Objective Secured

How expensive is Warhammer?

As a result of planning Southern Hemisphere Open for multiple years my social media feed is filled with different gaming groups from around country and around the world. Every couple of months one of those groups will focus on a hate filled rage at the prices of Warhammer and how expensive it is.

As I was putting one of my children to bed tonight I saw a group exploding over 3D printing models and IP and the price gouging that is GW/Warhammer. It started harsh, it went downhill!

Warhammer is expensive!

Warhammer is expensive. There is no denying it. It’s a luxury product and with it comes a luxury price tag. I will admit to being horrified by the prices of models and everything that went with them when I was first ventured down the rabbit hole into this world of table top gaming. I was buying Mike models as gifts and it really didn’t seem like I was getting bang for my buck. I felt like I was being ripped off!

My husband was hooked on Warhammer well before he met me, he was a lost cause. My children on the other hand, I could steer them away from Warhammer into a more affordable hobby. I was the mum who joked that getting kids into Warhammer is a good idea because if they play with toy soliders they will never have money for drugs.

Warhammer is expensive – But is it?

As an Event Organiser I found myself talking about the positives of Warhammer and table top gaming events in general. It is so much more than playing with toy soldiers (in fact I wrote a post about it a while ago – gee it was a while ago! Took me quite some time to dig through and find it!) and I started to convince myself that there was more to this game than two mates hanging out and taking great joy in blowing up their friend’s titan before it gets to fire a single shot.

Then, not too long ago I found myself in the Lego aisle of a shop looking at all the different Lego trying to find one (ideally more than one) that our son didn’t already own. Here’s where I found myself in a position I didn’t ever think I would be in. I found myself looking at Lego and thinking ‘we have to get him playing Warhammer, it is much better value for money than Lego!’

How does it compare?

As I stood in the aisle of Lego I thought ‘that Lego is $200, he will build it in an hour and then it will sit on a shelf and gather dust, will it bring $200 worth of joy in an hour?’

Obviously that is a difficult question to answer. How do you quantify the value of joy? Can you put a price on happiness? Does happiness come from a box of plastic bricks? (As somone who derives nothing but frustration from plastic bricks, I can tell you I quanitified it that $200 for one hours of Lego was not good value, it should bring more than an hour of joy!)

Full circle – my thoughts on GW price gouging

Tonight as I read yet again that GW are price gouging and they should be ashamed and how much does it cost to make vs how much are we paying to buy it I was forced to again examine my thoughts on how expensive GW is.

I come back to Warhammer is a luxury product. People can choose whether or not to buy it. The reality is, if you want to play the game and you don’t want to or have capacity to drop the $ on it you could, in fact, blu tac a lego mini fig onto a coin and the mini fig on the 20c piece counts as an intercessor and the mini fig on the 50c piece counts as a Librarian etc. Choosing to purchase a model brand new, versus waiting until it has been out a while and purchasing it second hand or using a counts as is 100% your choice.

Choosing to play is 100% your choice. In the same way that choosing to spend all your money at the pub is your choice or choosing to smoke a packet of cigarettes a day is your choice or choosing to drive a Ferrari or any other way you choose to spend your money on luxuries if that is an option for you.

My Lego aisle rationalisation expanded

Back to when I was stood in that Lego aisle. I had a moment of realisation. This Lego I am looking at is $200 and he will build it for an hour. Once it’s finished it will sit on a shelf. How much Warhammer can I buy for $200 and how much enjoyment will he get from that.

$ value comparisons

Tonight I decided to do a like for like $ value comparison. (These prices are all in Au$).

At the time of writing this a Lego Star Wars Tie Fighter (Ep IX) is $95, a box of 10 Primaris Intercessors is $98.

Enjoyment opportunity:

Tie Fighter.

Looking at the Tie Fighter kit I estimated that it would take our son less than an hour to build. A quick search on YouTube and I found a real time build which took an adult 52 minutes so my estimate is pretty close.

After the build it would be put on the shelf to be looked at.

Primaris Intercessors:

Build time (including cleaning them properly) estimated to be between 5 and 15 minutes per model. If you are clipping and gluing then you are looking at about 5 minutes. If you are clipping, cleaning all the mould lines, adding the pouches etc then you could be looking closer to 15 minutes per model and that isn’t including any time spend potentially converting any of the model. A conservative estimate is 60 minutes for 10 models.

Already we are on par with the Lego build time.

After cleaning, there is painting. Painting time is like asking how long is a piece of string. Today we saw a post saying someone could paint an Intercessor in 15 minutes using contrast paint and dry brushing. If you are undercoating and applying the base colours then the minimum you are looking at per model would be about 10 minutes and other people may spend hours on a single model. Lets go with the post I saw today and say 15 minutes per model. Thats another two and a half hours.

We have added 250% of enjoyment time. The value for money has gone from $100 an hour to $100 for 3.5 hours of fun. Another way to look at it, it has cost $100 an hour for Lego and it only cost $28.50 an hour for the models.

If you have a big enough collection that you can now put those 10 intercessors into an army you can potentially gaming time to the hours of enjoyment from those modelts. Let’s conserviatively add another 2 hours of enjoyment from that box of models. We are at 5.5 hours of fun from those models and the models have cost you $18 per hour of enjoyment.

It is about $16 to go to see a movie, the cost of enjoyment to go and see a movie is therefore about $8 an hour. We need to play another 3 games with the models to get the cost of those models to be about the same cost of going to see a movie. Play another 6 games and the cost per hour for those models is about the cost of purchasing a cup of coffee.

No man is an island

I am aware that I have over simplified this. I am comparing Lego that is a stand alone product that doesn’t require any additional products to build or play with it and Warhammer models need clippers and files and paints and brushes.

I’m also aware that you can’t play a game with 10 intercessors. At the risk of going down a tangent that will no doubt be argued because I am oversimpifying. An intercessor squad is about $100 for about 175 points (give or take). Aiming for 1750 points which is the standard points in the UK and happens to nicely work with the 175 points I’ve allocated for the 10 intercessor squad we could roughly guage that 1750 points would cost about $1000 and for the sake of being fair lets add in $200 for consumables – spray paint, paints, brushes, clippers, files etc. $1200 all up.

For $1200 in Lego I could extrapolate that we could buy 12 Lego box sets and my son could get 12 hours of entertainment from it.

For $1200 in Warhammer I could extrapolate that we could buy, build, paint and play with a 1750 point Space Marine Army (and I didn’t choose the cheapest army to use for this comparison).

Let’s dig deeper on this one…

Too late, I’ve started down the rabbit warren now. If you don’t want to come with me – Warhammer is good value for money. If you are coming with me hang on, who knows where we may end up!

This isn’t a good tournament army, but it is an off the shelf army with everything coming from core range box sets with no left over models. It is an example of a ‘starter army’.

Primaris Captain

Primaris Librarian

Primaris Lieutenant

2 x 5 man infiltrator squads

2 x 5 man intercessor squads

6 man aggressor squad

Primaris apothecary

Redemptor dreadnought

6 man Inceptor squad

3 man Eliminator squad

Repulsor executioner

At time of writing it is 1748 points and $1071 this is all with full multipart kits. Looking at Easy To Build; The start collecting vanguard space marine set and a the dark imperium starter core box, easy build redemptor dreadnought, 6 aggressors, and the executioner would get you 1750 points and would cost $773 (plus you get the death guard half of the dark imperium box that you can either add to the hours of play or sell and use that $50ish to fund an extra model or 2 :p)

With these two examples we are looking at between $1000 and $1250 for the army including consumables.

To build the listed army you are looking at (conservatively) between 6 and 8 hours. To paint the army you are looking at (to table top standard) between 10 and 15 hours.

Just to build and paint the army we have 12 hours of Lego compared to between 16 and 23 hours of Warhammer. That doesn’t involve playing any games.

Game length, like everything else differs depending on MANY factors. For a conservative estimate I’m going to say 2 hour games (the event organiser in me is revolting at this suggestion, 3 hours feels much more realistic but we will stick with 2 hours). Lets say a person plays with their army once a fortnight for a year (again conservative). That is 52 hours of play. For the same cost as 12 hours of Lego entertainment Warhammer has given 75 hours of entertainment and that doesn’t include the time that gamers spend on the internet reading about models, talking about them, looking up army list suggestions, reading the Lore etc. This is JUST building and playing with the models.

Lego equates to $100 an hour of entertainment, playing with the models as I have outlined costs $16 per hour for 75 hours of play. Play weekly for 2.5 hours a week for a year and the cost of that $1250 point army is $8 an hour. Is it likely that you will play every week with the exact same army for a year? Maybe not but Mike has had models that he still uses and that still see table time for three decades. They are still providing joy and entertainment.

It’s a 10c piece of plastic

The most freqent argument I hear is ‘it’s a 10c piece of plastic’. Normally I go into ‘it’s more than just the actual plastic, there is the cost of the moulds, the cost of the packaging, the advertising, the shipping to stores, the cost of the staff to make and sell the models etc etc – its expensive for a reason. For arguments sake, lets imagine it is just a 10c piece of plastic, what do you think Lego is? and I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that a Lego mould is somewhat less complicated than a Warhammer mould!

Final thoughts

Warhammer is expensive, it’s all well and good saying play for 5 hours a week for a year and it works out to be $4 an hour, or another way to look at it, for $1250 you can buy minimum of 283 hours of entertainment you still need to come up with $1250 to buy the army. That is literally more than my first car cost. For a 13 year old it is going to take a lot of birthdays and christmas presents and/or money and a lot of mowing the lawn to build that collection. For a grown up it is the equivalent of 250 coffees or 30 packets of 25 cigarettes or 25 cartons of beer. I’m not trying to diminish the cost, what I am saying is that when it comes to luxury items the value of time on the return on investment is probably one of the highest I know of and the game brings you joy.

In my opinion Warhammer – while expensive – offers good value for money but more importantly it offers a diverse range of hobby options. (but no Mike, if you are reading this, it does not mean I think you should buy a new army!)