Sunday 3 May 2015

Considering this weeks GW releases

now I know what you are thinking 'here he goes bitching about the Knight release and GW redoing a codex after only 12 months' but that isn't the set of products that caught my this week. I have been mire interested in the new brushes and White Dwarf subscriptions! What you didn't see that coming?

For those that haven't seen them the new brushes look pretty slick, aesthetically they are now in line with the GW tool range they brought out a while back. Here have a look:
Could these be the brushes we've been looking for? Ok one isn't a brush but the idea of a texture manipulator is cool right? 

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-EU/Painting-Modelling?N=102285+4294966606&Nu=product.repositoryId&qty=12&sorting=phl&view=table&_requestid=7572485

I'm not going to judge the quality until I can get my hands in them but if they are similar to the tool release then I feel this is a miss step, the same products with a fancier more expensive look, along with a a huge range of brushes that the ill informed with believe they need all of just seems the wrong move. The Essential set is £30.50... for the brushes that you need to start your hobby? Just feels as though it may become another barrier to entry which would be a shame as I see other companies doing the opposite and making it quick and easy to paint armies (ok maybe just army painter, but they do it so well!). Still I'll have a better look next week and give a full review once I can compare some with the current brushes I have.

The other release was White Dwarf subscriptions. I know I have been fairly down on what has happend to WD but I was willing to consider a subscription to the weekly magazine if it came in at a price that represented a decent discount. I know some people will scough as it is 'only' £2.40 to start with but with that £124.80 over the course of a year can get me a few quality board games and not being able to opt out of a week where I have no interest/there are no WD exclusive rules means I was looking for a hook. Then I looked at the price of £130 for 12 months and realised it worked out more expensive. The benefit? You get it early and to your door. Sadly this hasn't convinced me. It seems odd that with the original idea behind the weekly magazine was to get people into stores to get the increase sales but with everything being spoiled a week or more in advance (still before people would get their WD) they now want to lock you in with a subscription. So rather than be a negative Nancy about it I thought I'd suggest some solutions.

1- Mission of the week. Give people an extra reason to get their models out every week to try something new and I'm not talking about the stupid mini-games they add in using decks of cards! One 40k and one Fantasy mission a week would not take much but it would give you a regular reason to consider picking it up.
2- Put back in the card inserts.  Adding in unit cards for each weeks releases would be awesome, just quick reference cards which tell you about the units released this week and exclusive to WD (plus you can use the extra space for mission cards, and to cover the older codices units). I appreciate that card stock wasn't amazing but if I knew I could get these as player aids each week I think I may well pick up a WD with my new models. Maybe only put on them the keywords and not all the rules to keep the need to get the rule books (though I'd go full rules as the points costs are in the codex).
3- Vouchers. I know I've said it before but give people a deal and they are happy. Use it to shift old stock or promote new products (like brushes) for a short time window and you'd help to drive people into your stores and compete with the internet discounters.
4- Promote future releases. More than just vague sentences about next week, get people excited for a new codex by showing those silhouettes of the new models for something coming in two or three weeks. Add a count down for these and sprinkle them around the magazine like little easter eggs, nerds love that shit.

That would get me excited about WD again, anyone else have anything they would like or are we all just grumpy old gamers now and this stuff is for the bright eyed uninitiated?

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