One man, one shop, one bloody stupid idea

So today I found myself not using my God-given day of rest to exercise but to stand in Chelmsford high street, eating a toffee slice, a situation completely reversed from my usual attempts of a day of preventing my inevitable death by arterial failure. A situation that I find myself now finding Games Workshop utterly to blame, rather than my own lack of self control.

You see, profits are down with the mega-giant of little fiddly miniatures, as we might be seeing at long last a turning point for Games Workshop: when we at ultimately see their loyal fans say, 'Fuck this noise, this is way too expensive.' Oh noes!

Whilst as a student a few of my peers spoke enviously of my supposed finances considering a didn't smoke, drink, or do anything interesting outside, rather preferring to stay inside playing Dawn of War. Ah, I would respond wearily, but I play 40K. And a few who knew what I was talking about then nodded sagely and sympathetically. They would then turn to the audience who spent their free time actually going outside and having a life to imagine the state of my finances as having the equivalent of having a severe coke, heroin, and prostitute dressed as sexy nuns addiction to get the gist of my expenditure.

Admittedly, as I said that, I never brought any 40K as a student because that shit was far too expensive. And that was when I was a student, a very long time ago. Now, it's even worse. I mean, the recent Tyranid codex now tops out at £30 with two or three more additional supplements in the pipeline. Yeah, Games Workshop had the nerve to introduce freakin' dlc into their codex's. Well done, you turds.

Nowadays, let's say you want to start playing. Let's go as cheap as possible. Two squads of Space Marine tactical marine box sets and a headquarters unit is the bare minimum for a legal army. A quick scan for their cheapest HQ unit, and our total price is... £58.20. (1 x Chaplin at £8.20, 2 x tactical marines £25 for 10.)

That's... that's a fair bit of start up investment.

Only it isn't.

You see, that army is way to small as the smallest battles I regularly see played have around 1000 points worth of models. To bulk that up, you'll want a tank, a devastator squad, and dreadnought and a bike squad. Okay. hazy maths would be that extra just over £100 more. (1 x Predator tank at £35, 1 x devastator squad at £20.50, 1 x dreadnought at £28, 3 x bikes at £20) Okay, at that point, fuck it, we'll go cheaper and buy a whole strike force for £140 as the cheaper option. Cool. That's now a fucking hell of a start up investment.

Only it isn't.

You're going to need the rules now. For the main rulebook and Space Marine codex adds another £80, and we're finally ready to paint...

Only you're aren't.

You forget to buy paints. And sprays. And tools.

We're already over £200 before the paints and this is a small points value army. Yeah. There's your problem. No one new is going into your hobby at this rate, especially not the young kid demograph, who you want in to become addicts for life. Talk to Nintendo about that, it's their business model.

I found this, and the scary thing is, this is probably a good deal.

They sell tiny plastic models. They cost pence to make. And yet price gouging is not the end of their cock-dickery, because in an effort to save costs we go back to why I was in Chelmsford eating a toffee cake slice doing terrible things to my health (thanks for that, Games Workshop) because I had to be in today because tomorrow their store shuts for two weeks. Renovation? Repairs? Nah. The only bloke that works there is going on holiday.

You see, to save money they now operate a one man, on store policy. Each store only employees one dude. Yup. This is stupid for many reasons, let's start with the holiday; your one dude has no cover. He gets sick, on holiday, dies from overwork, goes for a piss, no one is manning that store. In this scenario, he's off for two weeks. Rent's still due. Tax is still due. That's some fixed costs you're not making back.

This also ignores the fact that most stores are a hub of gaming. Most shops cater to their addicts with tournaments, painting classes, and open late to give fans something to do and to keep coming back. Yeah, one man one store works in theory - if that man owns the shop. Then it's his time, his money. This poor dude's a salary man. He doesn't have time to cook up the proverbial meth to keep the addicts through the door. And as I get to this point I realise I've used rather gendered language this whole time, but considering that most long term 40K fans describe themselves as 'neck beards' I think I'll let this slide this one time.

That being said I don't expect Games Workshop to change any time soon. Profits were down, as said, but still there. They're still making money, just less of it, and it's a surprising loss with the launch of a few new codex's which traditionally see profits go up. They're proven themselves remarkably resilient to change or to compete on price or intelligence. I mean, I was only in there today because I needed some white spray. White spray for these:

The crowd goes wild for their intro song, Black Sabbath's Iron Man.

Say hi the future Helmsworth Iron Men, a Dreadball team from Mantic games. I got the rules for free, (they offer them for free, it turns out) and this whole team cost me £15. Which is a whole, legal team. Whilst perhaps a tad unfair to compare a single unit game versus 40K, an army game, Mantic also produce Warpath and a box set of a complete small army costs £50. With free rules.

So, Games Workshop. I'll be seeing you later. My money is going to the people who don't try to force their genitalia into my wallet.