The Hat Trick of Ass-Hattery

You gotta hand it to GW, when they screw you, they really do it good and proper. On the heels of my ill-timed post yesterday, GW made a slew of announcements.

First, the rumor was put to rest, metals are a thing of the past! Well sorta I guess. People are saying that Citadel Finecast miniatures will be a mixture of metal and resin. I certainly hope not. I think anyone who has tried to put together the old metal/plastic devastators knows the joy of how much they suck (that sentence makes perfect sense to me).

Beyond that, you have to be happy with GW making this move to reduce costs. I mean the price to tin, one of the major components of the "white metal" GW currently uses has gone through the roof over the past couple of years, so this of course will slow down the price increases. Oh, except for the fact that just about all of the Citadel Finecast miniatures will cost more than their metal counterparts. Some of them only $.25, but some like Canis Wolfborn will go up almost $8! ($48 for a dude with lightning claws riding a war-hamster?! Where do I sign up?)

Right on the heels of this, we get our yearly price increase. Am I the only one that thinks that these come earlier and earlier each year? Somewhere the BS has to give out. I can (sorta) understand the price increase of the Finecast models. Its a new system. New machines, new molds etc etc etc. There is probably a significant start-up costs with this, and passing these costs along to the customer is just what you do. But with these older sprues, has there really been that much inflation? The Black Reach boxed set was $75 when it came out a few years back and now its $99. Thats a 33% increase in the price. Wow. Way to go.

Last but not least, GW has told its UK distributors that they are not allowed to sell overseas. So, for example,  those poor bastards in Austrialia that have a stronger dollar than the US dollar, are totally getting raped. For example, if we go back to the Black Reach boxed set which retails in the UK for 58.50 GBP , that is equivalent to about 87 AUD. But if you buy the Black Reach boxed set from a distributor in Austrialia, you pay $150. Wow. Way to go.

So there you have it in the span of 48 hours GW has completed the Hat Trick of Ass-Hattery. I wonder how many of the people that are raging over all of this will actually quit GW, and I also wonder how many people quitting it will take for GW to see that these practices are not so good.