With the constant price hikes and frenetic release schedule for many hobbyists, this may be the new way to play GW games.
As something to think about, GW’s prices might have inadvertently spurred people to jump into their smaller skirmish games.
Let’s be real for a sec, GW has always been expensive. But within the start of 8th edition, we’ve seen two things happen. Prices have shot up while points of models have gone down. Meanwhile, there has been a study increase of supplements we need for games (which GW also said would not happen).
With both of these things becoming more and more commonplace, it might have sparked a huge community of support into their skirmish games. Let’s take a look at the symptoms:
GW Prices Keep Going Up- Points Keep Going Down
Back in 2019, GW announced a price increase (which we’ve also seen hit Forge World now- twice since 2017). This price increase made kits across the board rise as far as 20% of what they originally cost. And there wasn’t any change made on GW’s part. There was no revamping of the box or anything. Simply, overnight, prices shot up on the exact same product.
On the other side of things, we’ve seen a gradual, but steady drop in points for units across the board as well. 2019’s Chapter Approved could’ve been titled “all of your units are getting cheaper-2019 edition” instead.
Since these two things happened within the same year, what we’ve seen is hobbyists are having to shell out more money for a product that won’t go as far. Yes, 40k games are getting bigger in terms of units on the table, but with that, collections are getting much more expensive.
You used to be able to get a fairly decent army for about $300 only a few years back. Now, it’s not uncommon for any faction to spend nearly $1,000 to even play a 2,000 pt game. You might be saying “you have to shop smart“…But if you go on websites like eBay, you’ll also notice that most armies have completely dried up. In fact, the majority of what you’ll find is commission services for armies and units that are even more expensive than buying an entire army NIB.
Has This Pushed the Community Into Skirmish Games?
With prices only going up and games becoming more packed with units, this could have in essence, pushed people out of the hobby. What we mean by that is that some of the community might have “backed down” from the 40k/AoS high-speed trend of monthly supplements and rules changes, and have gone for the more cheap alternative. Skirmish games.
If you haven’t paid much attention to GW’s specialist games, they probably have at least one game for any type of player. There are some outstanding games that don’t get as much coverage as their heavy-hitters such as:
- Warhammer Underworlds
- Warcry
- Necromunda
- Kill Team
- Blood Bowl
- Adeptus Titanicus
All of these games, barring Adeptus Titanicus, are incredibly inexpensive to play and can even use models from your current AoS/40k collection. However, if you were to jump straight into the game without any models, dice, or rules, you could get everything you needed for about $100. And that’s not bad considering that they’ll last you nearly forever and most console games on things like PC/Xbox/PS4 cost roughly $60-$80.
Skirmish Games Have Slower Releases Which Means More Hobby
As part of a nasty side-effect of fast supplement releases in games like 40k and AoS- bloating, rules confusion, and chasing the dragon are all evident. People spend less time on the hobby because they are too busy chasing the “meta” army or unit. As a result, armies are becoming of less and less quality compared to the love we saw models receive in previous years.
With that said, in skirmish games, competitiveness isn’t as relevant, which might be a breath of fresh air to some of you. And on top of that, supplements are slower. That means that you can work on a given warband or gang for a long amount of time and not have to worry about them really becoming obsolete.
With all of this covered, have you begun to step more into the skirmish game scene? How much did your current 40k/AoS army cost you? What’s one underrated specialist game from GW?
Let us know in the comments of our Facebook Hobby Group, and make sure you enter the latest monthly giveaway for FREE today!
About the Author: Wesley Floyd
