I've been reading alot of complaints about recent announcements by Games Workshop and their new policy on selling and new price increases that are coming. Not good news by any means, but that's how it is. They obviously feel like they are in a position that they can do this and not kill their profits. More power to them if they think they can get away with, but it does hurt. But in the same token I'm not screaming the sky is falling. This hobby is the least expensive of all my hobbies with the exception of drawing. The other thing people need to keep in perspective is what is happening with the price of oil, this is impacting everything. I work in an industry that is closely related to the construction industry and in the past few years, I've been watching the prices of everything fluctuate all over the place. Its a volatile market today if you are in a business selling a product, you do need to protect yourself. Now this isn't to poo-poo all of the criticism, or to say it is okay. Will some people get driven off by all this, obviously some will. I quite honestly am probably nearing the end of building GW armies for myself as I see my orcs taking me a few years to do completely and plan on having a new 40k space marine army in the near future as well as finishing my chaos warriors army. So my parts list is pretty much filled, my schedule for the next few years is most definitely filled. After that I will have done most everything I've ever wanted to do army wise in GW stuff.
Now if all this cost increase stuff deeply depresses you, and you are thinking about quitting because of GW, I'm going to say shame on you. Have you looked elsewhere for miniatures, are you not paying attention.....There are some great new companies doing high quality plastic miniatures and very much affordably, as well as being supportive by doing metal miniatures to supplement. And I'm not talking about Mantic as I really dislike the appearance of everything that they have done thus far with the exception of their undead.
If you don't like GW anymore and want to continue playing wargames, checkout these companies and support them with your hard earned money:
http://www.warlordgames.co.uk/
http://immortalminiatures.com/
http://www.victrixlimited.com/
http://perry-miniatures.com/
http://www.conquest-games.co.uk/index.php
http://www.grippingbeast.com/shop.php?CatID=392
http://www.avatars-of-war.com/eng/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66&Itemid=63
And don't be afraid to supplement those above with some metal miniatures from these fine manufacturers:
http://www.avatars-of-war.com/
http://www.gorgon-studios.com/?page_id=2
http://www.grippingbeast.com/webpage.php?PageID=1
http://www.reapermini.com/
http://artizandesigns.com/
http://www.crusaderminiatures.com/
Reaper does a pretty nice prepainted line as well, I think it's called Legendary encounters. They don't work as 'troop' type choices because of few poses and individual cost, but I find they fill the slots I often time would use a metal.
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