Olaf the Stout wrote:Milo wrote:straume wrote:Sure, but a box with 4 Gutter runners instead of 2 for say 50 USD would be even better
Fair enough. A box with everything I need for a buck would be even still better! But any company that tried to sell that would go quickly out of business.
Milo, I think you're misrepresenting his argument. He's not saying GW's offering of 2 boxes to make a full team for $70 USD is crap. He's just saying that offering a full team of positionals for $50 USD would be preferable.
$50 for a 14 man team is not a financially unviable price for GW, like the $1 offer you proposed. It is something GW could have considered.
Obviously, the $1 everything-you-need example was hyperbolic. But really, no matter what they offered, someone could (and would) ask for more. Let's look at the sprues you get, so we can answer this request specifically. On each sprue, you get 1x Storm Vermin/Blitzers, 1x Gutter Runner, 1x Thrower and 3x Lineman. A box comes with two sprues, so you get doubles of all of those positionals and a total of six linemen, for a total of 12 players. Note than you need 11 to have a team, minimum, so two sprues fills that requirement in the most efficient way possible. If they had put two Gutter Runners on the sprue, then a box would have had all of the positionals but only four linemen. Still a viable starting team. But what if you wanted to buy more linemen? You'd have to buy a whole new box just to get FOUR more! And the other eight minis would have been mostly useless -- sure, you could use the Blitzers and Throwers on an Underworld team, but then you'd have to buy a third box just to get the Linemen you need -- and at that point you'd have EIGHT useless Gutter Runners.
Designing the sprues to be asymmetrical would have been a possiblity: you could do two Blitzers and four Gutter Runners on one sprue, and one or two Throwers on the second sprue with linemen to total six. But that's expensive -- not only do you need to make two different and distinct plastic molds, but you'd also have more effort in packaging boxes, and undoubtedly customer service issues stemming from the possibility of a team box containing two of either Sprue A or Sprue B, which eats into profit a little more. Not to mention, you're still left with the issue of either only having 4 Linemen or only one Thrower, and the only solution is buying another box team.
So it's hard to see the current team box as less optimal. One box gets you a viable (if not ideal) starting roster. Two boxes fills out your roster AND gives you all the Skaven minis you need for an Underworld team. (If you don't want it, you should be able to find a buyer pretty easily, and yes, the fact that Skaven and Goblins would complete an Underworld team was intentional on the design team's part.) One box and the new Skaven booster from Forgeworld gets you a full roster with unique figures for almost all positionals; I'm not sure what the total price will be, but I think it will be competitive with teams from Comixininos that have more unique figures. Many of the GW teams have also included some separate pieces (heads, et. al) so that you can customize the positions further, and -- as plastic figures -- they are probably the easiest option for customizing.
Aside from wishlisting, how would
you produce a more optimally designed team?
Olaf the Stout wrote:Also your Comixininos example isn't really a like for like example.
Granted -- the teams available at Comixininos are boutique teams, designed by and for veteran coaches and enthusiasts. GW has the ability to reach a much larger customer base.
Olaf the Stout wrote:I can't buy the Gutter Runners separately, so to get all the positionals on the team (outside of the Rat Ogre) it costs me $70 USD. If I want to add a GW Rat Ogre to the team then it will cost me nearly $30 USD (including shipping) to get the Forgeworld Rat Ogre. So a full GW Skaven team is just under $100 USD. I get 25 minis for that price, but that just means I have a heap of extras I don't need, yet still only have only 7 unique sculpts on my team.
Comixininos currently has 3 different Skaven teams available. They are all cast in metal and have between 9-13 unique positionals on each team. The full team with 16 players will cost between $100-110 USD, which is still price comparable to GW.
Is it, though? I mean, yes, if you total up the entire team, it's comparable. I agree with you there. And I (and many others) have a preference for metal figures, so some would even say the 3rd Party (or 3P from here on out) teams are a better deal overall.
But if you're a brand new coach just getting into a new game, would you rather pay $35USD at your local FLGS to get started playing the game and see if you like it, or would you rather pay $80-100 plus S/H and wait a week or two for your team to be delivered?
Olaf the Stout wrote:However, it is rare in Blood Bowl to actually have a team of 16 players. So, if I just wanted a team of 14 with max positionals it would cost me about $80 plus shipping for a Uscarl Skaven team. Of that team of 14, there would be 13 unique sculpts.
Personally, if I had the choice between a team with 7 sculpts or a team with 13 sculpts (assuming similar sculpting quality), the team with 13 sculpts would be my choice every single time.
I am aware that GW is bringing out extra Skaven sculpts via Forgeworld and I am super happy and very excited to see that they are doing that. I'll definitely be buying them as I really value having unique sculpts on the field. I just wish they'd been available when the Skaven team was released.
I prefer unique sculpts myself. But historically, looking at the 3rd Edition teams, there were a lot of duplicates or only very minor differences. That's part of why I say the 3P teams are "boutique" teams. For more than a decade, there were ONLY GW 3rd Edition teams available (or 2nd Edition via eBay). Then came Impact and the start of the 3P minis, but even Impact has a lot of duplicated figures. I've got some of Phil's Phigs Black Widows, and there's only about five or six poses for the whole team. Only in the last decade, really, have Comixininos and Willy Miniatures and Kickstarter and Indiegogo broken the scene wide open so there is now a ton of variety available. So we're spoiled. But realistically, this idea of having 16 different figures for your team is a very new idea. (2nd Edition was close, but it also only had about a half-dozen teams represented. Even my 2nd Ed Skaven use duplicate figures for the Gutter Runners.)
I think it would have been great if the Skaven expansion pack was ready when the Skaven team dropped too. But would it have been better for the game if the Skaven team box had been delayed until now, leaving the new coaches with ONLY Orcs and Humans for the first three months? I think if you look at the question from that standpoint, it's obvious that GW needed to ship at least one additional team when BB2016 dropped. Should they have waited for the whole release until 2017 when they could have had the Dwarves and Skaven on sale at launch day? Maybe... but as I've said before, the strong sales of BB2016 is allowing the team to grow and hire more sculptors to accelerate timelines down the road, so it's not a cut-and-dried decision.
Consider the GW box sets to be for the mass market audience -- new and returning coaches who want to get started but have a minimal investment up front. (Impact fills this niche with their Trollcast teams too, many of which also duplicate positions.) Forgeworld is producing boutique kits for coaches who want to take the next step, such as the Skaven expansion pack, the Bright Crusaders and Orcland Raiders kits. GW is also notably not interfering with the existing 3P market, so the full metal teams will still be available for coaches who really want them -- and the new coaches GW brings into the game will increase, hopefully, the number of coaches looking for those Kickstarters and boutique teams eventually.