Frugalnomics: Increasing Cost, Decreasing Value

Price rises, price rises, all I seem to hear about these days is price rises!  Personally I think everything's more expensive these days, but Dethtron (first and second links) has a point when he establishes that GW's prices are in fact behind the rate of inflation (whether they were marked up to the point of lunacy to begin with is perhaps another matter).  Still, that's not what I'm here to bore you about today.

I have, in the past, been heard to discuss the notions of cost and value; that having low point cost kits and making them both essential to building an effective force and expensive to purchase in terms of real money is the gaming company's road to profitability.  Dethtron has been caught remarking that you don't want your ubiquitous and essentially mandatory METAL BAWKSES, included merely to transport models across the board and provide an additional layer of insulation against the rain of hot lead/laser/microwave death outside, to eat up huge chunks of your army's points that you could be spending on cool stuff.  I say that I prefer spending my money on transport vehicles that contribute something else to the game, hence my love of anything Fast with good guns that can move and still shoot, Land Raiders and even, at a pinch, the Ork Battlewagon, but that's still not the point that I'm trying to make here.

My point is that price increases are only half of the way that gaming companies can, if they so wish, diddle and fiddle you out of your hard-earned wonga.  The other way they get you is by devaluing what you already own.  We are familiar, I hope, with the various justifications for new editions that invalidate your previous rulebook purchases; some of these are more valid than others but I think that by the time you're on, say, the third edition of a game you're either a bad designer or a deliberately poor designer trying to set up pendulum swings and/or release bloat for business reasons (which, as I keep saying but will continue to restate every time lest I be considered a ninny, is a valid business model and not something unethical and vile that it's worth starting a protest march over.  Go on the ones to preserve teachers' pensions instead and at least do me a favour while you're there...).

What some of us are perhaps less familiar with is the really obvious under-your-nose phenomenon that I never see emerging from discussions of How Things Were Better Value In The Mid-Nineties.  Stuff was worth more then.  When I started playing, a Space Marine squad cost 300 points for ten lads before any upgrades.  Buy them a Veteran Sergeant with weapons and wargear, special weapons and a transport and you'd be running something in excess of 400.  With 1500 points established as the Holy Grail of game size, that means an 'army' might comprise three of those squads, the mandatory Captain and, I don't know, a Chief Librarian or a couple of Predators or a Bike Squadron (the New Hot Sexy Release during the month I started playing, sixteen years ago...) or something. 

Third edition 40K slashed the points value of that squad - and it's interesting that we talk about 'points value' as often as we do 'points cost', don't you think? - in half while continuing to present 1500 points as the 'standard' game size.  Suddenly you 'need' twice as many d00dz in order to roll up to your games night, unless you're the sort of person who asks insightful questions like "what's so special about 1500 points anyway?"  The later editions of 40K have been nudging the game toward a sweet spot closer to 2000 while continuing to gently nudge point costs (Ork Boyz dropping from 10 to 8 or 9 to 6 over the course of three Codices, anyone?) to the point where your old stuff, even if still playable, won't amount to what people are conditioned to expect.

Now, lest I be accused of favouritism here, let's take a swing at a couple of other companies.  Privateer Press managed to pull off the double whammy when they released Warmahordes Mark II, changing the entire points system in order to revalue pieces and change the expectations about what constituted a game.  Alas, rummage as I might I can't find any of my Mark I lists anywhere to run an Edifying Comparison, but there was a lot of effort sunk into creating a formula that would unpick exactly how the points costs and values converted between the two systems, and it was at first rather tricky to establish how much you now had and whether you'd been played like a stringed instrument or not - which, a cynic would argue, is what they wanted.  Wyrd, meanwhile, set out with two different game sizes and, while I don't follow the Malifaux gossip too closely, I'd npt be surprised if their first expansion brought with it an emphasis on the larger of them.  Changing costs is only half the game; sometimes companies change the value of what you own as well.

Frugalnomics Lesson 2 - Shopping Around

If you play Warhammer (or even if you don’t) you’ll probably be aware that Orc and Goblin players are getting some treats from everyone’s favourite games company in the next couple of weeks.  Games Workshop have revealed a whole host of new models, alongside the obligatory magic cards and the new army book.  There’s been the usual criticism of price rises and sculpting quality (yawn), but I really like all the new bits and pieces.  I suppose that if all you have to complain about in your life is that some plastic models don’t look exactly like you’d hoped, then things can’t be that bad overall.  I’d certainly never overreact to something so unimportant in the grand scheme of things.  Personally,   I like the idea of the new book (hardback, full colour and much longer) and can’t wait to get my hands on it.

But where from?  There’s plenty of places offering these items for sale but which offers the best value?  As part of your ongoing education in ‘Frugalnomics’ let’s have a look...

The first step in shopping around is to be clear on what you want buy, otherwise you may fall into the trap of spending more to make up to a free postage limit, or just get carried away with the excitement of it all and spend more than you’d planned.  Decide what you want and then stick to it!  For this exercise, we'll look at a typical Frugal gamer, lets call him ‘Percy’, who is an Orc and Goblin player.  Percy wants to buy the new orc and goblin army book, the aracnarok spider and a set of magic cards.  After a bit of looking around on the internet he chooses the following online stores (Total Wargamer, Maelstrom Games and Wayland Games) and compares them to his local Games Workshop (Please replace pounds sterling with crazy foreign equivalent as applicable.):

		Arachnarok	Magic Cards	Book	P&P	Total	Saving
	GW	£ 36.00	£ 4.10	£ 22.50	£ 0.00	£ 62.60	£ 0.00
	Wayland	£ 28.80	£ 4.71	£ 18.00	£ 4.41	£ 55.92	£ 6.68
	Maelstrom	£ 32.40	£ 3.69	£ 20.25	£ 0.00	£ 56.34	£ 6.26
	Total WG	£ 30.60	£ 3.48	£ 18.00	£ 3.99	£ 56.07	£ 6.53

 
So, by looking at the table, Percy can see that Wayland Games is cheapest overall.  But he also notices that by buying the army book and aracnarok from Wayland Games and then buying the Magic Cards from his local GW next time he’s in town, he can increase his savings to over £7.  Good work Percy!

Next time you’re thinking about your next purchase, have a look around and compare prices, a little bit of time spent searching can save you pounds (or crazy overseas equivalent).

Class dismissed.

Please note that prices were correct at the time of writing this article, please check prices yourself before making any purchases!

Frugalnomics Lesson 1 - False Economy

It’s nice to have the position of power that I do.  But as Spiderman famously said ‘With great power, comes great responsibility’, so as part of my ongoing mission to educate the masses, I’m launching an intermittent series of articles on Frugal Gaming basics.  I’m calling it ‘Frugalnomics’

Basically it’s like Scientology, except that it’s free and there’s no big secret at the end.  By the way, if you’re wondering, the big secret at the end of Scientology is that Bruce Willis is a ghost.

The first lesson is ‘False Economy’.  False Economy is (according to Wikipedia)

...an action which saves money at the beginning but which, over a longer period of time, results in more money being wasted than being saved.

So how does false economy relate to gaming?  Well, perhaps you bought some cheap miniatures on a whim, only to realise the quality was rubbish and they never got used.  Not only did you spend money unnecessarily; you now have to spend the money all over again to buy better miniatures that will get used.  Or how about this; you buy a cheap set of tools, they’re difficult to use and break after a few months of use; you need to buy them again.  As the old saying goes ‘Buy cheap, buy twice’.

So how do you prevent falling into the false economy trap?  The main way I’ve found is to have a look at how much alternative products cost.  If you find a particular product from one retailer, have a look around and see what other companies are producing it. 

The tricky bit is trying to decide which offers the best value for money; so not necessarily the cheapest or the most expensive, but the one that offers the balance of quality and price.  A recent example from my own frugal existence is superglue.  I’ve been using pound shop superglue for years and it’s always produced terrible results, breaking easily and requiring me to buy more.  After the last bottle ran out I decided to go for a more expensive brand and dished out £3.20 for some thick, slower setting superglue.  Since then, it’s been a pleasure to use and has been much more effective.  I only have to glue once and it stays stuck.

 Have you had a false economy situation?  Let me know via email, or post it below. 

Class dismissed.