Grey Knights 4 sale and other news

[travis]

Just wanted to let everyone that Grey Knights go on sale this week. The following sku's will be available at your local retailer

Grey Knight Codex

Terminators

Dread Knight

Troop Pack

Lord Kaldor Draigo

Inquisitor Coteaz in a blister

Something else that I wanted to tell you guys that you may not have heard about. A large portion of their metal kits and blisters have gone to what they call Available to Order. This has been called Bits or Direct ordering in the past.

What this means is that they are still available to buy, I just can't stock them regularly through my trade sales rep. So if you don't see something, that is a metal kit, on the wall just place an order.

It kinda sucks for us retailers as our margin is much worse on ATO products then trade sales. Part of the reason that this has happened is due to them no longer making metal parts in the US. They exclusively make plastic here.

A few of you may remember last year the issue with trying to find Tyranid Hive Guard. Well the same thing happened recently with the beast models for Dark Eldar. Currently, retailers can't get from GW any of metal beast models for DE.

So with this information, if you are thinking about getting something that is metal please pre-order it with your local retailer. Games Workshop has no formal way of pre-ordering product. They have people that make educated projections on how much of a product people are looking to buy. Sometimes they get those numbers wrong and there is a shortage. The easiest way to make sure you get your stuff is to order it, before it comes in. Not the day before, the week before.

Some of the more popular kits that are no longer available from trade sales are the following: Chaos Obliterators, Plague Marines, Emperor's Children, Orks in Mega Armor, Thunderstrike Cannon, Necron Destroyer Lord. My guess is that when they do the price adjustment this year in June/July we won't have any metal through trade sales out side of the new releases that are coming in. This is purely speculation on my part. Them having to ship metal from Britain has to be costly.

On the bright side, more then likely these units will be made into plastic and made even cooler. I think all of us can agree that their plastics are awesome and for the most part more affordable.

So I just wanted to keep you guys all in the loop. If you come into one of the local store and don't see something that is metal and you want to buy it please place an order for it. We can stock them on our own but the pricing for us sucks and we would prefer to take orders. It's a bit nicer for us in a way as the expense of our inventory is much less to.

Thanks

[grubnards]

Travis,

Any estimates on when the Tomb Kings stuff will start appearing? If they are getting a major overhaul like the Dark Eldar did then I'm really going to have to consider starting another army.

- Kevin

[fishboy]

Just wanted to let everyone that Grey Knights go on sale this week.

Can you say when this week? Give me a call (will PM my Cell number) when it gets there and I will get there as soon as I can!!

[travis]

Probably Friday around 3pm. I usually get my shipments Thursday or Friday. On release weeks it's usually Friday. If you don't have your numbers in please get them in.

[MajorSoB]

Thanks for the info Travis.

I did want to share my reaction with you. I think it is very sad on numerous levels. Last I checked GW was a company that marketed gaming systems and models, yet they seem unwilling to manufacture the models necessary to play their games. Many models are outright unavailable ( thunder wolves for example ), others are scarce ( hive guard ), some have been recently pulled ( most guard special characters ), and now you tell us that some newly released models may no longer be available ( DE beasts?). I don't understand, maybe your rep can give us an explanation. This hurts the hobby in many ways. First, you as a retailer do your best to provide products for your customers to buy, but how can you make profit on products that you cannot get? Second, how does this benefit the GW gamer when they can no longer field models called for in the game? Lastly, how does this benefit GW, last I checked you cannot make profit from a product you do not produce.

Don't misunderstand me, I am all for GW moving forward and replacing its older models with newer and most often better looking products. What I don't understand is why you would go to the trouble to create a model ( DE beasts for example ) only to limit sales and limit the potential profit you could generate from it. If the metal casting is such an issue, why does GW keep producing metal pieces instead of plastic?

-Rant off-

Again, thanks for keeping us informed Travis

[travis]

To clarify. The Dark Eldar stuff will be back at some point. For the record, aside from Courtney, no other DE player's has bought any of it. I am still well stocked. The reason the Dark Eldar stuff is sold out is due to popularity and higher then projected sales figures. This is overall, a good thing. Let's be honest, when the codex came out, not one person was running around screaming "I can't wait to get my hands on that Beastmaster, Razorwing, Clawed Fiend, Khymera unit, it is gonna destroy people". With the exception of Courtney cause he's a lunatic and needs to own one of everything in the book.

We have talked about the reason why they don't make Thunderwolf Calvary. No one would buy the unit because it would cost the same as a Baneblade. I think they learned their lesson from the Undead Calvary.

Special Characters don't sell. It's that simple. They have to be ordered in pairs, through trade and they don't sell. I sell one special character for every 25 codices. Not having to carry them on my wall regularly is a good thing. With the giant amount of excess material from plastic kits these days player's should have no problem coming up with there own unique take on each special.

Some people enjoy modeling. All the units in books have never been produced. The amount of stuff that I would have to stock if everything, in every codex and army book was made, would be unreal. Especially when so many people are gonna just go through each book and cherry pick the best units for each category. After two weeks people figure out the cream of the crop and then retailers are stuck holding the bag. Sometimes something breaks, late in a book and gets hot, but not often.

Not all retailers have the player base and resources that I do. If they order a couple of wrong items, a couple of times, they close their doors. It's not because they don't want to be able to sell everything to player's, it's to protect the retailers that don't do their homework.

All of the products I mentioned going to "Available to Order" I can still get in. They are not something that I will stock regularly. The downside is a reduced margin, not the loss of a sale. In fact the Librarian you ordered is ATO now.

So while we can all agree that they aren't perfect. Games Workshop is still so far ahead of the competition that it gives us plenty of room to criticize them. After all, if your the best at what you do, your going to be taken to task on how you do it more often, because more people are impacted and care.

[MajorSoB]

Once more, thanks for the reply.

So the Termy Libby is now ATO? Does what does that mean exactly, will you be able to get it or should I start looking around?

Understand I am siding with you as a retailer. With many products no being produced or stocked, it does impact sales and profit. I would have already purchased the above mentioned product from you and you would have made your profit. Now since I ordered it, it will take some time for you to turn your profit and may now be diminished since it is some sort of special order now.

Back to the beasts. I picked up the models. I plan on playing them at some point when I get around to breathing life back into my Dark Eldar. The models are good with the exception of the beastmaster ( I dont like his helmet with all the eyes, but whatever ). If they were sold in a plastic box for $50 or $60, I would have bought them already. Most likely I will buy the max unit but at the price that GW charges for metal I have to weigh my options. This unit is cool and adds color to the army and game but produced and limited as it currently is will have some impact overall to the game and the hobby.

I also understand the whole striking while the iron is hot theory on selling product, and as a gamer I question the whole wave 1, wave 2 release policy. Take Dark Eldar. They sold quite well when they were released, but roughly half or more products detailed in the codex do not have models. Yes, rumor has it that in the coming months (summer) wave 2 will hit but hasnt the newness worn off by then? In other words, I sincerely believe that if GW went back to the older style of releasing the complete army with the codex it would help sales. You however are the retailer and would ultimately know what policy works best.

As for special characters, hey I get it, they should be direct order. There is no need for you to have one of every character littering your shelf but if GW feels fit to write rules on it, at least keep the model in production. Yarrick, Chenkov, Marbo ( terrible model! ), Tallarn, Mordians, Steel Legion, Valhallans, etc....RIP. All are now unavailable from a codex that is only two years old. I understand making certain products direct only but the removal altogether somehow doesn't make sense to me.

Back to your original topic. I am excited about the Grey Knights release. I preordered and am looking forward to seeing the new products. Put my stuff aside and I will see you sometime this weekend.

Thank you, as always.

[travis]

I ordered the librarian. It should be in soon. The Ato stuff I order through my rep when placing my regular trade order. It is picked and shipped differently from my regular order so it takes a couple of days to get here.

To touch on the IG stuff quickly. None of the models you listed were new models for the line anyways. Al of those models were released with the last codex or the one before that. Not having specific factionalized units such as Tallarn has been the norm. I mean look at Chaos. The Thousand Sons, Emperor's Children, Khorne Beserkers, Havocs, Raptors, Dreadnaught, Plague Marines were all leftover models from the Codex before.

I agree it would be nice if they came up with a plastic sprue like the ones they have for Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Black Templar and now Grey Knights so that you could take a base model and make them a specific faction. The problem with Guard more so then Space Marines or Chaos space marines in the model you start with.

With marines you can take a regular marine torso and a wolf torso and make it a unique Space Wolf marine. With guard this is very difficult based on the fact that they wear different uniforms completely. If everything was a base Cadian or Catachan figure this would be a piece of cake. The difference between the look of a Steel Legion, Vallhallan, Catachan, Cadian, Mordian is vast. I mean they tried right. You own Vostroyan right? How did you think the sales of those figures were all around.

Initially I didn't like the 2, 3 wave releases. I do now for a couple reasons. 1. It's more affordable that way for a player to get his/her army when it comes out. It's certainly less overwhelming. 2. When the second wave hits, it gives a resurgence to the first wave. 3. Unlike before when your army just got remade, you wouldn't get another new model for a decade. 4. You can gauge what you have to order on the second wave based on your wave 1 sales. If I had to project everything, all at once, it would be a crap shoot. 5. Most of the second,third wave stuff is specialized. Not everyone is going to get or do they need the stuff from the second wave to make an army. Most of the stuff is just to flesh out or add some flavor. It's also mostly metal. So more then likely they do the same thing I do. Based on their national/international sales they decide how much metal to spin. Obviously they need to do some tweaking to that calculation.

See you soon.