3 minutes ago, ScummyRebel said:

Why does one ask a question one already knows the answer to? It’s not a publicly traded company, so anyone having numbers is highly unlikely.

I certainly think there’s a “feels bad” because of being used to original cost. What are you getting for the upgraded cost? Not much, or perhaps nothing at all (looking at you P2 troopers).

Perceived value is a real force. No one is saying they can’t make money and no one is saying they can’t set that price, merely that it no longer holds the perceived value for them.

I’m not going to be sour if I stop buying legion minis. I just will stop and the funds will find their way to something else. If enough people do that, perhaps they’d reconsider? Or they don’t, either way it’s their choice.

I asked a question I knew the answer to to highlight the ridiculousness of his assertion. " They were making money prior to this price hike. This is greed." I'm sure it will make no difference to his beliefs, though, so I'm not sure why I bothered.

35 minutes ago, ninclouse2000 said:

They were making money prior to this price hike. This is greed. And unless you want this to turn political, perhaps you should ignore my perspective in this subject.

Let me ask you this:

Why do you think prices rose?

Your response is "greed" , but it could be something else?

Maybe FFG lost money due to delayed release dates? Or lost money due to the Dewback base issue? Maybe it costs more to make these new units due to the casting process which drove the cost up?

It's common for us as humans to immediately come to conclusions that help fit into our schemas. I don't blame you.

It sucks that prices are going up, but it's a broken mindset to claim "greed" just because you don't agree with the new price.

33 minutes ago, ninclouse2000 said:

They were making money prior to this price hike. This is greed.

I mean, not necessarily.

A lot of the pushback to Legion from the old warhammer communities at our local venues was due to the use of soft plastic in the original sets. The perception of the game at the time was that it was designed to be a larger scale board game like Rebellion or IA, or at the very least that FFG would treat it as so. It wasn't a serious TTWG.

It seems to me FFG (and likely Disney) would want the singular tabletop war game in this very expensive and potentially lucrative IP to meet the industry's best in terms of hobby and rule sets. Meaning soft plastic wasn't going to cut it.

Now I know a little about the manufacturing world and I know that changing materials can often mean a costly shift in dies, machines and processes. Even beyond that, if FFG is looking to compete with warhammer the bump in price may be to compensate for improvements in company infrastructure.

There's a lot of hearsay and hyperbole about the cost bump.

Realistically, we don't know what it cost them to switch, or what the inherent value of doing so is.

They probably raised prices in part because they can. No one else is making Star Wars miniatures. So there’s not really any competition to drive prices down.

The core set will be getting a price increase (along with plenty other Asmodee titles) according to some posts from GAMA.

The likely thing,

1. they did need to increase prices some to help with new molds, etc. but not by this much.
2. a price increase would probably be coming soon for other reasons so

3. They just put them together and hit us with one price change instead of one with the plastic change and another just a few months later as part of a swooping price increase.

3 minutes ago, davekon said:

They probably raised prices in part because they can. No one else is making Star Wars miniatures. So there’s not really any competition to drive prices down.

Or these customers can go play any other miniature game? Chances are majority of the community has played a game like 40K, Kings of War, or another board gaming hobby.

1 hour ago, ninclouse2000 said:

They were making money prior to this price hike. This is greed. And unless you want this to turn political, perhaps you should ignore my perspective in this subject.

There is more factors than just greed. If the price too high they end up making less. They are supplied from China whch recently has it's own market forces, they are moving to sprues and while I have no evidence that this costs more Games Workshop made the move not just from soft plastic but from metal figures to sprues and their prices went up.

Recently the company has had pay offs and while the majority of those were in the RPG dept (which apparently had moved to Europe), there has been some in other departments including I believe the one that has been in charge of Legion.

I'm fairly sure that the supply problems, they have had recently , and also over the previous few years has severely hurt their bottom line. So I wouldn't be surprised if Legion isn't making money hand over fist , this is still cheaper than games workshop , even in the UK and games workshop doesn't have license fees to pay for warhammer stuff. So comparing like for like GW is definitely much "greedier"

If you look at other miniature games too this game is still by far one of the cheapest. If you look at Privateer Press (who make Warmachine, Hordes and Monsterpolalypse) you can pay $125 USD for a single model as large as any of the Legion heavies and a single unit of people (6-10 models) costs anywhere from $60-100 USD. Like wise Warhammer you pay $60+ for 5 models and some of their heroes and vehicles alone cost $60 or more compared to Legion's $12-15.

Does it suck that the price is going up? Yeah of course, no consumer in their right mind would want to see a price increase cause it hurts your ability to collect. But let's be honest with ourselves for a minute compared to other competition the price of Star Wars Legion, even with the new prices, is still leaps and bounds better than others.

57 minutes ago, crx3800 said:

57 minutes ago, crx3800 said:

The core set will be getting a price increase (along with plenty other Asmodee titles) according to some posts from GAMA.

The new stuff I can understand, but if the raise the price on Stormtroopers, Core Sets, Death Troopers and all the other Imperial and Rebel stuff that has been established for years already, I won't be having that and simply won't buy.

Not sure why it gave me a double post...

17 minutes ago, Hobojojo said:

The new stuff I can understand, but if the raise the price on Stormtroopers, Core Sets, Death Troopers and all the other Imperial and Rebel stuff that has been established for years already, I won't be having that and simply won't buy.

Not sure why it gave me a double post...

That is your right.

I will point out that I've seen lots of price increases from other companies on miniatures and other products, without any changes to the product before. A $10 increase on the other soft plastic boxes would be annoying, I agree, but what if that increase coincidences with the change of that kit to hard plastic, would you still be out?

Folks, you have to remember that with everything switching to hard plastic, it will be more costly to run two different types of machines in order to keep pumping out the soft plastic stuff. This increase helps offset that, and once everything is in hard plastic, the price adjustment will stay to make up for the difference of hard vs soft plastic costs.

5 hours ago, ninclouse2000 said:

These price hikes have me rethinking how much longer I’ll keep getting expansions for this game. Might be about time for me to consider what I already have as enough to play casually forever. Really disappointed to see them raising prices to this extreme. Greed is a terrible thing.

Price hike would limit my future purchases, the new policy on replacing missing parts makes future purchases unlikely.

I also have enough to play casual for years, no interest in keeping up with the latest meta, and suspect the greed behind Asmodee (run by financiers looking to raise the value of the business before selling it on) will be detrimental overall. Fortunately there are many great games, and companies run by enthusiastic hobbyists, that are still outside the Asmodee Empire.

8 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

Folks, you have to remember that with everything switching to hard plastic, it will be more costly to run two different types of machines in order to keep pumping out the soft plastic stuff. This increase helps offset that, and once everything is in hard plastic, the price adjustment will stay to make up for the difference of hard vs soft plastic costs.

Why exactly is it more costly? It’s almost certainly just two different factories. Moving new stuff to hard plastic should have no effect on the PVC stuff. Unless they’re paying for those molds by taxing us on old stuff...

1 minute ago, NeverTellMeTheOdds said:

Why exactly is it more costly? It’s almost certainly just two different factories. Moving new stuff to hard plastic should have no effect on the PVC stuff. Unless they’re paying for those molds by taxing us on old stuff...

There are more skus to produce Whether one factory or two, each would have to change out molds in between runs. This also means that more boxes of various varieties have to be produced, and the various products have to be packed together differently. A lot more goes into this than people realize.

The models don't use common parts, so any new product has zero impact on existing stuff.

Make half in this fancy and over priced plastic and make half of the boxes in the soft plastic and see which sell better. I totally preferred the soft plastic. They were also way easier to assemble.

yes I realize this would never happen and wouldn’t be cost effective. I would just prefer the way it was to this super expensive version. I play casually only so I don’t need to keep buying these expansions. If enough people feel like I do on this and stop purchasing legion expansions maybe they will adjust prices. If the majority of the community doesn’t mind the price hikes, then potentially losing me as a customer won’t matter to them.

2 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I mean, not necessarily.

A lot of the pushback to Legion from the old warhammer communities at our local venues was due to the use of soft plastic in the original sets. The perception of the game at the time was that it was designed to be a larger scale board game like Rebellion or IA, or at the very least that FFG would treat it as so. It wasn't a serious TTWG.

It seems to me FFG (and likely Disney) would want the singular tabletop war game in this very expensive and potentially lucrative IP to meet the industry's best in terms of hobby and rule sets. Meaning soft plastic wasn't going to cut it.

Now I know a little about the manufacturing world and I know that changing materials can often mean a costly shift in dies, machines and processes. Even beyond that, if FFG is looking to compete with warhammer the bump in price may be to compensate for improvements in company infrastructure.

There's a lot of hearsay and hyperbole about the cost bump.

Realistically, we don't know what it cost them to switch, or what the inherent value of doing so is.

I don’t see why they don’t eat the extra cost I guess. I only have so much $$$ and armada will always come first in regards to my wallet.

22 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

There are more skus to produce Whether one factory or two, each would have to change out molds in between runs. This also means that more boxes of various varieties have to be produced, and the various products have to be packed together differently. A lot more goes into this than people realize.

None of which has anything to do with materials, it would still have to happen if everything was soft plastics. After the initial run, restocks should be fairly infrequent relatively speaking. Stormtroopers sit on shelves for months now, so that product doesn't need to be produced super often.

It is possible that the cost of the license increased though.

Regardless, this has all wondered very far from the point.

I would say we really need to see what is in the box before we decide on if the price is bad or not. Looking at the covers of the other Legion products and they usually are pretty plane and don't really show off the product at all. Hopefully they have a crap ton of stuff for that price.

I am still hoping for 3 super unique models and I would be happy since the price would be about even and they go hardcore cannon. Maybe throw in a generic to get up to four, but they will want to run with Iden/Sabine so I can see it go with just three......................... Not counting the bad batch is a group of four so get hype.

Other option I would be fine with would be one or two unique with five generics. Will match the prices of other around that area....................... I would be okay price wise, but I would complain about how they should of went another direction.

Anything else I would classify as over costed, BUT I still mostly trust FFG. A lot of others have pointed out that this game is still pretty cheap compared to the other miniature games. Got a friend showing stuff from Warmachine and the price was insane compared to a Legion model.

13 minutes ago, ninclouse2000 said:

I don’t see why they don’t eat the extra cost I guess. I only have so much $$$ and armada will always come first in regards to my wallet.

Well, to give some perspective, if the molds had to be remade for each existing product line, they can cost anywhere from 10K to 50K each depending on the size and complexity. Establishing a new production line can very expensive too. Different machines have different capacity and capability restrictions, size constraints, so on.

It's not an overstatement to say refitting a product line of this size to a new material could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to upwards of around a million.

Considering the price bump is only about $10 per package, I would venture it was a minimum of a $200,000 investment to change the product line over.

(although I do understand the need to keep money free for Armada ;D)

8 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Well, to give some perspective, if the molds had to be remade for each existing product line, they can cost anywhere from 10K to 50K each depending on the size and complexity. Establishing a new production line can very expensive too. Different machines have different capacity and capability restrictions, size constraints, so on.

It's not an overstatement to say refitting a product line of this size to a new material could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to upwards of around a million.

Considering the price bump is only about $10 per package, I would venture it was a minimum of a $200,000 investment to change the product line over.

(although I do understand the need to keep money free for Armada ;D)

I was told in Facebook legion group that all products including armada will be getting price hikes so that’s why I initially said greed. I don’t think armada would be affected by the changing of plastics so if all their games including more traditional board games are going up in price, it seems like there is something fishy going on. Especially when they are firing a lot of their employees and changing their return policies.

4 minutes ago, ninclouse2000 said:

I was told in Facebook legion group that all products including armada will be getting price hikes so that’s why I initially said greed. I don’t think armada would be affected by the changing of plastics so if all their games including more traditional board games are going up in price, it seems like there is something fishy going on. Especially when they are firing a lot of their employees and changing their return policies.

I suspect if prices are going up across the board, if anything, they're likely going to use those price increases to fortify a new infrastructure within their business. It's not a good thing when even their main money making lines can't sell because product can't get to the shelves. Shipping and meeting projections is something FFG really needs to sort. It's been a building issue over the last few years.

If I had to guess, they got their 2019 end-of-year projections to actuals sorted out over the last 30 days or so and they realized they came up massively short because of production and shipping delays. Trim the fat. Bump costs where they can. Reinvest to stabilize long term cash flow.

That makes sense to me anyways.

@ninclouse2000 I've said it before on here: the hedge fund that owns Asmodee is fattening it up for sale. That's what these companies do, buy a company, increase profits through layoffs of departments with a poor profit to cost ratio, and increase prices on product that does sell to improve the overall profit to cost ratio. This means they can demand a better price from the next buyer.

Or it could be as @Darth Sanguis says, only time will tell.

41 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

@ninclouse2000 I've said it before on here: the hedge fund that owns Asmodee is fattening it up for sale. That's what these companies do, buy a company, increase profits through layoffs of departments with a poor profit to cost ratio, and increase prices on product that does sell to improve the overall profit to cost ratio. This means they can demand a better price from the next buyer.

Or it could be as @Darth Sanguis says, only time will tell.

I feel like your theory is quite possibly correct and if it is then I am correct to say that greed is the motivating factor for the price increases.

For those enjoying these new price increases, you can get a box of stromtrooper upgrade on Amazon for $50.