Black Library jumps the shark... again

With Macragge's Honour. A 100-page graphic novel that costs 95€ (almost 1€ per page!) and that will be shipped after 10 weeks.

There is nothing wrong with Limited or Luxury editions, as long as there is a standard edition that most customers will buy. Loyal customers like me who have printed copies of most of the Horus Heresy books.

And there is nothing wrong with claiming a high price when the value is right, but 1€ per page and 2.5 months to ship it? warp travel is faster than that!

Something that I recommend though is watchning the promo video with Dan Abnett and Neil Roberts. At least until someone posts a PDF for all to read, until and if BL eventually releases a normal, reasonal, affordable copy. Because let's get this straight, that is what most customers will do and not because they like piracy, but because that is the only option GW is leaving.

Apologies for the rant but please allow me to use this small and remote corner in the net to express my frustration at what GW is trying to pull this time.

Anyone feeling the same? I'd also like to see if anyone is actually interested in purchasing this version.

Musings about finding your own painting style

It is interesting that many renowned painters area able to define their style in the interviews or posts; some say it is reallistic and gory (Third Eye Nuke), grey/blue (Arsies), based in washes (James Wappel) and so on... and it got me thinking about my own style - after 20 years in the hobby I still don't have  defined paint style! or should I say, my paint style is not established yet and I keep looking for it. If I was to look at the armies I've painted over the last few years, there is a big difference between my light Space Wolves, painted a la GW, the dark, dirty and realistic Blood Angels I painted when I got onto airbrushing, and the latest Dark Angels which are still dark but clean and with high contrast. All of this in a time frame of 3 years!

I think the reason behind is because I keep looking for ways to improve my painting, even when I have win several best painted at large tournaments. I just keep looking around and finding wonderful, inspiring paint jobs that make me want to up my level. I guess it's just like players that want to become better at it and play better players; we often see this desire of improvement from a gamer point of view but not as much as a hobbyists. I'll do a brief recap of my last armies to show my evolution.

The Space Wolves were an army I had always liked. Back in the day in the late 90s I painted some Blood Claws, Scouts, Long Fangs and Land Raider in dark grey, just with a drybrush. It gives me the creeps to look at them now :) but hey, I was so proud back then! by the way those Long Fangs with mixed plastic/metal components has to be the most difficult model ever to put together!

So about 3 years ago I decided to expand the army and went with the same aesthetic as those painted by GW - a light grey blue with simple edge highlighting and shadows in the recesses. The armour plates have no color graduation at all, unlike today where is the part I probably care the most about. But with all the wolf pelts, fangs, runes, beards, axes, knives and other viking stuff, who cares about the armour? I based them with a high contrast snowed rocky setting and it's an army that looks nice in the tabletop.

Light, almost cartoonish. But still able to scare the s*** out of many opponents :)

Then I got an airbrush and was very tired of all those edge highlighting, so I set about painting an army that was very different to the Wolves - it is dark and realistic, full of battle damage and dirt, and it has very little contrast.

Dirty and realistic, little contrast

Nowadays I keep painting in a dark style but I strive to get very light highlights, increase the contrast and add OSLs in the weapons. I put a lot of effort onto creating color transitions in the armour with the airbrush, and have started to consider things like warm/cold colors. These are all things I have seen in our great community and luckily there are a lot of talented painters out there who are willing to share their work.

Ditto dark with clear highlights and OSL

Dark yet clear and with more contrast

Yet I know that this is not yet my final take and that my paintjobs in 12 months time will look different to those I do now. What will change? well I would dearly like to do good NMM, and I want to keep increasing the contrast.

What has been your evolution? have you settled on one style or are still finding your own?

Is 40k becoming Apocalypse lite?

The Dreadknight was the first foot in the door. Then we heard about the Riptide, and the interwebs were so crazy about how OMFG good it was at killing things that nobody paid much attention as to what was a mecha doing in a 40k game.

(to be fair, we have assumed genetically enhanced super humans in power armours riding giant fenrisian wolves so why not).

Then came the Eldar Wraithknight, and now this abomination (in both being a Daemonic engine and a cosmetic torture). What bothers me now is not this thing, which ugly and expensive as it is will sport healthy sales as long as it kills handfuls of MEQs in the tabletop.

What bothers me is that Space Marines come next, and being the 40k poster boys I'd be very surprised if they don't get their own MC. Are we all going to be playing Mecha 40k?

Unsurprisingly this thing comes along with the newest version of Apocalypse, and GW will make sure that this is not another Baneblade or Stompa that most 40k have never even seen one live. Instead they will ensure model compatibility back between standard 40k and Apocalypse, even if there are different rules or if it doesn't belong at all.


By the way, this thing has some long story behing it seemingly. I'll give it to GW that the newest version has improved the looks of the old Epic model, if only because that thing below is absolutely awful.

The only upside to this is that I can keep dreaming about ever seeing Mechanicum Knights!


Images from Dies Irae 40k here.

Is Games Workshop a book case study on horrible customer care?

I do not consider myself to have any prejudice or bad feeling about GW, after all I have been their customer for 15+ years now. Their staff over the years has always been friendly, if not a little too insistent - like one time I went for a couple of paints and the guy was trying to sell me the Dark Vengeance box. Easy boy...

But more often than not we come across from actions that pisses me off as a customer, even when I have not been involved, and puts me on thw wrong foot as someone who makes his living out of (hopefully good) marketing. The story comes from Faeit 212, and in short goes like this:

• A long time Tau player is rightfully excited by the new codex and pre-orders $300 worth of greater good plastic.
• The day of the release he goes to the GW store, only to be told by the store manager that his order had not arrive. At this point, is worth mentioning the products were on the shelves and the manager just told him "those" are not yours.
• He goes back home, calls GW customer service who pretty much tell him to wait.
• Some days later he calls the store, they tell him they have a riptide so he asks them to save it (let's remember he has already forked out $300) and inmediatly drives to the store, only to find the riptide has been sold.
• At the moment he is awaiting a call from customer service to notify him his order has arrived.

Now you just need some common sense to realize all the terrible mistakes GW is doing; I hope this is just this manager/store but it could well be a country or general GW, which would be absolutely devastating.

1. First of all, someone who pre-orders $300 is a customer you are desperate to retain. You as a company want him happy with the hobby for many more years. The temptation of selling boxes to people who just walk in the store is absolutely dumb: if they were curious people who saw the models in the storefront, sell them something else or tell them to come in a few days. If they are Tau players who know their stuff, rest assured they will get it from this store, GW direct or someone else. It doesn't matter, at all.
2. This is pretenciously assuming you have an overwhelming degree of power over your customers, as no matter what you do to them, they will buy anyway. Let's not mistake engaged players for fools. No one likes to be treated like an idiot, and when they are, they will respond accordingly. This could result in a) not buying anymore from you but more likely b) getting the stuff alternatively. This includes second hand, ebay, proxies or even darker options like clones or chinese copies. Unfortunately, these exist.
3. Last but not least, you are telling a customer that you don't have his order when the shelves are full of products. Apart of disgracing yourself and your company with a lot of bullshit, this is an illegal practice, at least where I live. A customer purchases under the promise of having access to his order on a certain date, and the products are threre. The store can't retain that stock.

We could go on for a while but I think the concept is clear now. So what should GW be doing instead?

1. Apologise to all customers who are receiving their stuff late and do all you can to honor your promise. This means shifting stock/production, prioritizing pre-orders to store sales, etc.
2. Start running some bog-standard CRM practices. It is extremely easy for GW to give away a model or two to customers who make these purchases, to give them the digital codex for free when they purchase the book, or to print a few tchotchkes for them (i.e. t-shirts, keychains, pens... stuff that costs you $0.30-$1.5). It's all about making the customers feel you care for them (which you should actually be doing).
3. Clarify to their store owners what are they there for. Not to make money, not to treat people like idiots, no to spend their afternoon in a toy store, but to acquire new customers, teach them how to play, how great this hobby can be; to run competitions and events with long standing customers, to hear what they say and pass the word up to the HQs. To be ambassadors of the hobby, in a nut-shell.  Sales will naturally flow, and make these stores a shitload more profitable than they are today. Without any doubt.

Please feel free to write your thoughts / comments below. Thanks!

Dark Heart Review & saving money at the Black Library

Dark Heart is a short story by Anthony Reynolds set in the Word Bearers attack to Calth and makes a nice read for those who have enjoyed Know No Fear by Dan Abnett. Don't be fooled by the cover, this story is all about the Word Bearers and covers a scene towards the end of Know No Fear from their point of view. In Abnett's original novel, we pretty much see the Ultramarines side on this particular action and we don't get much insight onto what is going on Kor Phaeron and his boys end.

Now the good thing is that Reynolds doesn't just tell the same story from the other side of the mirror, but rather uses that context to give us some insight onto what the Word Bearers legion has become at this point. Even in the small calm before the storm, things stir where the Word Bearers tread!

All in all an enjoyable read, if only a bit short. But that's what you get for that price. Oh wait.


Price shaenigans, or how this costs 70% more in Europe than in the UK!

Now onto the rant... why does this ebook cost 70% more in euros than in pounds? and 26% more in USD than in pounds?

It is a well-known fact that international companies often have different prices across regions, beyond what the exchange rate fluctuations would justify. This is of course a profitability measure, as the price elasticity, competitive landscape and rest of variables affecting demand and supply can have significant differences. It is also use to protect margins against exchange rate fluctuations but let's not get too technical ;) GW's prices in Australia comes to mind as a good example.

And how to get around it

The good news for us customers is that unlike physical goods that can be restricted to a certain extent, online products like ebooks are far more difficult to bound to a geographical area. If you tried to order from the UK site of GW to say Europe, GW would stopped you from doing it with the UK prices as soon as you entered the destination address. However an ebook is purchased and downloaded, regardless of the adress the user has entered.

Simply register as a new customer with a UK address and order in pounds. Creating a new account takes a couple of minutes and you can order straight away and download the ebook. Unfortunately this only works with ebooks and not traditional paper books.

About Dark Vengeance LE, Wayland, customer commitments and greedy people

A long title for a rather simple issue. The inability of many fans to get their copies of the Dark Vengeance LE.

This begins with GW not producing enough Limited Editions to cover for the demand, which says a lot about how bad they are at product launches. They should know their player base well enough to know that they would buy the new box as soon as it was out, and should have a pretty accurate idea of the player base size. After all, they know how many hobby stores they have, how many units they have sold in the past, how many different customers buying online... you need to be really bad to get this forecast wrong.

Advice #1 for GW: hire someone who can do a decent forecast.

Failing at correctly estimating the demand is bad for GW mainly because those (like me, you guessed it) who couldn't get their copy will buy the normal box, therefore spending less. It doesn't mean they won't get the LE chaplain with time, but that's a different story.

Advice #2 for GW: you usually want to lift the average order value and average customer value. Limited Editions help here, as long as you produce enough.

Advice #3 for GW: for 7th edition, be rather aggressive than conservative with the prevision because you will sell all the copies anyway.

Then let's talk about Wayland. I'm a regular buyer and a satisfied one, even with the issues that regularly pop (like terrible long times to get my orders, confusion about stock availability...). Their wonderful, efficient customer support more than makes up for it.

Problem is, you can't sell something you won't be able to fulfill. If they knew they had say 100 units for the first week and probably 100 more for the next one, the right thing to do is to tell customer #101 that they cannot guarantee their orders. This is something they did in the end but not when I purchased.

Worst than that, they told me 2 days ago that they had stock for me, so have the boxes suddently vanished?

That said, I really like how they have handled this, giving customers different options to choose from.

Last but not least, I'm going to talk about some of the people in the community. I lost count on how many times I read "I'm going to buy 2 boxes of the LE", or even more. That's your freedom of course but considering it is a limited edition and the fan base is rather big, well I would have certainly never bought more than 1, even if I wanted the minis to build a new DA or Chaos army. That any extra box that I was getting means that someone would not get it. It does not hurt to think about other people from time to time. Now I know some of you will not agree with this view but please give it a thought. Feel free to comment away, but let's keep it civil!

Peculiar sales techniques

My local GW store is promoting the new dice sets in their Facebook page. Dices so awesome they only roll 6s...

Forge World Rant

19 frigging days to process an order comprised of a pack of rhino doors and 3 space marine torsos, from a recently launched kit.

Charge 20.5GBP for that.

Add 15% on top for shipping and handling

According to their website, expect 10-14 days of transit.

And then pray you don't get too much bubbles.

Nicely done, Forge World. Another happy customer.*

*Dear reader, if you happen to be a Forge World supervisor, please note the sarcasm intended in this last sentence.