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Penny Arcade - Comic - Warmongers

DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin

Warmongers!

Penny Arcade - Comic - Warmongers

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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Posts

  • DjiemDjiem Registered User regular
    This is my favorite type of classic punchline.

  • OverkillengineOverkillengine Registered User regular
    Ya know, sometimes I am glad I grew up too poor to get into Warhammer as a child/teen, by the time I was old enough to have a job and my own wallet for it to destroy, it was no longer the New Thing.

    Instead it was Magic The Gathering tournaments in the barracks. Much more portable but just as savage on the bank account.

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    The only thing that saved me from a warhammer habit the size of a moderate cocaine habit was my hatred of painting.

    I don’t like painting at all.

  • blueArcanablueArcana Registered User regular
    What if I told you the painting fumes could also get you high, giving you the pleasures of both?

  • LttlefootLttlefoot Registered User regular
    I don’t get these tactical games. Same goes for XCOM head to head mode even though that doesn’t let you see where your enemy is at all times. Either way it’s like whoever moves their units in range of the enemy first loses

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited July 2022
    On a very surface level... Kind of. There's a key advantage to getting first strike and disadvantage to giving it up. But there's a fair amount of strategy to getting that - it's kind of like that game where you need to force the other person to take the last stone out of the bag. You can't force the other player to come into range while you're set up and waiting but if you set up close enough to use your entire next turn launching a first strike you're putting yourself in range of an even worse first strike, and that range isn't the same for everyone to the extent that some matchups one side can't get that first strike baring a fuckup by their opponent, but you also can't just mutually fuck around and not fight either.

    There's a lot more esoteric stuff to it once you do come in range, a whole grid of damage/defense advantages and mechanical synergies that can force multiply a combined group of units, and you generally can't flip through the book during the game so if you depend on the old Magical Brain Phone in your pocket you're going to be making a certain number of optimistic guesses.

    There's also the size of the armies to consider. A small game might be completely decided in one critical turn, with everything before being mind games and everything after being a march to the inevitable, but the larger the game the less you can get an army-wide opening like that, and that crucial moments plays out multiple times and again between remnants (meaning even a fight you know you'll lose can still be spent removing the pieces that will threaten the clean up crew who will fight what you can't).

    And in turn that's why these games can so easily become a matter of thousands of dollars.

    Hevach on
  • V1mV1m Registered User regular
    Ya know, sometimes I am glad I grew up too poor to get into Warhammer as a child/teen, by the time I was old enough to have a job and my own wallet for it to destroy, it was no longer the New Thing.

    Instead it was Magic The Gathering tournaments in the barracks. Much more portable but just as savage on the bank account.

    I remember, a couple of decades and change ago, when I moved into a friends place after he split up with his partner and was as needy for cash*, and also someone to listen while he lamented his proclivity for fucking his life up, as I was for a place to Not Be Homeless in. He showed me his MtG collection.

    "Mate you've got a hell of a lot of those card things", I said "How much have you spent on this?"

    "About sixteen grand"

    Are 20+ year old cards worth more now or have they been force-obsoleted? IDK how these things work.


    *Luckily they had no kids but he had to buy her out of the house, and interest rates were a different thing in 2001.

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited July 2022
    V1m wrote: »
    Ya know, sometimes I am glad I grew up too poor to get into Warhammer as a child/teen, by the time I was old enough to have a job and my own wallet for it to destroy, it was no longer the New Thing.

    Instead it was Magic The Gathering tournaments in the barracks. Much more portable but just as savage on the bank account.

    I remember, a couple of decades and change ago, when I moved into a friends place after he split up with his partner and was as needy for cash*, and also someone to listen while he lamented his proclivity for fucking his life up, as I was for a place to Not Be Homeless in. He showed me his MtG collection.

    "Mate you've got a hell of a lot of those card things", I said "How much have you spent on this?"

    "About sixteen grand"

    Are 20+ year old cards worth more now or have they been force-obsoleted? IDK how these things work.


    *Luckily they had no kids but he had to buy her out of the house, and interest rates were a different thing in 2001.

    Old cards are generally out of print so they're worth more. A lot haven't been force obsoleted so much as replaced with mechanically equivalent newer cards or in rare cases phased out from the rules (see: Black Lotus in all it's various forms from the years - I think my old squirrel deck has several now-banned cards as well), so the old ones mostly have collector value rather than gameplay value (so you're not spending hundreds on a rare card and then depreciating it by putting your mortal fingers on its unblemished surface).

    They've started putting back catalog extras in regular packs as bonuses, which might reduce their value a bit but isn't being done on a scale that will kill the market.

    Hevach on
  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    V1m wrote: »
    Ya know, sometimes I am glad I grew up too poor to get into Warhammer as a child/teen, by the time I was old enough to have a job and my own wallet for it to destroy, it was no longer the New Thing.

    Instead it was Magic The Gathering tournaments in the barracks. Much more portable but just as savage on the bank account.

    I remember, a couple of decades and change ago, when I moved into a friends place after he split up with his partner and was as needy for cash*, and also someone to listen while he lamented his proclivity for fucking his life up, as I was for a place to Not Be Homeless in. He showed me his MtG collection.

    "Mate you've got a hell of a lot of those card things", I said "How much have you spent on this?"

    "About sixteen grand"

    Are 20+ year old cards worth more now or have they been force-obsoleted? IDK how these things work.


    *Luckily they had no kids but he had to buy her out of the house, and interest rates were a different thing in 2001.

    Old cards are generally out of print so they're worth more. A lot haven't been force obsoleted so much as replaced with mechanically equivalent newer cards or in rare cases phased out from the rules (see: Black Lotus in all it's various forms from the years - I think my old squirrel deck has several now-banned cards as well), so the old ones mostly have collector value rather than gameplay value (so you're not spending hundreds on a rare card and then depreciating it by putting your mortal fingers on its unblemished surface).

    They've started putting back catalog extras in regular packs as bonuses, which might reduce their value a bit but isn't being done on a scale that will kill the market.

    They’re also still abiding by the Reserve List, a promise from back in the 90s to not reprint certain old rare cards. So some of the Old Ones (eg original dual lands) having been steadily creeping up in price. My older brother had a fair number of them from back in the day and we just found an old box of his collection recently - he’s not interested in selling but on paper there was at least $10k in that box.

  • LuneiaLuneia Registered User regular
    Although I've never played Warhammer (any version), I have been Warhammer adjacent through my brother, and I know that is one hell of an investment, both in money and time.

  • SkwigelfSkwigelf Passed out in a cloud of farts and cigarette smoke.Registered User regular
    Games Workshop is awful now.

    Back when 3rd edition came out, a squad of tac marines was $28.99 CAD. Now, almost the exact same box is $65 CAD.

    I'd love to get some of the character models like Abaddon or Ghazgkhull but I cant justify $80 for a single plastic model.

    I cant imagine how much it would cost to start a 2000-3000 point army.

  • PyrianPyrian Registered User regular
    Skwigelf wrote: »
    Back when 3rd edition came out, a squad of tac marines was $28.99 CAD. Now, almost the exact same box is $65 CAD.
    3rd edition came out in 1998. Games Workshop has done some notorious price rises in that timeframe, but even so, most of that increase is inflation.

  • YoungFreyYoungFrey Registered User regular
    Pyrian wrote: »
    Skwigelf wrote: »
    Back when 3rd edition came out, a squad of tac marines was $28.99 CAD. Now, almost the exact same box is $65 CAD.
    3rd edition came out in 1998. Games Workshop has done some notorious price rises in that timeframe, but even so, most of that increase is inflation.

    For the USD:
    $28.99 in 1998 is $52.70 in 2022
    $35.75 in 1998 is $64.99 in 2022

    Canada is not quite as bad:
    28.99 CAD in 1998 is 48.50 CAD in 2022
    38.85 CAD in 1998 is 64.99 CAD in 2022

  • PyrianPyrian Registered User regular
    YoungFrey wrote: »
    Pyrian wrote: »
    Skwigelf wrote: »
    Back when 3rd edition came out, a squad of tac marines was $28.99 CAD. Now, almost the exact same box is $65 CAD.
    3rd edition came out in 1998. Games Workshop has done some notorious price rises in that timeframe, but even so, most of that increase is inflation.
    28.99 CAD in 1998 is 48.50 CAD in 2022
    Yes. 19.50 inflation, 16.50 non-inflation, "most of that increase is inflation".

  • YoungFreyYoungFrey Registered User regular
    Pyrian wrote: »
    YoungFrey wrote: »
    Pyrian wrote: »
    Skwigelf wrote: »
    Back when 3rd edition came out, a squad of tac marines was $28.99 CAD. Now, almost the exact same box is $65 CAD.
    3rd edition came out in 1998. Games Workshop has done some notorious price rises in that timeframe, but even so, most of that increase is inflation.
    28.99 CAD in 1998 is 48.50 CAD in 2022
    Yes. 19.50 inflation, 16.50 non-inflation, "most of that increase is inflation".

    Another way to say that would be "About half the increase is from inflation". It's 54% inflation and 46% "other".

  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    I will say that there is a *marked* improvement in the quality of the sculpts and a lot more is put into the design of the models than there used to be. Whether that results in a better looking product is up for debate (personally I think the old stuff does not hold up well, but the newest stuff is overdesigned: I prefer the mid era stuff that had poses but still let you customize the models a bit, as opposed to the solely monopose stuff they have now).

    So it's not so much that they have arbitrarily increased their prices with no justification whatsoever. It's more that they have made the unfortunate decision to become a very premium product that has priced out all but the most committed whales: people in an income bracket that would typically spend that money on things like cars or dune buggies.

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    blueArcana wrote: »
    What if I told you the painting fumes could also get you high, giving you the pleasures of both?
    What if I told you I could get more pleasure from drinking whiskey and not have to paint?

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