Return on Investment in the 40K Hobby

[Kevin48220]

Being relatively fresh to the hobby, I'm noticing certain things that are unique to hobbies like 40K, which overlap the playing, modeling, painting, and collecting aspects which are not all present in other games. My prior background includes a good amount of RPG, CCG, and collectible miniatures gaming, but nothing like 40K.

Basically, I'm looking at my Codex Space Marines force in relation to the codex after nearly a year of work, and realizing that while I don't have the special characters and some of the more specialized models, I can certainly field a good number of lists that cover the basics of a C:SM force. I certainly can't do some of the more focused armies--like the bike-based White Scars lists or truly armor-heavy lists--but I can put together basic lists for a good number of contingencies at standard point levels (1500-2000).

Now, I've realized that, at least for what I need now, I'm done with collecting, modelling and painting. That's not say I'm done for good; I know I'll be getting new models and such for fun and as new units get added to my codex. That's a given. But, even though I know that my army is basically set, I still feel the need to continue to get more models.

I think that comes from my background in playing CCG's, like Magic and collectible miniature games that are packed in blind boosters. In the former, there's such a wealth of cards, and new cards are constantly coming into the game, so one has to keep buying to keep up with what's going on. I'm not knocking that system, as it's a really fun game, and it's fun to add new cards to my collection. In the latter, getting a good collection takes getting a lot of boosters and/or doing a lot of trading and buying on the secondary market. In either case, it creates an intense consumer mentality that prevents one from being satisfied with what one has. One must always get more.

My experience with 40K is somewhat different. As a caveat, I'll say that I'm playing one army and not using allies; I don't have the time or need to go past one army, and I'm not collecting all the other rulebooks and such. I'm not naive enough to think that there aren't people who drop a lot of coin to keep up with everything that comes out--but I do think it's the case that one can build up a good force of models for 40K (or WFB, for that matter) and then more or less stop putting money into the hobby for varying periods of time. That is, one has the choice to continue investing or not, depending on one's needs or desires. The game is much more forgiving that way.

That raises another question for me: is this really 'the most expensive' gaming hobby? I've made a pretty good investment in my home-brew SM chapter--more than I'd originally intended to, but hey, I really got into modelling and painting! Anyway, my point is this: I've made an initial investment, and now, I don't need to spend more on it. i could play with these models for the next 2, 3, or 10 years and never buy another one; or, I may spend some to pick up specific new models that come out from time to time. But, barring the need to start a second army, I can look at what I've spent like an investment in an annuity or mutual fund, and focus on enjoying the return on my investment.

My return on investment--the ratio of the cost over how much time and enjoyment I get from what I spent--is potentially quite great. Contrast that with a CCG like Magic, where I may or may not ever play some of the cards, and have to keep investing to stay current with the metagame. If I factor in how much time I spend actually playing, and spread the cost over a number of years, is this game truly an overly expensive hobby? Or is it on par with others--or perhaps even cheaper?

This is just what was on my mind today, and I wonder what other people--particularly those who have been in the hobby for a longer period--think on this.

[magickbk]

You will get a lot of different answers on this from every side of the argument. My feeling has always been that Warhammer is a steep initial investment. You can start out in say, Magic, with the purchase of a single starter deck and a handful of boosters. That will run you about $25. You could play with just that, for a while. But at most, you are only getting maybe a year out of that, before you have to move on to the next set, and your old cards go into a box in the bottom of your closet. To remain involved continuously in Magic, my experience was dropping a few hundred dollars on every set that was released. On the other hand, once you have shelled out a few hundred dollars for a 40K army, you are effectively in except for rulebook and codex updates. Some people like me have many armies, all the codex books, and tons of supplies, paints, terrain, etc, and have shelled out WAY more money than necessary.

I consider the money I spent on 40K as having been a better ROI than everything I spent on Magic, but that is my opinion. Ultimately, the return on investment is whether you look back and decide that you feel you got sufficient enjoyment out of it.

I've been playing since Rogue Trader, in 1991 or so.

[Mr Mystery]

For return on my investment, I look to my life, lifestyle and social circle.

Everyone I now know is either directly or indirectly through GW. This has seen me through sole extreme times, including a period of hopelessness, and lead to the friendship that put me on to my curren job.

All thanks to GW having their own stores, thus enabling me to meet my now life long friends!

[Mystery.Shadow]

I've seen MTG players dump hundreds into cards, and after a few short weeks, they're stuffed under the bed or into the back of the closet. -Never to be used again! For this reason alone, many have jumped the fence to 40k or Fantasy.

Same for Video Games. I've spent many hours playing [Whatever] game, but after a few months I'll probably never play it again.

I still have and use most of the same 40k models since I started playing, way back in 3rd Edition.
In the unlikely event I get out of 40k, I know that the world of eBay still grabs and holds a pretty decent $$ on used minis.

...The ROI for Video Games is worse than used college textbooks!

[Chaoschrist]

If you've been into Magic for a while, I might even think about what format you've played. Clearly, buying packs of cards upon packs of cards, while it is wat Wizards of the coast wants people to do, that's not what I consider "being into the game" (but that's just my opinion). For the amount you spend on a warhammer army (a few hundred bucks) you could probably buy yourself into any established eternal formats in Magic as well. It just depends a bit on how serious you are with it and how much time you would like to spend on it. If you get into say... Legacy and look at affordable decks, attend tournaments and all (for said format) you don't have to worry about new cards that much, though being on a budget might limit deckchoice (but then again; being on a budget prohibits me from start Death korps of Krieg as well).

Maybe I'm the weird one out with Magic: the gathering. I spend money on one deck, and play that... and play that... and play that... I don't care about all the new stuff. I might tweak my deck for tournaments here or there. A reason why I don't get into casual that much is because of the "oh, hey let's try this"... I don't want to feel the urge of having to buy new stuff. Heck, the last time I bought cards... it were two of those pre-made decks, and I bought them on discount and to teach my girlfriend MtG (her idea, not mine, lol).

I found however, that 40k (or fantasy for that matter) is a bigger expense, but I prefer painting over gaming, so I don't know if that even counts or is a valid comparison. It's probably prefering building decks over playing them in terms of MtG.

As for the question in your post; "is this the most expensive gaming hobby?" I don't think so... it's as expensive as you make it. How big do you want your army to be, and what contributes to "fun" in your army? One can easily build a force from the Dark vengeance set, trade of the Chaos figures for more of the loyalist models and have 1000 points worth of figures, and that's for roughly the price of the DV starter set (on a related note; it's one of the "challenges" I'm trying out soon; can I build a somewhat decent army for 100 euro; 120 dollars or so). Of course we all want an Eldar force, a IG force and maybe even a Vampire counts army... but in terms of Magic; I would also like to play the vintage format and play some Metalworker deck. That's not... excuse the pun, not in the cards, for me either.

One way for it to become an expensive hobby though is if manufacturers (GW in thise case) market the game to be played with lots of models and lots of points. Looking at this months White dwarf; 3000 points of fantasy. If this is the new norm, then yes... it's becoming expensive, especially if everyone wants to play it that big. But generally speaking, no I don't think it's that expensive of a (gaming) hobby, it's a matter of how much you're willing to spend and what constitutes "fun" in said game for you.

[Kevin48220]

Wow, these are all really interesting responses. I think it's cool to see the variety, as it shows the wide range of involvement people can have with this hobby. I think Chaoschrist is right about both 40K/WFB and MTG, it's all about how far you want to take it.

The "fun" factor is really, really crucial. I can totally sympathize with the "unused magic cards" description--I've been that guy, more than once. It was part of why I dropped out of that scene for a few years, and only recently came back to it--albeit at a much lower level.

A friend of mine gave me the best way to calculate the "fun" factor; he and I were having a similar discussion of how much we were spending on gaming. His suggestion was to think about buying a movie ticket; if the movie costs $10 to go to, and lasts about two hours, then each hour of fun runs about $5. So, if a game lasts 2 hours, you have had $10 worth of fun. Based on that, you can figure out (roughly) what your return on your investment is.

In regard to 40K/WFB, one could include painting and modelling time in the math. If I spend 6 hours on painting and modelling a unit, that's $30 of fun. Using the same unit in a 2-hour game nets $10 more of fun.

I admit it's a bit simplistic, but I've found it to be a pretty decent way to work out whether I've made a good gaming investment or not.

[Wolfshade]

GW as much as they love to introduce new units and things to keep things fresh, not just by introducing new armies, but introducing new units for existing ones one of the things that they hate doing, or according to a Gamesday seminar some years back, is making existing things obsolete.

I think it is very true about investing in minis, I spent a lot about 20 years ago, and those same models still see regular action. I am very much a collector and as such my ideal is to complete an entire Space Marine chapter. I've got an entire battle company and abuot half a scout and half a 1st company (terminators) but this means that when new stuff does come out I don't really need to spend too much on it. Recently I have been trying to limit myself so that I can field an entire slot made from X, e.g. 3 Whirlwinds, 3 Vinidicators etc. Though now with the dual lists I'm looking at my collection and end up thinking, you know another 3 vinidicators would work really well, imagine a dual list 6 vinidicator list, that would be awesome.

In terms of enjoyment, I love building, not so much painting (the bane of my life) and I love playing and the more I play the more value I get out of my purchases.

With video games I love grand strategy games and really expansive games which you can replay different times using different characters and having geniuinely different outcomes, consequently I've racked up 140+ on New Vegas (with add-ons) alone.

But yeah the initial investment is very steep, then once you have a core it isn't so expensive to add to it to try different things, though people who play lists often find that the two lists share very little miniatures so for them each list is like starting again.

[jgebi]

Well I started a year ago like you and I bought the AoBR kit because of a stupid B******d at GW said oh no don't go for necrons their a hard race to start with now since their haven't been back to that store and don't plan to but now I have my necrons (just the battleforce) (which are properly the cheapist race in the game) and I don't seem to spend much at all just a hero or something here and their and it's all good so i've properly spent 400 or so (paints are dear) and some secound hands but any way so I would say that this is a cheap as chips game compared to Yu-gi-oh where your paying 6.50 or so for a booster pack and you need about 50 to make a good deck

[miteyheroes]

I think that if you collect just a single army, it's a relatively cheap hobby.

But I can't collect just one. There's no hope for me...

[Learn2Eel]

For me, I've always been of the mind that this is just something I put my spare money into because I enjoy it. Like with anything you enjoy, there is a price that you have to pay.

[Chaoschrist]

For me, I've always been of the mind that this is just something I put my spare money into because I enjoy it. Like with anything you enjoy, there is a price that you have to pay.

But if you enjoy 2 things equally (in terms of "feeling"), you can still look what gives you most value for your money. Of course there's a variable of "but if it's more expensive I might enjoy it less" and all, but just in terms of "I like both games equal, how much does it cost me to get in either, how much money does it require for me to keep at it?" that's the price you still can wonder.

I don't think the OP is talking "the fun factor"... it's probably more of a "how can I maximize the fun factor with my money".

[Kevin48220]

To an extent, certainly. The reality is (as has been pointed out in this thread) that any gaming habit can be expensive, depending on how far down the rabbit hole one wants to go.

Part of my reason for posting this was that I was talking to a friend of mine a few weeks ago, and the subject of 40K came up. He commented that my 40K hobby must be "really expensive" and that he didn't understand why I painted models for 6 months before I'd even played my first game (I was waiting for 6th edition to drop before playing).

I was a bit surprised, b/c he's one of those guys who will get two booster boxes of every MTG set when it's released, and then hunt for the rares he wants. From my point of view, his hobby is really expensive. But, we talked and it came down to something else that has been mentioned here--the initial investment to get into 40K is pretty steep once you add the cost of the rulebooks to a small set of models. He just couldn't get his head around the fact that I'd been into the hobby side of 40K for months before starting to play.

What does this mean? You got me; it certainly shows that we gamers are quirky, and that perceptions of value and return on investment are idiosyncratic at best. Given how much I'd enjoyed modelling and painting my C:SM models, I almost feel like I got my money's worth out of just painting them, and getting to play games with them is pure profit.

[Durendin]

Sweeping with a broad brush here but table-top war-gaming as a whole isn't exactly a cheap hobby but within the remit of table-top there is indeed a scale of costs based on the games.

Disregarding painting and background (which I consider to be relatively equal in costs regardless of the companies partaking) the base cost of Warhammer and 40K is definitely at the expensive end of the scale of the hobby simply based on a "boots on the ground" cost comparison, but such is the remit of the seller.

That said (and as previously mentioned) the cost overall depends on how much you want to spend. With 40K a Marine army bought back 20 years ago in Rogue Trader times is more likely than not just as playable today as what you'll find in-store. So other than the occasional update there's no need to go daft. Handled carefully this can be as cheap as chips.

[Kevin48220]

That said (and as previously mentioned) the cost overall depends on how much you want to spend. With 40K a Marine army bought back 20 years ago in Rogue Trader times is more likely than not just as playable today as what you'll find in-store. So other than the occasional update there's no need to go daft. Handled carefully this can be as cheap as chips.

That's key, not going too crazy with getting more models. I've had to deprogram myself from the CCG model of "more is better" and focus on my codex--i.e., looking at what specific models I need and don't have, and determining what bits I need to get to make them. Even down to deciding on which and/or how many models to get, this is a thinking person's game.

[aleyland]

Ultimately the GW is costly, but dependent on how deeply you buy into it.. One army, limited to a certain size, wont wipe you out financially, but that goes without saying for any miniature hobby. If you're ok with the limits you set for yourself you'll get a decent return on your investment, as it were.. That said, if you start collecting massive or multiple armies, I would think that "return" starts to diminish some as you end up with models/armies competing for your time spent with them. As some have said though, things like magic cards end up costing a lot, and ending up collecting dust on the shelf. So it's all relative regardless of what you play..

Even if you were into off road cycling or paintball or some organized sport, it all can spiral up to cost you a decent amount of money in equipment, leagues, field use, etc.. That said, if you're getting enjoyment out of a hobby or pastime and it's not breaking you financially, then IMO you're getting a decent return on your investment :)