How much?!

Over the last few days I have bought in to three difference skirmish games, Empire of the Dead, Freebooters Fate and Hell Dorado.  At Vapnartak I was also shown some minis for Wild West Exodus (WWX), I really liked them and wanted to buy into the game but was shocked at the prices.  For the three games that I’ve bought, the one player starter sets were between £20 and £25 and rules are available to download online for free, for WWX the one player starters are £48.

This really made me think a lot about the start-up cost for a lot of games and the comparison is enlightening.  Below is a list of some of the games I looked at and the cost of the two player starter box.

Warmachine/Hordes - £67

Warhammer Fantasy/40k - £52

WWX - £88

Flames of War - £45

Dropzone Commander - £54

Bolt Action - £54

Obviously the contents of the box change from game to game but it appears that game companies are aiming for the £50-£60 mark for the starter boxes (even the notoriously expensive DZC), this makes the price of WWX even harder to justify.  For games without  a two player starter box, the combined start-up cost of two starters would be roughly in that region (e.g. two Malifaux crews plus rules manual is about £60, two Infinity starters are around £50 and the rules are a free download).

In terms of box contents the closest to WWX is Warmachine, it contains roughly the same things and number of minis.  The key difference is that the WWX box contains all man sized minis and the Warmachine one contains some much larger ones (therefore using more raw material to make).

I have heard very good things about the gameplay of WWX and the majority of the minis are nice, I just don’t see myself buying into it at that price level when I can have two games for roughly the same cost.  That being said, if I see one going cheap I’ll be tempted to pick it up.

I am currently looking for a new skirmish level game to peak my interest, if you have any recommendations, please let me know (unless you’re going to recommend Warmahordes, it’s not a fucking skirmish game if there’s 200 minis!).