Tourneys, Ebay, and Net Decking: Does Competitiveness Affect Sales?





Hey Everyone, CrazyRedPraetorian here with some more thoughts on the state of our hobby. Earlier today, I was having an intellectual discourse with Cheeseburger Josh.

Now, CBJ is a deep thinker as any fans of his video can attest. Josh and I were talking about how many Leaf Blower lists were at last year’s Adepticon. We also discussed how many IG lists to expect this year along with tons of BA and SW. Josh asked why people weren’t loyal to “their” armies. Josh is a fairly new player having been in the game about a year and half but has gained a lot of experience in that time. He has also been a fan of Space Marines and Blood Angels in particular the whole time that I have known him. I told him it’s because people want to win. Everyone wants to win! Who can blame them?

It wasn’t always this way. Back in the days of yore, players used to “collect” their armies, building and painting huge armies. Armies that rarely if ever saw the field of battle due to their size. I know quite a few older players that have 6000-15000 pt armies. It was a status symbol to have those huge armies. However, even back in the day we had competitive players. The difference is they used their favorite armies to do their competing with. Games Workshop was laughing all the way to the bank.





In the last five years or so, we have seen a rise in the Tournament scene. There are many GT level events here in the U.S. and the competitive players have grown more competitive. For the most part, competitive players don’t buy sub par units. Some don’t even buy optional units. They build or copy a list and buy only the units in that list. That is THE army, no waste at all. While this is definitely a more efficient way of buying, it certainly has an effect on their own purchasing patterns. The sad part is some players don’t even like the armies that they play. They play them because the codex is “competitive”. Net decking miniatures has become the norm for some players in this hobby.

Ebay has also enabled these competition armies to be sold very easily when their competitiveness starts to ebb. So, as miniatures prices go up many are turning to ebay to make their purchases and there are some great deals to had. The sad part is that the FLGS is stuck in the middle of this. When there is a manufacturer price hike the FLGS’s  cost goes up as well, and when there are ebay or second hand deals to be had, they get hit from the other direction.