6th ed more complex to learn?

[me_in_japan]

The thing is, as experienced players we know all about Maelstrom and eBay and whatnot. A newbie player, aged 14, who just happens to wander in to his local GW has none of these options. My complaint is not the price a 40k army can be "acquired" for, it's the price GW asks for it that I think is wrong. There's a difference between shopping as a newb and shopping as an experienced gamer. Picture li'l Stevie, wandering wide-eyed through his local GW as the staff bear down on him and his mum. The list I made up isn't half of what they're gonna try and sell to them...

Jus makes a fair point about Black Reach being a good deal, but that's only the case if you want to play orks or marines. Many don't.

pdfitzg said that GW are the only company around who can support large scale painting. This is what GW would love us all to believe, but there are many painting contests around the world with far higher standards than the golden daemons, and in some cases, better prizes. E.g.

Reapercon - trophies called Sophies, similar in standard to GDs. Any model from any company can be entered. Similar painting standards to the GDs.
Euro militaire - no idea about trophies, but the standard is astounding. Waaaaay higher than GD. Mostly historical stuff.
Hussar - eastern European contest. Smaller scale, but high level.
Crystal Brush (adepticon) - flights to adepticon are given to the winners of contests like Hussar or other regional contests, then the overall winner at Crystal Brush gets 10,000dollars and a frickin huge trophy. This one widdles all over golden daemon in every way - prize money, global scale, painting standards.

There are loads more national level contests, as well as online ones that can be pretty high level, but basically my point is that the GDs, like GW, used to be the only option. Things have moved on, and GW haven't noticed.

[Admiral-Badruck]

@Jus - True, but lets be honest here, it would be a real beginner army. The contents of Black Reach are not exactly great. Tactical marines, shooty terminators and a vanilla dread are nowhere near the top of anyone's list of 'must have' items and certainly not on a BA player's shopping list, (which was the example M_i_J gave). The player would still want to expand if they were playing people who had been playing for a while.

Out of interest, I just tallied up the costs of 2 of my marine armies on the GW site, both running to 2000 points-ish.

Crimson Fists - 385 GBP, no rulebooks or extras, only the models.
Ravenguard - 351 GBP, no rulebooks or extras, only the models. (Not including FW stuff)

Of course, those models could be bought a lot cheaper via Maelstrom or Ebay and as Jus mentions, the rulebooks can be found elsewhere, but I think new players in the UK/USA generally begin buying models from a GW store or FLGS rather than anywhere else, which would also require real books to be purchased. I could be wrong as I have no real information either way.

I started with a box of fire warriors. And a box of kroot. 8000 yen. It kept me busy for 6 moths. Back when I cared about painting but before I knew how. I got a battle force and a devil fish. I played with that for a year.

[Auxryn]

When considering the cost of getting into the hobby, I think it might be best to compare it with the cost of buying a Playstation, Xbox, or other modern video game machine. No matter which way you jump, you are going to need to put down a few hundred dollars to play your first game.
The advantage that video games have over analog wargaming is that you can change your army by picking a new one from a drop-down list and your game by purchasing a new one for $50. You can even switch to an entirely unrelated game of a different genre. The internet provides lots of opponents to play against.
Of course, you need to buy a new system every few years, and most people buy a new game every month or so.

So what we are doing here is certainly anachronistic, but certainly not beyond the decadent entertainment budgets of the current era.
I think the biggest obstacle is the time and patience to model and paint everything. In Japan, you will find that pre-assembled and pre-painted anime figurines are much more popular than resin garage kits. I think if they sold a few figures ready to use right out of the box, people would find it easier to get started.

[pdfitzg]

@MiJ. You are right, GW isn't the only option and that's a great thing for the community. I love what Cool Mini has been doing and would rather go to Adepticon than a GW event. I wasn't clear in my statement though. When I talk about scale, it's not just the size of the local event, it's how many events, the diversity of locations, the number of participants. That, and most of the hobby community recognizes the GW trophies (Golden Demon or Slayer Sword) but not so much for the others, yet.... Tried to find some numbers on participants for the events but a quick search gave me few results.

That all said, I do tend to be a "the glass is half full" kind of guy and a slighty biased fan of 40K.

[Colonel Voss]

After getting the book and plowing through it last night (yes I read nearly the whole book in one night, it's no where near as big as people are claiming!). I found trying to get my head around all the new rules a bit rough going. The ally system is clear, but man, the vehicles and wounds just had me scratching my head. Fortifications are pretty nice. The warlord rule can be fun but also a royal pain. Leaders got harder to sort out.

[pdfitzg]

My ADD kicks in about 10 pages into any thing remotely resembling instructions.

After getting the book and plowing through it last night (yes I read nearly the whole book in one night, it's no where near as big as people are claiming!). I found trying to get my head around all the new rules a bit rough going. The ally system is clear, but man, the vehicles and wounds just had me scratching my head. Fortifications are pretty nice. The warlord rule can be fun but also a royal pain. Leaders got harder to sort out.

[Colonel Voss]

yep ADD usually makes it hard to read through rules. sheer grit gets me through

[Admiral-Badruck]

I just play a few more games. And when something comes up In play I learn from it.