TheBattlehammer

Would you like to pre-order something, gentle readers? Well, you can’t. You went onto the website at 12:30 GMT on the 2nd of February, at the moment it was available. You had issues with the website and after some frustrating keyboard mashing it was sold out before you could say “Aaaargh, give me that new book!” I am of course talking about Painting Miniatures from A to Z, Ángel Giráldez Masterclass Volume 1. For those of you who don’t know, this is a hotly anticipated painting guide by the brushmeister who does the official painting for Corvus Belli’s Infinity miniatures. When I tell you he’s an artist, I mean it with a capital A (I, of course, am an artist of a different kind). If you don’t believe me have a look here http://www.infinitythegame.com/catalogue/ and have a look at the Bootlegs, the Dog-warriors and the Kum riders (that’s pronounced Koom by the way, dirty perverts) to name but a few. Then remember that these are all in 28mm scale, stunning.

Today, his painting guide went onto pre-order and was sold out within minutes. There are various reasons for this, the main one being that it has always been stated that there will only ever be a limited print run of 5500 copies. Clearly that was not enough. Unsurprisingly, the official Infinity forum is currently burning with the fury of a thousand stars. People are complaining that there were three available per customer (which will no doubt be sold on ebay for ridiculous sums), other outlets began their pre-orders on the 27th of January and 5500 copies EVER is clearly not enough. Now, I don’t know anything about business plans but surely it’s better for profits if you can sell more of something rather than have a limited amount and I’ve no doubt that with all the nerdrage flying around Corvus Belli’s reputation will take a hit.

To me, this is just part of a larger picture. Kickstarter seems to encourage all of these add-on-stretch-goal-limited-runs with every miniature game that comes out and we follow it like a trail of sweets straight into the generic-magic-lady’s oven. Before long we’ve paid over the odds for a game that won’t be sent to us for about a year, by which time it will be wrapping up your chips, yesterdays news. Not to mention whether there will be any continued support of the game that has already pre-released every add-on it could conceive of before you ever thought to buy it. Games Workshop are also fans of the limited editions. I couldn’t even get hold of freaking DICE because they were limited. Almost all of their recent releases have had a limited/shiny/uber version that seemed to sell out before it was even available. The odd thing that is a special version of something you could buy anyway is fine but when so many things have limited runs we, the gamers, miss out. I’m sorry, you couldn’tg et a day off work to sit at home and pre-order something, no book for you. You’ve been playing the same army for years and wanted a set of maelstrom cards to make your game more fun? I think we sold all the copies to a guy who runs an ebay shop, only a 1000% price increase, but hurry there’s a limited run!

This may seem like a rant (which it is) so I’ll let you have your say. Are you a fellow hater this growth of all things limited? Do you make a tidy profit via ebay? Perhaps your friends envy your shiny precious and that’s all the happiness you’ll ever need? Let us know in the comments below and the best wins a good nights sleep for a job well done.

Until next time gentle readers.