Discount GW retailers

[pawl]

So I've started putting a list together of discount Warhammer stockists. Thought that by posting it I might help out, but could also take any suggestions you might have to expand it (particularly those outside the UK!)

 

Generally speaking I'm trying to keep to regional discount averages: in the UK for example 25% is quite common so I won't be including anything below 20%, but in the US 15% seems to be the norm, so I'll be sticking to that as my minimum. Europe is a little more varied, but you get the idea.

 

Discount GW retailers

Edited September 6, 2022 by pawl
Updated link

[Firedrake Cordova]

Alchemists Workshops deserve a mention - c.25% discount and very good customer service.

 

I've also only ever had good service from The Outpost (c. 20% discount) and Goblin Gaming (20% discount at launch, 15% thereafter)

 

I'd say that Dark Sphere probably deserve an asterisk, as they don't provide free postage and packaging on orders of GW products, which effectively reduces the discount (I almost ordered £120 worth of stuff from them, but bailed when they wanted £7 p&p, dropping the effective discount down to about 19%).

 

Don't know if any of that is any help.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Firedrake Cordova

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Troll Trader I have used on several occasions. I do not understand their pricing model one bit, but they have a large stock for second hand bits. Sometimes they sell new things at way under retail, and then want a fortune for used things which are worthless. (I do not know how so many people managed to lose every armour panel for a Warlord Titan, or how these guys think they're worth anywhere near as much as they charge for them!)

 

Service isn't bad however. Just don't waste your time trying to do deals with them. They know 'best'.

By the way, thank you for letting me know about Mirfield, that looks like a great prospect!

[pawl]

Hey Firedrake!

I've not yet gone through all the UK stockists, but it's on my list of things to do. I'm hoping that I can at least get one for each county, so that that people can get the 20-25% off and still shop vaguely local.

[pawl]

Troll Trader I have used on several occasions. I do not understand their pricing model one bit, but they have a large stock for second hand bits. Sometimes they sell new things at way under retail, and then want a fortune for used things which are worthless. (I do not know how so many people managed to lose every armour panel for a Warlord Titan, or how these guys think they're worth anywhere near as much as they charge for them!)

 

Service isn't bad however. Just don't waste your time trying to do deals with them. They know 'best'.

 

By the way, thank you for letting me know about Mirfield, that looks like a great prospect!

I was actually discussing the outrageous prices they charge for stuff with a friend the other day

[Sword Brother Adelard]

 

Snip

I was actually discussing the outrageous prices they charge for stuff with a friend the other day Lack of consistency would be the biggest reason I would exclude them from this list. Given that people new to the hobby could read it I don't think it's fair to say "need my recommendation - good luck out there, because you're gonna need it!". At that point I might as well just point them at eBay and tell them to have fun

 

The same friend was down there not too long ago, said that it's the kind of place where you could walk in "just to have a look", and then find you've bought two whole armies and a kill team for a hundred quid

 

Meanwhile, I bought a bag of AT terrain, for less than the RRP of one normal box i got all the contents of that box, half the contents again, and half the spire box.

I just don't understand the second hand 40k market, where really badly painted stuff, which will need stripping, is worth more than the new stuff?

[pawl]

 

 

 

Snip

I was actually discussing the outrageous prices they charge for stuff with a friend the other day Lack of consistency would be the biggest reason I would exclude them from this list. Given that people new to the hobby could read it I don't think it's fair to say "need my recommendation - good luck out there, because you're gonna need it!". At that point I might as well just point them at eBay and tell them to have fun

 

The same friend was down there not too long ago, said that it's the kind of place where you could walk in "just to have a look", and then find you've bought two whole armies and a kill team for a hundred quid

Meanwhile, I bought a bag of AT terrain, for less than the RRP of one normal box i got all the contents of that box, half the contents again, and half the spire box.

I just don't understand the second hand 40k market, where really badly painted stuff, which will need stripping, is worth more than the new stuff?

My guess is people are too lazy to build, or too stupid to check the contents against the box? It baffles me how they can be in business though with their prices so high.

[Noserenda]

Second hand stuff can be random but there are patterns, like Space marines in general being cheap as there are so many of them being sold, my heavily converted and FW heavy Fire Hawks for example went  for a third of what i paid whilst i made a huge profit selling on my relatively basic Tyranids. *shrug*

https://lvlupgaming.co.uk/

Lvlup games are my local for your consideration :) 
 

[AenarIT]

Ars Manufactorea is already on the list and I recommend them.
Another Italian one is Dominio (dominiox.com, Vicenza). 25% off with free shipping to Italy and discounted shipping abroad over €40, iirc.

Edited December 8, 2021 by AenarIT

[pawl]

Second hand stuff can be random but there are patterns, like Space marines in general being cheap as there are so many of them being sold, my heavily converted and FW heavy Fire Hawks for example went for a third of what i paid whilst i made a huge profit selling on my relatively basic Tyranids. *shrug*

 

https://lvlupgaming.co.uk/

 

Lvlup games are my local for your consideration :)

 

The plastic stock market

[Halandaar]

A nice idea somewhat compromised by the fact that the store you're highlighting above all the others (Element Games) is objectively the worst discount out of the four UK-based retailers you've linked to.

 

Darksphere is a flat 25%, plus shipping - (Also 10% off Direct-Only)

Longbow is a flat 25% off, plus shipping

Hobby Workshop is 25% off pre-orders, 22% off thereafter (free shipping over £75) - (Also 10% off Direct-Only)

Element Games is 20% off pre-orders, 15% thereafter (free shipping over £80) - (Also Direct-Only at RRP)

 

I understand why you're highlighting Element and at least you have the decency to say as much in your article, but you don't need to mislead people about what Element offer, and describing it as "up to 25% off" feels pretty disingenuous when frankly if they do have any GW product at 25% off, I can't find it on their site. Unless you're buying at launch when they do a slightly better level of discount, it's typically 15% off and that is substantially worse than the others on your list.

[TrawlingCleaner]

I understand why you're highlighting Element and at least you have the decency to say as much in your article, but you don't need to mislead people about what Element offer, and describing it as "up to 25% off" feels pretty disingenuous when frankly if they do have any GW product at 25% off, I can't find it on their site. Unless you're buying at launch when they do a slightly better level of discount, it's typically 15% off and that is substantially worse than the others on your list.

It's an easy mistake to make and likely no malice intended, Element advertise themselves as 15-25% off RRP. Brother Pawl has created a useful resource here, there isn't any need to point fingers

 

To add a Hampshire based store: https://www.blackholegaming.co.uk/

I believe their normal discount is 15-20%, they have a 30% off GW minatures sale until the 15th of December

[gorg_graggel]

I'd like to add to the German stores:

 

There is a typo in one of the listed. The name is 'Kutami', there is a 'y' that doesn't belong there (The URL is fine though).

 

Additional stores:

 

Aussenposten:

https://aussenposten-tabletop.de/

 

They usually have 20% off and I recently saw them doing an additional bonus discount during the pre-order weekend that added up to 24%. I don't know if they always do it, but it was there when I wanted to pre-order Dungeon Bowl and a box of new GW terrain.

 

Fantasy Welt:

https://www.fantasywelt.de/

 

While they do only 12% by themselves, they offer a 'Best-Price Promise'. So, if you show them another (German) store's 20% discounted price, they will lower their's to that. They're one of the largest tabletop online stores in Germany, so they may have stock when others don't and will lower their price even when it's unavailable at the other place. Page can be set to English and the conditions and instructions of how this works exactly are translated. For non-German shops they will use the discount percentage and not the actual price (because of how GW handles international pricing).

 

I have used this multiple times and they always come through. I recommend links AND screenshots of the other shop's offer.

Edited December 8, 2021 by gorg_graggel

[pawl]

I understand why you're highlighting Element and at least you have the decency to say as much in your article, but you don't need to mislead people about what Element offer, and describing it as "up to 25% off" feels pretty disingenuous when frankly if they do have any GW product at 25% off, I can't find it on their site. Unless you're buying at launch when they do a slightly better level of discount, it's typically 15% off and that is substantially worse than the others on your list.

Admittedly their discount does seem to now hover between 15-20%, though I would swear it used to be 20-25%? I could of course be wrong on that!

That said, Element offer an affiliate scheme that I've not found matched elsewhere, and everyone's got bills

[Joe]

I think it's important to note the issues regarding reliability with some of these companies, otherwise the list doesn't really paint a complete picture - companies such as Wayland and Element having a poor reputation for selling stock they don't actually have and trying to shift the blame, for example.

[WarriorFish]

What would be more useful is as Joe says; a more complete overview of a site's discounts and just as important their customer service and reliability etc. It's common for sites to drop the discount after pre-order so this isn't very useful to someone who is after something already released. Stock issues are important as the best discount in the World is useless if you can't buy what you're after.

[pawl]

While I would love to go into this much detail on each company I would struggle with both space and incomplete information.

I have a copy of the topic hidden elsewhere that I'm working on, with each region getting its own post - it's already getting fairly large, and I think that if I were to try and give a full review of every company then it would just die up getting silly.

 

What I might do though is rewrite the opening post a little. Encouraging people to actually check the prices themselves (especially on sites that don't advertise RRP or state the discount %) and to stick to in-stock or pre-order items would hopefully be enough to avoid disappointment.

 

I know that both Element and Wayland have a bad rep for selling items them don't have (and I've cancelled orders because of it), but given GW's current output I think that's almost to be expected. Had a call from another company not too long ago saying that an item I had ordered (not a new item) hadn't come in as expected on their delivery, with and offer to wait/replace/refund. They were very good about the whole thing, but if their delivery comes in short for a 'back-order' item what else can they do?

 

I'm also concerned that mI could end up talking negatively about some companies for one reason or another, but saying nothing about others (due to lack of first hand knowledge) and thus intentionally making them look better, possibly without warrant.

 

I have a few thoughts, none of which I'm entirely happy with, but leave it with me.

One of those was to create a topic for each company in our 'reviews' forum that I could link to, but that would just fill up the forum with potentially-empty topics. Suggestions on the back of a postcard!

Edited December 8, 2021 by pawl

[pawl]

Perhaps a format slightly more like this?

https://imgur.com/dQsy1O0

 

[WarriorFish]

I think Halandaar has demonstrated neatly what is needed to add useful information to a reseller, that would make the article much better as anyone reading would be able to quickly come to a conclusion where to check out.

[pawl]

This isn't live as I'm still updating things and adding to the list, but I think it's a little closer to what Halandaar was looking for.

[pawl]

Okay!

Formatting has been reworked, all original retailers have been double checked and details included, and UK retailers have been added. Now I have a few European retailers to look at and I can stop staring at my phone for the night!

[Black Knight]

I would advise caution about recording a summary of a small amount of customer experiences next to the store names. There are far better sites out there with 10s-100s of thousands of reviews that average out to something a lot more than anyone's experience here. I would suggest to leave the sites name, details, even the % saved. Those are facts that are useful for a Frater to then go an research further with online review sites. It is not our job to gate keep but to offer advice and personal experience for someone to make an informed decision.

 

There are people here that have had bad experiences with almost every online site that you can mention and to leave them here would discriminate against those sellers unfairly if those experiences were simply not normal for that store. I can mention my awful problems with Hachette Partworks but I understand that for me there are hundreds of customers that have no problems what so ever. I offer my experience but I do not expect you to follow what I say.

 

There are people here that have problems with Element and Wayland when I have had no problems with Wayland at all but only medium problems with Element(Mainly because I am in the EU). This is why I believe it would be better to not list any customer satisfaction on the above list and just for people to do a 3 minute search online for customer reviews(Our handful of experiences are not as good as a review websites thousands). They are there and will give them far better records of experiences than one or two of us here saying "They're Crooks!"(Yes there are sites that have been labelled as crooks on this forum in earlier discussions).

 

Also the fact that if you leave comments on customer satisfaction next to names that may not be the majority of customer experiences, it may open you up to being libel and receiving a friendly letter from a company if they are gun ho on the litigation front. Compare that to leaving you personal experience in this thread and that is a review and total different in theory. Its the whole labelling something as true rather than a single instance.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Black_Knight

[Black Knight]

Oh and thanks Pawl, been meaning to do this myself, especially for UK shops that offer EU delivery. Some companies send parcels normally with others going the extra mile to offer DDP so that we don't get a tax charge on this side(Hint: If its Royal Mail, you are going to get a lovely tax bill and admin fee when it gets to you).

Edited December 9, 2021 by Black_Knight

[pawl]

Fully understand your concerns Black Knight, had the same ones myself. I've tried to keep it to information that might be helpful at first glance (like lack of postage details being available, or unusual characteristics of the store) rather than a full-on 'reviews' section - in Element's case however I did note the stocking issues as they're very well known amongst regular customers.

 

If you happen to know off the top of your head which of the UK companies offer DDP I would be happy to add a little note above the European table - every penny counts!

[AenarIT]

Fully understand your concerns Black Knight, had the same ones myself. I've tried to keep it to information that might be helpful at first glance (like lack of postage details being available, or unusual characteristics of the store) rather than a full-on 'reviews' section - in Element's case however I did note the stocking issues as they're very well known amongst regular customers.

 

If you happen to know off the top of your head which of the UK companies offer DDP I would be happy to add a little note above the European table - every penny counts!

Wayland Games offers DDP, iirc. No idea about other retailers. 

A way around having to pay customs is to order from Northern Ireland, which at this moment is still part of the EU market (in practice). 

OnTableTop (https://store.ontabletop.com/) is a retailer from Londonderry that offers a 19% off UK RRP with free shipping to the EU above £80 (£40 to the UK). I haven't ordered anything from them yet so I can't confirm it, but afaik orders from NI should not pay any customs when entering the EU.