Talk:Hound's Tooth Expansion Pack/@comment-98.161.62.26-20150609181239/@comment-454133-20170410162132

And many of the models for X-Wing can be very complex, more so than most gaming components... concave surfaces, minute details, fragile guns and satelite dishes, etc all have to be moulded either as a single piece and then carefully removed from the frame, or moulded separately and assembled. Then painted at the high level of quality that Star Wars fans demand. Then packaged with a variety of components like tokens, instruction manual, dial, and the plastic form to hold the ship in place and not break it (if the packages that arrive at my door are any indication, shipping is a violent process and you're lucky if it gets off the boat not completely crushed or shaken to pieces). And both FFG and the retailer have to turn some sort of profit to make the exercise worth it, not to mention fund future operations. As Ajones47 said, I don't think we're being gouged. Many companies and kickstarter projects have gone under from not realizing just how much goes into producing components, even simple ones like tokens and cards. :(

I figure Anonymous' beliefs are not uncommon though. Players feel quite a bit of sticker shock when buying into a models game for good reason -- it's a huge investment. But that doesn't mean the game company is a bunch of fat cats laughing at them. I like to imagine literal severely obese kitties in business suites, rolling in hundred-dollar bills and catnip, but this turns out to be inaccurate. ;)  The more I've interacted with the board & tabletop development community, people running kickstarters, game developers and retailers at board game conventions... the more I've come to understand the phrase "the easiest way to walk out of selling board games with a huge pile of cash is to enter with a huge pile of cash, and not lose it all".  It's a difficult business, few thrive there, and the select few companies that do well have learned to not short themselves and scuttle future investment.

And FFG is a fairly responsive company that's more-or-less liked by its customers... at least from what I hear from friends complaints about Warhammer, FFG is more engaged and friendly with its customers than Games Workshop (which supposedly has a habit of backing down from nicely balancing Warhammer by saying "we're just a miniatures company, they're for show; the game is secondary!" etc, but maybe that's only some friends saying that?). FFG puts tremendous, continual work into X-Wing, into rebalancing ships, carefully planning expansions, and keeping the game fun. That cost is factored into the ship price as well, and that's worth paying for. ^_^