Things used to be a lot less complicated. A company would put out a game and then you would go to a store and buy it. Sometimes the store would be out of stock and they would have to order the product in. Generally if the game was still supported and the company was still in business then you had a decent chance of getting your hands on it.
Before I moved to Edmonton, a friend wanted to see if I was interested in playing Aeronautica Imperialis. Games Workshop had just recently released a new boxed set for the game that had Eldar and Space Marine aircraft. I was intrigued but when I went to check the game out I found that the boxes of Eldar and Marine aircraft and equipment cards were out of stock and there was no expectation that they would be available again. Ever.
This is called a drop or limited release. Here is what Shopify 1 has to say about the technique:
Limited drops create a sense of urgency and scarcity that leave customers craving more. The result: merchandise flies off shelves.
Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/retail/limited-drops
And to a certain extent it is true. I think the understood consensus among Games Workshop fans is that if you want copies of GW’s lower tier games that you need to buy them on the release date and that you need to buy everything 2. Now!
Games Workshop is a big company. And in the past they have been burned by having too much stock of games and minis that people didn’t want to buy. This can be a serious problem and the modern solution to it is to only make a small amount of product. Almost all companies do this now. Kickstarter, and other crowd-sourcing sites, provide this as a service for producers both large and small. Fantasy Flight Games operates under this model but they also provide a page on their website where you can see the status of upcoming products and reprints. Small publishers like Metal King Studios also use this model as a way to help expand their games.
What Games Workshop does is more more like the release of a limited edition of a sneaker. It comes out, people buy it and then it goes away. Which is fine, I suppose, if you are selling sneakers or merch for Tik Tok stars. It does seem to be a very odd way to sell a game that you want to build a community of players around. Or at least the people who bought the game hope a community builds up so they have someone to game with.
Legions Imperialis was released a few months ago and, aside from the starter boxes, almost nothing is available for the game. No cards. No expansion boxes. Nothing. New products are being advertised for it but there is no mention when, if ever, the first wave of releases are going to be reprinted.
A few weeks ago I was looking for some minis to paint and I asked around about the availability of Aeronautica Imperialis minis. I really don’t have any interest in the game but I do like the figures and they seemed as if they would be fun to paint. I did manage to find some Eldar and Space Marine aircraft as well as the aircraft and equipment cards that were unavailable when I was in Calgary. Looking online the card sets are selling for $40 – $60 each. some of the older aircraft are selling for equally ridiculous prices.
Those prices are chump-change compared to what some Kill Team sets go for. $60 boxes often get sold for $120. Some sets, like the Inquisitors and Chaos Cult boxed set, aren’t even available. Other starter sets can reach $400 online. If you want to play Kill Team you either have to wait and buy a starter set when it is released or pay ridiculous prices online for the set(s) you want. Kill Team at least has some stock still remaining in stores but it is primarily recently released team boxes. Even the books that accompany the boxed sets can be difficult to find.
Well unless you want to pirate the books. I was interested in trying to play the Blooded kill team. I like Chaos, what can I say. Luckily I can actually find the miniatures. Not the book though. Unless I want to hit up a GW focused piracy group on Telegram. The stats and special rules are available online and there are even sites that will let me build cards to play the game. But all of this is unofficial and subject to the whims of GW’s legal department.
Clearly there exists a demand for Kill Team. As there was for Blood Bowl, Aeronautica Imperialis, Adeptus Titanicus and many other small Games Workshop titles. GW’s attitude appears to be that they want to get the financial benefit of “motivated” fans but not the potential risk of being stuck with some unsold boxes in a warehouse. And this is an understandable concern but I can’t figure out why GW thinks that anyone, other than their most devoted fans, would actually want to participate in this “Tik Tok merch drop” business model.
Pile of dice 
I don’t think it is new, just a more common practice for them now. I remember the release of Space Hulk barely seeing a shelf and now they use the YouTube hype train for kits that are impossible to get by the time the video is up. I will play epic, warmaster and the handful of skirmish games I own before I reinvest in a full GW system.
It is sad though as Kill Team is pretty fun system. As long as you are quick off the mark
Don’t be desperate. Companies are supposed to serve us, not the other way around. If you want to play a skirmish game like “Kill team” you can, with One Page rules “Grim Dark Firefight” and minis from Wargames Atlantic or Etsy.
Zach has a copy of the rules so we might try using those and then adding in the campaign rules from the Kill Team book