KIngs of War

Considering bringing in the Kings of War rules from Mantic. The main reason is that the rules work well with the existing Games Workshop line of figures, giving fantasy miniature players another option to use with their exiting fantasy armies.

Games Workshop Name Change

As you may or may not have noticed, last week, in its annual report, Games Workshop announced it planned to change the name of its retail storefronts from “Games Workshop” to “Warhammer”. As I noted in one of my first columns looking at the use of the “Wizards Play” name by WOTC in regard to its Organized Play program, this is a good idea from a branding point of view. Customers buy the brand, they don’t care about the company behind it. 

Games Workshop worked as a brand name for the company during its formative years during the 1980s when its primary purpose was importing and distributing the releases of a new company known as TSR which had this really popular Dungeons and Dragons game. Demand for D&D proved quite strong, enough that GW could survive as the official distributor of TSR products in the United Kingdom and, as demand for RPGS grew along with the interest in them, Games Workshop added on more product lines to their distribution offerings. Games Workshop worked as a name for a distributor because, although I think they did do some direct to consumer sales, most of their imports sold to other retailers who then sold to consumers. However, I have never known a RPG player who didn’t think they could make a better system than the one they currently play and Games Workshop proved no exception, Launching Citadel Miniatures as a separate company in 1979, releasing the rules for Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 1983, the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Role Play in 1986 and Warhammer 40,000 in 1987. After all, businesses certainly make much more money by selling their own products than by reselling someone else’s publications. 

However, the company retained the name “Games Workshop” as main brand, with each game line a separate product category and expanded quite aggressively into retail, launching Games Workshop stores worldwide, with each store selling Warhammer Fantasy Battle (or Warhammer:  The Game of Fantasy Battles as it was later renamed), Warhammer 40,000, The Lord of the Rings (and later The Hobbit) Strategy Battle Game, Citadel Miniatures and paints as well as other game lines such as Blood Bowl, Necromunda and Inquisitor. This practice of expanding game lines put a lot of games into Games Workshop’s product portfolio but also meant the company has to spend time and limited resources promoting all of those brands plus the overarching retail Games Workshop brand.

Changing the name of the company’s retail outlets to Warhammer is a change that, had I given it any thought in the past, is 1) an obvious change to make and 2) probably 20 years overdue. Their customers don’t come to the store looking for that new Games Workshop Codex or figure, they come looking for the new Warhammer or 40,000 product. The company has created incredible brand loyalty among its customers; just look at the number willing to plunk down $50-60 for a new codex only a couple of years after the last one came out. Yes, they complain about the price, but they also buy. Other companies in the industry would kill for that kind of brand loyalty.

Changing the store name means that the Games Workshop brand can now recede into the background to appear in legal documents and on annual reports, while the Warhammer brand now does the heavy lifting of bringing new customers into the hobby and retaining current ones.

Kickstarter Pricing

Got into a discussion about the the pricing of games launched via Kickstarter and how much it impacts whether we stock it.

The answer is, not as much as it used to affect the decision. In the past, we were concerned about how much of a discount a publisher would offer on a game launched through Kickstarter. For example, a game with a Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price of $30 would be offered to backers for $20 through a Kickstarter campaign.  That's a pretty hefty discount but what we have found over time is that the length of time between the end of the Kickstarter campaign and the actually release of the product is usually so long that people forget what the discounted price was. Those people who bought it during the campaign get it for a price they long forgot about and those who buy it after the campaign either don't know about the discounted price or don't consider it as a factor.

Now, what pricing situation will impact our decision on whether to stock a game or not is its pricing on the manufacturer's website or other forms of direct to consumer sales. If said game has a MSRP of $30 and the manufacturer has it listed for $20 on their website and are selling it for that at conventions, the de facto price of the game has dropped to $20 and the store expects to be able to buy it a a price that lets us sell it for $20 as well. If we cannot, then we look at the publisher as undercutting  us and will look elsewhere for products to stock.

Runequest 6th Edition

I see that RuneQuest is scheduled for a 6th edition sometime in the future, coming from Studio 2 Publishing later this year, though the Indiegogo campaign to fund the deluxe version of the book funded back in 2013. I really like RuneQuest and consider it one of the best RPGs ever developed but wonder if a new edition will sell, given how long the game has been out of print and the lack of interest in the currently available materials for the game.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Following up on last week's post about pre-release burnout, players may be suffering burnout on special events as well.

Sitting here in the quiet of the evening, with MacGuyver on in the background so there are explosions, having wrapped our first Grand Prix Trial, this one for Oklahoma City, around dusk. A dozen players showed up to have a go at the grand prize, a Modern Masters Tarmogoyf .  We figured, given the current valuation of the card and that this was a Modern tournament, it would be a pretty good draw. The chatter I heard prior to the event led me to expect some 20 to 40 players in and I thought we might have a chance of breaking 50 for an event, which we have not hit in several years. However, 12 was what we pulled.

I was talking with another store owner who also had a Grand Prix Trial running the same day and he expected to pull in about 10-12 players. He opined, and I tend to give this quite a bit of credence, that the newness and excitement of players getting to play in a Grand Prix Trial or a Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier has worn off. Originally, in order to run an event like, stores had to have a very large player base and focus heavily on Magic, or whatever their card game of choice was. Now, with it comparatively easy for stores to reach Advanced status, which is the DCI level stores must reach in order to run events like GPT and PPTQs, even stores with a comparatively small player base like ours can run what used to be a fairly elite event. We often struggle to pull 8 players for a Friday Night Magic event, yet, because of the number of events we run, the number of unique players and the number of new players we generate over a year, we get to run the same events that much more focused stores get to run. This is one reason why WOTC introduced the Advanced Plus level for stores about a year or so ago, simply due to so many stores hitting Advanced level. The company had two choices, either make it harder to reach Advanced or add on another level to the program and it is likely a lot easier to create another level that it is to modify the numbers needed to reach Advanced, especially given the number of complaints WOTC would like receive if they tried to rework the numbers required to reach Core and Advanced level.

So, given the number of PPTQ and GPTs around, players can afford to pick and choose which events they attend. We have a PPTQ scheduled for next month and another local store set one for mid-October. The market can only bear so many premier events.

Pre-release and Release Burnout

I have noticed a definite downward trend in excitement over new releases of collectible games, with the notable exception of Magic. We had two people show up for the last Yu Gi Oh Sneak Peek and 4 for the one prior to that. The last Cardfight Vanguard pre-release scheduled drew exactly 0 players.

Today, new sets of Pokemon and HeroClix came out. We sold zero Pokemon and 2 boosters of the Nick Fury HeroClix set. I wonder how much of this is due to player burnout and how much is due to the frequency with with new sets of collectible games hit the market?

Final Thoughts on Gencon 2105

Wrapping up a Magic Game Day weekend while grading final exams makes for a very busy weekend but I still had some thoughts about last week’s Gencon:

1.        Attendance.  Reported attendance topped 61,000 people. That’s over double 2010’s attendance of  just over 30,000 through the door and, while still just under half the attendance of the pre-eminent pop-culture convention, San Diego Comic Con, the numbers GenCon posts far eclipse that of the second largest gaming convention, Origins, which posted n numbers of just under 16,000 this year. Whatever else one might say about Gencon, and lots of people have lots of things to say, the people running it are certainly doing something right to generate those kinds of numbers.

2.       Dealer’s/Exhibit Hall.  With the kind of attendance numbers GenCon has generated the past decade, the convention has become THE place to be if you are a game company, especially if you are a smaller game company or a seller of gaming related paraphernalia, such as t-shirts, bags, etc. As I mentioned last week, a number of companies reported selling out of their con stock of a production run on day one (Looney Labs and Green Ronin come to mind) and had to get a rush delivery to restock for the rest of the con. However , the huge demand for space in the hall has caused GenCon to move to a priority points based system for allocation of space, with vendors needing to accumulate so many points in order to get a booth. Factors determining the number of priority points a vendor gets include number of years displaying at Gencon, size of the booth, sponsorship level and other factors that I wasn’t able to find with a quick search.  This means that smaller vendors with low priority point levels get relegated to less desirable spots in the hall. Couple that with a booth fee in excess of $1500 for a 10’ x 10’ booth and smaller vendors can feel  quite squeezed, to the point where they may find it financially infeasible to return to the show.

3.       GenCon Releases.  Still quite a bit of a problem with small publishers even after all these years. Wanting to make a splash and draw attention to their booths, publishers hold or target new releases for GenCon (see the aforementioned Looney Labs and Green Ronin.  Batman Fluxx released the week after Gencon and we still have not seen Fantasy Age or Titansgrave in store yet). This doesn’t hurt stores that are a good distance away from Indianapolis. However, one of the selling points for Indianapolis as a location for GenCon is that 70% of the US’s population lies within about a day’s drive of the city, meaning that a good number of stores lose sales to Gencon.  It’s also possible to look at this problem in another way. True, the store lost sales to Gencon, but the store can also look at this as a demo opportunity. I know of stores that have customers come back with Gencon purchases and want to play them in the store. Instead of getting angry, the store manager looks at this as a promotional opportunity, taking advantage to show the game off to those customers that did not get to go to Gencon, and there are a lot of them out there.

And with that, Gencon 2015 is on the books.

Upcoming Pathfinder Releases

Coming in September for Pathfinder:

Coming in September!

PZO9098 Pathfinder Adventure Path: Turn of the Torrent (Hell’s Rebels 2 of 6) $24.99 SRP SDI The rebel group known as the Silver Ravens once fought for independence in the city of Kintargo, but after the nation’s civil war came to an end, they disbanded until today! Now, new heroes have re-established the rebel group to stand against the inquisitor Barzillai Thrune and his oppressive diabolic regime. But before the Silver Ravens can rise up, they’ll need allies -friends among powerful groups like the Hellknights of the Torrent, Kintargo’s established rebel cults, and disenfranchised agents of the government itself. But until the heroes find the perfect hideout for their rebellion - a place secret enough and strong enough to withstand the battles to come - they’ll be forced to stay in the shadows. When a perfect site for their headquarters comes along, will the heroes survive long enough to claim it as their own? “Turn of the Torrent” is a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for 4th-level characters. The adventure continues the Hell’s Rebels Adventure Path, an urban- and political-themed campaign that focuses on a rebellion against one of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting’s most infamous nations - devil-haunted Cheliax. Several new monsters, an exploration of the fishlike humanoids known as skum, and a brand new Pathfinder Journal round out this volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path! 96 pages, Soft cover, Full color	PZO9461 Pathfinder Player Companion: Occult Origins $12.99 SRP SDI Unlock your inner potential with Pathfinder Player Companion: Occult Origins! Featuring brand new rules and options for the 6 new occult character classes from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Occult Adventures hardcover, this volume outlines ways to fit psychic characters into the Pathfinder campaign setting. Discover secrets of the mind from across the Pathfinder world, including archetypes tied to secret traditions, new occult rituals, psychic spells, magic items, and much more! 32 pages, Soft cover, Full color
PZO6025 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Deck 5: Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth $19.99 SRP SDI Lost in the Labyrinth! Your victories over the Cult of Baphomet have earned you an audience with the goddess Iomedae. She’s asked you to travel to Baphomet’s Abyssal realm, navigate its trackless mazes, and rescue the Herald of Iomedae from an ancient prison. The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth Adventure Deck is a 110-card expansion that adds new locations, monsters, villains, and more to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. This deck also includes new loot cards and 5 new scenarios that make up the complete Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth adventure. Continue your character’s mythic ascension with the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth Adventure Deck.	PZO6809 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Class Deck: Monk $19.99 SRP SDI Mind and Body! Monks make weapons of themselves just as capable of crippling or killing as any blade. The Monk Class Deck accessory for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game allows players to bring these inspired warriors to any Base Set including the demon-filled Wrath of the Righteous campaign. The 109-card Monk Class Deck contains 3 new characters including a new version of the iconic monk Sajan and enough new and familiar weapons, spells, items, and other boons to advance your monk through an entire Adventure Path. This deck can also be used in the exciting Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild organized play campaign.
PZO9280 Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Races $44.99 SRP SDI Learn all there is to know about the peoples of the Pathfinder campaign setting, from elves and dwarves to goblins and strix, in this massive 256-page hardcover companion to the Inner Sea World Guide! Along with expansive details on Golarion’s most prominent races you’ll find whole chapters of exciting new character options, allowing you to make your favorite hero’s culture more vital and valuable than ever before! Dozens of racial details and heritages also make choosing the perfect race easier than ever, whether you want to be a Varisian human or an archon-blooded aasimar. Whether you need realistic cultural details for your game or want to make your character feel like a true native, Inner Sea Races brings the peoples of the Pathfinder world to life like never before!	PZO30067 Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Slum Quarter $14.99 SRP SDI Navigate the twisted alleys and crammed quarters of the bad side of town in Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Slum Quarter. The grimy streets on either side of this durable accessory provide a warren of blind corners, dangerous courtyards, and dilapidated shanties more dangerous than any dungeon. Don’t waste your time sketching when you could be playing. With Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Slum Quarter, you’ll be ready next time your players slum it amid the city’s most dangerous district! This portable, affordable map measures 24” x 30” unfolded, and 8” x 10” folded. Its coated surface can handle any dry erase, wet erase, or even permanent marker. Usable by experienced GMs and novices alike, Pathfinder Flip-Mats fit perfectly into any Game Master’s arsenal!

Upcoming Fantasy Flight Games Releases

  Coming late August or September from FFG

 

 

New Releases:

ADN29 Android Netrunner LCG: Data and Destiny

GT01 A Game of Thrones LCG 2nd Ed

KN26 Samurai

VA93 Mission Red Planet

Reprints:

SL16 Elder Sign: The Gates of Arkham

TM03 Talisman: Reaper

TY05 Hey, That’s My Fish

SWX01 Star Wars X-Wing

Coming From Cheapass Games

Releasing in September from Cheapass Games:

Coming in September!

CAG222 Lord of the Fries (4th Edition) $25.00 SRP Lord of the Fries is the follow-up to Give Me the Brain, another game in the Fast Food Restaurant of the Damned. The mechanic is simple: combine the ingredients in your hand to build combo meals, with dishes like the Cowabunga, the Meat Munch, and of course the Lord of the Fries. This time, the game is designed to expand. The core box contains the original restaurant menu (55 cards) plus a completely new Coffee Shop menu, with all-new art and ingredients (also 55 cards). Each deck can support up to 6 players, and there is a third menu using ingredients from both decks, which supports up to 8 players. 3-8 players Ages 12+ 30 minute play time Contains: 110 Cards One 6-sided Die 1 Rules
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Each Lord of the Fries expansion is self-contained, but they can also be mixed with the cards from the core game for new menus and more fun! Each deck contains all new art and ingredients, with a new menu for 3 to 6 players, and instructions for combining the deck with the core game to create a deck that plays with up to 8 players.
CAG224 Lord of the Fries: Chinese Expansion $10.00 SRP This is a stand-alone expansion for Lord of the Fries, set at Friedey’s Long Wok Chinese restaurant. 3-6 players Ages 12+ 30 minute play time Contains: 55 Cards 1 Rules	CAG226 Lord of the Fries: Irish Pub Expansion $10.00 SRP This is a stand-alone expansion for Lord of the Fries, set at McPubihan’s Irish Pub. 3-6 players Ages 12+ 30 minute play time Contains: 55 Cards 1 Rules
CAG225 Lord of the Fries: Italian Expansion $10.00 SRP This is a stand-alone expansion for Lord of the Fries, set at Ghicciaroni’s Italian restaurant. 3-6 players Ages 12+ 30 minute play time Contains: 55 Cards 1 Rules	CAG223 Lord of the Fries: Mexican Expansion $10.00 SRP This is a stand-alone expansion for Lord of the Fries, set at Las Cabezas Mexican restaurant. 3-6 players Ages 12+ 30 minute play time Contains: 55 Cards 1 Rules
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PAIRS is a quick-playing and original card game, that comes in multiple versions with many different alternate rules. In the basic game, players take turns drawing cards and trying not to score a pair. Or, you can fold, and score the lowest card in play. The first player to score too many points loses the game, and there’s only one loser!
CAG228 PAIRS: Goddesses of Food $10.00 SRP This is a new Pairs deck featuring art from Echo Chernik’s Goddesses of Food series. The cards in the deck are simply the numbers 1 through 10, with amazing all-ages pinup art by Echo Chernik. 2-8 players Ages 12+ 15 minute play time Contains: 55 Cards 1 Rules	CAG227 PAIRS: Lord of the Fries Theme $10.00 SRP This is a new Pairs deck featuring art from Lord of the Fries and its many expansions. The cards in the deck are simply the numbers 1 through 10, with glorious Zombie fast food art by Brian Snoddy. 2-8 players Ages 12+ 15 minute play time Contains: 55 Cards 1 Rules