Media Surprised by Boardgames

Every so often I see a news story about the resurgence of boardgames, as if they had gone away somewhere. This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at reasons why people are still surprised boardgames get played.

Tomb of Annihilation Miniatures

the D&D Miniatures Tomb of Annihilation set arrived yesterday and we have plenty of boxes and single figures.

Bring the heroes, villains, and monsters from the jungle of Chult, as well as the Tomb of the Nine Gods to life in this latest series of fantasy miniatures!

Collect all 44 figures from Tomb of Annihilation, the newest set of randomly sorted monsters and heroes in our exciting line of D&D miniatures, Icons of the Realms.

Adventurers have been sent to the jungle peninsula of Chult, where they must face all manner of dangers in order to find the lost city. Adventurers will need all the help they can get to get through the Tomb and the Dungeon’s evil architect – The Lich Acererak.

WOTC Promo Change

WOTC just made a major change to their promotional program, rather the way in which we handle promotional items. Prior to this, certain promotional items such as the Buy a Box Card and Game Day playmats, had to be destroyed after a certain amount of time if they were not used for the promotion for which they were designed. Now, after the promotional period has ended, stores can use them to enhance play in whatever manner deemed suitable. Stores, of course, still cannot sell promo items, they must be given to players.

Stranger Things The RPG

This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at a couple of RPGs that appear influenced by Netflix' Stranger Things.

How To Improve Friday Night Magic

This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at the one way WOTC could improve pre-releases and Friday night magic and no, it is not giving away more free stuff.

Of Comics and Collections

As you may or may not know, we sell comics as well as games and every so often, someone comes in, expresses an interest in a comic but then says "Well, I'll just wait for the graphic novel" which is the common term for a collection of issues of a mini series or a arc, typically six issues, of an ongoing series.

Prime examples of this are the ongoing books The Walking Dead  and Saga, both of which are extremely good and long running series. We used to sell 10-20 copies of each issue but now the numbers have dropped to 3 to 6. The reason is the regular collection of the story arcs, which have trained readers to wait for the trade collection, rather than picking up individual issues.

This is fine for strong series such as Walking Dead and Saga, which have a loyal fan base, but much harder for just starting series such as Curse Words and Hillbilly, which are extremely well written but may have a hard time attracting attention and generating those single issue sales needed to justify a collection.

With us, if we don't see issues of a series selling, it is hard to justify purchasing the trade collection as a lack of sales indicates not much interest in the book and, unlike mass merchants such as Wal-mart and B&N, once we buy a book, we cannot return it for credit. It stays on the shelves, just like our games, until it sells or we clearance it out. Needless to say, we work to minimize buying books that won't sell quickly.

A Pair of Promotions

This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at a couple of promotions from Steve Jackson Games and IELLO Game. The store will have the Go Up A Level card to give out at the next Munchkin day and will participate in the IELLO Games promotion for Mountains of Madness

Halloween Comicfest

Although it is several months away, the comics have been announced for Halloween Comicfest, the Saturday before Halloween. We will have many of these available for you to get in late October.

Model Retailer Shuttering

Most customers will never have heard of Model Retailer magazine but it was a mainstay of the retail gaming industry for over 40 years.