Re: OT: Mage Knight Rebellion

On Tue, 17 Oct 2000 16:42:32 -0500, "Dean Gundberg"
<dean.gundberg@noridian.com> wrote:

>Hmmm, do those stores know how much has come out for Disk Wars?

Some do, some don't. But knowing how much is out there for Disk Wars is,
in
some ways, a detriment.

The problem is these stores got REALLY burned on cards, and not just
Magic.
They got burned on all the different games that came out. It wasn't just
all
the Magic sets, but all the Legend of the Five Rings sets, and Seventh
Sea
sets, and Deadlands sets, and etc., etc.

This isn't just Toronto, either. I haven't checked some of the local
stores
that sold nothing but cards, games-wise. The games stores, though, just
don't
carry them. I was in Kitchener recently, too (it's an hour away from
Toronto,
has a local population in excess of 200,000, and is home to two
universities).
There were three stores I visited, none of which have disk games. One
hadn't
even heard of them. And you'd think miniatures stores would be
interested,
particularly in Diskwars. They did sell the German board games, though.

Part of the problem is that cards are VERY labour intensive. It's not
just the
cards, but the need to handle the second hand market. It takes sales
away from
other stuff. It's pretty good for sales, except if you get caught in a
downturn you lose a substantial part of your profit to date. The people
who
buy cards don't buy other stuff, either. In a perfect world, the two
sets of
customers offset each other. In reality, some will swing to cards and
stay
there.

I think there is more overlap between disk games and miniatures.
Certainly I'd
be interested in looking into them if they sold them locally. But the
stores
are "once bitten, twice shy". "Collectible" is a dirty word...

One thing about collectible miniatures games. They have all the
disadvantages
of cards and disks, without one crucial advantage. Except for displaying
used
cards and disks, card and disk games take up very little "shelf space".
In
fact. they can sit on the counter beside the cash register. 

Mage Knight, though, is sold in little boxes. If they sell as well as
cards or
disks, they will take up much more space. And a store now has to sell
terrain
packs. While I hope I'm wrong and KR sells a ton of terrain packs, I
suspect a
lot of places will shy away from them because they are collectible and
because
they take up a lot of space.

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Surprisingly, when you throw two naked women with sex
toys into a living room full of drunken men, things 
always go bad." - Kyle Baker, "You Are Here"