It kind of shows a gap in the formula or maybe just a really bad dial design that fails on all edges of the gap.

Even 10 equal clicks on a dial that appear respectively in slots 2-11 should be slightly cheaper then if they appeared in slots 1-10.

Part of the problem is that the activation click is too expensive and doesnt make up for the saving by pushing clicks 1-10 to clicks 2-11. Particularly if those clicks are suffering from unfavorable rounding.
10 (too pricey, to match the marginal savings)
Battle Fury is/was expensive (when you would think it should be a savings)

Hard to say for sure because I have never seen the formula they used with this set.

That is actually very true. So while overall tournament attendance will fall, the ones that do come will be of better quality -- these are the people that will want to come and play for the sheer purpose of playing.

My overall point stands though -- this is excellent news for the short term early sales, but very bad for long term of any given individual set.

-The Le

Huh? How so?

Well, of course, before we got those tricks, we had Pulse Wave for a while, which certainly helped get certain ladies of the night off of their activation click.

That's funny, because I am hearing two types of arguments...
1) Bad prizes killed the tournaments
2) The judge was at fault for not making the tournaments fun

They seem to be at conflict with one another. You guys can't have it both ways.

As a retailer, that's a losing proposition. I don't want less attendance, I want more. I want more people in my store looking over and buying my product. I want more people to come in looking for Heroclix product. I WANT mr. suitcase traveling to my shop to try and win a hard to get piece because it brings him into my store. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for what they are doing as a stopgap measure right now, but flooding the market with "Limited Edition" prizes isn't going to help drive sales in the long run. It won't bring more players to my shop.

I understand the gamer's perspective- I'm a gamer myself. I understand wanting to have equal access to EVERYTHING. But as a retailer, I know that exclusivity, be it chase figures or even just LE prizes at events, help drive my sales and allow me to keep my doors open. I've had kids who pulled a chase piece, sold it on Ebay and used their profit to buy more product from me. A healthy secondary market means a healthy game. Look what happened to mechwarrior; 6 month gap between sets, when it returned, all of the tourney prizes could be found in boosters which resulted in lower attendance, lower value for the pieces on the secondary market and it marked the beginning of the end of the game. I saw my attendance drop by 50% when that happened. I saw my sales drop by about 40%. I didn't even see a rebound in sales once the Diamond exclusive contract cause many other area shops to stop carrying the product. The game stagnated and then died. I only hope that WK learned from those mistakes...

I am pretty sure the shop could just buy the pack and not run the event, then sell it all online.

I am sure that's how this is going to go considering no one is there to over see whats going on.

Is there a limit to the number of kits hey can buy?

~Phil

Could you explain this thought further? It seems to me that both arguments would not conflict with each other; rather, that they would be working in unison (affecting different demographics) to kill the tournament scene.

I could, but why? I don't think I'd make enough of a profit to make it worthwhile. I'd rather use it as a carrot to get players in my store to buy Heroclix or any of my other products. That will only work if it is worth the players' time to try and win the piece. If they can buy all of the prizes for $20 online, why would they bother to show up week after week?

It will happen some places, not so much at others. The online retailers that will sell these packs for $2 profit and don't run events will kill the local b&m shops that are trying to use the product to bring players into the store. Personally, there's no incentive for me to spend $18 to make $2. It's bad business. But there will be those who will.

1 per case of product ordered.

Because the game is fun to play?

How do you order these packs?
My venue doesn't want to order HoT through the Scandinavian distributor as they have had bad experiences with them, and they said they couldn't find the price pack on Alliance's web site... What to do?

Why do people assume a binary condition? Either you like the game, or you like the prizes.

Truthfully, I think a lot of players fall in the middle. They have a lot of options for how to spend their leisure time. When they're deciding how to spend that time, the prizes can tip the balance in favor of HeroClix over another activity.

Does that make them a "bad player" or a "prize shark" or a "mercenary?"

-J

One person says that players won't come if the JUDGE does not make the tournament fun. If that is the case, then quality of the prizes should have no effect, because people don't want to come to an unfun place even if the prize is an uber LE.

The other person says that players won't come if the quality of the prizes is poor. In this it should not matter if the JUDGE creates a fun tournament or not... because even in a bad environment, people will still come out to hunt for that uber LE.

So, if you fail at any one criteria, the players won't come. So is it the Judge's fault, or is it the prize selection fault? It's bad enough that people are accusing me of running poor tournaments, but to make broad statements like these is kind of weak.

I simply don't accept either of those reasons. I've seen players come to terrible prizes, and I've heard many stories of players going to venues that consistently have bad tournament environments because they what to play or want the prize.

Ironically neither one is able to contradict my own opinion (and the opinion of many others) -- when the LE prizes were available within the booster packs themselves, the tournaments suffered because the need to attend the tournaments dropped.

Will fun environments bring out people? It can, yes, but its overall effect is limited.

Will good prizes bring out people? Absolutely. But how many of them will come out when those same prizes can be found easily on eBay or for purchase at your local store for just a couple bucks?

The tournament scene worked before because they were truly "limited edition" prizes available only during certain weeks of after the set was released. This added a sense of collectivity to these figures and helped to bring people out to play, which in turn kept purchasers happy because there was always a venue to play at.

With enforcement, we ended up with a good system where the judge, venue, and Wizkids were able to keep tabs on each other and provide a fair environment where customers could have fun. This was not perfect by any means, but this type of strict enforcement kept play level high. More importantly it kept interest very high because people had incentive -- either to find a limited edition figure, or simply to play, or both. Even more importantly, it kept interest high for 3-4 months, which is how long we have to wait between sets.

With this new system, you removed the need for judges altogether and let the Venues control the events. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the venues will still need judges.

However, you're now asking the venues to PAY for the prizes, with no enforcement on results or tracking. If the venue is paying for it, they can really do whatever they want with it (and they should). So on the first day it's released, expect every single prize to be available on eBay with multiple listings. Demand will be high early on (as it always is), but it will taper and we will find an influx of prizes out there.

So what happens to the tournament scene? It suffers, especially after the first month. Think about it: this is not Organized Play. This is giving all the stuff to the venues and letting them handle it. There are no rules involved, no schedules, and no repercussions. This is in no way an "organized" tournament scene.

As such, tournament turnout will suffer in the later months. This isn't a bad thing per se, because you will still get people who simply want to play, but it will be far less. After all, it's odd to play in a tournament for prize A when half your opponents are already using Prize A on their team -- and it's insult to injury if they win another Prize A in front of your eyes.

The problem, is the long term viability of the set (not HeroClix as a whole, just the individual set). Because by month 3 there will be far less interest in the game due to a declining tournament scene, and the trickling of sales the retailer normally expects will drop. And so they won't reorder as many refills and may cut back on ordering the next set because their final sales numbers (over 3 months) is less than usual. This has a bad snow ball effect. Need proof? Go find 3 retailers in your area and ask them how their AA tournaments turned out in December, January, and February, and ask the judges what happened to all prizes (many of which hit the eBay market immediately after we received them).

This is not the end of HeroClix by any means. Every new set will still sell very well and players will be very happy. But the long term viability of any given set will suffer. The old tournament scene is what helped keep interest high, and this type of prize change will hinder it greatly.... which is a shame because it trades long term sales for short term boosts.

-The Le

Here I was hoping the days of rampant speculation and pessimism were behind us.


Thele,

You've made a LOT of assumptions above based upon how the HoT OP kit is being distributed.

I think it's very important to note that this will most likely not be the model for OP for future expansions, but rather the most effective and expedient way of getting OP materials into Retailer hands for HoT.

I can't emphasize enough how much you're jumping the gun here. Stop bringing ants to the picnic.

You are absolutely correct. This is certainly not the final say in things, and I am more than willing to wait it out. I personally think these prize kits are fine for this set, and this set only, but I urge WIZKIDS to change it for future sets.

That being said, I am not suggesting that this is going to kill the franchise by any means. The fact is that 80% of the sales always comes from the first 6 weeks that the product is out. This will not change at all -- the hype and excitement is more than enough to get players to open their wallets.

My speculation is really aimed at the last 20% of the sales after those first 6 weeks.

It just seems to me that the majority of people reading this thread seriously underestimate how important the organized tournament scene is to collectible games, and how it's literally sunk other games into the ground (this will not happen with HeroClix since it's the veteran in this industry, but my point should not be ignored).

-The Le