Be kind of a shame if it does, no one is really interested in the D&D one and I am loath to give WoC any money after 4th ed. I have played every version of D&D and AD&D but not sure I am going to touch the 5th version

I'm worried the blind boosters are going to drive people away from the game. The price of tournaments at my venue went from $5 to enter to $18 and a lot of guys are questioning if they really want to pay that, even if it includes a blind booster. If turn out is low and the venue gets stuck holding a bunch of unsold boosters I could see them cutting back or canceling all together.

I know a lot of people say Wizkids does this sort of thing for the players, but when you take a step back and look at it, the OP events are becoming more and more geared towards making money off a venue, not supporting the player base.

OP kits aren't free, and I have heard more than one venue owner complain about the price of recent OP kits and the possibility they might not break even, may even lose money running an event, or they have to pass the cost onto the players with high entry fees and such.

Of course these venues don't have to run the events, but by not doing so many venues are essentially sending their players to those venues that do.

I don't think War of Light, the AW blind boxes, and such events are created as exclusive events to draw players to venues. I think they are exclusive events designed to force venues to order a set amount of product and related materials to ensure that Wizkids maximizes the return on that set, so it isn't sitting in a warehouse waiting to be discounted or a part of the next "con in your store event".

While this may be an issue with HC, it's not the case with AW. The main OP kits have got down according to my local venue. DW OP were $30 but The Collective is only $18. While the blind brick is $80, a store could always ppt out of that if their player base is luke warm on the ships.

One of my venues that holds 2 events decided to go the blind booster route for only one of them because of the extra product they had leftover from Fear Itself which Wizkids wouldn't let them sell for 4 months. I understand their hesitation but it is having the exact opposite effect of what you are worried about. My local players are all in for the event with the blind boosters and are discussing not attending the events without the blind boosters. Ultimately most of us will attend because it's still a chance to win the nice competitive prices.

wow that is a good deal...the blind boosters go for at least $15...double that online. I don't see why a store wouldn't want to run this event. Of course then they would need to build a player base...huh that seems to be a good system WK!

A good deal for the store, if they sell each of the blind boxes for $15 (at that price they only need to sell 3/5 to break even), a good deal for WK either way, not a great deal for players.

A store wouldn't want to run this event if it didn't have a reliable enough player base to recoup the costs of the Blind boxes and OP kits.

I don't think building the player base is/should be the issue at this point. Like I said before, I think the Dominion War was very successful in building a player base for Attack Wing. It was a really well-implemented OP series. At least in my area, however, between mixed feelings on blind boxes and disenchantment over balance issues, WK is making it harder for venues to hold onto that momentum that they built up with the Dominion War, let alone drum up interest in new players.

We averaged 7 or 8 at my one venue through the DW. We had 10 in 2 of our last 3. In my area it looks like momentum is building going into the BC.

"I don't think building the player base is/should be the issue at this point."

building the player base should always be the number one priority.

I'll clarify what I meant.

Of course I agree that it's a good thing to try and grow your player base, but once established, they shouldn't have to worry about justifying the cost of the OP kits and brick ships. Those should be no-brainers for a venue that has a reliable player base, and for many venues that's already the case. They have a loyal following, and presumably they checked with their players about the blind ships and decided about ordering them based on that.

I don't think the blind boxes help a venue grow a player base, though, and I don't think they'll help a new venue looking to start the OP series build a player base, because both building and growing a player base requires bringing new players in. The increased cost of entry for new players is added disincentive, and frankly there's not enough marketing of them to counteract that. Unless you're already tapped into HCR/BGG, and it's likely that a prospective new player isn't, then you probably don't know what the blind ships are or maybe even how much they're likely to cost.

I think the blind ships are here for people who are already hooked on the game, as a way to change up OP play and as something else to add to their collections. They're just not much of a selling point for recruitment, IMO.

He addressed that point in his post. Why is the fallback response always "then don't buy it?"

Because that's the only alternative they have.

Well, not really. There are tons of ways for stores to address the blind boosters, just don't be an idiot and try to sell them on ebay.

Is it the same blind booster ships for the entire collective OP or are we supposed to get different blind ships each month?

Same five different ships packaged in a ten pack brick for each of the first three events, then five new ships packaged the same way for the next three month event.