I don't have a problem with the retirement issue. Yes, I have piles of figures that are now useless, but I like to see new teams and make new teams to play.
My concern is that they are retiring these sets before MM is available to ALL of us!!!
The mess that is the Pre-release/Premiere Events(whatever) only benefits a few players who are willing to travel 100 - 300 miles to get new boosters and LE's.
Even the players who have preordered cases will not have those for a few weeks(depending on when product gets thru the port back-log in CA).
They should rightfully wait to retire until the MM set is released to the stores while still rewarding those who DID travel and let them play their MM figures.
That seems like common sense to me. I play for the fun (as anyone who has beat me over and over knows).
WizKids needs to think this thru better and not push just the newer sets right off the bat before all of us have a chance to spend our $$ on new boosters!

Just my opinion.

not suprised they did this, just didn't think it would be so sudden

and who was hit the least by all of this, oh yeah, the X-Men, didn't see that coming

Hypetime won't be retired, until a new base set comes out for DC (ala Marvel Universe). There's not telling when that will happen, though 2005 seems like a good bet.
I'll miss some of the figs that are rotating out (might as well start using the M:TG terms now).

Sadly,I can't go back and tell my players that they can't use their figures...our tournies were already set (because they happen on Tuesdays and Wednesdays) before this 6 hour notice was given. Which means that it will be two weeks before I can have this go into effect.

I really think that most people here have too much time on their hands. Complaining about retirement when only about half of the tournaments are even affected is really a waste of time. And the CT/XP retirement will not take effect until after the MM marquee.

A typical month will have 4 tournaments:
1 Unrestricted, retirement not an issue.
1 Sealed or booster draft, retirement not an issue.
2 Open events, Retirement has eliminated 1/2 of IC, 1/2 of XP and all of CT.

That leaves Universe, CM, Ult, MM, HT, CJ, Unl and Indy. That is 8 sets in which to choose figures. Sure some teams are neutered and some fan favorites will be missing( mine included), but I can see this helping some of my newer players.

I have mixed feelings about retirement, but ultimately I suppose that it is a good thing for the game for new players so they are not at a disadvantage in some of the monthly tournaments.

I personally think that retiring certain individual figures would have made more people happy, but it is not my company, but I do have 1000 shares of TOPPS stock, so I play by their rules at tournaments and my own when it is a fun game. Why retire Puppetmaster? Who did he ever hurt?

Now I also think that arguing over the internet is like swatting a hornets nest with a broom, might seem like a good idea to get rid of the nest, but not really the best way to go about it.

It's not like we didn't know this was coming.


If you wanted to get your panties in a bunch, you should have done it a long time ago...

CT and XP are retired as of today.

Hmm, let me see if I follow your logic here.. Retirement forces unoriginal players to develop new teams and strategies. They do this by actually limiting the amount of figures you can possibly use by another 100+ figures. "Oh yeah, another Ultimate Thor team".. Wow, how original...

looks like some people are still all bunched up .....

untill wizkids comes to my home games.... i think i'm safe with the retirement issues.... but i do feel bad for the 15 and under crowd who buy this game and can't get their mommy and daddy to purchase new figs because wk decides to retire a set or two one day....

I'm not really for or against retirement.

I just don't see the sense in getting worked up about it when we knew it was going to happen months ago.

Hate beating a dead horse, but also Infinity Challenge. While minor, it adds Sentinel, the pogs, and LE PSM Hulk to the list.... All infinity challenge, all weren't reprinted nor on the "universe" list..

I too am not totally deadset against it, but the timing is lowsy. Their marketing dept. obviously has no clue about marketing at all. If this announcement was made about a month before the new Marvel set and hey, gee whiz, some of those figures were going to be redone (not reprinted, but actually redone) in the next expansion, I think there would be a lot more support for it. As it is, it just ticks off the people that may only have the tournament scene in which to play to not even bother with it anymore..

I probably should have reread the document more closely, but I was under the impression that originally that the retirement would not go into effect until the new set became tournament legal.

And since I was evidently wrong, I still will not enforce retirement until after the MM Marquee. But since I think retirement has some advantages I will play by WK's rules.

Thanks,

Well its a simple supply and demand issue. The goal for wizkids is to pull in more players. Combine this with the reality that they can't financially support the constant printing of every expansion (hence the fact that clobberin time and xplosion have sold out) and you have new players that will never have access to figures unless they resort to a secondary market that is completely out of Wizkids' hands (local game shop selling singles, ebay, etc.). Retirement is actually a way to keep bringing in newer players and evening out the tournament scene. Imagine six onths from now if clobberin' time hadn't been retired and was still sold out; new players facing endless streams of old players with R invisible girl and the like would either bankrupt themselves buying out of print figures and thus not investing money into new wizkids products (which would hurt all of us) or they would quit the game completely since they couldn't get the pieces they wanted. Either way wizkids' sales suffer.

I may not like having a spiderman/hulk/wolverine in every set, but this allows for retirement without losing flagship marvel figures to bring in casual fans. To counter balance this at least wizkids has made the hulk and wolverine figures variants, now they need to make some spider variants.

And most venues will ignore retirement for a majority of events and god forbid certain events are restricted, that's life, play at home.

Abe

PS Indy rules!

AMEN!

That's not necessarily true. the LE Invisible Girl, for a small upgrade, is vastly more improved than the rookie invisible girl. Rookie invisible girl maybe goes for a buck online. Yes, that's really unreasonable. Compared to $10-15 for the LE con exclusive (which may go up even higher, now).

Wizkids hasn't printed Clobberin' Time in quite some time. Xplosion, Cosmic Justice, Critical Mass, and Unleashed are in the same boat. If it's at the distributors/stores, it's because they haven't sold them out yet, but once they do, they're done as well.