How is this different than WK??!? Venues were shorted GSX. And Chaos War FF packs. You can't find WatX. And don't even get me started about EFF Itself.



Edit... wait, it is different. At least with FFG I know I'll be able to get anything I want at some point in time.

I can't speak to your examples as I have no experience with those products. I buy more FFG games than Wizkids. I play Attack Wing and X-Wing ( among other FFG games) and those two games seem to invite the most comparison. My flgs has 3 rows of pegs with I believe 9 pegs in a row filled with AW:ST product. When one runs out it is filled the next week. By comparison, SWXW has one row of pegs right next to AW:ST that has 4 or 5 empty pegs. They have been empty for for over a month. I have no idea when they will be able to restock their missing ships.

FFGs supply and demand problems for SW:XW have been well documented. They have had the better part of 2 years to figure this out. At first it looked like they might have solved it when wave 3 came out, but now that doesn't appear to be the case.

I like FFG games. I like SW:XW the best of all their games, but I'm so used to not being able to get their product when I'm ready to buy it that the thought of waiting 6 months to get a copy of Imperial Aces doesn't even phase me anymore. FFG should consider the cause of that attitude in their customers a problem worth solving.

Everything I said about FFG should apply equally to any supply and demand problems Wizkids has. They just don't have any that affect me personally.

Edit: I said rows of pegs, the product runs vertically, I guess columns of product would be a more accurate statement.

I guess its different for me. No stores super close to me run X-Wing events. I buy online a lot. I also pick up a few things from my Heroclix venue as they stock it. However I'm pretty sure me and two of my friends are the only ones that buy X-Wing from them.

I got my Wave 3 ships at GenCon. I started playing right after Wave 2 released, which was before I even stared going to my current Heroclix venue, so it was eBay, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the occasional random game store purchase for all my wave 1 and 2 stuff.

Its different than Heroclix. They will always be doing reprints of their ships as long as the game is going and there is demand. If I don't get something now, I know it will be available eventually. I dunno if this is true of Attack Wing products.

I've had very little problem getting X-Wing stuff online.

Anyway, my point is the availability of X-Wing hasn't been a factor for me, and isn't troubling at all. It might be if they had waves every single month. They don't. They run out and they print more. They take their time and make a quality product. Its not rapid, and I don't have to attend store tournaments to get exclusive game elements.

Also, coming from a collectible game to the non-blind expansion model used for the flight path games is rather refreshing.

Heroclix hits the shelves. It likely sells out within a month if not sooner. Now you can never get it again. Ever. Its secondary market or trading to complete your sets.

WizKids is better at the supply and demand portion, because they have been managing a highly popular miniatures line for 10+ years. X-Wing is BY FAR FFGs biggest product line. Its a learning curve for them.

While I make no apology for supporting the local economy, I do realize that part of the reason I don't have the imperial Aces expansion right now is on me for my inflexible stance on buying locally. I have 3 local stores that sell the product and they were all allocated less product than they ordered and sold out on day one. I am still holding out hope of a restock and plan on going to my FLGS today. If they don't get one soon I'll be in for my standard waiting period as I hear the supply has almost dried up.

We don't actually have X-Wing events run in my area anymore, which is fine because I prefer casual games anyways. The events I was referring to were the AW:ST Dominion War events, I do attend those.

Attack Wing: D & D, as I previously stated looks really good. I'm just not sure how much time I'll have to dedicate too it, if any. I don't know if it will have enough support locally to warrent a shop running the OP events but I suspect it will. If I get in, it will be in a small way, like just a starter. Then the danger will be that it will suck me in and I won't have enough gaming time to go around.

The difference is with AW, WK is evidently better at A) getting the numbers for the first print run correct, B) predicting/noticing where reprints are needed and C) getting the product reprinted in a more timely fashion.

Reprints for AW are already occuring. The TOS Enterprise has already gone to reprint. No one's been aware of this because there was not a 6 month lag time like there is with FFG. The only reason I was made aware of it is a card popped up on a FB group I'm a member of and the card art is different in the reprint.

It's probably a fairly easy job for WK to pop those ships off of the Tactics figs that are just sitting around.

That, and Wizkids doesn't advertise whether something is being reprinted or not on their webpage.

FFG obviously hasn't completely ironed out all of their manufacturing and supply issues, as indicated by the Imperial Aces and the god awful delay on the SWLCG. But I think, with Wave 3, they are obviously getting much better. I'm actually impressed they are already stating May on the transport, rather sticking with the vague Q2.

I'm glad someone finally found a use for those ships.

Not really.

AW figures do not have the registry #s listed on them.
Tactics figures have them.

AW cannot use the same painted sculpts as Tactics.

So they have to peel the decals off too.


The point is, I'll bet WK has a bunch of ships made and sitting around to be packaged into something. As much as they "repurpose" figs for their various games, they know they'll use them somewhere and its probably cheaper to do massive amounts at a single time rather than keep going back for several smaller runs (it costs money to change tooling and line set up).

really which card?

True. This is also why I can't figure out why FFG can't forecast their sales worth a damn, then make enough product for all their preorders and some extra to actually allow some to sit on the shelf for a month or so. Bigger runs equals cheaper cost per unit for them too.

I agree. However, I would imagine that FFG has to weigh the cost of a reprint vs the risk of over producing something. If FFG made 25% more Millennium Falcons than they'll ever sell, that's a cost to them. If WK ends up over producing it likely isn't as big of a deal to them (beyond storage costs) because they know they'll use that Enterprise model in another run of AW. Or Tactics. Or their next board game.

Right, I definitely see your point with the MF, but how long were they planning Imperial Aces. They could have ordered more Interceptor models when reprinting them and held the extras for IA.

On a general note. I've worked for companies with sales of $15 million a year to $150 million a year, I'd imagine FFG falls somewhere in between. Not all of the companies I worked for started out good at forecasting sales and managing their supply line, but they all eventually saw the value in improving in theses areas. FFG has been around over 15 years hopefully they will learn this lesson eventually too. It will bring them more satisfied customers and make them a more profitable company, everybody wins.