Good Luck, remember, Ogres never retreat, they do run away...

Go ignats.
The guy who came with us is in too.
Double pestilence team. Wink.

A chatty overnight, I see!

Best wishes to any and all Ogres playing in events today!

Agreed. May the dice gods shine upon all the Ogres competing today!

And looking around on the bay, I see several Goldeeh customs. They are priced pretty high, about 131.07 per figure. Not sure they'll sell for that price, even if that's what was originally paid for them.

If I get moving in time and pull some (well, at least one) 500 pt teams together I'll be off to play in a 500 pt Golden Age event starting at noon.

Friday night I didn't get much more done than dishes and cooking up dinner (rice pilaf, spinach, and swai broiled with some butter and lemon pepper) before sliding into watching tv -- a combination of moving through items on the DVR and catching chunks of the Sox/Yankees game and much of the Phillies/Giants one.

Sorry to see an understaffing problem for clix events at GenCon, The most positive spin for it, though, is that apparently their events were much more popular than they'd expected.

The secondary market will always be a big factor in any successful collectible game. The secondary market is what establishes the market values for pieces that validate the rarity schemes in the set which, in turn, drives primary sales. It's important to remember that primary sales are case-level ones whether they're made to wholesalers or those retailers with direct accounts with NECA. Wizkids makes the same amount on a case that ultimately sells at Mr. B. Mortar's local Comic Kingdom or Neckbeard's Cyber-Castle on ebay, and attempts to choke off the latter will only harm Wizkids' bottom line.

The rarity issue will always be a sticky point, as it alienates those without the luck and/or cash to dive in deeply and efficiently enough, but without it the sales will fizzle.

Trying to continue to be a completist, especially via direct purchase of blind boosters, is something that's increasingly insane. I think Wizkids' aim is more likely to get the average player to always be looking at the brick and above level of buy-in, but they recognize that many will essentially spend the same money on the secondary market, making the (mostly online) speculators the actual surrogates buying those cases for breakdown and parceling out. Whether it's six guys each buying a brick through a venue or one guy buying three cases and supplying the Wants to five or six other guys makes little to no difference to Wizkids as it's three cases either way. There's still enough local market to keep it healthy for local retailers. Any thoughts that restricting online sales will significantly boost the bottom line for B&M stores really need to be abandoned. This hobby only remains viable to me in the way I continue to collect it because of the bulk (case+) discounts I find. Anywhere near the MSRP, though, and seriously buying into a set becomes ludicrously expensive, and would lead me to at the very least seriously cut back.

So it is that I hope Wizkids has the sense to never go the "protecting the brand" route of controlling prices by setting a discount cap. (eg Saying that no one is allowed to sell their product at a discount greater than, say, 15%.) Since the slanted, pro-Right Supreme Court has in the past decade essentially undone many decades of legal controls that would have blocked that sort of move, it'll be up to Wizkids to choose the right path.

Their approach going into 2012 is to provide slightly smaller, easier-to-collect sets at an accelerated pace so that people have less time to lament what they didn't get from the most recent set. This is most likely leading to fewer people attempting to be completists - at least in terms of not trying to collect every set - but who knows?

I'm going to give myself a couple minutes for some overdue slappage, then move into the next phase of my morning.

Too, too, too much to get done this weekend!

One down, two to go.

I think one of the possible roots of the problem with Wizkids is that they mostly have fans and gamers running the business and their decision. While you need passionate gamers in the company, in the end you need businessmen and businesswomen running the company and decisions. They seem to lack the business savvy. Before returning to school to go for med school, I got a business degree and I have experience in sales/marketing/management. I know good business practice and shoddy practice. Wizkids is certainly not a model of business success. Right now, they are fortunate to have a great game and extremely loyal fans that help smooth over many of the little mistakes here and there.

It's tough pulling this sort of costume off in medium shots and most stills. Tight, quick shots and action - preferably accompanied by loud music and background explosions - are what's needed to sell these to an audience.

Okay, cleavage can help, too.

Yeesh. I really do have to go. The next 20 minutes will likely be the difference between whether I go to today's event or not.

It's going to be very very very hard to stay away with this Superman set and the Infinity Gauntlet set.

And here's my rant for the day.

It kills me when people contact us for technical support and then argue and don't want to do the steps that I provide them. There's a reason I ask people to do certain steps. It's not because I'm doing it for fun, it's because this is how to resolve the problem. If you don't want to do what I tell you, hang up because there's no point in us talking anymore. Sorry, long morning in having to deal with people like this is frustrating.

Come Thursday, I will be in the same boat as you. I get to technical write, too. Goody...

You have my sympathies.

Where do you do your technical support?