Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne shares his experience with out-of-stocks on Adventure Time Card Wars and Marvel DiceMasters.
 
Sales of the Adventure Time Card Wars decks and the Marvel DiceMasters: Avengers vs. X-Men boosters are demonstrating how easily the lack of product for a hot game can dampen interest.
 
When the first two Adventure Time Card Wars decks, Finn vs. Jake and Lady Rainicorn vs. BMO, released, we could not keep them in stock and neither could most other stores with which I spoke.  Demand hit such levels that sales on the secondary market hit levels of $50 per deck and higher.  Unfortunately, both decks had sold out by the time the For the Glory booster packs released and, our order, which I thought would be enough for only a few weeks, has lasted until now.  The Princess Bubblegum vs. Lumpy Space Princess decks which arrived this week, despite our promotion of them on Facebook, the store website and in-store, have been met with a collective yawn by customers.  Even  Cryptozoic Entertainment's plan to launch an Organized Play for them sometime in the (hopefully) near future, has not generated much excitement, save for the two or three really big fans of the game.  Casual fans haven't shown much interest, though that may change when OP details get released (and if we get decent promotional material for it).
 
Similarly, when first released, we could not keep WizKids' Marvel DiceMasters: Avengers vs. X-Men in stock, and neither could any other store with which I spoke.  However, the game has really died off here and at other stores as well.  Once again, it is the lack of product that has done so.  In this case, our customers are telling us that since "We cannot get the product" consistently, we are getting out of the game.  Though DiceMasters is a great game with a wonderful price point (99 cent boosters, anyone?), it is truly hard to sell a 99 cent booster when you cannot get any.
 
Similarly, though WizKids did publish workarounds to compensate for the lack of starters, customers do want the official starters rather than using generic six siders in their pool.  Not having them has really hurt sales, because I really need a starter to sell to a new player, not directions to hand to them on how to make a starter pool out of dice they already own.  In fact, the DiceMasters situation is worse than Adventure Time, since we, at least, have had the Adventure Time boosters available to sell to customers.  I have had a number of people bail on DiceMasters who said they did so primarily because of the lack of product to support their habit.
 
I realize that WizKids got caught pretty flat footed, as did we all, with the demand for DiceMasters, and applaud them for steps they took to rectify the problem, such as putting an Organized Play program into place post-haste and cancelling their sealed booster tournaments at the big conventions so they could pump that product into the retail pipeline.  However, sales have still slowed way down.  Whereas a month or so ago, when I got in booster displays, a quick email to our list or a Facebook post would move them out within 24 to 48 hours, we still have one display remaining from the last three we received two weeks ago.  I expect to sell them, but this doesn't bode well.
 
If you have a collectable game, you have to have something for customers to collect.  Magic: The Gathering could survive lengthy out of stocks in its early days since it had the market pretty much to itself.  WizKids and Cryptozoic don't have that luxury; there are too many other things out there for their customers to collect and play.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com