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 discusses the journal promotion for Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Skaventide and Wizards of the Coast's EventLink test.

Skaventide is the gift that just keeps on giving.  As mentioned in a previous column, the promotional item stores received to give out to customers was a blank journal with Skaventide symbols on the binding (see "Skaventide Boiler Room Push: WotC’s Love your LGS Promo.").  Ordering eight copies of the game got the store six copies of the journal. One would think that, if a store ordered eight copies of the game, it would receive eight copies of the journal; one to give away with each copy of the game purchased, much like the metal tokens customers receive with purchase of Skaventide directly from GW’s websites and stores.

Nope.  Stores received a box containing six copies of the journal.  That’s it, a flat six, no matter how many Skaventide's you order.  However, if a store orders 120 copies, apparently you get 12 copies (as one store reported).

Communication about the journals was also pretty spotty, with several stores commenting they had not received any notification about them.  Usually, GW sends out emails pushing promotional items as an incentive for increased sales.  This time, the company was just pushing the increased sales, with little to no mention of the promotion.  A few stores said they were not told about the journals and would have bumped their orders by a few copies if they had known about it, while others said the journals were not worth increasing orders to get.  Most stores would have preferred either the command point tokens or objective markers, especially offered on a one for one basis.

Meanwhile, Wizards of the Coast has announced the company will run a test in EventLink using stores in Missouri and North Carolina flor the period of July 26 through August 16.  During that period, stores will only be able to register players in EventLink using Wizards accounts.  For those stores not familiar with the Eventlink registration process, stores can register players for WotC events either with their Wizards account or as a guest.  WotC counts both forms of registrations in terms of participation, but players registered with Wizards accounts count as Engaged Players.

Stores must have a certain number of Engaged Players in order to maintain and improve their status as a WPN store (though this appears much less important than in past years), as well as certain numbers of participating players.  However, since players can be registered as a guest with only a name, it appears that some stores may be inflating their participation numbers by registering non-existent players as guests.  Requiring Wizards accounts for all players would eliminate the guest registration and give WotC more accurate insight into how many players participate in events.

Of course, requiring a Wizards account to play means that players without an email address will not be able to participate in events.  There are players who choose not to get email addresses or, has happened here, parents may not let their minor children have email addresses.  WotC says it will take the results of this test into account when deciding whether to require Wizards account for all events in the future.

Comments?  Is requiring all Eventlink users to log in with their Wizards accounts a good idea?  Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.

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.