Gnome's Eye View is a weekly column by retailer Pat Fuge, who owns Gnome Games, a two-store chain in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  This week, Fuge takes a look at the growth in war games:

 

There is a rumbling on the horizon.  Our forward observers have noted that war games seem to be creeping back with a flourish. Our intelligence operatives have noticed a quiet increase in the requests for Axis & Allies, Battle Cry for Freedom, and, most importantly, tabletop historical miniatures! So here's our take on what customers have been asking for and how we are going to give them exactly what they want.

 

Let's re-fight the last big war we won.  That's right soldier! We can't seem to get a handle on the current situation in the Gulf so it appears that our customers want to re-fight the last war we kicked butt in -- World War II.  So let's grab our steel pots, e-tools (not the WotC d20 type) and get down to the fun of a good old-fashioned blood and guts war!  We want to 'see the enemy!'

 

Axis & Allies Miniatures,by Wizards of the Coast, has presented us with the marketing opportunity to bring tabletop historical miniatures back to our customers. We are really excited about this game.  We don't expect it to generate immense sales outright.  Instead we are interested in what the renewed interest in historical miniatures can do for our overall sales and interest in gaming in general.  It's a good switch from the Anime - Movie - Fantasy pop culture games that have been the staple for the past few years.

 

Axis & Allies Miniatures has a pretty neat and very basic concept - take a squad- or company-sized element and become the battle-captain or general in charge of the unit.  This is even better than in real life because your soldiers all do exactly what you want them to do all the time.  Too bad this game was designed from the aspect of the collectable miniature game rather than of an affordable miniature game.  I'm not at all excited about eventually pulling the great generals Rommel, Eisenhower or Patton or the infamous personalities associated with this conflict but there is a reason to be very optimistic about the release of this game.

 

We are very excited about the renewed interest in the classic tabletop war-games and miniatures that Axis & Allies Miniatures has and will continue to generate.  We've already seen a significant spike in special orders for DBA, Flames of War, WRG and other miniature rules and products.  We plan on exploiting this target of opportunity as much as possible, while Wizards of the Coast is promoting the daylights out of World War II. 

 

The renewed interest in WWII doesn't mean that we'll be hosting weeklong Axis & Allies (the board game) marathons; but it does mean that we will be hosting Learn to Play and sealed Axis and Allies events on Veteran's Day (Friday, November 11th) with special pricing for veterans.  This is intended to bring in a few new customers and makes for a good media event as well.  What it does mean is that we will also be featuring other non-collectable miniature games over the next few months.  War Machine, Confrontation and Warhammer 40K will all get their play time, but we expect the cost conscious customers will look toward War Machine as a game with less sticker shock.  The demo table will feature the smaller sized armies and the emphasis will be on introducing players to the hobby, one small box of miniatures at a time.

 

Finally we will be taking this opportunity to make our customers feel special.  We realize that we can't keep every miniature, every color of paint, or even every rulebook in stock - but we can foster good relationships with distributors that do.  We can use these opportunities to bring a new focus to the special orders for our customers and show we really do care about them and their games.  By getting what they really want in a timely manner we can bring a little bit of satisfaction back into their lives, making us their favorite place to go to win a war!