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 in-store sales on Magic: The Gathering - Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy, and his experience with Games Workshop's policies on breaking release dates.
Well, it looks as if the store is on track to have its best month ever and it appears primarily due to the popularity of Magic: The Gathering - Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy. I thought the demand for The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth was crazy, especially with the serialized The One Ring (see "The One Ring 001/001"). The demand for that set was only a fraction of the demand for Final Fantasy, even without the hype of million dollar offers for the One Ring card.
This clearly shows that you shouldn't pay too much attention to any of my predictions about the demand for Universes Beyond sets; my staff and I did not think there would be huge demand for Final Fantasy so went comparatively light on our orders. Boy, were we wrong. Having an invoice monetary total that resembled a shipment tracking number made me a bit nervous, and the amount we ordered is still easily the largest total order we have ever submitted.
With all that said, here are my thoughts about the upcoming Universes Beyond Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender sets as well as Edge of Eternities. So far, I'm hearing little interest in either Spider-Man or Avatar: The Last Airbender from my customers, while I did have people inquiring about Final Fantasy back in February.
I'm getting Aetherdrift vibes from Edge of Eternities, which isn’t good. Magic Foundations and Tarkir: Dragonstorm both did great here, indicating a demand for a return to the roots of Magic and its planes. I'm seeing far more interest and enthusiasm among customers over Lorwyn: Eclipsed, which doesn't release until 2026, than I am for Edge of Eternities, which releases later this summer (see "Two Magic The Gathering Sets").Those of you that deal with Games Workshop should have noticed a box you are to check on the preorder forms acknowledging you will not put the product on sale before the release date. In case you were wondering, Games Workshop takes that seriously. GW regularly now ships new product the week prior to the release date; we won’t talk about the allocations, at least not now (see "Modest Proposal").We've received the Chaos Knights sets the week before the release date. Unfortunately, the figures reached the shelf a week before the release date. A staff member noticed the error and pulled the sets off the shelf, but not before a customer snapped a photo of the figures out for sale and emailed it to retail policies at GW who passed it along to my sales representative who got ahold of me. Figures. The one time we slip up and put out the figures early is the one time someone happens to wander by and decides to point out our error to GW. So be aware Games Workshop takes release dates seriously and will reach out to you should they hear of you violating them.Comments? Were you concerned about the size of your Final Fantasy pre-orders? How do you expect the next two to preform? 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.
