ICV2 and You (Q1 2011)

 Dungeons & Dragons: Not dead, just resting

Here are ICV2 sales figures compared to our own. ICV2 contacted us for the first time in Q1, so some of their data includes us.

Top 10 Hobby Channel Card Games – Q1 2011
	ICV2	BDG
1	Dominion	Nightfall
2	Munchkin	Death Angel
3	Thunderstone	Pirate Fluxx
4	Ascension	Seven Wonders
5	Killer Bunnies	Dominion: Intrigue
6	Bang!	Thunderstone: Dragonspire
7	Dixit	Dominion
8	Resident Evil	Dominion: Prosperity
9	Seven Wonders	Munchkin
10	Guillotine	Gloom

Nightfall hit hard in our store and became a popular game with our Tuesday night board gamers. Resident Evil hadn't quite percolated to the top yet for us, but is huge in Q2.

Top 10 Hobby Channel Collectible Games – Q1 2011
	ICV2	BDG
1	Magic: The Gathering	Magic: The Gathering
2	Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG	Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG
3	HeroClix	D&D Minis
4	World of Warcraft	Pokemon TCG
5	Pokemon TCG	Naruto CCG
6	Legend of the Five Rings CCG	World of Warcraft
7	D&D Miniatures	Axis & Allies
8	Naruto CCG	Heroclix
9	Axis & Allies	-
10	Monsterpocalypse	-

We don't even have ten collectible games, thankfully, although we'll be adding Redakai next week, which should do very well. We're also trying to sell Legend of the Five Rings CCG, but no bites.

WizKids doesn't like money. That's the only answer I have for why they sold out of their latest Heroclix on release and then announced recently that they've sold out of the next set, weeks before release! Hooray! We've limited our profits! We are awesome and in demand! A store that does that is called "out of business." Heroclix is definitely on my radar and I want to get organized play going in the store for the "current" set and even ordered an OP kit, but no, it's gone. No OP. I have to tell this story about once a week to customers who want to play in our store.

We were selling the current set (last, I guess, since it's gone) so well that it rarely lasted the day. I don't even think we opened the shrink wrap to sell boosters, as we just handed bricks over to customers. The next set? Yeah, that will sell out too. We've got a lot on order, but who knows the demand? I sure don't. Hey, haven't we seen this kind of annoying behavior before? Yeah, it was WizKids 1.0. WizKids, don't make me cry.

Oh, wait, they actually put a big smile on my face this week. See our number three? D&D Minis? Wizkids and Paizo are working on a project to create Pathfinder minis for their upcoming starter set in October. I can't imagine that this doesn't turn into something huge and resurrect pre-painted plastic miniatures for the game trade. So yeah, Wizkids, you're kinda cool. Grrr, you say, I don't play Pathfinder, I play D&D, blah blah blah. Do you think that stops Pathfinder players from buying up D&D minis by the metric buttload. Nope.

Top 5 Roleplaying Games – Q1 2011
	ICV2	BDG
1	Dungeons & Dragons	Pathfinder
2	Pathfinder	Dungeons & Dragons
3	Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch	Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch
4	Dragon Age	Eclipse Phase
5	Mutants and Masterminds, inc. DC	Call of Cthulhu

Q1 marked the end of D&D's lead in our store as lackluster releases were eclipsed by vibrant Pathfinder releases. That trend will only get stronger throughout the year, thanks to Pathfinder Ultimate Magic (Q2 success) and Ultimate Combat (Q3 hot release). D&D is not dead and annual sales have just tipped in favor of Pathfinder, but it tipped at a time of Pathfinder strength and D&D weakness for the foreseeable future. Unlike a lot of stores, we sell near equal amounts of both, strongly support both and generally try to fit the right game with the right customer. However, that's getting harder to do as I begin to have my doubts about the long term health of D&D.

Eclipse Phase gets pushed quite a bit at our store, thanks to our RPG Club loving this game and it being a staff favorite. Call of Cthulhu used to be this game where we stocked the core rulebook out of a sense of nostalgia. Lately it has taken off. The real news is why it hadn't done it sooner, since there are very strong CoC pockets throughout the Bay Area.

Top 10 Hobby Channel Board Games – Q1 2011
	ICV2	BDG
1	Settlers of Catan	Mansions of Madness
2	Ticket to Ride	Wrath of Ashardalon
3	Carcassonne	Settlers of Catan
4	Cargo Noir	Settlers of Catan 15th Anniv
5	Mansions of Madness	Betrayal a/t House on the Hill
6	Small World	Pandemic
7	Survive: Escape from Atlantis	Carcassonne
8	Forbidden Island	Battlestar Galactica
9	Wrath of Ashardalon	Small World
10	Arkham Horror	Castle Ravenloft

The board game news for us is the slowing of Euro board game sales. There is a general fatigue with the prolific release schedule of games that are inevitably rated a 7 or 8 out of 10. In our local market, there are just so many people who can buy those games, even if they are great. It's an embarrassment of riches, in which very good games are regularly clearanced out to make room for the next crop of very good games. It's a great time to be a board gamer.

My initial post, before Blogger ate it, showed some different top picks, likely due to errors on my part. The $80 Ameritrash games were hot in Q1, but there is fatigue there too. Distributors expected more from them as well, and some, like Mansions of Madness, are on sale there. My 45 day supply of that game lasted for months, so it caught me by surprise as well.  Kind of like the Euro games, there are just too many of them at the same time to gain a lot of traction.

Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Lines – Q1 2011
	ICV2	BDG
1	Warhammer 40k	Warhammer 40K
2	Warmachine	Warhammer Fantasy
3	Warhammer Fantasy	Warmachine
4	Hordes	Malifaux
5	Malifaux	Hordes

This is much as it was last quarter.

The big news in Q3 is the abandonment of tin by Games Workshop. The Finecast resin model release was yesterday and it had mixed greetings, which tended to skew by experience and age. Younger customers were excited, saw this as a genuine new release and were happy with the product, which has richer detail and advantages in modeling. Older gamers were more skeptical, myself included, and generally railed against the miscasts, higher prices, and general cheese moving. I admit to being skeptical at first, but I'm happy enough with the product to bring all the 40K Finecast models into the store, even if a metal version is on the shelf. The Finecast enthusiasts are happy enough with the new models to want to seek them out. I personally wouldn't paint a metal model again if a Finecast equivalent was available. I dislike metal that much and appreciate the improvements.

Also, if you happen to get a miscast Finecast model, GW is the best in the industry in just giving you another one on the spot and dealing with it on the back end. We have that same offer, although you'll likely have to wait for a restock. Carrying Finecast is essentially a duplication of a very expensive segment of our inventory, so we mostly have single packs of each.