Thursday, July 20, 2023

Building a Community Around a Brand (Necromunda)

I have ordered most Necromunda products and carried them for a while, but the game isn't really played in my store, so they end up going away. The new edition seemed like a great opportunity to try again. How many times will I try? Well, I had a dozen or so rulebooks sell of the last edition, so I knew there was interest. I thought I might try once again, because as a retailer, this chasing of potential is what I do.

So I ordered half a dozen copies, what I sold in the first six weeks of the last release, and... I was allocated down to one copy. I'm passing on that one copy. For a new game, not allowing me to capitalize on that buzz is death. Worse, imagine a bunch of customers now wanting to play Necromunda in my store, after buying their copies on the Games Workshop website. 

If it were an allocation of one for a 40K release, fine, I'm going to carry 40K regardless. But for a game that I'm trying to reboot? I would rather it not exist at all. Zero seems like the appropriate number. For Games Workshop, this also means I will not be buying any of the subsequent Necromunda releases. It's not out of a sense of spite, just that it's not a game that has proven any sort of traction that might have occurred with rulebook sales.

If you have a Necromunda community, my advice would be to get your one copy, maybe use it as a store copy, and hope to get more later. Let your community beat the hell out of it as they attempt to upgrade their game. However, if you don't sell Necromunda, I don't see why you would want a game sold elsewhere to be played there. I would skip it.

No comments:

Post a Comment