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 recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles prereleases that occurred over the weekend.
Universes Beyond: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles prereleases took place this weekend with both a bang and a whimper. I say a “bang” because we sold somewhere around $1,500 worth of the set on Friday to TMNT fans. The “whimper” came because, after selling out of prerelease seats for Lorwyn Eclipsed, the TMNT set brought less than a quarter of our Friday attendance for Lorwyn Eclipsed.
Turnout for Saturday was much worse (with zero attendance). I rather expected the same numbers, or lack thereof, on Sunday. I have heard from stores reporting their players opted to play Commander rather than participate in the prerelease for TMNT. This is a bit of a shame since, once you get past the Turtles skin, it is a pretty well-designed set. I see a few reasons for the falloff in numbers:
Cost. Universes Beyond pre-releases typically run about $5 to $10 more than an in-universe prerelease. By the time a player works their way to a weekend slate of events, they have usually spent $120 to $150. Compare that to the cost of an in-universe pre-release, with a three-event slate typically costing, depending on how much of a profit margin hit the store is willing to accept, $100 to $135.
Target market. As Wizards of the Coast is fond of saying, “Not all Magic product releases are aimed at all players.” Universes Beyond releases, compared to in-universe releases, illustrate this point perfectly. We’ve seen a lot more interest in Universes Beyond sets from collectors, whereas players gravitate towards the in-universe releases like Lorwyn Eclipsed and Edge of Eternities. We had no problem filling our prerelease spots for either of those sets, while Spider-Man and TMNT left/will leave us with a dozen or two unused prerelease kits.
Glut. WotC has seven releases for the game on the schedule this year. That means a prerelease every month and a half or so. Compare that to the time when WotC had three to four releases a year, leaving two to three months between prereleases. As one of my players commented Friday night: “It used to be I would do my best to make a prerelease. Now, I can just wait a month or so and there will be another one. They don’t feel as special anymore.”
Based on feedback from players, I expect Secrets of Strixhaven to do really well, but our store will cut back on orders for Marvel Super Heroes as I feel the lack of enthusiasm for Spider-Man will carry over to the set. Similarly, based on the response to Edge of Eternities and Lorwyn Eclipsed, I think Reality Fractured will do well, but want to know more about the set before committing.
I don’t think The Hobbit will do Tales of Middle-earth numbers, but it will probably perform far better than the Universes Beyond Marvel sets. Like Reality Fractured, I want to know more about Star Trek. We are fielding inquiries already about the set, mainly about which of the various series will get included in the set.
Comments? How did your TMNT prerelease events do? 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.
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