Board Game Smorgasbord – GenCon



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34 thoughts on “Board Game Smorgasbord – GenCon”

  1. Tom ends with the line "Go to Gencon next year!"

    Thanks, but after your descriptions of the crowds/lines at Gencon, I can't think of many things I would want to do less than go there.

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  2. Games of the Con for me were World Wonders and 3 Ring Circus. I expected to like World Wonders and did, 3 Ring Circus was kind of lower on my radar but after trying it I was very impressed and ended up picking it up. I was hoping to grab some Lorcana but decided to spend more time having fun at the Con than waiting in line and just preordered some from my FLGS.

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  3. My wife and I tried to get by your booth several times and each time it was packed. Seemed like 2500-3000 section of the hall was extra crazy! Disappointed we didn't get an opportunity to chat.

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  4. I found Joey's attempted joke about people showing up for cosplay next year dressed as the thieves in bad taste. There is nothing funny about it. As someone who was in retail for many decades I find it rather depressing.

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  5. I was so psyched to find Mind Bug at gen con. They had a 2022 promo pack with the helmeted dice tower dice as one of the creatures. I think they have one more expansion. This version also comes with cardboard dial HP trackers.

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  6. Magic the gathering wizards of the coast LOVE scalpers because they sell out of all the stock so the risk of holding stock is transfered. They also artfically inflate the market by controlling print runs. Like the "one ring" a very well thought out plan to push up value of the brand publicty advertising. Wizards is playing the economic game to.Theres been a lot of research on the economics by wizards of the coast and hiring people for this and a active 2nd hand market is what has allowed magic last so long. You can tell when support for a card game will not be supported based of 2nd hand market. The thing thats crazy to me is people with the money paying those kind of prices for toys. Theres laws already for scalpers for essentials items like fuel,medicine,toilet paper, food, ect. Who cares about toys? My fav time to get in to a card game is when support is canceled. Then prices plummet on 2nd hand market then occasionally goes back up.

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  7. While the game Lorcana is technically releasing only a few weeks after Gen Con, the reason WHY the scalping situation is so bad is because Distributors informed both Ravensburger and Game Shops (months ago) that their initial print run was stupidly low for a brand new Trading Card Game. Ravensburger made a public announcement that they would going into immediate production to attempt to fix the situation (but as we all know it takes time for manufacturing.)

    The initial numbers were so low that Distributors actively warned their priority Game Shops to drastically reduce if not cancel all pre-orders to not disappoint customers.

    Based upon all the information that so far has been made public, Lorcana will be only in the hands of scalpers and Gen Con attendees for at least the first 3 months.

    This is why Scalping was so bad.

    (Tom was correct that the stolen pallet was far too small for anything like Lorcana to hit that total. Its since been confirmed that it was Past Times that was robbed. The pallet was the "Commander Masters". The newest over priced Magic: The Gathering set. Since the boxes would have been labeled… this implies the robbery was planned and the thieves KNEW what they were planning on stealing.)

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  8. How have Zee and Milla not heard of Blob tag?? I was born in 1990 and we played blob tag in gym class in Wisconsin…. Haha.

    Anyway, awesome hearing your thoughts on Gencon. Really need to make a convention here soon. DT West maybe can be my first? Not sure I can handle Gencon yet.

    In other news, really want Spider Geddon!

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  9. With Lorcana the reason why there's people 'crazy' enough to wait and sell for 'crazy prices is that there's people with more money than sense and patience. If someone is dumb enough to shell out there will always be people 'smart' enough to give them the opportunity to show that. Happens all the time in other arena's when popularity+limited availability / rarity + FOMO meet disposable income and impatience. If the situation exists people will fill that niche. Nature hates a vacuum, and so does capitalism.

    Ravensburger and Disney aren't stupid, they didn't create artificial scarcity and buzz by mistake. Allowing it to initally be sold via a Limited release at a ticketed event with low stock is called good business practice in a capitalistic society. Like it or hate it, Disney and Ravensburger were obviously extremely aware of the secondary market that would immediately pop up and assuredly are using it as market research. If a TCG doesn't have a ravenous secondary market, it's a matter of time before it will fail.

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  10. Wondering where the heard that the Canadian government gets 40% of the sale of the “one ring”. I search online for details of that and couldn’t find it. I don’t know how sales of something that big goes. But we don’t even get taxed on our lottery wins. So I found that odd and want to learn more.

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  11. Is there any incentive for GenCon to cap attendance any lower? I wonder how peoples' experience this year (which, at least with respect to the size of the crowds, seemed to be uniformly negative) will impact attendance next year, if a large chunk of folks won't go back because it was so hard to move around the floor. I've been three times—2018, 2021, and 2022—and the smaller crowds of 2021 were such a blessing, though I know those numbers aren't realistic for a normal year. The size of things in 2018 and 2022 was pretty overwhelming, but still manageable.

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  12. We saw the announcement about the new recycled material CGE is introducing for game pieces. Super excited about this. Hope it catches on widely and quickly! (also great job on all the GenCon coverage. it was a big part of our GenCon online experience as Jayne's illness makes attending impossible!)

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  13. Did Fantasy Flight do the big 'In-Flight Report' event like they used to? I saw the little videos they did daily but it wasn't the same and I saw no "AMAZING" reveal like they used to spring on people.

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