Mage Knight is on Kickstarter

[heroscaper2010]

This is tremendous news. It's great to see a major company like this take on the production of MK. Hopefully, as Hogg said, Hasbro does pick up on this and do something like it for HS.

[Hogg]

Even if they don't bring back Heroscape its a good sign for minis in general. Miniature gaming itsself looked like it was against the ropes a few years ago. WizKids went out of business, Heroscape, Star Wars Miniatures, and Dungeon and Dragon Miniatures were all cancelled in a short period of time. With the rising costs of oil (plastic) and Chinese labor there was a pretty dark cloud hanging over that whole section of the gaming industry. This is a bright ray of sunshine.

Whatever Wizkids is doing, they're doing it right. There have been four (Star Trek, Avengers, Dark Knight, Galactic Guardians) major Heroclix sets released so far this year and at least four more (Batman, DC 10th A, Marvel 10th A, Chaos War) before 2013. And now they're bringing back Mage Knight too. They seem to have solved the problem of how to make minis profitable and I never even see their products in Brick and Mortar stores. I wish they were in charge of Heroscape too!

[insomnimaniac]

Originally Posted by Hogg

Even if they don't bring back Heroscape its a good sign for minis in general. Miniature gaming itsself looked like it was against the ropes a few years ago. WizKids went out of business, Heroscape, Star Wars Miniatures, and Dungeon and Dragon Miniatures were all cancelled in a short period of time. With the rising costs of oil (plastic) and Chinese labor there was a pretty dark cloud hanging over that whole section of the gaming industry. This is a bright ray of sunshine.

Whatever Wizkids is doing, they're doing it right. There have been four (Star Trek, Avengers, Dark Knight, Galactic Guardians) major Heroclix sets released so far this year and at least four more (Batman, DC 10th A, Marvel 10th A, Chaos War) before 2013. And now they're bringing back Mage Knight too. They seem to have solved the problem of how to make minis profitable and I never even see their products in Brick and Mortar stores. I wish they were in charge of Heroscape too!

Very well put Hogg! I wish I could find The Dark Knight Rises heroclix at Target. I heard they were there and can't seem to find them.

My concern with the cancelation of the kickstarter campaign was, if it is as successful as they say and are bringing the game back, why did they cancel the campaign?

The new miniatures will be great to cherry pick from and like someone else said, I hope Hasbro/WOTC jumps back into heroscape.

Have a good day all!

[Yodaking]

Originally Posted by insomnimaniac

I wish I could find The Dark Knight Rises heroclix at Target. I heard they were there and can't seem to find them.

The box full of foil package ones popped up at my only local Target about 3 weeks ago. They keep them up by the baseball cards and such near the registers. I stopped by last week though and they were already sold out with no sign of the box at all. The same Target had the Avengers ones too, had one box then sold out and never reordered. They do however have two boxes of the Hunger Games minis still sitting on the shelf so I don't know who is doing the ordering there but they don't seem to have a clue what they are doing.

[jwindjackal]

To be honest, I think that Wizards would make a ton of money if they reprinted all of the Heroscape waves from first to last and marketed them like it was a new product. When scape first came out it was available in Walmart, Target, Toys 'r' us, Fred Meyer, etc. If it was rereleased and a deal was made with the stores listed above, they would have the potential to bring scape to a lot of new players, and a new generation of kids. Its been over 5 years since scape was widely available in stores. That's 5 years of consumers who are generally uninformed as to what scape is. They don't even have to make new units. Just reprint and sell the old ones. Obviously MTG benefits from being sold in bigname stores, I can't take a trip through wally world without seeing them. Why not give scape a little help, get it back into the stores, and advertise like its the newest coolest idea ever?

[Hogg]

One of the problems with Heroscape was the distribution in big box stores. The wave packs weren't differentiated and the large retailers weren't interested in keeping track of up to 52 different products. That combined with the lower sales of the unique packs led to lots of shelves clogged with old packs that no one wanted to buy. So the new stuff never got restocked and sales suffered across the board. A product like this needs the specific attention that FLGS and online game stores can give it, but I don't think that's enough to carry it with the original model (high volume.)

The other problem now is the cost of materials. It has been said that RotV was a loss leader, even back in 2004. It could be $60 or more if they reprinted it, that would probably mean less sales. Some of the other terrain expansions, particularly the Tundra, strike me as more than $20 worth of stuff too. They had to somehow re-engineered the Jungle set before production because they said it would have been too expensive to produce.

I think reprints of Heroscape could be profitable but it would have to be in smaller volume and it would have to be more expensive. The business model would need a major overhaul.

[jwindjackal]

I see....does anyone have any idea as to what Wizards is even willing to consider? Like would the consider reprints? Would they/Hasbro be willing to lease the license?

[Hive Lord 1233]

Originally Posted by Hogg

One of the problems with Heroscape was the distribution in big box stores. The wave packs weren't differentiated and the large retailers weren't interested in keeping track of up to 52 different products. That combined with the lower sales of the unique packs led to lots of shelves clogged with old packs that no one wanted to buy. So the new stuff never got restocked and sales suffered across the board. A product like this needs the specific attention that FLGS and online game stores can give it, but I don't think that's enough to carry it with the original model (high volume.)

The other problem now is the cost of materials. It has been said that RotV was a loss leader, even back in 2004. It could be $60 or more if they reprinted it, that would probably mean less sales. Some of the other terrain expansions, particularly the Tundra, strike me as more than $20 worth of stuff too. They had to somehow re-engineered the Jungle set before production because they said it would have been too expensive to produce.

I think reprints of Heroscape could be profitable but it would have to be in smaller volume and it would have to be more expensive. The business model would need a major overhaul.

I'd be more than willing to pay 30$ for a tudra set, or 70$ for a RotV. Heck, I'd buy multiples.