Future of D&D Miniatures

[Fifth Element]

16 minis for $20. Bliss.

That's not extremely reasonable, to use MerricB's term; that's a loss leader.

(Can one be extremely reasonable, btw?)

 

[Sammael]

That's not extremely reasonable, to use MerricB's term; that's a loss leader.

(Can one be extremely reasonable, btw?)

I'm not so sure about that. Harbinger starters got a second print run at some point (after Dragoneye, IIRC), and they were priced the same, despite the fact that they were preparing a price change. If it was a loss leader, how come they didn't wait for the Archfiends' price increase to re-release the starter at $22 or something?

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Odd, from my readings on the WotC site, I had the impression that the DDMers were the big consumers and the acquisition by roleplayers a much smaller chunk.

"Per buyer," that's definitely true. In absolute volume, though, RPGer DDM purchasers swamped out "pure" DDMers. (IME, many, maybe most, DDMers were also RPGers.)

From a business perspective, a revamping to 2.0 is likely to be a response to a decline in the product line.

In most situations like this, that might be true. In this particular situation, WotC was ramping up toward the release of 4E, and wanted the skirmish game and the RPG to use the same rules. DDM players had the first play experience with 4E's combat rules.

Again, as a fairly hardcore DDM player, IMO the game was still healthy immediately prior to 2.0's release. It wasn't at its peak, for reasons mentioned upthread, but we were still getting tournaments together pretty easily. That changed pretty fast after DDM 2.0 was released; as far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a tournament or organized DDM league day in the Bay Area (once a hotbed of DDM hardcore players) in many months.

 

[Stormonu]

Again, as a fairly hardcore DDM player, IMO the game was still healthy immediately prior to 2.0's release. It wasn't at its peak, for reasons mentioned upthread, but we were still getting tournaments together pretty easily. That changed pretty fast after DDM 2.0 was released; as far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a tournament or organized DDM league day in the Bay Area (once a hotbed of DDM hardcore players) in many months.

I'm sure that the sudden invalidation of 10(?) sets didn't help matters much for DDM. I did not follow the game other than some of my friends comments, but I seem to recall it took a month or two just to get the previous set recarded ... and I'm not sure they ever recarded the sets all the way back to harbinger.

 

[Shazman]

Constantly increasing price while decreasing quality of minis + market saturation = fail!

 

[Herschel]

The Twin Cities used to be a great hotbed of DDM players but once WotC pulled the plug, we couldn't even get a four-person tournament together. A number of us are doing 4E RPGA stuff and some of us are in regular campaigns together now too.

 

[Herschel]

Constantly increasing price while decreasing quality of minis + market saturation = fail!

Constantly increasing? The $15 price point has been around quite a while. As for minis quality, there were a couple of bad sets (Demonweb and the first visible set) but the last two were outstanding as was Desert of Desolation. The decrease in minis/box with the coming of teh visibles that so many clamored for was a bit disappointing when opening even though what was "lost" was not a rare.

 

[Sammael]

Decreasing the number of minis while keeping the price the same is, effectively, a price increase.

I didn't mind the visible sets (except the first one, which was beyond terrible). But, then again, I buy all my minis online as singles.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Fifth Element]

In most situations like this, that might be true. In this particular situation, WotC was ramping up toward the release of 4E, and wanted the skirmish game and the RPG to use the same rules.

Good point.