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 talks about the plethora of prereleases that happened this weekend at retailers across the nation.
This weekend was a bit much for retailer; quite profitable, of course, but having four TCG companies release new products and schedule prerelease events takes up a lot of staffing at time. Stores saw Marvel’s Spider-Man release for Magic: The Gathering, an expansion, which save for the Gift Bundle, has seen lackadaisical interest among players here. As I expected, attendance was way off from Final Fantasy numbers (see “Was I Wrong about ‘Final Fantasy’? Yup!“).
However, our Spider-Man numbers also came in under our Edge of Eternities prerelease numbers, which did not surprise me that much given the lack of interest in preorders here. This tracks with what I have heard from other retailers. Most have reported really low numbers for prerelease turnout for this Universes Beyond set.
Unlike Final Fantasy, which brought in a lot of fans of the Final Fantasy video game franchise, we haven’t seen much if any crossover from Spider-Man or Marvel fans looking to buy the set. Attendance at our second pre-release of the weekend on Saturday dropped by 75% from Friday night. While our Saturday events are typically lower, that large of a drop is pretty drastic.
We had one of our Spider-Man comic customers express some interest in the set, but when he heard the pricing, especially on the Collector boosters, he demurred. However, it appears sales for the set are strong, even if initial Organized Play is not. According to what I have heard from the Alliance Open House, Wizards of the Coast’s run of Spider-Man cards was three times as large as the company produced for Tarkir: Dragonstorm.
Stores and customers started seeing promotion for Avatar: The Last Airbender weeks before the release of the Spider-Man set, and we’ve see far more interest in Avatar than we have in Spider-Man. Meanwhile, as I noted last week (see “Magic: The Gathering Supply Chain Woes“), stores still see no scheduled restocks for Play Boosters for Final Fantasy or Edge of Eternities.
Meanwhile, Konami scheduled their premiere event for Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG: Doom of Dimensions this weekend as well (because why not). Konami used to have stores run Premiere events on Saturday and Sunday, but expanded the events to Friday a little while ago; though that did not impact our customers participation in the event as they still wait for Saturday to participate in the Premier. Konami is now allowing stores to run Premiere Tournaments, which run during a Premiere weekend and allow the players to use cards from the Premiere weekend set in their decks. This likely helped drive healthy attendance for the event. We had our best turnout in several Premieres with numbers far greater than either Magic Spider-Man pre-release.
To cap off the weekend, both Flesh and Blood and Pokemon scheduled prerelease events for this weekend as well, and DC Comics scheduled this year’s Batman Day for the September 20, 2025. This meant stores hosting prereleases for all four TCGs and running Batman Day events had to stretch their staffs out thinner than ever. I realize companies cannot discuss promotional strategies with each other, as that is collusion, but would it hurt to look at announced release schedules?
Comments? Make a wager on when restocks of Final Fantasy Play Boosters arrive? 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.
Source: ICv2
