The stores in my area apparently got few copies and have no idea when they will be getting more leading to wait lists for whatever restocks come in. Some say even their distributors are clueless on this. Every webstore is sold out with nebulous December restocks. What's up with this, did Fantasy Flight just totally not forsee demand? I haven't seen anything like this since Marvel Dice totally screwed up their initial release where you can't find a copy and there's no real information anywhere on when new stuff will come in.

Maybe FFG pulled a Nintendo Classic on us? Nah, they're not that bad. It wouldn't surprise me if FFG thought that demand for another Arkham game would have waned and we got the best one in a decade.

Oh no! What if they don't make enough L5R core set?

Looks like the core set is currently in stock in the FFG store. ...along with some of the small playmats - but not the big one!

I'm still trying to get my hands on that one, so hopefully it'll come back into stock soon as well...

It's available again on their website, so I think they probably just underestimated demand for the initial release, and as pre-orders came in, Asmodee realized they needed to print a new batch, and fast. Those might be going out to retailers in the next couple of weeks? My store's getting their batch Friday.

It's available again on their website, so I think they probably just underestimated demand for the initial release, and as pre-orders came in, Asmodee realized they needed to print a new batch, and fast. Those might be going out to retailers in the next couple of weeks? My store's getting their batch Friday.

This isn't directed solely at you, but I think its time people stop saying "they underestimated the demand". Its a old excuse I could see them saying a few years ago, but this is not their first LCG, nor will it be close to their last.

They have a TON of data and they know the numbers for their products well, hence why they are one of the top game companies in the world.

Its all a marketing game. You create such a high demand, people who focus just on the product they cant get. Every company fights for a piece of the game pie, and this is one tactic that works every time.

On a different note, their webstore has it for sale since yesterday and FLGS around me are getting in lots of restocks today. So it will be around again this week.

I think it's fair to say they underestimated. Given how long it takes to print, ship, and distribute, they had to put in an initial order for the launch night probably weeks, if not months, before Arkham Nights and before game reviewers got advance copies, which is what sparked the increased demand. True, it's not their first LCG, but it's only their second co-op LCG, so the data can't be perfectly reliable. It's also their 5th Lovecraft game, so probably expected some customer fatigue on the IP. Statistics are not infallible. I'm sure they did their research on expected number of release copies they'd sell, but they got it wrong, and that's not something you should hold against them. Everyone got the presidential election wrong, too, but nobody blames Nate Silver.

Its all a marketing game. You create such a high demand, people who focus just on the product they cant get. Every company fights for a piece of the game pie, and this is one tactic that works every time.

"Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."

I think it's fair to say they underestimated. Given how long it takes to print, ship, and distribute, they had to put in an initial order for the launch night probably weeks, if not months, before Arkham Nights and before game reviewers got advance copies, which is what sparked the increased demand. True, it's not their first LCG, but it's only their second co-op LCG, so the data can't be perfectly reliable. It's also their 5th Lovecraft game, so probably expected some customer fatigue on the IP. Statistics are not infallible. I'm sure they did their research on expected number of release copies they'd sell, but they got it wrong, and that's not something you should hold against them. Everyone got the presidential election wrong, too, but nobody blames Nate Silver.

But how many times has this happened? Over and over and over.

Warhammer quest - Now gone but such a high demand stores hardly got any and you only needed 1! Not a LCG but again they understand supply/demand

Netrunner - sold out instantly, jus like arkham with a longer period till restocks came. Stores were shorted.

Star Wars - Had good stock BUT again sold out. Not only because its star wars, but a lcg as well.

LOTR - I cant speak to, I got into it a good 2 years after it came out so was easily obtainable

Warhammer Invasion - Sold out instantly. Hard to get copies and took another to get them in stock.

Warhammer 40k conquest - Same as above.

I guarantee, 100% that when L5R comes out, its going to be the same, the exact same. They have the data, they have the understanding of how popular it is.

and when some day they LCG 7th Sea when they acquire it (we all know they will) it will be the same.

Im not grabbing pitch forks here and saying burn FFG. I love the company, but I don't think people making excuses for something that's happened time and time again is the way to do it. If your just accepting it is "how its always been" then it wont ever change.

The election was wrong because of the battering of lables in the public eye. Speak your mind out loud and get lynched. That booth is the only place where you could actually say how you feel without judgment. But that has nothing to do with this topic, so your comparison doesn't hold to true there.

Its all a marketing game. You create such a high demand, people who focus just on the product they cant get. Every company fights for a piece of the game pie, and this is one tactic that works every time.

"Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."

I just don't agree its their incompetence. They are a successful company, with lots of smart people. They have obviously proven they understand economics and how to tweak it to their advantage on supply/demand.

I'll be buying this game in mid december give or take I hope I can find a copy...

I just don't agree its their incompetence. They are a successful company, with lots of smart people. They have obviously proven they understand economics and how to tweak it to their advantage on supply/demand.

You could say the same thing about play balance, but Netrunner is still in an awful state and X-wing is having to errata catastrophic designs pretty much every cycle to avoid the same.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with your checklist, either. Sure, every one of them happened, but was it all foreseeable? Warhammer Quest's popularity was a shock to everyone, it was a small and new game, and the Warhammer Fantasy products hadn't been doing all that well. Netrunner was a revival and no guarantee, despite the small but fairly diehard following. I don't remember particular problems getting either Invasion or Conquest, although that could have just been my local areas. I also haven't heard about any issues with the new AGOT.

I'm honestly not sure the premise holds value even if we think they are smart enough to do it. Most standalone games almost certainly front-load their sales, so driving excitement by intentionally shorting product might have a benefit. LCGs are long-term, though. An initial spike off the core set doesn't seem like it helps much in the long run. You also don't hear about this much with anything past the core sets. And it certainly doesn't do any good for the company - FFG's reputation for short stock and long delays is legendary. It's certainly recovered, but the initial shortages for X-wing certainly didn't do good things for the game at the time.

I think it's far more likely that they're conservative in initial print runs to minimize risk while they see how a game does. It's admittedly a small data set, but the X-wing example fits this perfectly - it was a new game in a new style and genre with a much higher price point. The conservative print runs imply, to me, caution which they then have to catch up to recover from.

I was told I should have my game this Friday since they got a new stock, but I'll wait because this is the third time I've been assured I would be receiving my copy of this game.

1) Sometimes the publisher understimates the demand and doesn't produce enough copies; consider also that the printing orders are given to the printer in China up to half a year before the release of the game. 2) Then again, distributors take pre-orders from retailers and don't order too many more because they don't want to risk more money that necessary and new games are coming out every week. 3) Retailers don't want to risk more money that necessary, either; they can't bet the farm on a single game; it's better to sell through and reorder, than order too much and have all that money frozen for months, also their customers haven't made so many special orders, which leads up to 4) You, the customer, knew you wanted this game. You knew for months, since your first saw the previews, and with each new preview, demo or unboxing or play report on youtube, you were more and more sure you wanted it. However you still didn't bother to make a pre-order with your retailer. So release day comes and that day, or even a few days after, you expect to come to the store and have one or more copies of the most awaited for game of the year waiting for you, just because...

Frankly, if there is any temporal scarcity I'd say is more a fault of 2 to 4, as FFG probably had a good idea on how many they could sell, have the most warehouse space, and their investment per unity was the least of all. However, if your store got 6 pre-orders from their customers, they aren't going to order more than 10 copies, 12 if they feel very daring. and the distributor is going to send them exactly what they pre-ordered. And if the distributor got 500 preorders from the stores, they ordered at most 600 from FFG, just in case, and these extra 100 were gone the first couple of hours on release day, to the few first stores who rushed to phone to reorder aditional copies.

Now you must wait until the distributors make new orders to FFG, and pray that the distributor your store works with gets their restock order to FFG before they sell thru the rest of the printing, otherwise you will have to wait a few months for a new printing, because the Dunwich Legacy and the Mythos packs are on the boat and that comes first

FFG has piles of them, why not buy one from them if you're desperate for a copy?

If FFG only had better communication to their retailers it would be one thing. Heck Amazon had been saying up until 20 mins ago that I would have my copy today. Now they are like sorry we received far fewer then we expected from the supplier. This means FFG is not even communicating with their partners on expected supplies. So now the only way to get the game I had expected to have for someones birthday this week is to pay ridiculous amounts to a reseller.

If FFG had communicated properly with retailers on their expected supply then at least retailers could let folks know with more advanced warning on how much product would be available. I do like FFG games but the constant issues they run into suppling their retailers is nuts as is their shipping costs when ordering from them.

Heck Amazon had been saying up until 20 mins ago that I would have my copy today. Now they are like sorry we received far fewer then we expected from the supplier.

Glad I'm not the only one. I had pre-ordered through Amazon as well, and within the last hour received an email that it was delayed.

Many stores are usually limited by middleman distributors. At least that's the case here, where that's the excuse I hear when a new product has been out in the UK for a month, but my neck of the woods hasn't even received a delivery date anywhere.

Everything LCG (and some other FFG properties) sells out a week after release, then it's out of stock for half a year or more :/

(Except Netrunner. I can get new stuff almost on launch day, and they keep older data packs available across several shelves.)

If you are in Canada (or want to pay international shipping) http://boardgames.caseems to have plenty. They had a big stack of them when I was in there last week to pick up my preoders.