Hi, quite new to the game and absolutely loving it. Been spending more time and money on this than anything else for the past few months. I'm hooked.
It is apparent however that the game is hard to get a hold of. I'm from Scandinavia and I believe it could be even harder here than anywhere else - USA is far away, we don't have a local translation and we aint a lot of people.
During my time with the game, I've not been able to grab a single big expansion until recently, when a medium sized online store for board games got a decently sized shipment from FGG.
Mountain of Fire, which they had about 20 of, sold out in 5 hours.
Land of shadow, Treason of Saruman and On the Doorstep sold out in 1 day.
Black riders and Heirs of Numenor sold out in 3 days.
Several AP's were sold out in a few days as well.

And now we're back to having close to no stock again. I bought most of the expansions mentioned above, so I ain't mad about missing out on those.
I just think it is odd that FGG is not acting on the obvious demand for this game - are they purposefully choking the game out?
The fact that ebay auctions go for 2-4 times the original price, just hows how in-demand the products are, and it's not just in my country.

It is quite apparent to me that these products are still popular, even after 9-10 years - so congrats on making a successful game!
But what's up with most of the products being out of stock and barely getting reprinted? Especially the older exps and APs, those are really hard to find. What is the goal here? Making us pay tripple prices through ebay won't give FGG any money.

I really don't know. No one really does.😕 FFG could literally print money, and make their LotR fans happier, but for some reason: no reprints.

😕

I hear ya OP. I sold my collection last summer because I got sick of waiting for the reprints. I literally wanted to throw my money at them but they didn't want it then so whatever. Now I just use OCTGN/TTS.

They Are all the time making reprints. The amounths that is needed to reprint meats that it will takes 10+ years to 20 year to reprint that we allready have! About 5 reprints in a year... They can not reprint more because there Are no space in Gaming shops and They Also have to produce something new so there is limit on how Many reprints van be made in given period of time!

Can only agree @player4036658. In the UK the stock situation is also very poor. I regularly check with 6 different UK gaming store sites and it’s so frustrating. I’ve recently ordered from Amazon US, where the stock situation is marginally better, and it is cheaper, even when including import duty and delivery, than to buy the same product from Amazon UK! And really I’d like that money to go to my FLGS...

My collection is slowly building but I’m pretty sure Frodo would’ve given up by now.

4 hours ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

I really don't know. No one really does.😕 FFG could literally print money, and make their LotR fans happier, but for some reason: no reprints.

😕

I resent this! The fact that I use counterfeit money and that I like LOTR are totally unrelated!😜

Another thing to pay attention to is that LOTR is not the only game FFG makes, nor is it the biggest or most popular.

FFG has limited resources in terms of printing and manufacturing capabilities - LOTR competes for printer time with any number of their other lines. So sure, they could sell a lot of product if they prioritized our beloved LCG. But if printing new KeyForge decks is more profitable than LOTR reprints (news flash: new anything is probably more profitable than reprints of almost any game; new stuff just draws in more players), then they certainly aren't making poor business decisions by not prioritizing reprints.

Now, it would be nice if they could upgrade printer capacity to meet demand, so that they could do reprints in addition to the new stuff, but without seeing their finances and cash flow, it's hard to say categorically that they are making poor business decisions. It could very well be that the cost of acquiring new printing capacity (probably through new contracts with new Chinese manufacturers, with all of the time and money that making sure the new company matches up to existing standards implies) is more than could be recouped by a faster reprint schedule.

Another consideration is that FFG was just blindsided by the demand for the game. The recent reprints disappeared remarkably fast, and it could very well be that they are planning to increase the schedule moving forward since the demonstrated demand for the game is more than they expected.

31 minutes ago, Onidsen said:

it could very well be that they are planning to increase the schedule moving forward since the demonstrated demand for the game is more than they expected.

I really hope so. Like you said, either printers running hot at all times or "warehouse too full" seems to be the only logical explanations here.
I've yet to find a Khazad Dum expansion for a reasonable price, so would love to see that one being reprinted sometime. Need to get my dwarves!

It has been frustrating as a new player who had the game for Christmas not being able to pick up much in the way of content. I heard about the reprints and thought great I'd finally be able to expand my collection and then only just managed to pick up a single saga box of the hobbit as everything else either never made it or else can in and went out of stock in what must have literally been hours since in was checking a half dozen stores every day.

I was initially frustrated with the stock situation but it seems that after buying into the game earlier this year I have been rewarded with the most lucky run of reprints imaginable? I'm, as of posting this, just 3 adventure packs short of the full set.

It has been frustrating. I've been wanting to expand my collection since '17's Fellowship event, when I chanced upon my FLGS running it and got to participate with my very limited collection. I haven't been the greatest at keeping watch for what is being reprinted and haven't had any success buying anything until the end of last month and this month.

I mean I'm happy that I've gotten almost everything I hoped to get to expand my collection but it has only been by watching this site and the other online retailers like a hawk. I basically went into a frenzy, and I'm sure you could make a lot of Gollum/Precious parallels to my sudden purchasing habits of everything LOTR LCG. I guess I had always hoped to gradually expand my collection like I did with the first two cycles years ago.

The unique nature of a cooperative LCG sets it up for continuous growth. Even now, knowing how rarely it is made available, I have a list of people at my LGS who want me to demo the game with them. So I do hope that FFG is able to increase production and meet demand, because I think this game will continue to be solid for them for a long time, including after they decide the game is complete and stop making new content.

While I would love for this game to get even better support, the truth of the matter is, that it does have really good support for reprints. The other FFG game that I follow is Star Wars Armada. It rarely gets reprints. The Fighter Pack I's (a critical expansion) were just reprinted after being out of stock for nearly a year if my memory serves. When the reprints hit, they sold out in less than 5 hours! And the game isn't dead on FFG's side either, It's getting the largest expansion in FFG history! So while I'm disappointed that I likely won't see The Dread Realm, The Steward's Fear, or Druadin Forest for months to years, I'm really happy with how well they've been doing with reprints this year! And I sincerely believe that FFG is not forgetting or neglecting us.

10 hours ago, Gordeaux789 said:

I was initially frustrated with the stock situation but it seems that after buying into the game earlier this year I have been rewarded with the most lucky run of reprints imaginable? I'm, as of posting this, just 3 adventure packs short of the full set.

It seems I must've missed the early reprints then. I havn't seen any Khazad-Dum/Dwarrowdelf, Voice of Isengard, on either FGGs own site or any other store. Only ones I've seen are on ebay/amazon.
Good news then, if they really are ramping up their reprint schedules. However I wonder if it is enough with this tempo, they're still selling out in hours/days?

Voice of isengard was easy to find earlier in the year but yeah looking now it seems like it's pretty much out of stock and being price gouged. Khazad-Dum/Dwarrodelf was restocked in february but seems completely gone again. I'm not going to say that the stock situation has been great for this game, and will echo what TheSpitfired said earlier, which is that if you want to get everything you need to be willing to go into a frenzy and buy everything as it comes into stock. In a perfect world I would have been able to just pick up a few packs here and there from my usual internet retailers at my leisure, but that's not how it has been. I've accepted that it's just the price I pay for coming to a game pretty late.

hopefully FFG learns something from these reprints and maybe scales up the next round with more product so that they don't have potential customers losing interest.

It does make me sad. I was strapped budget wise when Wilds of Rhovanion came out and I really want to get it now and the adventure packs as it sounds like one of the better deluxe expansions in recent years (I only have Kazad Dum and Heirs of Numinor) but I can't find it anywhere that isn't for twice as much or more. But all good things are worth the waiting I suppose. :)

Budget plays a part as well. Especially if there's a big clump of reprints like last month. Unless you have the funds free to buy up a chunk of stuff really quickly you end up stuck anyway. I had to prioritise what I wanted to buy and what I could fund. With some of the adventure packs still available in a few places I might be able to add a few more to my collection at the end of the month even if I can't get all the use out of them without the deluxe boxes.

Yeah as a new player I wish they would reprint both the deluxe boxes and the adventure boxes associated with it. Right now the Voice of Saruman seems very hard to get, but the APs are available. But I just can't bring myself to buy the APs, then be stuck waiting for up to a year for the deluxe to be reprinted. I'm sure when the deluxe comes around, the APs will be out of stock. It seems like anything you don't jump on now, you'll need to wait a year for to see reprinted again.

There are several reprints shipping now, not sure if it's what you're looking for and it looks like there are several more awaiting reprint. Star Wars Legion and X-wing are their big pushers now, everything else is taking a backseat.

On 3/28/2019 at 12:57 AM, JolliGreenGiant said:

Yeah as a new player I wish they would reprint both the deluxe boxes and the adventure boxes associated with it. Right now the Voice of Saruman seems very hard to get, but the APs are available. But I just can't bring myself to buy the APs, then be stuck waiting for up to a year for the deluxe to be reprinted. I'm sure when the deluxe comes around, the APs will be out of stock. It seems like anything you don't jump on now, you'll need to wait a year for to see reprinted again.

You may consider doing that just that. In the last year the reprints seem to be chosen almost randomly and the order in which they are released is rarely in line with anything chronological. If you intended to complete your collection, you just have to buy whatever is available and hope the game doesnt go EOL before you finish.

While waiting for the deluxe to be reprinted, APs won't be completely useless -- the heroes and other player cards will be completely usable against other quests.