I thought that has occurred to me and may excuse / explain things to do with availability (at least in Europe). Around the time that Asmodée would have been asking for pre-orders from distributors and distributors from stores, many brick and mortar places would have just been closed up indefinitely due to various lockdowns. This could have meant that some places that would normlly have put in orders didn't, which dominoed up the chain to main that less were printed than you might expect.
The Rise of Red Skull - avability
I wouldn't really be bothered if there would be any official statement from FFG, even just some PR **** like 'Please accept apologies, we will try to get restock available for you as soon as possible'. At least we would know that they see it and want to resolve it, covid doesn't choose, it hits and affects everything and everyone, would be very understandable. FFG PR is what actually bothers me. Instead, like usually in such cases, they pretend that nothing has happened, whole release went as smoothly as they planned. The only communication with players is if some card artist is fired because of some scandal.
I’m sorry to hear that folks are having these difficulties. ☹️ I picked mine up at my FLGS after pre-ordering about a month ago. I am happy to be plugged into a solid local shop that is committed to taking care of their customers. Sure hope you’re able to get a copy sooner than later.
46 minutes ago, yosemite said:I am happy to be plugged into a solid local shop that is committed to taking care of their customers. Sure hope you’re able to get a copy sooner than later.
The store I use has never let me down before, and to be fair to them, they haven't let me down this time either. It's FFG or their distributor to the UK that has failed to fulfil the orders to the stores; leaving the end customer empty-handed, despite pre-ordering months in advance. I know FFG will not wanted to have let anybody down and I hope they'll be pulling out all the stops to get another print run into the supply chain as soon as possible to fulfil the outstanding orders.
I for one would very much appreciate an official announcement from FFG to acknowledge the issue and confirm how soon a new print can be expected and shipped.
19 hours ago, radzio78 said:I wouldn't really be bothered if there would be any official statement from FFG, even just some PR **** like 'Please accept apologies, we will try to get restock available for you as soon as possible'. At least we would know that they see it and want to resolve it, covid doesn't choose, it hits and affects everything and everyone, would be very understandable. FFG PR is what actually bothers me. Instead, like usually in such cases, they pretend that nothing has happened, whole release went as smoothly as they planned. The only communication with players is if some card artist is fired because of some scandal.
FFG comms are always on the low side. But we must remember that since the Asmodee merger, they are now simply a design studio within a larger entity. Maybe Asmodee forbids them from commenting on such things? Maybe FFG have less control than we think over print run sizes etc?
Miniature Market in the U.S. still has a lot of supply left if anybody needs to order a copy.
Pre-ordered nearly 2 months ago from my local retailer, they found when they recieved the delivery that they were only getting 35% of what they ordered. As a result they no longer taking pre-orders for FFG products as has they have no faith in recieving stock from them reliably.
I know a few people have suggested that Covid19 might have impacted but unfortunately this is not new as FFG are notorious for underproducing stock.
On 9/7/2020 at 9:28 AM, radzio78 said:I wouldn't really be bothered if there would be any official statement from FFG, even just some PR **** like 'Please accept apologies, we will try to get restock available for you as soon as possible'. At least we would know that they see it and want to resolve it, covid doesn't choose, it hits and affects everything and everyone, would be very understandable. FFG PR is what actually bothers me. Instead, like usually in such cases, they pretend that nothing has happened, whole release went as smoothly as they planned. The only communication with players is if some card artist is fired because of some scandal.
They've done this for years. No company is more inept at communication than FFG. If a product is delayed, they don't say "hey guys heads up there's a delay", they completely ignore all questions on it and leave everyone wondering if the game is cancelled.
They also tend to not tell anyone when they decide to kill a product, which has left many of their customers suspect of them. RuneWars:TMG had a ton of people that said "I'll wait 2 years and see if they are actually willing to support this".
And then of course lately they've gotten even worse, they barely preview their new products. I used to check FFG's site daily in order to read the new previews and articles, and that would in turn expose me to games I wouldn't have seen otherwise. I probably wouldn't have bought Runebound if not for reading the Lord of the Rings and Netrunner previews they used to do constantly. Now you are lucky if you even get an article when the product is released, it's basically just the annoucement.
9 minutes ago, Supertoe said:They've done this for years. No company is more inept at communication than FFG. If a product is delayed, they don't say "hey guys heads up there's a delay", they completely ignore all questions on it and leave everyone wondering if the game is cancelled.
They also tend to not tell anyone when they decide to kill a product, which has left many of their customers suspect of them. RuneWars:TMG had a ton of people that said "I'll wait 2 years and see if they are actually willing to support this".
And then of course lately they've gotten even worse, they barely preview their new products. I used to check FFG's site daily in order to read the new previews and articles, and that would in turn expose me to games I wouldn't have seen otherwise. I probably wouldn't have bought Runebound if not for reading the Lord of the Rings and Netrunner previews they used to do constantly. Now you are lucky if you even get an article when the product is released, it's basically just the annoucement.
The moment their games gonna start being worse, they're dead in market. Product is one thing. But it is dam important how you sell it and support it. Good they have actually good games. But I belive in rule "Do not f--- with the customer" - that my company is allign with, that's why I hate the thing they're doing.
Yeah this is logistics which as I understand it is really Asmodee's territory now. Like JonboyJon said I believe FFG as a studio just does the creative work now. That said even when they were their own studio they always had issues with slow reprint cycles and release delays on LCGs. That's the unfortunate reality of printing overseas I guess. No one is immune to it and FFG will probably always be plagued by it unless they do larger print runs (which is probably both a risk and cash flow consideration) or start printing domestically so they have less overhead (but also I would assume a much greater cost to print). In both cases I assume they did the cost analysis and deemed it not economically viable to make a change in either direction.
My recommendation like others stated above is get into someone's preorder system (either online or at an FLGS). Before I did that LCGs were very frustrating to collect especially in the first year or so of release since the game is still finding and growing an audience. Therefore FFG is still dealing with fluctuating demand on the products and more uncertainty on the print run sizes is the result.
I will say most of the good communication I've seen from FFG comes from their livestream or from the various podcasts where the designers make an appearance. Just reading the website articles are hit or miss for information and the upcoming page is not always reliable. I don't do Twitter so I don't know how good they are at communicating on Twitter. Rarely is a delay communicated and they stopped posting reprint dates on their upcoming page (I really dislike that move since it did help alleviate some of this). Is FFG the worst at this sort of communication? No I don't think so. Can they be better? Certainly I'd like to see more open communication with the audience.
3 hours ago, phillos said:My recommendation like others stated above is get into someone's preorder system (either online or at an FLGS).
I pre-ordered on 5th May from a store that I've purchased a lot of FFG product from, but FFG/Asmodee failed to fulfil the stores purchase order. In this instance, even pre-ordering four months in advance of release still leaves customers empty handed.
I sent FFG customer service a politely worded email on Sunday to explain my situation and asked if they could comment on when a new print run might be expected to fulfil outstanding orders. So far I've only had an automated reply to acknowledge receipt of my message. I hope to hear from them soon.
Edited by Janaka
18 hours ago, Supertoe said:And then of course lately they've gotten even worse, they barely preview their new products. I used to check FFG's site daily in order to read the new previews and articles, and that would in turn expose me to games I wouldn't have seen otherwise. I probably wouldn't have bought Runebound if not for reading the Lord of the Rings and Netrunner previews they used to do constantly. Now you are lucky if you even get an article when the product is released, it's basically just the annoucement.
Hard to tell how much they've cooled off on marketing due to Covid though. They normally announce a big new game line at GenCon - this year they didn't - it was just expansions for all their existing stuff. Maybe that was always their plan, but maybe they had another LCG/competitive game due to be announced at GenCon before all this. No point in releasing it in this climate.
37 minutes ago, jonboyjon1990 said:Hard to tell how much they've cooled off on marketing due to Covid though. They normally announce a big new game line at GenCon - this year they didn't - it was just expansions for all their existing stuff. Maybe that was always their plan, but maybe they had another LCG/competitive game due to be announced at GenCon before all this. No point in releasing it in this climate.
You do remember that X-men game they announced?
12 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:You do remember that X-men game they announced?
Yeah, just a board game right? Not a huge new product/game line. I don't see that as an equivalently big announcement as say Star Wars Legion, KeyForge, Marvel Champions, a new competitive game
Yeah, the X-men game is just a standalone board game similar to Elder Sign. Having played it, it doesn't feel like it needs expansions, but if it sells well I think they might try to make some.
17 hours ago, Janaka said:I pre-ordered on 5th May from a store that I've purchased a lot of FFG product from, but FFG/Asmodee failed to fulfil the stores purchase order. In this instance, even pre-ordering four months in advance of release still leaves customers empty handed.
I sent FFG customer service a politely worded email on Sunday to explain my situation and asked if they could comment on when a new print run might be expected to fulfil outstanding orders. So far I've only had an automated reply to acknowledge receipt of my message. I hope to hear from them soon.
This is exactly the issue that Team Covenant talks about in their podcast about the issue with the three tiered system. I'm not sure what fell apart in this case, because I didn't think Red Skull went to allocation, but there's a definite issue with the way the system works with respect to how retailers, distributors and publishers communicate. That said preordering versus not preordering is at least doing something versus nothing to help yourself. I am sorry you didn't get your product. In my experience preodering I've only not gotten a handful of products at the most at launch (I believe maybe three products that I can recall in 5+ years of preodering multiple LCG product lines). Before I started preordering I was constantly missing stuff.
Edited by phillosFollowing my message to FFG on Sunday, I have today received a reply from Asmodee which states: " We're sorry to say we have no additional information to share about any upcoming reprints for Marvel Champions" .
Basically, I take that to read that those of us in the UK that pre-ordered but received nothing are not likely to be receiving our orders any time soon - or at all.
My BnM says its been pushed back and will arrive on Saturday does that seem possible or unlikely?
I originally had a pre-order through Amazon that was supposed to arrive by the 8th. The morning of the 8th I received an email from Amazon saying the order had been delayed indefinitely and they would update me on a new delivery date. Not hopeful, I called a local, major game retailer about two hours away who said they just received plenty of copies. Ordered, shipped, and received in 2 days. Amazon now says my original order is scheduled to arrive on October 30.
So...not sure if there's an actual supply issue or a logistics issue in getting shipments out.
Got my set late last night, I have avoided most of the spoilers and am excited to give it a go this weekend.
I got some Purple Sleeves for Hawkeye and Red for Jessica and I am going to try to switch over to Perfect Fit clear side-loaders for the Heroes.
Well, I've taken the plunge and ordered Rise of the Red Skull from America. Pleasantly surprised that it cost roughly the same as my UK order, including the shipping. I hope to be equally pleasantly surprised by receiving the order without any problems and delays in shipping.
On 9/8/2020 at 1:12 PM, Mesrob said:Miniature Market in the U.S. still has a lot of supply left if anybody needs to order a copy.
Oh, and thanks Mesrob - it's your advice I've taken.
And it's here!!!!!! All the way from St. Louis, America. My copy of Rise of Red Skull arrived today.
My first experience of ordering a game from abroad. Ordered from Miniature Market, cost about the same as ordering in the UK (including the shipping) and took twenty days.
Happy days!!! 😊
17 hours ago, Janaka said:And it's here!!!!!! All the way from St. Louis, America. My copy of Rise of Red Skull arrived today.
My first experience of ordering a game from abroad. Ordered from Miniature Market, cost about the same as ordering in the UK (including the shipping) and took twenty days.
Happy days!!! 😊
I like Miniature Market a lot.
Dear fellow Europeans!
I have contacted Asmodee and they told me that you can order it from the us store. https://store.us.asmodee.com/catalogue/marvel-lcg-the-rise-of-red-skull_2724/ Which is kind a odd that they have it in stock, they had seen the order numbers from Europe...and then they kinda just ignored it. To be honest I feel hurt by this decision.
Gravityends