What the heck is going on!?

By neuicon, in Mutant Chronicles


So, I am in the Pasadena, California area, and Mutant Chronicles is NOT doing well AT ALL.

Now for me, I totally love the game; me and my fiance play almost every day at least once and I have been a fan of Mutant Chronicles for years.

I went Christmas shopping a few days ago, and guess what!? All the Mutant Chronicles Warpacks were $5.99 and the Starters were $10.99 at my local game store; to be honest, I BOUGHT ALMOST EVERYTHING.

From what the store owner told me, the game was blown away by the Monsterpocalypse game, and when I showed up that night, it was FULL of folks playing that game. The store owner also told me that Mutant Chronicles only got him 1 starter sold since it's release and has not bought anything else because of that. I hadn't been to that store in months, and I left when the game was being demo'd by the FFG guys ( Lucas, here's a shout out! ).

The store owner told me that until the game can get picked up, he will not buy anything MC; he even asked me to get my fiance in the store and play as to get folks interested, but from the looks of it, the Monsterpocalypse game is owning, and ALWAYS selling out.

What needs to happen to save this game? I already know that no one in my area plays this game, except for me and my fiance; my gaming friends won;t even play this game... ...when I say SAVE I don't mean the game is dying, because it's not. It looks like it is doing rather well in certain areas, but to walk in and see the Warpacks at $5.99, like, WHOA.

I bought his last four Starters ( he only had purchased 5 ), I bought 2 Nepharite Overlords Warpacks, 2 Gommorian Hammer Warpacks, 1 Warmaster's Legion Warpack, 2 Dark Wager Warpacks, 3 Advanced Recon Warpacks, 1 13th Banshee Division Warpack, 3 Striker Division Warpacks and 3 Fury's Wrath Warpack.

Now seriously, I am kind of happy to have payed so little for everything, but kind of sad that its doing so horribly in that store and in my area.

Maybe those among us who have been around for a long time can tell us about how much time takes for a game to stablish itself?

Here in Madrid is selling slowly too, but I think it's just a matter of time it starts sell OK. Here, Bauhaus and Brotherhood have just been released, and most people don't even know about the game. We have some figures on the miniatures shop window, but only the starter ones and a few Capitol and Legion ones (including the Gommorian). This weekend I'm going to put there some Venusian Rangers and some Brotherhood, as they seem to be a good catch for new customers. happy.gif The points to sell the game are: it's cheap, for the price of some heroclix single figures you can get a warpack; it's easy to learn, but at the same time the game is really complex; you can create your force in a few minutes and play a game very quickly, not like in WH40K, where those things can take you a whole day; lots of armies to choose, and the chance to combine almost all of them; and constant releases for all armies, so you can expand it little by little, which is more affordable, instead of waiting for months and then get an avalanche of new products.

Problem MC is facing is that it is a bad time for most people to spent money. I don't know how it is in other places, but here the media is bombing all day with "THE CRISIS" (it almost seems to be a godzilla-like monster or something like that). It's not that the MC is selling badly, all CMGs have poor sales around here this days. This week I sold just 2 heroclix boosters, and with the christmas and all, I can grant you that we've had great sales with CCGs and boardgames.

There is another problem here that probably you don't share, and I really hope you don't: the guy demoing the game here is horrible! So horrible I decided to do the demos myself. He's the kind of person who, instead of tacking people into the game, makes them avoid it. He's boring and obnoxious, he just leaves a message in some forums the day before he goes somewhere to demo the game (sometimes nobody shows up), and he doesn't even know the rules!! So I can show the game at my shop and take in all the people I find, that the game probably won't be getting atention in other shops around. preocupado.gif

Monsterpocalypse may be selling greatly in the USA, but here in Spain I still have to find a shop who sells it.

What Mr.Glum said. angel.gif

Besides, there's some more reasons for this behaviour:

- MC has an specific target, mostly old fans of the others MC trademark products (Doomtrooper, Warzone, the MC RPG...). Instead, the target of the Monsterpocalypse game it's a lot wider, since Godzilla and other daikaiju has a lot more fans than the MC Universe could never have.

- As I know, the Monsterpocalypse game doesn't require much thinking or strategy for winning games. As all of us have seen anytime, the "Capitol sucks because their soldiers are very weak and only uses green dices" type of gamer would prefer a less-strategic game (didn't mean MoPo it's a worse game, but his game tactics are simplier by far)

- This is a classic: This franchise it's doomed in many ways. There's no guilty, not the gamers, MoPo or even the FFG staff... simply it's the story of this trademark. A few but unbreakable crowd of fans distributed all over the planet, without many inter-fan communication in most cases, are the ones who're supporting this trademark from the beggining. I suppose FFG knew that and didn't purchase the rights of this setting without a previous knowledge. However, the work FFG it's making with the franchise is very great. Keep like this!

- The owner of your LGFS has not patience at all. lengua.gif

But WE can make the difference, we can support this game. Talk with your LGFS owner (yes, the impacient one!) and offer yourself to make demonstrations, or simply play your usual games in the store so everybody would see it and ask. Try to introduce your store in the "Organized Play", try to convence your gaming friends to play anytime (if you can't convince your closest friends, there isn't much more to do), etc... As any human project, together we can lift the MC Miniatures game to the top! aplauso.gif

MC suffered from a really bad hype at launch, and apparently, people are still irrationally signing off the game without even trying it...

Like others said : demo the game, show people at your FLGS what's enjoyable in it... You know, I also happen to love Monsterpocalypse, but Mutant Chronicles and Monpoc have close to nothing in common, except you play them with figs (skirmish SF vs Kaiju wrestling duels). MC has its own strength, just like Monpoc. In fact, I think Mutant Chronicles is even more enjoyable on the long run, thanks to the freedom you have when designing army builds... And MC is not random, so you get to buy only the figs you need.

I don't understand why you friends wouldn't even want to try the game... I mean : it's not like it they were forces to buy figs after that... You have all the figs needed to enjoy the game with two or three other players ! The game is simple, fun, but has a great learning curve. It shouldn't be THAT hard to convince people into playing it (once they get over their preconcieved ideas...).

Yeah, I don't see much movement of MC from the 2 stores I frequent and I never see anyone playing it. My son is only mildly interested...GoW 2 is far more fun for him. Maybe MC will last a year and a bit, then it'll probably fade. That's my sad prediction, sorry.

Well, I do agree with a lot of you fine folks, and I thank you all for the replies.

I have spoken to him ( the LGS Owner ), and he does want me to come in to the store and demo the game for folks and play a few games with my fiance, who also loves the game and get people involved with the game.

We decided that we will, although he does NOT wanna start Organized Play; me and Roselyn have a Campaign going on between the two of us ( she's commanding the human forces and I am commanding the Dark Legion ) and you can see all the Battle Reports and follow the story on my YouTube.

So, me and Roselyn are really hoping to get folks into the game; we were hooks on our first try and I did manage to get one friend a few days ago into the game; he got so into it that he threw a fit when I won and demanded a rematch! Hee, Hee. All it takes is a go at it, I think.

Thanks again for the replies!

http://www.youtube.com/neuicon

neuicon said:

So, me and Roselyn are really hoping to get folks into the game

That's the spirit! Thanks a lot! aplauso.gif

P.S.: Your Youtube channel rocks!

neuicon said:

So, me and Roselyn are really hoping to get folks into the game

That's the spirit! Thanks a lot! aplauso.gif

P.S.: Your Youtube channel rocks!

I can only say. Neuicon for prez. happy.gif

I've only found one store in town so far that even carries the game, out of say 10 hobby stores that might have carried it. So finding it locally is a bit harder than it should be. However, with consistent on time releases going forward (which seems to be the case so far), hopefully it will pick up steam. I've been asking about it at all of the places I shop, which hopefully means more stores will carry it going forward if enough players are asking for it.