Against the Giants Collation

I understand that randomly packaged packs of cards/minis/whatever… aren’t.  There’s a very good reason for this; true randomness would be prohibitively expensive to assure.  Then, when the truly random packs got to the customers, there would be complaints that people weren’t able to build the full set after so many packs.  Getting the same rare five times in a row does in fact sometimes happen with a truly random distribution.

You can also read this as “people are bad at math.”

Still, some attempt at randomness should be made. For a couple of years, AEG’s CCGs were not randomized in the box, and so one could go through a box and pull out every foil and chase rare, leaving the chafe behind.  This is a bad thing.

But the collation for the new D&D minis set?  Way beyond that.  Our first two cases opened, for a total of 12 packs, were identical.  All 8 miniatures, supposed drawn from separate groups, were identical. There is simply no excuse for that sort of laziness.

Then I won several drinks by betting gullible customers that I could call all the miniatures in pack 12 before opening it, so I suppose it could be worse.

Warhammer 40K Weekend

Games Workshop is releasing the latest edition of their 40K rules set this weekend. (That’s 5th Edition, for you folks keeping track at home). In celebration of this (arguably) momentous event, they’ve organized a tournament to be run simultaneously at a bunch of independent stores, in addition to the official GW Battle Bunkers.

I have no problems with the Games Workshop product line. Their casts tend to be clean, and are interesting and complex. Their costs are reasonable, even if on the high end thereof. Their rules set caters well to the type of gamer that makes up their market.

No, the problems I have with GW are with the company itself, and some of their absurd policies. For example, making certain pieces available only direct from them? Equivalent to flipping the bird at local retailers. Limited release items that are “out of stock,” but that individuals can still order? Requiring retailers to order from all three product lines, including the sells-about-as-fast-as-a-space-heater-in-the-Sahara Lord of the Rings line, in order to get free shipping and event support? More spitting in the face. These types of decisions are why I dread dealing with the company in any capacity.

Back to the events. GW has gone all out on this weekend: We’ll be giving out $430 retail worth of Games Workshop products this weekend, at a series of free events. GW will be reimbursing us for this support.

That’s absurd. That amount is just slightly under what we’ve sold worth of GW products for the past two weeks. And GW is simply handing it away to people.

So, either I’m doing something very wrong here, or they are. If (…when) we only get two people showing up this weekend, I’ll be pretty comfortable in assuming that it’s them. But in the meantime, hey, free GW stuff if you come play.