Today we continue our look back at the Magic: the Gathering release post-mortem articles from The Backstage Pass! In some cases the hindsight on this stuff is fairly significant. In other cases, not so much. In other cases, it’s a howl of laughter. Please feel free to amuse yourself at my expense as you read this.
So, I didn’t actually write an Amonkhet post-mortem, but a couple of weeks after release, I wrote an article called “That Guy With The Opinions Again” that covered the same ground and a bit extra, so in giving it the remastering treatment here, I am retconning it to be the AKH article. During early- and mid-2017, I was heavily occupied with the Tempe Comics acquisition and then the store move from Gilbert to Chandler, so this series of articles became briefly irregular and then got back on track for good with Guilds of Ravnica in 2018. So I’m kind of happy to be able to use the LGSNI Remasters series as a way to correct the source material and conform it to a consistent and more polished format.
As always, original in normal text and my new annotations in italics.
Here we go!
My peers in this industry are highly variable, but from among those who I communicate with regularly, I have found genuine compatriots. Paul Simer often says that if you've run a comic or game store for longer than a few years, you are a "survivor." It is a sentiment I share. We survivors tend to band together for mutual protection. We fortify, trade, and intermarry. Or something.
For the most part, retailers learn best practices, put them into place, bang around the edges of them with custom tweaks, lose some money on the custom tweaks, and then return to the center of best practices with allowances for whatever must be adapted to the resources at hand. It is ever thus, nobody gets into this trade without enough arrogance in tow to think we can do it better. Then, reality is beaten into our faces and we get religion in a hurry. [We’ve discussed this before here at LGSNI, and the key takeaway is that the new disruptive idea or process that ends up gaining traction and truly becomes sustainably transformative, tends to come from experienced retailers who have been through years of trial-and-error, iteration of their processes, and lessons learned. It tends not to come from the splash-in-the-pan new arrivals who want to open a store with Uncle Rich’s bequeathal and are sure they will be on the road to easy profits with their neat repack idea and high prize payouts, easily stealing all the other stores’ customers. I’m not saying to stuff wax in your ears and ignore all the ideas that newcomers bring to the scene. Just, try to avoid the mistakes a lot of us made in the 2010s when we overvalued apparent innovations that turned out to be expensive, fiddly nothingburgers.]
For example, despite some disagreement in the trenches, the data we have internally in the trade suggests that board games (or any boxed game really, but for simplicity, "board games") that are featured for demonstration to customers sell four to ten times the quantity that they do at similarly situated stores that opt not to demo that particular game. Performing a demo of a board game is also an important social function because it opens the gateway to the tabletop hobby overall to a visitor who might not already be engaged. It is an overwhelmingly positive best practice on multiple fronts. And I don't do it.
Why don't I engage in the proven best practice of boxed game demos? Because I don't have room in Gilbert to do it in any meaningful way, and in Tempe where I do have room, I don't have the consistency of customer traffic or the board game clientele depth to support it. I could say I don't have enough board game volume overall to do it, but I don't want to beg the question or use circular reasoning. The counterargument becomes, of course you don't have the board game volume, you don't demo. If you did, you'd build that volume. Chicken and egg perhaps. That's without addressing the online dumping element, but either you've got a coping mechanism to dampen the sting from that or you're out of the category anyway.
Take this for what you will: Board games are bouncing back slowly but surely in Gilbert, showing signs of life in Tempe, and depending on the particulars of the move this autumn, might feature meaningfully at DSG New, perhaps including room to demo them. So while I may dismiss board game demos as a non-starter under my immediate circumstances, I recognize the best practice for what it is.
[Epilogue to all this: We did have room to demo board games at the massive Chandler location, and in 2018 a bunch of my fellow retailers visiting town even did the very cool gift to me of arranging my board game merchandising for lots of demoing and great display aesthetics and encounterability. And you know, I think right then and there, at that point, was the happiest I had gotten in the category since DSG started. In a very real way, as I’ve discussed here on LGSNI, there is an immense appeal to the notion of running an ultraboutique, cutting-edge, tastemaker board game store, and I wanted this for many years. However, if wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets. Hobby/comic/video/game store owners should certainly follow our educated judgments, but to some extent we have to “take what the defense gives us” and adapt our offering to the revealed preferences of our customer audience, regardless of how that lines up among our personal product favorites…
…the 2018 holiday board game sales ended up being very good, but not amazing. They were surely the best I had seen since 2015, before Amazon’s steepest ascendancy. In 2019 the holiday board game sales were so-so. During the pandemic of 2020, board games collapsed for us. I’m doing a lot of hindsight analysis of DSG’s entire experience in the category and I want to emphasize right up front that there was no one factor that pointed to exiting that category as DSG’s optimal line of play. Much like comics, Warhammer, and video games, we were making money on board games at the time we pivoted away. I plan to develop articles out of the facets of this decision process because so much of it is worth understanding no matter what kind of game store you run. Was the category becoming more perilous, glutted with more chaff, and more devalued by dumping every year? Yes, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t viable. Were there internal problems at DSG that limited our success with the category? Yes, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t viable. Those and other factors, including broader market and macro effects, put me in a position in 2020 to make a Tuld Rule decision to commit hard in other directions, and that’s what DSG did. But that absolutely did not mean board games weren’t viable. I talk about how board games were a category I loved that didn’t love me back. And so on. The thing is, coarse as this will sound, in business, love isn’t always necessary for success.]
At any given time, there are best practices that I believe might not be everything they were promised to be. Or, perhaps, I believe I've found an even more betterer practice. Or I'm just tired or irritated that morning, especially if I have had to be on the phone. Whatever the reason, I often find myself at odds with many of my peers, doggedly insisting on swimming the stream less traveled and being typically verbose and vocal about it. Sometimes I'm wrong, but sometimes I am right, so I stick to my judgment until process and outcomes reveal more.
Here is some current evidence of my obstinate contrariness:
I carry video games. Something this basic constitutes something of a sore spot for many retailers. Gamers are notoriously cliquish and many retailers in this trade are ascended gamers, so that is to be expected to some degree. Others simply don't like or understand the category, or are apprehensive about the rougher edges of the much wider audience video games attract. In some cases a shopkeep will get tired of unknowing customers blurting, "I thought this was a game store. Where are the X-Box games?" or calling incessantly last winter asking for a NES Classic the store never even carried, and a snarky reply will follow. "Oh, we don't sell electronic games." The customer shrugs and offers their wallet full of money to someone more interested in taking it, like me. There are three strong arguments for a game store not to carry "vidya games" that I know of: (1) They don't have the product expertise and are not inclined to import it, a perfectly reasonable basis to stay away; (2) The store's brand is focused on something that isn't video games, or is focused on analog/tabletop generally, and the owner doesn't think the brand dilution will be worth the payoff; or (3) The store can't carry them due to exclusive rights of a GameStop in their plaza or whatever. [We can think of a few more reasons today, including (4) the shift among casual video gamers to subscription delivery has, at long last, shifted the industry toward the sunset that everybody knew was eventually coming. I still maintain that stores prepared to get in the trenches with the tougher-to-please collector cohort can still see significant success dealing in video games.]
[Hey, finally I get to the topic of Amonhket, the single biggest and most important product in the store at the time this article originally went up!]
The prevailing opinion is against the Amonkhet Invocations, but I like them. I don't like the Egyptian theme that much, and I don't care that much about the specific aesthetic. This is nothing new; I did not like the floating rocks and Aztec theme of the Zendikar Expeditions, whereas I did enjoy the filigree bronze of the Kaladesh Inventions. But my specific aesthetic preference isn't the reason I like the Invocations. I like them because it means we are going to see more and more daring departures from the norm for special Magic cards, and that is both exciting and compelling. [Oh my God, did the monkey’s paw ever curl on that one.]
Can you imagine the kind of gorgeous, solemn, hauntingly beautiful gothic frames we'll get on the Masterpieces from In Keeping Secrets of Silent Innistrad 3? Or the intricate, superfine, exquisite Kanji frames we'll get on Masterpieces from Spirit Wars of Kamigawa? Or the old-world, refined Italian-style splendor of the Renaissance frames we'll get on Masterpieces from the next traditional high-fantasy Mediterranean block setting? So yeah, I like the Invocations. Because they mean so much more still to come, and oh by the way, there are probably some Egyptophiles who are absolutely loving them right here and now, so how about if we let people enjoy things. [It feels like we ended up getting a bunch of those frames and the verdict was mixed on them. I think everyone likes the pavilion masterpiece frames from Kamigawa, right? Tarkir also looks sneaky good with the dragon wings, even though it doesn’t jump off the paper at you. Wizards hit it out of the park with every type of D&D showcase frame, especially the dungeon modules. The rest have been mixed, generally good, but I’m not sure they got us to the sense of wonder that the early masterpieces did. Is this just an impression thing? Is it because you can get nonfoil commons in showcase frames now so they are less special? I do think both of the Innistrad showcase frames we got were misses, and maybe that world is just so deep and multifaceted that the true “masterpiece” frame for it is still yet to come.]
[Right now I want to insert a bit more reflection on Amonkhet specifically since that’s what this article remaster is anchored on. The prerelease did pretty well and was one of only two large-set prereleases DSG held at two fully-operating locations at once: the original DSG Gilbert, and the newly acquired DSG Tempe, formerly Tempe Comics. Ixalan was the other, later in 2017. In both cases, we had a newly introduced world/plane, constructed as a pastiche on a past human culture, with Amonkhet riffing on Egypt and Ixalan imagining Mesoamerica. These sets came out during the ascendancy of the scream-everything-down online influencer, and sales of both were strong, but perpetually a bit cooler than they should have been. Over time, this was vindicated out, as both are now wildly popular settings and sets, and singles from both are in constant demand. These things are also true about their small-set followups, Hour of Devastation and Rivals of Ixalan, respectively. Anyone who got into Magic in 2018 or later can be forgiven for missing the initial boat, but for all those players who were there on release but turned up their nose at Amonkhet because the yootoobers told them to, but now complain that they have to chase down the Amonkhet cards they need… maybe next time don’t obey the internet uncritically?]
[A bit more on Amonkhet mechanically. We got allied-colored cycling dual lands with land types, and in commander it’s never great to have lands that enter tapped, but the five in Amonkhet are fairly playable despite that thanks to the combination of subtype searchability and cycling letting you redraw cheaply. We have yet to get enemy-colored cycling dual lands with land types, but the Ikoria triomes and the New Capenna shard headquarters kind of do it and add a color to boot, so we may be waiting a while for direct completion of the Amonkhet cycle. Universes Beyond: Fallout finally completed the Odyssey eggland cycle though, so it will probably happen one day. Elsewhere in the set:
Desert-matters cards are wonderful,
Embalming is awesome for limited formats,
Exert felt right in Standard and appears viable further back,
Tribal cool stuff is everywhere,
and by the way the flavor absolutely shines.
A new Magic experience in a new Magic world, well-executed from design and development, and it landed into what should have been a reasonably favorable macroeconomic landscape. Despite all this, retailers at the time all agreed the release failed to punch weight, when discussing it in our chats and groups. So this collective “B-minus” wasn’t just me, and wasn’t just a few other store owners I know. It was fairly broad across independent game stores. If it’s not us, and it’s not civilization in general, by process of elimination, it can only be the players. And the players proved in time since that they wanted the product, so they didn’t want it as much at the time. What was happening then that could have poisoned the well? The ascendancy of the scream-down influencers isn’t the only thing that was going on, but it was a pretty visible thing at the time, so it seems like it has to be at least partially that.]
[Post-script, today, 2024, the influencers seem less bad, but part of that is that after all these years people finally figured out not to watch and obey most of them, so the few that wanted to keep at it and do better than earning $31.26 monthly disbursements from YouTube, had to up their game and actually present good analysis and arguments and not just scream down every new product. We also partially have Pokemon to thank for this. The 2021 boom had every third Pokemon card collector open their own worthless channel for the same box breaks, hype, anti-hype, and otherwise valueless content as one another. I think the parallel probably helped players of Magic, other TCGs, and even other non-TCG tabletop games, see through the bluster when their own game was being “influenced.”]
Store credit should be good for purchase on anything in the store, period. This might be the single point on which I differ the most from other retailers. Anything, including tournament entry. If there is anything store credit is not accepted for, that store is devaluing its own Itchy & Scratchy Money. Many retailers cringe when customers redeem large chunks of store credit on premium items, but the problem isn't the redemption, the problem is that the retailer foolishly gave out too much store credit for whatever value they got. Store credit isn't an independent currency. It can only be obtained from our stores, nowhere else. We control the spigot and the well pump. If we are paying the right amount for card and game buys, and our credit bonus is reasonable, and we are prizing tournaments prudently, then we will already have accrued the needed value at the time of the store credit disbursement. The redemption, when it happens, is mere bookkeeping at that point. It was a long-term interest-free loan against merchandise at margin. I welcome it, it gets deliverables off the books. I believe it is unacceptable to place restrictions on the redemption of store credit, and I think consumers will vote with their wallets on that. [I continue to advocate for this and it’s a position where mostly players agree with me and other retailers sometimes don’t.]
A lot of retailer-to-retailer advice is given without any manner of disclosure that the advising store's situation is, in some instances, grossly atypical. And I'm not just talking about places in hip coastal enclaves who can collect MSRP on social pressure versus those of us in the southern wastelands competing against pervasive online plus every backpack/garage dealer the tides can wash up. I'm talking about someone asking for advice on handling seating and parking for his first PPTQ and hearing the way it's done from the guy who has a 700-square-foot board game store and has never had more than six people in his building at the same time. Or someone asking for help organizing their TCG singles so they can move into online sales and hearing advice from a store that does no online sales and dispenses singles from binders. Or someone asking how to handle aggressive local competition and hearing sage wisdom from the only store within a 70-mile radius in Tertiary Micropolitan Census Designated Area. Look, if you're a gross outlier on a given question, maybe leave that help request alone and let the parallel stores give guidance instead? When a new Facebook group was formed for board-game centric retailers, I did not join. Many of my friends are in there and I'm sure I would have been welcomed, but that's not what my store is and my input there would have been of low value to them. In that group, I would be the outlier. It was appropriate for me not to crash that party.
[The inapplicability thing is still happening in the groups today, and I think it’s not really totally preventable because people want to help but every hobby/comic/video/game store is likely to have a bunch of unique aspects that make a given piece of advice range from spot-on to totally irrelevant. As you’re asking the questions in such groups and venues, and as you’re asking at events like the GAMA Expo, you’ll want to construct a mental filter based on what you learn about how the person giving the advice does business. You can reach deep levels of nuance with this. I’ve listened to owners of coffee-shop board-game hybrid stores teach me things that you’d think meant nothing to DSG, my TCGs-and-video-games store… but it was deep process, it was structural stuff or personnel stuff or whatever, and it just so happened that their scale and reach was similar to mine and the advice fit very well.]
Finally, booster drafts should never be paired randomly. 15 37 26 48, odds vs odds and evens vs evens round 2, and round 3 writes itself. You simply tree the rest of the bracket if you have swiss rounds and no elimination. It's so easy, and it's not even taught anymore except for qualifier playoffs, and now we have situations where real drafts happen in real stores and you can get paired against the person who fed you in packs 1 and 3, and who has a steep statistical advantage against you. I've been complaining to Wizards of the Coast about this for years and yet WER still pairs randomly because reasons mumble mumble. Worse yet, most store owners don't care. For the player who enjoys playing at a high level, and this is not necessarily a "grinder" but can be anyone who enjoys drafting enough to perceive why this is more than mere nuance, I want to be able to provide a superior experience. [Nothing to add here. This is still being done wrong at stores all over the place, and it sucks.]
I'll leave it at that for now, I'm sure these same debates will rage on within the trade and our forlorn little corner of it. In an environment where three dozen business concepts a day find themselves the subject of argument, it's not difficult to find a contrary view. Hopefully, even if you don't follow the contrary view, you're understanding why you went the other way.
Also, pineapple does not belong on pizza. That's an absurdity.