Bloomburrow was really big for me, I think I had 16. Bear in mind I am a really small shop in a town of <10,000. My prereleases are normally 12-14.

It was my weakest attended prerelease event since I became a WPN store back in 2019. Obviously not counting COVID era events.

I had 5 people on Friday, 2 people on Saturday. It tied my next lowest, which was Aetherdrift with 0 frost and 7 people Saturday.

Aetherdrift I at least had a lot of take home prerelease kits. Final Fantasy had zero.

Sales for Final Fantasy are up over Aetherdrift, and Tarkir Dragonstorm, which had abysmal sales. Since TDS’s release I have sold more Bloomburrow than I have Tarkir.

Anyone know an alternative to TCG for card pricing?

These high ticket board games are not like Candy Land, or Parcheesi. Nemesis has multiple characters you can play, each has different abilities, there are multiple scenarios, different maps, as well as different enemies to face.

Monster Hunter plays a lot like the video game, it has beautifully sculpted miniatures. Your character advances in levels as you play different adventures. You can upgrade your gear.

HeroQuest (you may be familiar with this one from the late 80s / early 90s) has a ton of miniatures, and terrain/scenery. It has multiple quests, which allow for character advancement.

Of the games I listed I think only Nemesis and Gloomhaven are actually $150 or over. The rest are in the $120-130 range.

A lot of the higher end games are more in the $100 bracket.

Let me introduce you to Gloomhaven, or HeroQuest, or Nemesis, Lords of Ragnarok, Monster Hunter.

I will post this here too, since you double posted.

This thought process is going kill small businesses that cannot absorb tariffs. If Walmart sell an item that I also sell in my shop and Walmart keeps the item the same price it was before the tariffs, but I have to raise my price, where do you think people are going to buy?

Let us use Pokemon cards as an example. Packs are about $4.49. Typical keystone markup dictates we are paying ~$2.25 per pack (I wish I was paying that little for pokemon). But now there is a tariff of 50% and the manufacturer wants to pass that cost along to the consumer, so I am now paying $3.37 a pack, so if I want to keystone I need to sell at $6.75, while Walmart absorbs the cost and sells at $4.49. That does not look like too much.

But what about a $150 board game? I am now selling it at $225 and Walmart still has it at $150, I look like the greedy bastard trying to milk my customers.

This thought process is going kill small businesses that cannot absorb tariffs. If Walmart sell an item that I also sell in my shop and Walmart keeps the item the same price it was before the tariffs, but I have to raise my price, where do you think people are going to buy?

Let us use Pokemon cards as an example. Packs are about $4.49. Typical keystone markup dictates we are paying ~$2.25 per pack (I wish I was paying that little for pokemon). But now there is a tariff of 50% and the manufacturer wants to pass that cost along to the consumer, so I am now paying $3.37 a pack, so if I want to keystone I need to sell at $6.75, while Walmart absorbs the cost and sells at $4.49. That does not look like too much.

But what about a $150 board game? I am now selling it at $225 and Walmart still has it at $150, I look like the greedy bastard trying to milk my customers.

I ordered about twice for my shop what I normally order. Normally I do not do preorders and collect ahead of time, but with this set I had to.

I had a player in my shop who wanted some banned commander to be playable. He whined about it every time he bought packs, every time we played. So we agreed to have a single night where there were no banned cards. He got his ass handed to him every which way. And mostly by banned cards.

10 copies is a really small amount

I am a really small shop. The allocation is based upon how many people attend my events, which on a busy night is 16. And an average night is 8.

I do in a year whose most of the shops in the city do in a month.

My suggestion is to either look for a smaller shop, or talk with the owner/manager about smaller events.

At my shop I can seat about 20, but events are rarely larger than 10. With non commander events topping at 6 most times.

A lot of players, after beating your pants off, are willing to look at your deck and offer some advice. This can help with your play, as well as introduce you to new friends.

it was pretty clear that this was going nowhere, and the space was a bit louder than anticipated and I could feel myself getting exhausted pretty early.

So yeah, just hoping for an ettiquite lesson.

FLGS owner here, I usually can tell when someone is going to drop. It is always a bummer when it happens. But I never expect anyone to stay especially when they are not having a great time.

During my Aetherdrift prerelease I had a new player join us (she was a long time customer, but has never played in the shop) and I had a feeling she was going to drop, sometimes you can just tell. I was glad she did because I could see the stress on her face.

If the other players give you grief ignore them. I think most shop owners will be understanding about it.

It looks like others have posted about arena in here. And the only mtg arena specific community I see is on .ml

If you search my mtgzone account name from any other instance it does not appear, only this one.

For the love of Jace, can we please get through spoilers for tarkir before we skip onto October’s set?

This gripe is directed at WoTC not OP.

Reposting my comment with this account for visibility as it appears my mtgzone account still is not visible outside the instance.

I opened in October 2018, the first set I carried was Rivals of Ixalan. They are still in my system as $3.99/pack. While Lost Caverns of Ixalan, iirc the last set before Play Boosters, is $4.99 for Draft, and $5.99 for set.

There was one official price increase since I opened, but we also had price changes going from Boosters —> Draft/Set —> Play. MSRP for Foundations Play Boosters are $5.25, while Aetherdrift are $5.49. I am guessing Tarkir will be the same as Aetherdrift.

As a retailer, our margins are ever shrinking too. So many of these companies sell on Amazon and in big box stores that slash prices, everyone expects me to have those same bargain basement prices.