Well, we're 2 days away from release and I've already received 2 notices regarding allocation of product (in the US).
First, due to a distributor shorting them, my LGS will not be drafting BFZ on Friday. They are using that product to try to fill as many box pre-orders as they can (which is cool, but sucks if I don't get my box and can't draft). Who's to say what we'll be drafting the following FNM?
Second, I received a notice from an online retailer stating that for their initial shipment, customers will only be receiving 1 box per order of BFZ. Customers can either wait for subsequent shipments or change/cancel orders. Their Fat Pack allotment is limited and sounds like not all orders will be filled. Waiting to hear what that really means.
Now the jaded/conspiracy theorist in me thinks that retailers will use these shortages as an opportunity to fill orders that purchased product later at higher prices and short/cancel those that ordered early at 'normal' pricing. I hope that's not the case but, I have no way of knowing otherwise...
I hope everyone that pre-ordered in a timely fashion receives their order.
I've been back and forth over preordering, and think I'm going to wait until the initial rush dies down. I'm lucky enough to live in Seattle and frequent Card Kingdom, and they've typically had their 'variety pack' for the last few sets for around $160-170ish. BfZ is $224.99. I doubt the lands will keep prices inflated for very long, and since I'm not an active Standard player, waiting a few weeks for the hype to die down should do me no harm. I hope.
Wizards will print booster boxes to demand. BFZ boxes will, in the near future, be roughly the same price as boxes from other fall sets when they were released. If stores are holding out in order to try and get a higher price per box, well, frankly I think that's a losing proposition. These boxes will be ~$100 each soon, just like every other set ends up.
This is incredibly irritating. I don't think it's any sort of tactic, but it's starting to feel like the 90s again. In 97 I wasn't surprised when things like this happen. Mtg is old enough to drink now. Wotc needs to get it together. Nobody is ever going to be 100% happy, but don't give the whiners ammo. Not a good look
I don't think lgs's are very schemy but the distributors have been known to pull fast ones such as skimming off product to sell separately (see commander 2013). Lgs's have reputations to maintain with the public and usually want to make things work. Even if they are making profits off of higher perorder prices they were probably still making a profit off of the original price. The more product they move the more they make. Preorders are basically a loan that stores can take out and make a profit on. They don't want to screw that up.
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This is incredibly irritating. I don't think it's any sort of tactic, but it's starting to feel like the 90s again. In 97 I wasn't surprised when things like this happen. Mtg is old enough to drink now. Wotc needs to get it together. Nobody is ever going to be 100% happy, but don't give the whiners ammo. Not a good look
YEAH! Screw WOTC for making a product that is so great the demand can't even be met. How dare they create such an amazing product. If they would just do their jobs and make a crappy product I could actually get it for a reasonable price.
I've been back and forth over preordering, and think I'm going to wait until the initial rush dies down. I'm lucky enough to live in Seattle and frequent Card Kingdom, and they've typically had their 'variety pack' for the last few sets for around $160-170ish. BfZ is $224.99. I doubt the lands will keep prices inflated for very long, and since I'm not an active Standard player, waiting a few weeks for the hype to die down should do me no harm. I hope.
Wow that sucks. I never pay over a bill for my boxes. man some retailers love to screw their base...
This is incredibly irritating. I don't think it's any sort of tactic, but it's starting to feel like the 90s again. In 97 I wasn't surprised when things like this happen. Mtg is old enough to drink now. Wotc needs to get it together. Nobody is ever going to be 100% happy, but don't give the whiners ammo. Not a good look
YEAH! Screw WOTC for making a product that is so great the demand can't even be met. How dare they create such an amazing product. If they would just do their jobs and make a crappy product I could actually get it for a reasonable price.
/sarcasm
they've had 20 years to figure this out. they have no excuses for not knowing to print more of this set than usual, and early enough to get it to everyone buying it. Assuming, of course, that they didn't, and it's not the distributors bottlenecking the product.
Strangely enough, my LGS just let me know that they're getting a few more boxes on Friday than they previously thought they would, so instead of waiting until Tuesday I could come in and buy a box at preorder price ($100)!
Not implying a lack of understanding, but to be clear, stores do have limited allocations from distributors as well. For example, if they'll get their product a week before and it's, say, 10 cases...They'll need to set aside those that were preordered and then be sure to allocate enough for their given events that week including prize support for those events. It can get tight even if a store takes full allocation. There's a lot of demand to be had, limited product in a given timeframe, and we really do try to get as much product to you guys as possible. There's just a lot of juggling.
-An LGS manager
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I play:
Block Tiny Leaders:
Theros Block / Anax & Cymede
Return to Ravnica Block / Vorel of the Hull Clade
Khans of Tarkir Block / Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest
This is incredibly irritating. I don't think it's any sort of tactic, but it's starting to feel like the 90s again. In 97 I wasn't surprised when things like this happen. Mtg is old enough to drink now. Wotc needs to get it together. Nobody is ever going to be 100% happy, but don't give the whiners ammo. Not a good look
YEAH! Screw WOTC for making a product that is so great the demand can't even be met. How dare they create such an amazing product. If they would just do their jobs and make a crappy product I could actually get it for a reasonable price.
/sarcasm
they've had 20 years to figure this out. they have no excuses for not knowing to print more of this set than usual, and early enough to get it to everyone buying it. Assuming, of course, that they didn't, and it's not the distributors bottlenecking the product.
Do you know how cards are made? They don't just magically appear out of wishes and dreams. They have to actually be printed. They could print more if they paid more, but why would they do that? They're going to sell the same amount regardless of how much is printed in the initial release. Even if there is some ill will that impacts sales, that is never going to justify paying extra money to print more cards. The other option is to push back the release date, and again, what incentive do they have to do that? The earlier they release the set, the earlier they can make the money. They handled this perfectly, and some people are just going to have to deal with not getting "normal" prices for a couple of months.
Not implying a lack of understanding, but to be clear, stores do have limited allocations from distributors as well. For example, if they'll get their product a week before and it's, say, 10 cases...They'll need to set aside those that were preordered and then be sure to allocate enough for their given events that week including prize support for those events. It can get tight even if a store takes full allocation. There's a lot of demand to be had, limited product in a given timeframe, and we really do try to get as much product to you guys as possible. There's just a lot of juggling.
-An LGS manager
No, I get it, especially with boxes. I guess my gripe is that these notices are showing up days before release. That leaves customers with next to no options other than patience and/or disappointment. I think my LGS is definitely trying to make customers happy by using their inventory for singles and events to fill pre-orders. But, they probably knew before this week? How about calling those with pre-orders and asking if they're willing to wait (and maybe offer some incentive) that way there might be some inventory for singles/events. At this rate, I'm guessing there will still be outstanding pre-orders and non-box buying customers get the shaft for singles/events anyway.
Even prior sets with Shocks/Fetches reprints didn't have these kind of allocation issues. I know many online shops were sold out of BFZ Fat Packs even before Expeditions were announced. Ok, I understand that many customers are buying more sealed product than they normally would due to the full-art lands (specifically Fat Packs), but retailers should be aware of what they typically (pre)sell/receive with any new release and once they reached that threshold, they should have a disclaimer that orders may not ship on day of release. (easier said than done, I"m sure)
Customers perceive pre-orders as 'peace of mind' to be guaranteed to receive that product at release, especially months in advance (loans, as someone else described it). I guess these last minute notices seem kind of...what's the word? Inconsiderate? Incompetent? Insincere? I dunno, depends on your perspective I guess. At this point, I've learned not to take it personal, and just stick with retailers that can handle these periodic panic-storms.
Every time this happens, customer's blame Retailers, Retailers blame Distributors, everyone blames WotC and in the end, no lessons learned. Oh well, we'll ride this panic out for a few weeks and get back to playing magic like nothing happened
due to enormous demand one of my LGS's has presold every booster pack of BFZ they've been able to order from their supplier...which means there are none for sale on opening weekend at the store
they will of course get more next week....but to not have sufficient product available for demand on release weekend suggests wotc or their supplier, depending on who you believe, really dropped the ball in regards to anticipating demand of the set
Or... or. Companies produce product based on previous sales. Even if they produced some extra for BFZ expecting it to be big, my experience is stores are ordering 10x what they usually do. That causes problems.
Or... or. Companies produce product based on previous sales. Even if they produced some extra for BFZ expecting it to be big, my experience is stores are ordering 10x what they usually do. That causes problems.
If they did make prints based off of previous data, sales, I am left wondering if the spoiler policy - and when we get spoilers - *indirectly* contributed to this mess... I mean, if we got spoilers earlier (like we used to? Am I off in thinking we used to get them a lot earlier?), then *theoretically* they would be able to gauge demand a little bit sooner, though I dunno if in time to make adjustments to printings.... just a thought, I could be way off on this for all we know.
Even if the above had ANY merit, I find it at least a little hard to believe that nobody at WotC considered that full arts would drive demand up, even a little bit.
Or... or. Companies produce product based on previous sales. Even if they produced some extra for BFZ expecting it to be big, my experience is stores are ordering 10x what they usually do. That causes problems.
If they did make prints based off of previous data, sales, I am left wondering if the spoiler policy - and when we get spoilers - *indirectly* contributed to this mess... I mean, if we got spoilers earlier (like we used to? Am I off in thinking we used to get them a lot earlier?), then *theoretically* they would be able to gauge demand a little bit sooner, though I dunno if in time to make adjustments to printings.... just a thought, I could be way off on this for all we know.
Are you reading the same set spoiler thread I am?
'Cuz the one I'm reading is absolutely *full* of *****ing,
and no one would ever guess the demand would be so high based off that alone.
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
Eh, Wizards and Distributors have been telling retailers for a while now that allocations on Fat Packs in particular are at least 20% lower than usual print runs and there will be no re-orders.
So any retailer that took pre-orders at their normal or higher than normal volume, willfully did so *hoping* what WoTC and their distributors were telling them wasn't true.
Booster boxes should be no problem. Fat packs are an intentionally smaller print run this time around.
We have a severe problem with Fat Pack supply here in The Netherlands. There seem to be enough Booster Boxes but most orders containing fat packs are cancelled. I know of one store / online retailer that did not get any produt at all, no allocation to his store.
Second hand the Fat Packs are now offered for around 65 euro which is outrageous..
So the question is, why did they cut Fat pack supply this time? Literally only sensible reason I can think of is they needed the printers who produce the fatpacks to print more of another product. *cough commander or next summer set* than usual.
No matter how much WotC underestimated demand, they could at least made a press release about it and promised a second wave of Fat packs, so everyone has the opportunity to buy them at MRSP.
you're implying here that they WILL do that (second wave).
I don't think so.
So the question is, why did they cut Fat pack supply this time? Literally only sensible reason I can think of is they needed the printers who produce the fatpacks to print more of another product. *cough commander or next summer set* than usual.
I don't know that they cut Fat Pack supply. Fat packs are dissimilar to booster packs in that they are not printed to demand. There always is a limited supply. I believe it's merely that the demand for these Fat Packs is much greater and I'm unsure that they have made/will make more Fat Packs than they typically do for a set.
I know that we don't typically take our full allocation of Fat Packs because some go and then we have some on hand, but we never NEED the full allocation and I'm sure many other stores are the same. For BFZ, we did take our full allocation. It will not be enough to sate the demand I've received for them and there's really nothing further we can do. When they're gone, they're gone. Barring a second wave or the ability to pick up straggler packs that other stores did not take.
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I play:
Block Tiny Leaders:
Theros Block / Anax & Cymede
Return to Ravnica Block / Vorel of the Hull Clade
Khans of Tarkir Block / Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest
I do find the shortage of fat packs to be dubious. Everyone knew well ahead of time that BFZ fat packs would be big sellers, as evidenced by the absurdly inflated prices, and they just happen to get shorted? I don't buy it. I think distributors are sitting on them to release later at more absurdly inflated prices.
I pre-ordered a lot of sealed product very early(with the expectation that BFZ would be as fun to draft and at least nearly as value-packed as ZEN) and I'm getting shorted on boxes and fat packs. It's especially frustrating since I ordered them $95 per box and $35 per fat pack. I guess I could see it as a blessing in disguise since BFZ is pretty disappointing, but it feels like I've been had by some greedy wanks.
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First, due to a distributor shorting them, my LGS will not be drafting BFZ on Friday. They are using that product to try to fill as many box pre-orders as they can (which is cool, but sucks if I don't get my box and can't draft). Who's to say what we'll be drafting the following FNM?
Second, I received a notice from an online retailer stating that for their initial shipment, customers will only be receiving 1 box per order of BFZ. Customers can either wait for subsequent shipments or change/cancel orders. Their Fat Pack allotment is limited and sounds like not all orders will be filled. Waiting to hear what that really means.
Now the jaded/conspiracy theorist in me thinks that retailers will use these shortages as an opportunity to fill orders that purchased product later at higher prices and short/cancel those that ordered early at 'normal' pricing. I hope that's not the case but, I have no way of knowing otherwise...
I hope everyone that pre-ordered in a timely fashion receives their order.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
YEAH! Screw WOTC for making a product that is so great the demand can't even be met. How dare they create such an amazing product. If they would just do their jobs and make a crappy product I could actually get it for a reasonable price.
/sarcasm
Check out http://www.mtgbrodeals.com/author/john-murphy/ for my EDH articles!
Wow that sucks. I never pay over a bill for my boxes. man some retailers love to screw their base...
they've had 20 years to figure this out. they have no excuses for not knowing to print more of this set than usual, and early enough to get it to everyone buying it. Assuming, of course, that they didn't, and it's not the distributors bottlenecking the product.
Cheers
-An LGS manager
Theros Block / Anax & Cymede
Return to Ravnica Block / Vorel of the Hull Clade
Khans of Tarkir Block / Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest
Peasant:
Kuldotha Red
Commander:
Maga, Traitor to Mortals
By "whiners," do you mean those who are pissed that their orders were cut, supply was limited, and/or feel that they could have handled things beter?
(On a slight Grammar NAzi tangent: complaints can be whining, but not all complaining is whining, I hate when people blanekt abuse this word. )
Do you know how cards are made? They don't just magically appear out of wishes and dreams. They have to actually be printed. They could print more if they paid more, but why would they do that? They're going to sell the same amount regardless of how much is printed in the initial release. Even if there is some ill will that impacts sales, that is never going to justify paying extra money to print more cards. The other option is to push back the release date, and again, what incentive do they have to do that? The earlier they release the set, the earlier they can make the money. They handled this perfectly, and some people are just going to have to deal with not getting "normal" prices for a couple of months.
Check out http://www.mtgbrodeals.com/author/john-murphy/ for my EDH articles!
Even prior sets with Shocks/Fetches reprints didn't have these kind of allocation issues. I know many online shops were sold out of BFZ Fat Packs even before Expeditions were announced. Ok, I understand that many customers are buying more sealed product than they normally would due to the full-art lands (specifically Fat Packs), but retailers should be aware of what they typically (pre)sell/receive with any new release and once they reached that threshold, they should have a disclaimer that orders may not ship on day of release. (easier said than done, I"m sure)
Customers perceive pre-orders as 'peace of mind' to be guaranteed to receive that product at release, especially months in advance (loans, as someone else described it). I guess these last minute notices seem kind of...what's the word? Inconsiderate? Incompetent? Insincere? I dunno, depends on your perspective I guess. At this point, I've learned not to take it personal, and just stick with retailers that can handle these periodic panic-storms.
Every time this happens, customer's blame Retailers, Retailers blame Distributors, everyone blames WotC and in the end, no lessons learned. Oh well, we'll ride this panic out for a few weeks and get back to playing magic like nothing happened
Thanks everyone for your input/insight.
they will of course get more next week....but to not have sufficient product available for demand on release weekend suggests wotc or their supplier, depending on who you believe, really dropped the ball in regards to anticipating demand of the set
If they did make prints based off of previous data, sales, I am left wondering if the spoiler policy - and when we get spoilers - *indirectly* contributed to this mess... I mean, if we got spoilers earlier (like we used to? Am I off in thinking we used to get them a lot earlier?), then *theoretically* they would be able to gauge demand a little bit sooner, though I dunno if in time to make adjustments to printings.... just a thought, I could be way off on this for all we know.
Even if the above had ANY merit, I find it at least a little hard to believe that nobody at WotC considered that full arts would drive demand up, even a little bit.
Are you reading the same set spoiler thread I am?
'Cuz the one I'm reading is absolutely *full* of *****ing,
and no one would ever guess the demand would be so high based off that alone.
Reprint Stasis!
Control needs more love.
EDH:
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm
WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW
WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
So any retailer that took pre-orders at their normal or higher than normal volume, willfully did so *hoping* what WoTC and their distributors were telling them wasn't true.
Booster boxes should be no problem. Fat packs are an intentionally smaller print run this time around.
Second hand the Fat Packs are now offered for around 65 euro which is outrageous..
you're implying here that they WILL do that (second wave).
I don't think so.
I don't know that they cut Fat Pack supply. Fat packs are dissimilar to booster packs in that they are not printed to demand. There always is a limited supply. I believe it's merely that the demand for these Fat Packs is much greater and I'm unsure that they have made/will make more Fat Packs than they typically do for a set.
I know that we don't typically take our full allocation of Fat Packs because some go and then we have some on hand, but we never NEED the full allocation and I'm sure many other stores are the same. For BFZ, we did take our full allocation. It will not be enough to sate the demand I've received for them and there's really nothing further we can do. When they're gone, they're gone. Barring a second wave or the ability to pick up straggler packs that other stores did not take.
Theros Block / Anax & Cymede
Return to Ravnica Block / Vorel of the Hull Clade
Khans of Tarkir Block / Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest
Peasant:
Kuldotha Red
Commander:
Maga, Traitor to Mortals
I pre-ordered a lot of sealed product very early(with the expectation that BFZ would be as fun to draft and at least nearly as value-packed as ZEN) and I'm getting shorted on boxes and fat packs. It's especially frustrating since I ordered them $95 per box and $35 per fat pack. I guess I could see it as a blessing in disguise since BFZ is pretty disappointing, but it feels like I've been had by some greedy wanks.