SW:CCG still one of the top 5 CCGs in February

Comics & Games Retailer Magazine reported that LOTR was the top selling CCG again in February. Interestingly, SW:CCG was #4, after LOTR, MTG and Pokemon.

In January, SW:CCG was #5, behind LOTR, MTG, Pokemon and Dragonball Z.

Not bad for a dead game, eh?

 

That's amazing and sad at the same time, the game just shouldn't be dead at all, it has too much support. What a shame.

 

As long as we keep playing, it will survive.

 

I just have to say that that made my day I'm glad that it's still doing ok, since it is "dead." Lets just hope people will hold on to it for a while.

 

I hate to point this out to you but the report was two months old about the game being on the top five. It could have slipped since then.

 

possibly, its also possible march figures aren't available yet... but I think the point really is that the SW:CCG actually increased in sales 2 months after it was announced "dead"- and probably indicates that many areas, like my own, saw a lot of new players come to the game.

Maybe, but maybe not.

The fact that its sales increased after the announcement of the game's end may suggest another theory: that the announcement ITSELF caused the boost in sales.

(It's generally a BAD idea to go from correlation to causation, and I'm not doing so here - I'm merely offering an alternative interpretation of its jump in the sales charts.)

I see the announcement causing the increased sales in any combination of three reasons:

1. Old SWCCG fans attempted to show Lucas that the game still has life in a 13th hour attempt to get the license returned to Decipher. (I use "13th hour" instead of "11th hour" because such attempts are, honestly too little, too late.)

2. Old SWCCG fans, afraid that the last remaining stock will disappear before they have one last chance to beef up their own collection, buy boxes while they can.

3. Vendors, worried that the release of the TCG will seriously cut into demand for the CCG, cut prices. Supply and demand being what it is, lower prices result in higher sales.

So it's not necessarily the case that Decipher's CCG is still attracting a great deal of new players.

(As a final note, this is NOT an attempt to criticize the CCG: just my take on the situation, the opinion coming from an amateur student of economics.)

 

So it's not necessarily the case that Decipher's CCG is still attracting a great deal of new players.

For Everyone's Information:

Many PC volunteers and Shadow Squad members have been reporting an increase in many player bases. Some reports say 1 or 2 new players while others seem to report full scale revivals. Case in point for the last one--Nortehrn Virginia had 2 players before D lost the licence and now they have 10.

Cause for the increase in support is usually attributed to at least one of three reasons:

1. With no new expansions coming out many players now feel they can get caught up with everything and learn the game at their own pace.

2. Tournament sanctioning has been lowered to 4.

3. TDs are scheduling more "player friendly" tournaments. In other words, ALL scenario tournaments from Ep1 to Battle of Hoth are now sanctionable--and in many cases preferable to the wild and crazy "normal constructed" (aka "open") format.

There are also scattered pockets of retalier locations that are either only doing the minumum (selling it but not fully supporting anything else) or apparently not supporting/selling the TCG at all. (My local retailer is one of the "minimums".)

One thing I have realized over the last few months is that the dedication and loyaltly to the SWCCG is off the page--even from some of the game's harshest critics. It's amazing the support we've gotten--especially from a lot of the retailers out there. It really shows just how much this game has become a part of CCG culture.

Now, none of this is meant to undermine the TCG or call it "illegitimate". Everyone has a right to make a card game these days and ANY gaming company would be crazy to pass up an oppurtunity to make a game for the most sought after license in movie history. All I'm showing in this post is that what I said a few months back is coming true: Lucas Licensing grossly underestimated the SWCCG playing community's power to keep the Star Wars CCG (and YJ too) alive and competitive.

And that's the sad part--that LL would take candy away from its own fans in the name of Convenience.

 

Well I can tell you that the Northern Virginia area is getting ready to have a Star Wars Open in a couple of weeks. My son has dusted off his decks and is getting ready to get back into playing the game. I do like the probability that the TD's in the area are considering Classic only tournaments. I'd personally get back into playing if I didn't have to get involved in pod racing and the senate related decks.

Hopefully those type of tournaments will become more frequent as time goes by. The last year with the deluge of all the new expansions_cards was just too expensive and too much work. I've always been more of a casual player myself, and although I do enjoy tournament play, having to be ultra competitive was never my cup of tea.

Restrainingbolt.

 

and I might add... that we're getting ready to have a JK tournament in Northern Virginia as well on the 11th of May. Anyone interested in playing in that tournament could consult the Decipher tournament locator for time. It's will be in Chantilly Virginia at the Game Parlor.

Restrainingbolt

 

I had 9 guys show up for my SW:CCG tournament this month. A lot of them are playing LOTR, too, but this time they came to play SW:CCG.

A LOTR tournament was supposed to start around the middle of my tournament (we organized it that way). The LOTR TD only had 4 players at the time, not enough to sanction. The LOTR TD asked if we could cut our tournament down from 6 games to 4, but the overwhelming response from my SW:CCG players was "no". They wanted to play SW:CCG more than LOTR.

(Eventually the LOTR TD got 6 guys to play, and I helped him out by playing in his tournament ... returning a favor he did for me. With the TD playing, he got 8, enough to sanction.)

 

I am one such player who returned to playing the CCG in the past few months. My friends and I have been doing most of our gaming in the Halo/JSRF form, with some Rifts RPGing mixed in. However, I was doing some reorganizing in my spare room in my place a month & 1/2 ago (Preparing for 4/23/02's release of the AOTC figs!), and I began to dust off the old CCG stuff. Looking at the old cards I had brought back the memories of playing with all my friends. Now mind you, I only had Premiere, Hoth, and Endor cards, and had put them down before DS II, and Theed Palace ever came out. But, seeing them again made us want to play once again. I did see on the Decipher site that much of the stuff is going cheaper nowadays, which would make sense, seeing how Decipher cannot produce anymore. Question for the CCG faithful: Can anyone recommend some trustworthy, affordable websites that sell boxes of Star Wars CCG?? I thank you all in advance.