More on GTS Tuesday

Here I sit, in Vegas at 10.04pm in my Jammies. I just plain wore myself out today, and had to come back tot he hotel room to lay down. I have a seriously bad back, and the amount of walking I am doing isn't so hot for it...I am old, and suck. Sigh.

Anyway.

After the Dragon breakfast, we then immediately went into a meeting with the folks at Wizkids. If you know me, or have listened to me speak of them on the OC Podcast, I haven't had a lot of love for them in the past. IMHO, the way their organized play works, it breeds selfish prize-hounds, whose only interest is in free crap. They have little interest in providing a good game for their opponents. But over the past few months, Wizkids has been winning me over. They have really been incentivizing players to buy from Brick and Mortar stores, are offering all new lines at full returnability, and most importantly: they seem to be listening. This is the second year EndGame has participated in one of these meetings, and last year we were pretty upfront about our dissatisfaction. I was impressed when their head marketing guy said he was pleased to see us at the meeting again this year, as part of his introduction. We spent a couple hours talking about what we needed from WK to be successful witht heir lines. Now, the disapointing fact was that maybe 60% of this was dominated by stores discussing the freebies and prize crap from their organized play...but 40% seemed darn useful. They are really showcasing Horror Clix here at the show, and announced "Toon Clix." I was told about it at this meeting, but kept my mouth shut until they made their offical announcement at their dinner tonight.
I should mention I like Jordan Wiesman. Not just 'cause he created my most favorite game ever (Battletech), but because he is pretty much a no bullshit type of guy. I asked him directly if their market research and focus groups had indicated it was time to jump back into the Clix market. He got quiet for a second, fumbled with the answer for a second, then said straight up: 'To be honest, I got pissed off at Gencon. WoTC was doing more in a market we invented than we were, and I got fucking pissed off.' So, not really the best market research, but a healthy dose of honesty goes a long way with me.
I want to play the demo deck of the BSG CCG I was given, and will try and do so soon.

After that, it was time for the feeding frenzy that is the exhibit hall. I must admit, by noon I was getting pretty fatigued, so it is kinduv a big blur. I ran into many of the people I wanted to talk to right away. (Mr. Pramas, thank you for stepping aside and chatting. I am bummed to this moment I missed that podcast...and cheers for the announcements made today!) I think I am bound to do that thing where you forget to thank your wife during your awards speech, so I will just say that I met with a bunch of people that I was glad to see.

After one more meeting, it was time for me to retreat back to my room. I missed some things I wanted to see, but knew that if I didn't, tomorrow would be even worse. I wish I could say I saw the most exciting things ever today, but I didn't. I am kinda glad for that. I am more than happy if the industry takes a year to figure out what it's doing with itself, without losing it's mind. Ya know, I think I am going to take that back. There was one exciting thing: an utter lack of new CCGs. There may have been a couple, but not the volume that was there this time last year. Maybe people are actually figuring out we are in the middle of a serious glut, and have decided not to add to it. So, perhaps, old dogs can learn new trick...if you beat the crap out of them with a newspaper....