The Heroscaper blog about the news of November 3rd:
http://www.heroscapers.com/community/blog.php?b=1422

QuoteWizards of the Coast announced today that it will be discontinuing the Heroscape line.

They've sited a desire to focus on their core brands as the reason. I know, shocking right? Wizards doesn't want to branch out from Magic and D&D?! Since when?

Quote from: Benoist;414617The Heroscaper blog about the news of November 3rd:
http://www.heroscapers.com/community/blog.php?b=1422

Even more shocking because that thing was a hit in many areas.

Heck, there were groups and leagues devoted to playing HEROSCAPE. About a year ago our store hosted a HEROSCAPE tournament. Those guys were incredibly creative with their terrain layouts.


- Ed C.

So no more Heroscape Marvel?

Gutted!

Never played the game, or much cared to start.  However, I have been considering picking up odds and ends of terrain and minis for the heck of it, since there is so much cheap stuff out there if you don't care about the game stats or anything.  Curse WotC for lighting a fire under my ass and creating an instant collectors market.

That's a drag.

1st the came for Heroscape, but I didn't say anything, because it was not a core brand.

WotC absolutely hated Heroscape (check the comments below the blog entry). [Edit. will insert quote now, for ease of finding]

QuoteI guess I should elaborate more on the Heroscape portion of my rant. First, the line was mismanaged from Jump Street as soon as it went to Wizards. I know the whole, sordid history, and I don't need to get into that. Suffice to say, as Uba said, it was "foisted" onto Wizzies because it wasn't hitting HAS's margin ideals. Wizards wanted NOTHING to do with it, and it was met in-house with disdain and animosity.

Fast forward: The corporate masters at HAS told them to make it a priority, and they put a "line manager" on the job. Note that this guy, who we'll call Paul, knew little about it, although he did a good job of getting onto Heroscapers.com to get it going, for the most part. Here's what was missed, though:

1. If you want to grow a product line, any product line, it needs to be known by the consumers. There was no advertising, there was no effort put into marketing, and they simply used a third-party FANSITE as the primary information channel. Why the fuck would you advertise to the FANS as a primary channel when it's obvious they already know about it? Advertise on websites like BGG. Advertise on Wargame sites. Advertise in GTM. Put a lot of effort into marketing to the distributors. Make nice displays for "key" FLGSs that are big Magic sellers to leverage the relationship. This is marketing 101. They did NAUGHT.

2. Ask what the consumers want, and not just your core constituency. Nobody ever held "focus groups" at Gencon, nobody was walking with clipboards and promo figures to ask people who DIDN'T know Heroscape what they'd like to see in a light wargame. Nobody asked anything, except to the core customers, which apparently weren't enough to keep the line alive.

3. Don't flood the market. Why produce 100,000 units when you know you have 40,000 sitting on Wal Mart clearance aisles? It alienates your sales channels by forcing them to buy enormous lots and then stock dried-up product.

4. Be mindful of your channel. You need the channel far more than they need you, and if Wal Mart is pissed, remedy it. Don't pull product from Target and K-Mart, renegotiate.

In short, it was mismanagement and then crossbranding that killed the line. Had they raised the price point by 10-15% (2.00-2.50 US) it would've made an impact and still sold well. Also, sell to countries with a greater currency (ie. Britain) where you already have a market footprint (Hasbro is a multinational). Why not leverage that?

It seems that they have ONE business model they know how to work, and that's the Magic model. Anything else they botch miserably, damage their brand, and piss off consumers.

I wonder though what fate befalls D&D miniatures now. I thought going via Heroscape was WotC' latest idea to sate their DDM customers. Now they scratch that. Apparently they must have high hopes that boardgames delivering old builds with medium sculpts and unpainted will work out fantastically. Well, good luck. Or it's really a near 100% switch to tokens, as in the Essentials boxes.

The thing I take out of your link WJ is that it is further proof that something is seriously wrong with WotC's marketing team. It is really, really strange to say the least. Why is it that professionals working on such brands with potential are not aware of these kinds of things? What kind of management culture brings about these kinds of failures? That's what I would like to know. I'd like to know what happened, and what is probably still happening as of right now, that is fucking up any shot WotC has at building an effective, competiting product that fits the market it should be shooting for. This is insane.

I suspect WotC marketers are not gamers, they're people with MBAs. They don't understand the market, and obviously didn't try to. Which is too bad, because HeroScape had some cool ideas.

Places like walmart and target didn't know how to sell heroscape.  They'd apparently order equal numbers of all boosters.  The cool commons that play pushes you to use a bunch of in hordes sold out quickly; the heroes that you'd never buy more than one pack of lingered.  There was still product on the shelves so they apparently didn't reorder.  The result was that the same handful of packs would sit on the shelf for months.  This problem could have actually been higher up in distribution or production but someone along the line didn't understand how to sell the game.  That's probably why Hasbro wanted to move the game to WOTC but no one at the latter had any ego invested in its success.

The Marvel game would have done better would have been much better if they had made a full line of boosters to make play varied and so people could get their favorite hero - it could have done as well as clix.

Heroscape was freakin awesome. I dearly love that game. I used to feel silly for getting tubs of that stuff, but I guess I'm glad I did.

There haven't been many games in the last few years so cool they would compel me to get the boy up early on a Saturday morning to hit all the Toys R Us's in southern Colorado to play a few rounds and get a few extra Nerak the Swog Rider figs.

I have hated every single product Wizards has ever put out, including their stupid versions of D&D. It doesn't surprise me at all that they would bury a game I loved.

I don't mean to be bitter, but this is sad, sad news for me. Stupid fuckers.

Geez... I certainly know a good number of wargamers who love the game, especially since they can easily play it with their kids. I've seen some amazing jungle terrain setups.
Too bad...

Quote from: Benoist;414823The thing I take out of your link WJ is that it is further proof that something is seriously wrong with WotC's marketing team. It is really, really strange to say the least.

It gets weirder when you look at Magic.

Magic is marketed very well.   Not perfect, but good enough to keep the sales high and new players are always entering the M:tG hobby.    

For reasons unknown, WotC can't duplicate the efforts of that team for their other product lines.

It doesn't surprise me HS was unwelcome at WotC.   Would you want your name attached to a troubled product?  I'll be that "line manager" gets the WotC Christmas special.  

Shame about HeroScape.   Good game.

Heroscape I barely knew ye. I had a blast with the first box set, but went through some financial issues making it difficult to stay with the game. Too bad it is being canceled.