Celestial Edition 15th, how I hate thee? Let me count the ways… (1)

Some of you probably have noticed it has taken me a long time to update the L5R store database after The Harbinger. That’s because CE15 is a maddening h*ll of a hassle to collect and even make a complete list of.

First of all, CE15 is a «re-do» set of the original Celestial Edition base set. I have issues with this kind of product, so this part of my… rant applies to the all them and not just to CE15 in particular (even if CE15 was the worst offender of the lot) . At this point, AEG had already done something similar with Samurai Edition Banzai! (SEB) sets, which was itself a re-do of the original Samurai base sets. And would do the same later with Emperor Edition and Emperor Edition Gempukku (EGG) later on.

What are these redo sets? Well, essentially they are not-quite-reprints of the original sets, with some (or lots of) value added, mainly extra rare slots. What’s wrong with that? you may ask. Who doesn’t want boosters with extra rares and other stuff? Sure enough, these extras are a godsend for players. More buck for their money, more cool stuff to play an collect. Well, I tell you who didn’t… the retailer who, based of performance of several earlier base sets, decided to invest in the game and ordered enough of the original base set to last them for the rest of the arc.

You see, back then I worked for a gaming retailer and we were in fact one of the hubs of L5R play in our country. We had been supporting the game almost since the beginning (we started mid-Clan Wars arc). Because of our experience with the game, we knew distribution could be spotty, and you couldn’t just wait to be out of stock of the current product to make a reorder. By then it would be too late; at best the restock would take months, if the kami of international distribution were merciful enough; or at worst, the set would be out for good. And because base sets were entry level products it was doubly important to make sure there was always stock in the store to cater to all kinds of players. At the time, L5R was a very healthy game, so you had the whole gamut of players: existing, returning and brand new.

So, what happens when six months after the release of the new base set, you have sold a good bunch of it, but you still have enough product to last you hopefully for the end of the arc… Then the game publisher tells they are going to bring about a better version of this product… and all of sudden, the product in you warehouse becomes OBSOLETE, and you are suddenly only able to sell it heavily discounted, under cost even. And you still have to invest in the new, better product because that’s what your customers ask for, of course. What was a good investment became, out of nowhere, a bad one.

You may think, well, that’s the breaks for any kind of trade… some investments pay off; others don’t. But this was not Wall Street, and this was not, let’s say, the iPhone being made obsolete by the new model, which is a know number. There was no precedent for this. This maybe didn’t damage the mom and pop store (these existed back then, I’m not sure now). If anything they had half display box on the shelf, and they weren’t going to replace it anyway. This hurt the mid-sized stores that made a concerted effort to support the game, investing time and resources in teaching the game to newbies, organizing tournaments… that is, putting the game out there!

While this may sound overly dramatic, it felt a complete betrayal of the 3-tier distribution system that existed at the moment. All 3-tiers of the industry (publisher, distributor, and retailer) were supposed to partner and benefit selling the game. Now, I absolutely don’t seriously think AEG had this in mind when they decided to publish these redo. After all, you are out of stock in your warehouse mid-arc, you have got some orders from distributors for restocks… what’s the harm to make an even more attractive version of the product. Well, I wish they would have thought it through, or simply asked the retailers. At that moment the result was, the more you had invested in the game, the more you were punished. Retailers like us were caught by surprise with SEB, maybe were more cautions with CE15.

Did this harm the game in the long run? I can’t say, because I don’t have the numbers. But it stands to reason that if a retailer like us was burned the first time, and had such lesson repeated a couple of times over, the teaching to take from it was… be careful and don’t invest too much in L5R. And I can imagine that, for smaller stores carrying the game, the lesson was: L5R has suddenly stopped selling; we better drop it and sell some other of the many games that are out there.

Some have pointed some similarities or precedent with the Imperial/Emerald/Obsidian base sets (for the original Clan War arc), then Jade/Pearl (for the Hidden Emperor arc). While I see the point, I think the situation is only superficially similar. Imperial is worth (and always was worth) extra, and not just for the Swords, so let’s take it off the equation. Obsidian did not make Emerald obsolete. Pearl did not make Jade obsolete. On the other hand the re-dos (EGG , SEB and CE15) were DESIGNED from the outset to be more value for the money than the originals, thus causing the value from both the original sets and the other affected expansions (the ones were the extra rares came from) to just tank.

So I think that while this might have helped AEG sales in the short term with a jump in player excitement and sales, it hurt by hampering retailer trust and thus limiting sales in the long term.

But the CE15 set had additional challenges…