Friday, July 6, 2012

Warhammer 40K 6th Edition More on the Release

Following up on yesterday's post, yes 40K 6th edition sold quite well.  However, we didn't even know about an upcoming 6th edition in April.  Unlike, say, WOTC, which has been very upfront about the upcoming D&D Next, we first heard rumors about this from customers and 40K fan websites.  Nothing office from Games Workshop until late May.  Then we are told, yes, there will be a 6th edition and it will release sometime.  The rumor mill says late June or early July, Games Workshop, not even that specific.

A promotional video next appears on the GW website, giving no information about what to expect, save that indeed a 6th edition was coming and closing with the date June 23.  OK releasing June 23. This appears in early June, giving us about 2 weeks to plan an event launching 6th edition.  Given that we plan our event calendar 1-2 months ahead of time, all of our June and July dates for events are already set.

Whoops, turns out June 23 is not the release date for 6th edition, it's the release date for the new issue of White Dwarf, which will focus on 6th edition. Still not sure when 6th edition is releasing.

Finally, we get our upcoming releases list from GW (we get the list of next month's releases about 2 weeks before the end of the month), with a release date of June 30.  Now we can take pre-orders.  Not much time to do so, but we will work with it.  Oh, wait, what are the Gamer's Edition and Collector's Edition?

More conversation with the GW rep.  There are very limited special editions of the 40K rules that GW put on our list but that we probably can't get.  They go on sale the evening of June 22 and individual customers can order them from the GW website. Retailers can email orders in over the weekend and the sales reps will key them in Monday morning, if there are any left.  Guess what?  In most cases there weren't.

We did get the rest of the order in and had a very successful midnight release of the new edition, but the lack of information from GW early on was frustrating as was not getting any of the special editions for those customers who wanted one.  However, people seem to really like the new rules so everything did work out, just not that easily for the store.

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