Secondary Markets

We have a strong Magic: The Gathering following at our store. When you first think of something as simple as a card game you'd think that it might be easy money. But there's a lot of nuts and bolts when it comes to managing just one game.

The first myth that needs to get busted is the singles market. In a normal retail space the singles market doesn't work. Which is to say, it doesn't generate income. The singles market is best run by someone on their own time out of their own home with little to no overhead. When you bring the singles market into a retail space things change drastically.

A lone gunmen running singles out of an eBay store can set his own hours and trade at a very comfortable rate. The largest advantage they have is the lack of overhead in a retail space. The difference between their gross earnings and their net earnings is very minimal.

When it comes to retail space you quickly have to start analyzing a lot of different factors that modify the gross income and the percentage of that which becomes your final net earnings. Floor space, local competition, and manpower are some of these factors which determines how much effort you're allowed to place in the singles market.

If you run a store with the single purpose of running Magic events and trading singles you can probably break even; if you're smart. When you're attempting to supplement the income of a much larger store things become much trickier. There are two key elements I think of when considering the singles market.

First, how much manpower and time am I going to dedicate to this process? This has literally everything to do with how much an employee makes per hour, and if you're using that employee's time at maximum efficiency. Generally this means tracking my own time so the store is using me to my fullest potential. Second, how much floor space are we dedicating to the product? This has to do with product turn over rate, space efficiency, and the cost of that physical space in utility bills.

This creates the basic retail math. Does the cost of the manpower and the cost of the floor space exceed the income of the product? If the answer is yes then typically the product has no selling value and should be swapped out for something else. This is what big box stores do all the time. In my short time at Bed, Bath & Beyond I got to see several sheets of data that talked about sales potential per square footage. A local brick and mortar doesn't have a lot of this complex data, but the general principals work the same.

So if card singles never exceed the overhead to stock them, why stock them at all? The simple term we use for this is a loss leader. Typically a loss leader is a product that is sold lower than market value to stimulate the sale of other more profitable products. In our case card singles is a built in loss leader because of the secondary market as a whole.

The secondary market has existed for years based on the value of a product in an ongoing competitive format. It's become so ingrained in the gaming culture that wherever you go to play Magic, you're expected to see singles for sale.

Essentially, a loss leader is all advertising. If you have a modest amount of singles that rotate at a good pace people will come back to see them. Once a customer knows there's a singles market in the store they can begin to look for other products. Selling singles also encourages trade between the player base. This is all part of the secondary market ecosystem, and should be encouraged whenever possible. A healthy secondary market means the core product continues to move.

That's essentially it. Find the total overhead for stocking the product then measure it's worth against the market value. If it doesn't add up scrap it or turn it into a loss leader for a more valuable product with lower overhead.

D Weapon Click Bait

So everyone is up in arms about the new D weapon arms race that Craftworld Eldar seems to have started. I had a moment to look at the eBook edition this morning. The thing I'm looking into specifically are Wraithguard and their respective Wraith weapons. At first glance they're pretty potent. The cannon is straightforward, and the D-Scythe's template weapon could also be potentially destructive (imagine getting to toss a flamer template over multiple vehicle hulls).

Their biggest weakness is the short range of their available weapons. Yes, strength D is very potent but what people are refusing to see is the larger picture. Wraithguard are bulky. You can only fit 6 in a Wave Serpent as a dedicated transport. There are a plethora of long range, high strength weapons that do not care about those Wave Serpents OR those Wraithguard. Leman Russ Battle Tanks, Chaos Defilers, and the Necron Doomsday Ark are just a few of the models that can vaporize .

The Codex hasn't changed much. Everyone see's the proliferation of D weapons and panics. The Eldar game is the same. They maneuver. The make the movement phase matter. People get caught up with the shiny weapons and the special rules they often disregard the basics. If you know how to control your army -no matter what army it is- you can control the movement phase. The Eldar have some built in mechanics to make their movement a bit easier. This is only "unfair" because people are lazy and won't read any other codex but their own. Know your enemy, and you know how to defeat them.

If you control the movement phase you can take objectives. If you control the movement phase you can out maneuver your opponent. This is why we decide -before the game even starts- what terrain does in respect to cover saves and line of sight. Because that's the knowledge you need to be an effective general in the movement phase. If you can position key elements of your force behind cover the shooting phase doesn't matter. If you can keep terrain between you and the howling banshees then the assault phase doesn't matter.

At the end of the day player's need to cowboy up and forget the news cycle that drops all that D weapon click bait. Remember your fundamentals. Continue to practice the universal rules of Warhammer 40k. Maneuver your models where they need to go. Force your opponent out of position. Follow through and punish them for whatever choice they make. But above all else be gracious, whether you win or lose. At the end of the day it's all about having fun.

The Colour and The Shape

There is a joke about guys & gals and how they see color. It is an old joke. I much prefer the analogy of geeks and norms. Because when anyone asks me "what color does this look like to you?" I'm hard pressed to find any real name I might attribute it to.

You see, all my colors come from my hobby. Any time I'm thinking of color I'm using the silly names given to those colors by game companies. Mostly Games Workshop, but also Vallejo. I helped some family members paint their house earlier this month. Every time we had a discussion about color quality I had to give very brief answers.

"Yeah, those go well together" or "I like the contrast"

What I wanted to say -which couldn't be said- was stuff like "The accent wall is great in 'The Fang' and the 'Administratum Grey' along the rest of the living room and kitchen really pulls it together. Reminds me of painting crumbling ruins for my 40k table"

You might think to yourself that those colors are actually awful for painting a house. But they were both mixed 10:1 with white scar, so the whole first floor still feels very bright and the two 'The Fang' colored accent walls really tie the entire first floor together as a cohesive living space.

At any rate I'm sure I'm not the only one. In fact I have proof. I discuss paint schemes with my co-worker who plays Warmachine & Hordes. We had a literal language barrier at times because he references P3 paints and my lexicon only called for citadel or vallejo. Luckily citadel became our common tongue because we stock it and sell it the most. So when I look at him quizzically he can rush off to the citadel display and call out a color he's actually trying to reference. Luckily I'm picking up on the P3 dialect so this hasn't happened in a while.

Yet my point of reference is still the same. My origin in painting miniatures is citadel paints. That's my native painting language. So when I finally go to paint my own house I'm going to bring a swatch of paints I've made myself from gaming colors. The paint department at Lowe's can scan them all because that's a thing they can do. When I get home I can paint my house in gaming colors and everyone else will have to speak my language for once.