THE CRYPT OF PERPETUAL DARKNESS discussion

[Nlinindoll]

I'm also trying to stay apolitical here, though a conversation around tariffs in today's environment, is going to end up somewhat political. Tariffs are implemented by politicians after all. I'm trying to remain politically agnostic as a fan of this game that we so love.

So, if I may share a breakdown of the math of board game production. Let's use COPD's MRSP of $34.99 USD as the basis.

The profit is shared between: Manufacturer (20% MRSP), Publisher (20% MRSP), Distributor (10% MRSP) & Retailer (50% MRSP).

So, a $34.99 expansion like COPD would be broken down as follows PER UNIT: $6.99 to the Chinese factory, $7.00 to Avalon Hill/Hasbro, $3.51 to the individual distributors (like Southern Hobby, ACD Distribution, etc.) and $17.49 to the individual retailers (Your friendly local game store, GameStop, EB Games, Amazon, etc.).

Tariffs to China right now (April 10) are being cited as +145% on China, and this tariff-tax is charged against the production cost at the time of entry into the USA. A 145% tariff on $6.99 brings the total manufacturing cost plus tariff to $17.13 ($6.99 manufacturing + $10.14 tariff).

With Hasbro's profit standing at $7.00 USD per unit, expecting Hasbro to pay the $10.14 tariff would mean they are LOSING money. It's just not going to happen.

Now, the publisher or retailer COULD just tack that $10.14 onto the MRSP, but that would mean the retailer is getting LESS THAN 50% gross profit on the MRSP - giving the retailer less room to offer sales, and making the purchase of inventory more risky. If I told you that you could make $20 on a $10 investment, you might consider it. If I told you, you could make $10 on a $15 investment, it's not as appealing. Retailers are less likely to carry product that is riskier. This isn't even accounting for the 10% blanket tariff for every other country that is going to make everything else more expensive. If a $10.14 tariff is added to COPD, the MRSP is likely to increase by MORE than that to cover the tariff and to keep the profit margin appealing to retailers. The double edged sword here is that the more expensive a product is, the less units they will anticipate selling. It's a delicate balancing act.

From the CEO of Cephalofair Games (Publishers of Gloomhaven) recently wrote on their blog:
"The impact that 104% tariffs will have on our industry, and our company, are nothing short of devastating and are already having immediate consequences that will be felt knowingly and unknowingly by everyone who enjoys this industry - from the hobbyist, the retail store owner, the publisher, and ultimately our communities."
Source: https://cephalofair.com/blogs/blog/tari ... fair-games

I'm generally not swayed by overly negative press. I've never been worried when people shouted, "is this the end of Heroquest?" But with what's going on with these tariffs, I'm not just worried about Heroquest, but the table top gaming industry as a whole.

I think we as a community may not yet understand how "devastating" this actually could be. I'm hearing major game designers and industry "insiders" are already being laid off and projects are being cancelled. This is not business as usual.

All that said, I'm hopeful that these tariffs are NOT here to stay, that a resolution comes soon, and that we can all go back to the gaming table to enjoy rolling some dice with the people we love.

As Mentor would say, "Until we meet again, take care my friends..."

[LucaRocks]

However you feel about big corporations using cheap oversees labor, the small companies are always the ones who suffer most because they can't weather the storm of market fluctuations and political stuff like this.

I don't play GH but it would be ashame if it went away for a time.

[Kurgan]

CEO Chris Cocks said a few times that their strategy going forward will be to raise prices on "collector" products, to avoid having to overly inflate prices on their regular ones.

For Hasbro to go out of business, can their entire board game line, or switch everything to digital are all scenarios I don't imagine happening, even if the tariffs remain in place (or increase) after four years.

I'm not worried about HeroQuest going away, and personally I wouldn't mind paying more for HQ products, especially if it meant they continued to be available in retail and even more so if they were made domestically rather than relying on, without getting political, a certain powerful nation in Asia whose name starts with "C".

Worst case scenario (which I don't see happening, despite all the doomsaying), HeroQuest does officially end, stocks get sold off, no more content for another 30 years (maybe with December 2026 really being the "last era of support" from Avalon Hill). In that case, it'll be no different than it was just 5 years ago, except there will be more of us, and more copies of the stuff floating around for people to mod. We'll survive.

My advice? Take advantage of the discounted product. Get proxies. Do homebrew.

[Kurgan]

As reported by a bunch of people (Ribby, Deathtone, Malacdon, HispaZargon, seekhashem, RobChamp & Jo reported, thanks to them and anyone else I might have missed!) on HeroQuestFans Discord... Joe Manganiello was a guest on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS (a 6 minute clip was posted on youtube, they talk about HeroQuest from about 1:45 to 3:20 mins). Only boxes are shown... the 2022 Game System and Crypt of Perpetual Darkness retail.

Key points: entire cover has the holographic layer... Joe only mentioned 10 quests. The back of the box is flashy but hard to make out in the brief blur of Colbert's hands.

On any other day I'd suspect this of being A.I. but Avalon Hill confirmed it on their instagram as well. So much for the Florida Gators? This was more of a tease and a PSA that HeroQuest exists, for everyone out there (probably many) who didn't know that yet.

[Kurgan]

More images. "It's shiny." I did appreciate Colbert (and Joe) name dropping Gary Gygax in the clip too.

Recall that back in 2020, Joe referred to the "proprietary" Venim as a "black dragon" (D&D term, right?) as well, but the figure was gray, and the artwork depicted the dragon as green (just like it does here with the retail cover). It looks like all they did was re-frame that artwork and add Joe's name in a new bold font at the top. The back cover is the newest thing but we don't get a very clear view of it on the video. The text is pretty much impossible to read at least by me...

The video's subtitles are supposedly not the "auto generated" ones so yes, he said "ten quests." Doesn't mean there couldn't be "new content" in there, since a simple tweak of the text could change everything (if he wanted).

I am setting my expectations low and presuming that we'll only have some Errata fixes but otherwise it will pretty much be what we got with the crowd fund version. Of course it'll be interesting to see what (IF anything, nothing stands out from the blurry back image yet) is in there besides the 1) tile sheet 2) booklet 3) dragon mini 4) cards (two unique ones, but other than the spell scroll all others were copied from KK/ROTWL).

Yes, the original CoPD also called for three tiles from KK, so maybe those will be included (or worse, left out) or maybe re-designed?

I anticipate though that Hasbro probably has a strategy to focus AH's creative energies on developing Wizards of Morcar so other than some fixes and the fancy foil cards and the metallic black plastic on the dragon (this versions attempt to jazz it up and make it different for collectors who already have the Mythic version... similar to how we got the holographic covers and translucent dice/minis for SQT and PoT in retail).

Will there be dice and any other figures in the box? I'd be a bit disappointed if the Dragon was the ONLY plastic in the box, for sure, if the price is the same. But then again people have been speculating whether the tariff situation will change anything for this, so who knows.


Happy Easter everyone! (I'm out for the weekend so any further discussion from me of the teases will have to wait till I return...)

[LucaRocks]

The back of that box looks mighty disappointing. All I can see are cards. Really disappointed that they would do two remixes of previous material for 2025

[Kurgan]

You want all new stuff, I hear ya there, but we got First Light this year [which is still on for a May release in Spain from Pulse] which was "all new." Yes, the assets are "remixed" from the GS, but the quests are all new, dragon monster (not just the design but the whole mechanic) and hero sculpts are new, new content in the form of the reverse side of the board, etc.

People had FOMO over CoPD Mythic, so that to me is fulfilling a "promise" to fans (to release the former exclusives into retail as much and as soon as possible).

Wizards of Morcar has been out of print for over three decades, and was an EU exclusive back in the day... I'd call that last one no less disappointing than the re-release of ANY of the legacy boxes (GS, KK, ROTWL, FH, MOTM...). And while Avalon Hill hasn't (yet) officially acknowledged this latter one, I'm 100% convinced it's coming out very soon (after CoPD which is August), given the store front leaks.

If they were to NOT release these two things, I would be more disappointed, personally. No offense, each to their own opinion of course!


Here's hoping that there is at least some new content in the box and not just the dragon and cardboard!

[wallydubbs]

If not black dice with neon green skulls, shields & black shield... Or possibly the other way around. Just basing it off of what they did with Prophecy of Telor and Spirit Queen's Torment.

[LucaRocks]

No offense guys but when advertising people look for things to market a product, they will lead with their strongest selling point as people have limited attention spans with that kind of stuff.

So if all they have to put on their big convention ad to get us excited is a dragon and some cards, I'm staying that's all that'll be there. A stack of cards and a dragon. I don't even think they will give us a tile. Or maybe just the one or two tiles we absolutely need. The stairs and other tiles could have easily been removed from the quest book. I think seeing the back of the box strengthens my theory.

Not sure what selling points they advertised for SQT and POT though. But I'm pretty sure they told us we were getting minis but not that they were translucent.

[Kurgan]

There's no reason to leave out the extra cardboard for the pennies it would shave off the total cost of the already small box, while still increasing it with the holographic foil. SQT and PoT were already sold at a lower MSRP ($33.99) vs. KK/ROTWL ($34.99, yes, originally $24.99 but they were increased after the first few months I think just like the GS jumped from $124.99 to $134.99, in 2022 I thought).

I don't believe it will have less than the original, but it might have more. Agreed that they should advertise the main points, but then the advertising for these packages in general is pretty minimal. They don't point out every little thing ahead of time necessarily. Doug likes "surprises" and while these are things we want not every random would-be customer is assumed to want the same things. Even official photos often end up being CGI renders that get little things wrong (and little errors are even left in official PR packages that remain on websites including Pulse for years after release). Thus we rely mostly on fan unboxings (officially sanctioned ones often ignore things that hardcore fans like us want to know, like material quality and minutia).

On the Late Show promo Manganiello and Colbert barely talked about it, all that was shown was "shiny cover" (after the "heavy box" physical gag) and Joe said it didn't have any prep time and had 10 quests and mentioned a dragon. "D&D in a box" was the summary of HeroQuest for that audience (assuming they knew who Joe was and therefore what D&D was). Obviously showing the boxes in close up was the advertising bit, and the comedy bit was "I'm a bigger nerd than you are to talk about this stuff." Clearly the focus of that appearance was Joe himself and his new movie, but I'm glad he at least tried to plug HeroQuest and Colbert played along as I'm sure as much as he was contractually obligated to do. I'm not sure how much I believe that Joe is really "divorcing" (a riff on his recent divorce that was talked up in the media awhile back?) D&D in favor of HQ, but it was a nice little bit.

That's probably the first time I recall seeing or hearing a board game talked about on one of those shows. It's almost always a book, movie, music album, or comedy act that it is being promoted for the celebrity guest, so they quickly moved on to talking about more familiar things. Still, bless them for trying! If that gets a few more people realizing HeroQuest is alive again, and talking about it, great.