[caps]

Here's some fun stuff from the various Discords:

Originally Posted by Encarmine

You’re the first one to catch it @Cpt. Stupendous. I guess I’m hiding the breadcrumbs too well.

The Widow Ching Shih (Zheng Yi Sao)

The War Council worked hard incorporating historical pirate captains of note into the Dawn Raiders. There is a lot of solid work in there for the history buffs.

Also an amazing resource of powerful, noteworthy and illustrious female personalities to incorporate into the brand.

Originally Posted by Encarmine

The informal discourse of the community is all good food for thought, and results in healthy conversation back in the studio. General consensus and a large majority standing behind a unified opinion have a direct effect on the overall strategy of our brands. We do listen to the fan community and opinions/feedback of players, (almost the entire team is here hiding in the shadows and lurking/listening) and that conversation drives review and further discussion for future development (keeping in mind we work about 2 years ahead of retail launches). The direction of a brand like Heroscape is actually heavily based on the wishes and dreams of this community over the last decade. While you may be looking at parts and pieces in a teaser format on the Discord, the overarching marketing strategy and direction of Design & Development are an amalgamation of years of the community’s general input into a pool of “what if” and “bucket list”. While that might not yield a result to satisfy every single solitary perspective and opinion, the net result should feel familiar to the general requests of the overall wishes of the active and vocal player base. Also, rest assured, Hasbro has the infrastructure and personnel to properly curate and inform consumer behaviors and seek out consumer insights for the appropriate demographics, that process also yields valuable data to help develop a business strategy that works to ensure we are moving the business in the correction direction for our brands. On the other side, a formal request for affirmation, inclusion, 3rd party development, request for fan generated content to be accepted as canon or “official”, will typically be ignored by the team by design, as it can create potential legal issues, and is better handled through very specific channels that are designed to protect inventors and creators on both sides.

It is recognized by the team that a group of dedicated and passionate fans helped keep this community alive for years with fan generated content, and that drove our decision to form the War Council and bring those people into the circle to help relaunch the brand and for that we greatly appreciate that talent supplementing the Avalon Hill team in an official capacity. For everyone on this Discord, know your voices are heard, you have a DIRECT connection to the team without filters, and that is something very new and different for Hasbro as a whole, you are blazing trails everyone.

Originally Posted by Encarmine

Not the first time we’ve heard that comment. There are considerable logistics and cost associated with an initiative like that. It will come down to simple arithmetic: do we apply the team’s resources, budget and time into producing a premium edition with X volume for X amount of consumers interested, or are those resources, budget and time better spent producing more new items that appeal to a larger amount of consumers and therefore can generate a higher volume of units sold. At the end of the day, Hasbro is a business and Avalon Hill will only exist as long as it’s profitable. Yes, it’s a fan-focused business, but there still needs to be enough fans willing to purchase the item to make it viable to manufacture.

I’ll give you example to ponder, purely rhetorical: if the price to develop was identical, would you rather: get 2 options of the same unit, painted and unpainted? Or. 2 different unique units unpainted? (Yes you can only choose one) therefore literally halfing the overall size of the product line to incorporate painted options for purchase at a steep premium online.

Looks like there may be more on the Avalon Hill server; I'll troll through there next.