A Return Trip to
Arnak by Justin Sweigart, CGE Retail Support Specialist, Czech Games Edition
A
s you are reading this, everyone is no doubt hard at work preparing for GAMA Expo! It’s been a long couple of years, hasn’t it? I’m sure we’re all thrilled and excited to finally get to see each other in person again and discuss a lot of what is going to be coming up this year. By now, you all should be recovering from (what I hope is) a strong, successful holiday season and pressing into a great Q2 of 2022. Also, you should have received the long-awaited expansion to Lost Ruins of Arnak, titled Expedition Leaders! We normally wouldn’t put quite as much focus and discussion into an expansion, but this one is kind of special. Lost Ruins of Arnak is one of our most popular CGE titles, and we hope it’s done extremely well for all of you, too! The success of the game and the excitement you all helped generate with us has made this one of our most successful games to date. Doing an expansion and continuing to support the base game long-term was a no-brainer. Instead of heaping praise upon ourselves for how well the game has done,
18 AROUND THE table • Q1 2022
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what I would like to do today is discuss ways to help you continue to sell this title and keep its momentum going for all of us well into the future. To me, one of the coolest things about the expansion is the addition of asymmetrical player characters, each with their own abilities. Some characters are easier to play (like the Captain), while others are more difficult to play (like the Mystic), so it creates many different ways to play. Hopefully, by the time a customer is looking to buy the expansion, they already either have the base game or are familiar with it, and you won’t have to explain the basic mechanics of the game to them. Instead, it will give you time to focus on the particulars of the expansion and how it adds so much to the core Arnak experience. In addition to the asymmetrical players, there are 18 new items, 12 new artifacts, 12 new sites, and five new guardians to mix into the base game. Perhaps my favorite new element though, and the highlight you can share with your customers, is the new
research tracks (the Monkey and the Lizard temples). All of these elements, combined with the inherent flexibility of play styles in the base game, creates an almost limitless amount of combinations that you can play with, making it difficult to have the same playing experience each time you play. Highlighting these differences may help convince the customer to go ahead and pick up the expansion, knowing that they won’t be disappointed. The increased variability of game play may also be the best selling point to someone you may be trying to sell both the base and expansion to. I hope this helps guide you and your staff a bit in terms of how to sell and promote this great expansion to your customers. As always, if there is any more information or help we can provide, please let us know! Now, I am going to spend these two coins, hire a pilot and fly out of here … until next time, my retailer friends. For more information, email justin@czechgames.com
czechgames.com
2/9/22 11:51 AM
