Well if you are Plaid Hat Games, recently absorbed into the Asmodee Borg collective, you do the following for starters:

• Make sure that your product is very hard to get hold of at LGS.
• Make sure that if the public buy direct from you, that you charge extortionate prices for shipping abroad.

Then you go and do the following:

Rumours on bgg  and I have had it from another source as well, is that instead of having this nice deluxe box coming out that was planned, they are going to split out the two new Phoenixborn and their respective new dice into two separate packs. With the fate of the deluxe box in limbo.

What’s the issue with that you ask? Initially not a lot. I’m cool with that. What I’m not cool with is the price these two new expansions will be sold for. The plan from Plaid Hat is for these to be sold for $25 each! $50 for both! That’s more than the cost of the base game which has six Phoenixborn and four sets of dice. Plus if you pre-order being in the UK we get totally robbed with the shipping as well. Plaid Hat are not the most friendly company for international buyers.

But why would you buy from Plaid Hat then, and not just buy the expansion from your FLGS? May I direct you to point one of their plan to kill off the game. Plaid Hat are not able to get product out to stores in enough numbers for people to buy it. It’s very very rare, in fact it’s easier to find an honest Tory MP than to be able to walk into a FLGS and buy an Ashes expansion or even the base game.

So you are kind of forced to buy from Plaid Hat to make sure you get the expansion. They try and sweeten the deal by adding a promo Phoenixborn that is exclusive to them. But that really doesn’t make up for the daylight robbery that occurs when they add shipping.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Ashes. I love the art work, the release schedule was ideal for it to be my second LCG/CCG of choice (although it could be a little bit more frequent), I love the dice as resources, it’s a really nice game. Plus in some ways Plaid Hat are also a really great company. They obviously care about the community, and the likes of Isaac Vega (the designer) are regularly interacting with the community, and giving updates when they can.

Not many companies out there actually make their OP kits available for groups to arrange their own OP events (there were some conditions for being able to do this, that were totally reasonable). That was a great touch, and showed they were listening.

But the community is screaming for product. Not just expansions to increase the card pool. But also accessories such as playmats, deck boxes and OP kits. Yes you can get the plastic tokens that Team Covenant do, but for those of us outside the US of A that’s an expensive option once again, because they also like to take the piss on postage.

My fear is that Ashes is dead already. That the combination of these failures, and this latest news about the upcoming expansion will be enough for people to say “I’m out”, and pack away their cards. I know for some this expansion news was the straw that broke the camels back.

It’s hard enough as it is to find people to play the game with. No point demoing the game, as people can’t buy it! No app, no physical product. The situation is bad. Oh and on the app side don’t give me Table Top Simulator as an option. It’s not. If the app isn’t multi platform ie runs on Windows, OS X, iOS, Android then it’s useless. Plus Table Top Simulator is clumsy and horrible. I want a dedicated app that runs on my tablet or phone (my main computing devices when at home), not some cludge.

For a bit of context, White Wizard Games released Epic around the same time iirc, in the past year we have seen OP kits, playmats, one expansion, card sleeves, deck boxes, and the second expansion is hitting any day now. And like Plaid Hat a World Championship. Oh and we will be seeing a Kickstarter for an Epic app (already in development) as well next year.

If White Wizard Games can do all this, plus all their Star Realms, Hero Realms stuff, whilst being a smaller company. Why can’t Plaid Hat, who have more resources behind them?

I hope Plaid Hat are listening. The window for saving this game is closing extremely fast.