What makes a reprint successful?

My theory is that multi player war games basically don't sell that well. And if they are reprints rather than a new hotness they sell even less well. Rex, Nexus Ops, FA, and Gearworld are all conflict games. I think, whilst these designs are a staple of the boardgaming genre, are falling out of popularity. Most folks just own one or two such games and play them on occasions. Someone might buy every game where they are a hero on a map or a worker placement that comes out. What was the last really successful multiplayer war game? Alright the coin series but thats largely due to the serious wargamer market. The only other game i can think of is Risk Legacy and that brought a rather unique experience. A Game of Thrones 2nd ed i guess, but it is riding the tv show. I suspect plaid hat will have a hard time selling off City of Remnants, I don't think conquest of Nerrath did that well. I could probably think of other examples.

There have been some flops that were not wargames like Dungeonquest. But they are giving Dungeonquest a revamp so it can't have failed to sell that bad.

I agree that the graphic design of the Nexus Ops tiles is not good. Too dark, not different enough, etc.

The game itself is fantastic and it quickly became one of my favorite games.

The thought of expansions for it is nice, but the game is so perfectly pure that I don't think muddying the waters would help.

Another reprint (or consolidation set) up for discussion is Blue Moon Legends. I'm not sure that I understand its reprint philosophy. Sure, it consolidated all of the factions and the game was OOP. The game has a cult following, but, I'm not sure whether it really has enough of an intended market to make it commercial. Who was the supposed target audience for the reprint? There are so many other card games in this genre. Those who originally played it, and didn't end up owning it, might want it for nostalgic purposes. But, they'd also want the larger original cards with the full artwork instead of the reprint's newer compressed artwork on smaller cards. I thought that the artwork in original Blue Moon was one of the bonus features of the game? With that in mind, why does FFG squander and gild the lilly on other games with components, but didn't do that with Blue Moon Legends? It makes no sense. I was fully expecting this game to be in the Holiday Sale--perhaps, it will be next year?

One thing that Cosmic, Talisman, and Wiz-War share is that those were games that already kind of transcended the hobby. That was certainly the case for the first two anyway. They are games like Settlers and Acquire that sell copies outside of the context of BGG users, with fans that might have just been into those games. Granted, that's more what I feel is the case than anything hard. But that's a far cry from something like Nexus Ops, which only ever really became beloved as an out-of-print gem.

That makes the bungling of Dungeonquest all the more of a shame, because I think that one might have had a better shot if they'd just left off the Terrinoth branding and not tinkered with it so much. I'm glad the updated version is on the way, because they've mostly brought it back in line with the original.

I'm still not sure how successful Merchant of Venus actually was, because the online dialog on BGG seems to be one mostly set by fans of the original game, like Colorcrayons said. But then it's never shown up in the annual Christmas sale, so it must have done alright.

Another success I thought of is Stronghold's Survive, which might be the last traditionally published game to really put a publisher on the map. It had a terrible looking box originally, but the original game had a substantial following outside of the hobby, which makes it a good candidate.

I think that last point is the crux of it. CE did well because it's basically the foundation of modern board game design prior to the German emergence. Wiz-War has a cult following from a series of reprints through the 80s and 90s. Talisman 2nd Ed has a similar following because it was the closest that some people were ever going to come to an RPG (I actually convinced an RPG-exclusive friend of mine to play because of the stories I was telling about what happened in our games.) Plus all three have sound design for one reason or another and/or hit on a particular geek niche (Wiz-War being the foundation for MTG is the most obvious aspect of that; people want to be wizards blasting each other.)

I think many of the rest didn't do well because, despite having fans, a lot of them just aren't sound designs. Dungeonquest is the most obvious example. Unlike Talisman, there's no game there. It's basically Push Your Luck but with an almost complete lack of quantifiable variables that make PYL-style games worthwhile. You can push your luck in a game that involves dice because you can assess the odds of rolling specific combinations. DQ requires you to take an enoormous risk before you ever roll the dice/deal cards and there's no way to avoid it. It's basically the poster child for the BGGers who profess to despise "randomness" because something actually involves dice. It's not a good design. I own it and I like pulling it out once in a while, but usually after other games or when there's alcohol involved. There's just not a lot of strategic thought and, thus, game involved in the game.

I think Nexus Ops may have better design than some of the other failures, but it lacks the decades-old audience that the real successes have and there was nothing particularly transformative about it in the manner of CE or Wiz-War and it didn't have any familiar tropes attached like Talisman or Fury of Dracula.

Well first I think we need to define successful.
There is a world of difference between this being the remnants of a third run of Nexus Ops compared to if this was the remnants of the first run. Wouldn't a reprint that made the company money and satisfied the unfulfilled demand be successful?

And from that perspective how could DungeonQuest be anything but successful? The first iteration had gone through a few print runs at least. They've now come out with a Revised Edition meaning there is still demand out there.

Blue Max is an interesting case. A recent, ostensibly "deluxe" reprint (mounted board!) of a classic and generally well regarded game, FFG is already blowing it out at $20, and I bet they won't get that many takers. I had it loaded in a cart and have since held off. I think the case may be illustrative of some of the points raised in this thread:

(1) Copies of Blue Max in earlier incarnations are readily and cheaply available. (The copy I have was even an unrequested throw-in by a guy trading me a copy of Dawn Patrol.)
(2) The intensity of Blue Max's following was probably mistaken for breadth of interest, which isn't, apparently, particularly great.
(3) Wings of War does most things Blue Max does, and more prettily and with less work, so the game is in some sense outdated.
(4) The seemingly "deluxe" edition felt to some more like a starter than a full game, with comparatively fewer aircraft represented in previous editions.
(5) The reviews on BGG were few in number and not particularly kind. The one English-language review ( boardgamegeek.com/thread/1146066/blue-ma...014-eidtion-blue-max ) was from a fan of prior editions chiefly pointing out how this edition didn't live up to the prior ones. So you have a "gatekeeper" effect where people who know the classic game tell the (slightly) wider audience that this is not the game they're looking for.
(6) There were also mistakes, with mismatches of plane names and artwork (according to the prior link). Games like Blue Max chiefly draw people who care about the hardware, and messing that up is both going to be noticed and not regarded lightly by the hardcore.

I would have thought that if FFGs DQ was successful, there would have been expansions following. It makes no sense that there hasn't been a 'reaper' sized box of new characters for DQ. Heck, it seems that one reaper sized expansion box could have been all that was needed to convert the existing DQ to this new revised one. Not sure a totally new base game was needed...unless there was a complete setting overhaul...but there wasn't.

I think FFG's Condotierre is better than the original, but I like the aesthetic of the original more - such is the relationship between FFG and I. Still, FFG puts out the superior game.

(Oddly enough, I have next to no complaints about the new Chaos Marauders...I've just never been won over by the gameplay. Maybe I'll give it another shot.)

Mayfair's A House Divided did away with the goofy and inaccurate art of the Phalanx version, but I go to sleep just looking at the board. It's a series of boxes within a box...hard to tell there's a map of the Eastern US there.

So, what outside of AH, Talisman, and CE have been the major reprint successes? Survive? FoD (then why oop now)?

EDIT: Yeah, I was interested in the Blue Max remake, as I'm wanting something with a smaller footprint than WoG for WWI dogfighting, but all those issues put me off. That and I wanted to see if more planes would be forthcoming. Perhaps, Dawn Patrol is still worth a look.

You know, there is a sort of underpinning here about reprints that doesn't get talked about much.

The internet, and BGG in particular, creates the illusion of demand. If there is suddenly a 20 year old game on the hot list, somebody posts "Reprint????" in the game's forums or it turns up on geeklists or whatever it starts too look like that a game is wanted and desired. Then you see eBay auctions- you start to think that if a game is selling for $200 (even if there is no actual buyer), then it's got to be a valuable property.

So you get the rights and print 10,000...50,000 copies of this game that people are "clamoring" for.

And it turns out that everybody that really wants the game already has it, and maybe you changed it or didn't create a compelling reason for upgrading. The rest of the peole "clamoring" for it? It turns out that it's like, 50 people. So what's left is to somehow get people that didn't know about the game on board with sales, convince legacy owners to upgrade, and somehow stake out a place in the market for an old game that may be superceded by multiple other more recent titles.

You think a Magic Realm reprint would be a smash hit? No way in hell. I bet a publisher would do well to sell all of a 5k print run.

The cases like Space Hulk, Talisman, Wiz-War and so on are rare, where a reprint hits the market and not only holds it own in terms of merging with the modern gaming landscape, but also in terms of paying its way, so to speak.

When you get down to it, too many reprints are essentially vanity projects or the result of a misunderstanding of how "big" games are.

Those are all aspects that business-savvy people already take into consideration with a reprint though. They also have to consider that by and large a reprint doesn't require a lot of in-house development and testing, which lowers in-house cost to allow some tolerance in case they misread the market.