What makes a reprint successful?

Also, just because someone is the original designer doesn't absolve them for shitty ideas.

Michael Barnes wrote: Also, just because someone is the original designer doesn't absolve them for shitty ideas.

True. But it means that it's not just about FFGs unsatiable hunger to change things and make them more complex. And they were quick to offer variants and changed it for the revised edition, so obviously a lot of people complained. But what I'm trying to say is that since they've even made a revised edition, it can't have been quite the fuck-up it's painted at in this thread.

Yeah, but the revised edition totally ditches the card combat from the original reprint. That seems like a pretty big mea culpa to me.

VonTush wrote: So:
Ra - Had lapses of availability and went through different publishers. Reprint or not?
Pandemic - Same publisher but different ownership, art style and direction. Reprint or not?

Yeah, I wouldn't think that a new release from the same publisher would be a real reprint, but maybe a new edition?

I mean, would we compare the various editions of Catan from Mayfair? Is Risk 2210 a reprint of Risk? It has more in common with original Risk than FFGs Warrior Knights has with its original.

EDIT: content on expansions moved to new thread.

That was a bit of what I was getting at...What constitutes a reprint?
Ra is never brought up though it has been through a few publishers but remained largely unchanged in both art, production and quality. So it is thought of as more of a restock.

Pandemic with the new version that isn't backwards compatible without an upgrade pack is never thought of a reprint though when Nexus Ops which for the most part was a straight reprint with cosmetic changes is? Is it then the change of publishers? Can't be otherwise Ra. Is it then a span of years between availability?

What about when a game has a small initial launch (Stronghold or Galaxy Trucker) then is restocked/reprinted by another publisher on a wider scale?

I'm just trying to wrap my head around what qualifies a game for a reprint over a restock.

San Il Defanso wrote: Yeah, but the revised edition totally ditches the card combat from the original reprint. That seems like a pretty big mea culpa to me.

I agree (even though I like the new combat system). But again: if they've sold enough to even consider republishing it, then it must have sold quite well in the first place. So I'm just not sure it's a good example of a reprint gone wrong from a sales perspective.

In answer to VTs question, id suggest it is mostly internet hype and marketing. Though i'd say most reprints that are called reprints have some significant changes to them it is mostly hype.

For instance Tammany Hall has garnered quite a bit of internet buzz as a 'reprint' but other than the box size my understanding is that it is the game as the original. However as it went out of print and was noticed as being oop by the bgg community it is heralded as a reprint. Ra or Settlers have always been around if not necessarily in the original publishers warehouse so we don't call new print runs reprints. There are some games that fall in the middle a bit. Z-man has just reprinted Chinatown. It has been oop a while and i think it has a new box size. It could easily be compared as a reprint to Tammany but it is not a hyped reprint.

With the ffg there is always hype, but also because they change things at least visually it they always will garner some heralding as if they were new games.

I would say that my distinction between a reprint and a restock is largely based around how long a game was gone. So that excludes Catan, which has been basically in print in English for over fifteen years straight. Risk 2210 is pretty clearly a completely different game from Risk, which I think also precludes it from reprint status. That's actually why I don't consider Arkham Horror to be a reprint. It's pretty clearly a second edition, united to the original game in concept only. Not sure why I feel that way there, and not with Fury of Dracula, but I suppose that argument holds there too.

For me my mental cutoff is roughly five years, which is totally arbitrary but it's what my brain thinks. I think that's a little different from the normal 6-8 month gaps while a company is printing mroe copies of some Essen title.

That touches on something we've circled around on here for a while, that the next big wave of reprint cycles will probably be classic German games, if there's any new wave of reprints coming at all. It seems games like Manila, El Grande, and Amun-Re all have solid futures if they could make it back on shelves. At any rate they hold a little more credibility with BGG crowds than old AH titles.

an El Grande reprint is in the post apparently.

The thing is, will anyone dare update the mechanics from any of the classic german games?

I don't think it'd be anything more than a tweak, since modern design ideals are still pretty strongly tied to the German aesthetic. Granted, the new version of Wallenstein from a couple years ago integrated some of the bits from Shogun, so we might see something like that.

It seems like when a German game vanished in the past it would return with a different theme. That's happened as recently with New York, which was a reskinned version of Alhambra. It's not a big loss there, but I'd be disappointed if they did that with bigger tentpoles of the hobby.