Friday Night Shots – Game Promos – Yea or Nay?

Welcome to the new year!

Sorry that the bar was closed last week, but I was off doing something much more fun than trying to figure out what I wanted to write about that week.

With last week also full of other posts, I didn’t want to try and squish a FNS post in as well.

It’s 2024 and the bar’s still as empty as it usually is. But I love it that you’ve graced it with your presence.

Have a seat and let me get you a libation of your choice.

Crap, let me unplug the jukebox too. Somebody came in and locked it down on the 90s boy band channel.

I’ll get that fixed tomorrow!

Anyway, let’s talk about board game promos.

This post was kind of inspired by seeing the new Scholars of the South Tigris promo card that’s part of the Dice Tower 2024 Kickstarter.

Of course, as part of that Kickstarter, there are tons of promo cards from a bunch of different games.

So much so that every year a thread is formed in the BGG Dice Tower Guild about trading promos around that you might not want.

There are promos for a number of games in a lot of content creators’ Kickstarters as well.

Most companies, of course, will make them available at a later date, for sale on their web site usually.

I know Garphill Games does.

In fact, you can buy all of their own Kickstarter promos there (though I have them all, since I back their Kickstarters for the games I want to get).

My question for you, and this kind of goes back to my old post about the completionist mindset (but that’s a very old post, so never hurts to ask the question again!), is this.

Do you try to track down as many promos, if not all of them, as you can?

Or are you a person who just takes what comes, doesn’t worry about promos, and basically just ignores them unless they just happen to show up?

For me, I’m not really that interested in them, at least not to go seek them out.

Like I said, of the Garphill Games that I own, I back them on Kickstarter so I’m already getting those.

But I won’t go buy somebody else’s promo, and I probably wouldn’t buy the Garphill ones if I happened to buy a game via retail.

It’s good that they’re available if you wait for the game to go to retail.

There was a big to-do about the Dune Imperium promos when that game first came out and then even more of a kerfuffle when they announced a new promo card back in 2023 and it wasn’t available on its own.

You had to buy the promo pack and get duplicates of what you already had.

Or something like that.

Read this thread, but warning that it’s 8 pages of arguing!

Promo cards are nice to have, of course. I know I enjoy the ones that come in the Garphill games that I have, because often they integrate all of the expansions too (when they come with an expansion Kickstarter, anyway).

The promos that came with the Viscounts of the West Kingdom expansions used elements of both of them.

And they’re cool!

That’s mainly what promos are, really.

Cool additions to the game that you don’t really need but they are nice to have.

After going back to read that Completionist Mindset post and then reading this one, what do you think about promos?

Then of course there is the opposite effect, where a game comes with a promo to another game.

Does that entice you to buy it?

I don’t think so!

I wish I could remember the game and the company, but there were two games that came out almost at the same time.

Each game had a promo card or two for the other game in it.

(Abi will probably remember, if he reads this).

I did buy the one game (which is why I’m really annoyed I can’t remember which one it is!) but I had no interest in the other one.

That promo sat unused and I think I may have given it away at some point.

I guess that does make for a vibrant second-hand market, though I doubt that’s the reason for the promo.

How common is that?

I have no idea, but it’s happened at least once!

Speaking of promos, though, do you know what companies really need to do when they put out promo cards like these?

Post somewhere how they work, if they’re even a bit confusing!

The Scholars one above is pretty basic, as are the heroes that I also pictured above.

But I remember some promos for the West Kingdom games that didn’t make a lot of sense at first.

Have something on your web site, post something to BGG, something that explains what the iconography of the promo means.

It might save a lot of questions.

What’s especially egregious, of course, is when these promos are only sent out to Kickstarter backers and then “maybe” if you happen to go to a convention where the company has a booth.

Really?

I’m not a completionist for the most part, but it bugs me that they would actually make things that unavailable.

How many people are able to go to the big cons, compared to how many bought your game?

Anyway, let’s make this a short one tonight. It’s been a long week.

And I have my Combat Commander ladder game tomorrow!

What do you think about promos?

Are you a completionist when it comes to them?

Does it bug you when they’re not really available?

Let me know in the comments.

Tonight’s post brought to you by the Hennessy, the number 168, and the letter P.