Please change the MW subtitles

[Sailor Vulcan]

This is a request/recommendation to change the subtitles of Mage Wars Arena and Mage Wars Academy, as well as to add a new one to the overall Mage Wars combat system and make the battlegrounds lineup not be presented as subordinate to arena (which it obviously isn't any more than arena is subordinate to academy or vice versa).

The current subtitle for Mage Wars Arena, "The Customizable Strategy Game of Dueling Mages" could just as easily apply to Academy, and it's so generic that it could just as easily apply to any customizable spell-slinging game, of which there already exist an awful lot of.

And the current subtitle for Mage Wars Academy, "New Standalone game set in the Mage Wars Universe" won't work once the game is no longer new, and we shouldn't need to be reminded that Mage Wars Academy is its own thing, that should be made more clear from how you describe the games in the first place without having to tell us outright that its "standalone" because that just makes it look like you're trying to compensate for all the people who might think it's not. When you make a new base game, the DEFAULT assumption is that it is standalone, so saying it on the box should not be necessary. In fact, this subtitle doesn't really tell you anything about the game unless you're already familiar with Arena! That is obviously not a good thing.

I propose that a new subtitle is added for the overall franchise: "The Ultimate Modular Fantasy Card-Combat System". That tells potential players much more about Mage Wars than saying "new standalone game set in so and so universe" or "The customizable strategy game of dueling mages".

To be honest I'm not sure you even need a subtitle for Academy and Arena specifically. If it's made more clear to people that mage wars is an overall fantasy combat system which can be used for different games, they wont need to be reminded that academy and arena are separate, and they'll know exactly how they are separate.

You could even rebrand the battlegrounds line to have both alternate variant academy sets and alternate variant arena sets. Instead of the mouthful that is "Mage Wars Arena: Battlegrounds Domination", you could just have Mage Wars Battlegrounds: Arena Domination, and then people could just refer to the set by the traits that uniquely identify it, "battlegrounds" "arena" and "domination". "Battlegrounds: Arena Domination". And for the whole lineup of Mage Wars Battlegrounds sets, just call that "Mage Wars: Battlegrounds". You shouldn't make it subordinate to Arena any more than you should make Arena subordinate to Academy or vice versa, which is to say you shouldn't.

To recap, I am making the following requests/recommendations:

1. get rid of Arena's subtitle, "The Customizable Strategy Game of Dueling Mages"
2. get rid of Academy's subtitle, "The New, Standalone Game set in the Mage Wars Universe"
3. Rebrand the Battlegrounds line as Mage Wars: Battlegrounds, and have it include both alternate variant Arena sets AND alternate variant Academy sets
3.5. change the first Mage Wars Battlegrounds set from "Mage Wars Arena: Battlegrounds Domination" to "Mage Wars Battlegrounds: Arena Domination"
4. add a subtitle for the entire Mage Wars Franchise: "The Ultimate Modular Fantasy Card-Combat System" or something similar.

Thoughts?

[jacksmack]

You asked for thoughts.

Mine are that these are terrible ideas.
Going out on a renaming / re-branding campaign is going to cause more confusion than good. And to be frank i'm not even sure it will bring any good at all.

I understand that you have an issue with academy being labelled as the 'more easy to learn version of Arena' - but i think its great and i find that it belongs exactly in that category. Because it is in fact what Academy is.....
Ill say it again. Academy is simpler, more straight forward to dive into for new players + it's less complex than mage wars.
This is what Arcane Wonders wanted to do with Academy, and they did a great job with it.

[wtcannonjr]

I would avoid another round of re-branding the product lines at this point based on my experience. However, I don't have access to sales numbers to inform this decision.

I run an annual event at the World Boardgaming Championships and I need to explain the difference between Academy and Arena to players all the time. It is not very clear to consumers how these games differ and why these are separate games and not expansions. The fact that a player can use Academy cards in the Arena game adds to this confusion from a new players perspective.

This year I had AW donate a copy of Arena and Academy to the conventions Gaming Library so that players can now open each copy and see the differences for themselves. During the convention I can now provide a description of the two games and suggest players check them out of the library for more details.

As a marketing tactic I would suggest a single page flyer for Ambassadors, Stores, and Conventions to use be created that clearly shows the relationships of the Mage Wars products from a new players perspectives. This could also be provided on the web site for online shoppers to find.