There have been several questions regarding our print run information.

As a general rule, FRPG does >not< disclose total print runs. We do this for a number of reasons, but the primary reason is to make it difficult for our competitors to track our revenue. If I know the amount of cards printed, and can make a good estimate of the number of cards sold, I can pretty much give you the P/L for any company doing CCGs these days. That's information I'd rather not have in circulation.

That being said, I will discuss some things in "relative" terms.

IE, EE, SL, FK and AoD were printed at about the same size runs.

C&J was about half the size of those runs.

ToV was about three quarters the size of those runs.

OE is about equal to the size of the IE run.

BBP, for those of you scoring at home, was about the size of the C&J print run.

We sold out of IE, EE, SL, C&J and ToV. We still have FK, AoD, BBP and OE to sell.

Here are some interesting figures for you. In January of 1997, L5R was being sold in about 12% of the stores reporting figures to Comics Retailer magazine, which tracks such things. The average store selling L5R was selling about .7 displays a month.

>Last Month<, CR reported that about 27% of the stores were selling it, and they were averaging 2.2 displays per month.

That's a very, very significant number. In comparison the only two products higher on the chart, Star Wars (80% @ 3.9) and Magic (100% @ 13.32) have print runs that I would estimate are about ten to tweleve times larger than the L5R print runs.

We are successfully adding new stores, which is the key objective of our marketing program. From those new stores, we are seeing an increase in sales, which I attribute to the ongoing player satisfaction with the product and word of mouth. What we are not doing is overprinting cards. This really means that stores which order sufficiently will have stock for as long as they care to extend their inventory dollars, and stores that order one or two displays will sell out quickly.

Ideally, I'd like an expansion to be available from the distribution channel for about three months. I think that ToV may make it to six weeks - oh well, at least we're improving over C&J.

The suggestion that FRPG is "creating" a "buying frenzy" by decreasing the print runs is flat out silly. We don't sell more cards that way! It's like the old saw about the guy selling 25 nickles for a dollar - when asked how he makes money, he shouts "volume volume volume!". I make more money the more cards I print. I print the amount of cards I think the market can absorb without creating a huge backstock in the FRPG warehouse. I then cut that estimate by some arbitrary percentage just to be on the safe side.

Just for your information, we print at least 30% more than the preorders we receive from the distribution channel - that means that we would get stuck with 30% of the print run if the expansion fails to sell, and that 30% pretty much eats all the profit.

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A word about the Rarity levels in ToV. Due to the way the hopper spits out cards, and the way the cards are arranged on the sheets, the chances of getting a duplicate rare card are very low - perhaps only one or two per box. Also, the chances of getting the exact same 46 rares in two displays is vanishingly small. That said, I think you will find that after opening two displays you are within five or six cards of having a complete set of rares, regardless of the R1/R2 split.

You get to choose folks - smaller card sets with unified rarity, or larger sets and varient rarity. Which do you prefer?

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There are 225 cards in Time of the Void boosters.

There are two "clan specific" cards in the decks (the two thunders).

Thus there are 227 cards in total in the whole set, if you do not count reprinted basic set and expansion cards with ToV borders used only in the de cks.

If you count the artwork on the deck boxes, you get a total of 229 pieces of new artwork.

There is, in fact, one ToV card that was cut at the absolute last minute - Isawa Kaede, Elemental Master of the Void. In a last minute Design Team teleconference, we decided to do something extra special with Kaede in 1998, and removed her from the set - leaving the fate of the last Elemental Master in limbo until future revelations are made. So it is possible that you may see an Experienced Kaede artwork displayed at a convention by the artist, without seeing that card in print for a while....

There are also about 10 different promo cards planned for 1997, of which I think 6 have so far been distributed to either magazines or the IA. The IA will get all these cards eventually.

There is also a very special, very rare L5R card. It is called "Designers Win" and it's an event card with the Promo Card border. This card features the pictures of the Design Team, and reads:

"If your face appears on this card, then you win the game." "Lump it, Fanboy!"

There are only about 60 of these cards still in existence, and they are fiercely guarded by their owners. Needless to say, our winning percentages have all improved dramatically lately!

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