2021 early sales update from ICv2

It’s premature to call 2021 a post-COVID year, but it feels different from last year at least. Of course, 2020 saw record sales for hobby games across the board, and a fair bit of change in the top charts.

Let’s see what the early changes are for 2021.

Most card games had 2020 as their record sales year. Magic sits at the top of this chart, but is below Pokemon once mass market stores are brought into consideration. No great change in the charts here, but the volume of sales for those top 3 has definitely increased.

In the land of board games the old stalwarts of Catan and Ticket to Ride are gone, replaced with newer, more interesting games. While those are both considered good ‘gateway’ games for getting new people into the hobby, it can be argued that games like Wingspan, Azul, and Codenames (covered in the card/dice game chart rather than here) do a better job. Also Quacks of Quedlinburg is a favourite at our house so it was nice to see that in there.

The best selling games aren’t all entry level though, with Gloomhaven, Root, and Scythe offering a deep game that lasts several hours.

Games Workshop seems to have a strong grip on the miniatures chart with the two Warhammers occupying the top two slots. Role-playing miniatures make up two of the other slots, leaving Star Wars Legion as the only tie-in game. It’s not that long ago that X-Wing was outselling Warhammer 40,000 – it’s now nowhere to be seen.

Lastly we have RPGs, which is undergoing a resurgence, and there’s plenty of activity. It still looks like a case of Dungeons & Dragons followed by the rest.

You can see more details and even more charts at ICv2.