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I want to get more republic/seppy stuff, and maybe a second starhawk/onager/ssd for funniest, but I'll wait til things settle and see if there are any good deals on ebay

A pox upon AMG for their handling of X-Wing and Armada, though the troubles did start with FFG's bungling of 2.0.

It really was a fun, but I haven't touched my models since a few months after v2 dropped. I did pick up the clone side of the prequels but only played them once before everything sort of got put away and I haven't gone back to them. AMG's changes to points and squad building certainly didn't help matters.

Sadly, Armada just didn't ever seem to catch on. Too slow, expensive (compared to X-wing) and the unpainted starfighters I don't think helped. Luckily, the only thing I'm lacking from that is the always-out-of-stock hammerheads (and the SSD), and I'm an imperial player anyways.

I wonder if FFG regrets how the edition swap over was handled or if they were just phoning it in at that point in favor of newer games. From what I remember, they always seemed to have (at least from the RPG side of things) an attention deficit game design business style quickly switching to the new thing. Obviously X-wing got ALOT of attention from them given the massive (and unexpected per them) success but I wonder if they felt that it had run it's course from a design view and refocused their attention elsewhere.

The 2.0 edition was probably just the "least bad" or "rip the bandaid off" solution FFG came up with for an edition change that was probably needed to fix balance issues and add some new mechanics. I don't remember any issues about the new rules, the biggest complaint locally and personally was how much of existing card/dial collections were invalidated when the first edition pushed buying all the ships to get those components.

There was probably a better way to handle the transition than how they did it. They could've probably sold sticker sets for a fraction of the price as a lower cost alternative, and then done a more expensive upgrade for those that wanted a "premium" full upgrade to the new standard.

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
The 2.0 edition was probably just the "least bad" or "rip the bandaid off" solution FFG came up with for an edition change that was probably needed to fix balance issues and add some new mechanics. I don't remember any issues about the new rules, the biggest complaint locally and personally was how much of existing card/dial collections were invalidated when the first edition pushed buying all the ships to get those components.

Yeah, it was getting pretty obvious that something *had* to be done to clean up 1E, but I think they let it get too long in the tooth before they did so. The game model being that you got the ship and models was great for selling the individual ships as self-contained packages, but it put the brakes on when all of a sudden you had to buy this big chunk of cardboard to convert over your ships - but there just wasn't going to be a way around it. I think they could have reduced the sting if they hadn't had to redo the dials (and tokens) and limited it to just the ship & equipment cards - but there was still no getting around it.

I do think Wizkids handled it a little better by selling just the updated card packs at one point without the ships - that might have eased the transition.

Also would have helped if it didn't feel like the line stagnated for so long as we got just repackaged and more expensive copies of existing ships. And non-functional software that was the only way to figure out what options your ship could have and what points it was supposed to cost.

Almost entirely an issue of letting it go on too long before making the change. Not only did it result in a bloat of things that had to make the transition, but it also resulted in a total absence of new things to entice players to switch.

There were 4 brand new ships announced before the conversion kits were released and 2 new factions just after.

All Star Wars games suffer from lack-of-factions.

In the Rebellion era you have Rebels, Criminals, and Empire.

In the Republic era you have Separatists, Criminals and Republic.

There is not enough to work with there unless the license gives you free range to make gakk up, which it doesn't.

they would just need to do it like GW with 40k and split the factions up

in 40k you have Imperium, Chaos, Orks, Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Votan and Tyranids, so 8 compared to 6 factions in SW, but GW just split some of them up to make more

and at least for Imperium and Separatists you could split them the same way as the Imperium is split in 40k

it is just not done as this won't go well with fans

 ingtaer wrote:
There were 4 brand new ships announced before the conversion kits were released and 2 new factions just after.

How many releases for Empire and Rebels after?

The issue is getting existing players to buy into the new edition. When the two factions that were for quite a while the only factions are given absolutely no reason to buy new releases anymore, there's just not a lot driving them to the new edition.

There’s always the Ssi-Ruuk and Yuzhan Vong.

What? Why are people laughing?

 Easy E wrote:
All Star Wars games suffer from lack-of-factions.

In the Rebellion era you have Rebels, Criminals, and Empire.

In the Republic era you have Separatists, Criminals and Republic.

There is not enough to work with there unless the license gives you free range to make gakk up, which it doesn't.

Eh, dunno. It always feels like they suffer of it as much as WWII games.

It's less a lack of factions and more just that at the time the prequel fans weren't old enough to drive product. There's a reason the ARC launched as a Rebellion craft after all and even Legion took a while to get away from the OT despite it being a game FAR better suited to the Clone Wars. Now that the animated series has largely defined the prequel era in place of the films, you see a lot more including elements of multiple eras successfully.

 Easy E wrote:
All Star Wars games suffer from lack-of-factions.

In the Rebellion era you have Rebels, Criminals, and Empire.

In the Republic era you have Separatists, Criminals and Republic.

There is not enough to work with there unless the license gives you free range to make gakk up, which it doesn't.

that is ALOT to work with
like 6 factions is pretty well
you then get into sequel era
and then get into possibly high republic now
people that say they will run out of stuff lack imagination and forsight

 Easy E wrote:
All Star Wars games suffer from lack-of-factions.

In the Rebellion era you have Rebels, Criminals, and Empire.

In the Republic era you have Separatists, Criminals and Republic.

There is not enough to work with there unless the license gives you free range to make gakk up, which it doesn't.

In theory, I'd agree that it's a paltry amount of factions for a game... but it never seemed to bother anyone in my local playing groups (I played in two stores with some but not much overlap). Because Star Wars used to be so beloved and iconic, we were all just fine with Imps vs Rebels and mostly ok with adding the third criminal faction (though two of the guys playing were full on mando-fans building armors at home for their version of the 501st and they were ecstatic about it).

Man, life is a trip. Around 7th edition Warhammer was absolutely in the doghouse while everyone fawned over Infinity, WarmaHordes and X-Wing. Where are they now? I don't wish ill will on any of those systems, but I guess there is such a thing as companies being too big to fail.

GW/40k is just an order of magnitude or two larger than those other games. It takes a lot more for them to collapse or hit real trouble. There's also an advantage to GWs corporate bureaucracy- it moves glacial and isn't subject to an individuals whims, whereas you can point to xwings collapse as being partially caused by will schicks hubris and trying to impose his design philosophy onto an established game amd community and having it backfire, or warmachine falling apart because Matt Wilson doesn't know how to run a business and thinking that privateer press hit a level of scale where momentum would carry it forward amd there was no need to continue investing in organized community building.

you can compare them as the collapse of X-Wing won't kill AMG/FFG/Asmodee, neither will it kill the Star Wars game franchise and if anyone launchers another SW ship game it will sell the same way as a new 40k game will sell and the same way GW won't be hurt by a single game collapsing

the big advantage GW has with 40k is that the fans are happy with a new game under the same name every 3 years and the disadvantage of other companies is to think that all games work like that

GW also doesn’t carry much, if any, debt. And its debts being called in which tends to do for companies. So even if their income was closer to their running costs, slight dips in takings wouldn’t overly query their pitch.

Again somewhat defending AMG, or at least its staff, because it’s not their fault or within their control that Asmodee bought another company and then dropped two or more game systems into their lap, seemingly without properly hiring new staff.

I still remember when they did their live stream for new stuff. It felt embarrassing to me. Products not kept in shot, few if any close ups. Just someone clearly not comfortable being on camera in an office doing their best in a bad situation. Again, I’m not knocking the persons involved in that live stream, and it would not be fair to do so. But it smacked of “GW are doing it, you will do it, what do you mean proper resources”. So again feels like Asmodee or AMG bigwigs leaving others in the lurch.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
GW also doesn’t carry much, if any, debt. And its debts being called in which tends to do for companies. So even if their income was closer to their running costs, slight dips in takings wouldn’t overly query their pitch.

Over the last few recessions/economic downturns it more and more highlights how insanely lucky/smart GW were because not taking on debt meant they never grew half as fast as they "could have"; but at the same time its left them in such an insanely robust position in the market. When you consider how insanely niche wargaming is and yet GW have stores on most major UK settlement highstreets. Granted they are main-highstreet any more but they are still in the decent bit of town in most places.

It's perhaps a very "old school" approach to business, but its weathered the storms every single time because, as you say, there's no big investor or debt holder calling it in suddenly or draining funds so much that the firm has no investment/growth/safety net. Heck GW appears to really hate debt, I think they paid their covid money back to the government in a very short span of time (and I've no idea how many firm actually even managed that)

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Again somewhat defending AMG, or at least its staff, because it’s not their fault or within their control that Asmodee bought another company and then dropped two or more game systems into their lap, seemingly without properly hiring new staff.

I still remember when they did their live stream for new stuff. It felt embarrassing to me. Products not kept in shot, few if any close ups. Just someone clearly not comfortable being on camera in an office doing their best in a bad situation. Again, I’m not knocking the persons involved in that live stream, and it would not be fair to do so. But it smacked of “GW are doing it, you will do it, what do you mean proper resources”. So again feels like Asmodee or AMG bigwigs leaving others in the lurch.

Asmodee definitely take a lot of the criticism for how things were handled. That said, AMG's approach to marketing, sales and communication is embarrassing. I get that they weren't keen on X-Wing, nor did they get any say in having it dropped in their laps, but their attitude when they did get it was deeply unprofessional and at times borderline insulting to the X-Wing community. They also decided to shack up with Asmodee rather than staying independent, presumably for the various advantages that gave them, so it seems a little churlish to then complain about having to answer to your paymasters. That's the deal they made, whether they realised it or not.

 Overread wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
GW also doesn’t carry much, if any, debt. And its debts being called in which tends to do for companies. So even if their income was closer to their running costs, slight dips in takings wouldn’t overly query their pitch.

Over the last few recessions/economic downturns it more and more highlights how insanely lucky/smart GW were because not taking on debt meant they never grew half as fast as they "could have"; but at the same time its left them in such an insanely robust position in the market. When you consider how insanely niche wargaming is and yet GW have stores on most major UK settlement highstreets. Granted they are main-highstreet any more but they are still in the decent bit of town in most places.

It's perhaps a very "old school" approach to business, but its weathered the storms every single time because, as you say, there's no big investor or debt holder calling it in suddenly or draining funds so much that the firm has no investment/growth/safety net. Heck GW appears to really hate debt, I think they paid their covid money back to the government in a very short span of time (and I've no idea how many firm actually even managed that)

There’s definite luck to GW. For instance, the LOTR bubble burst rapidly, and that had a significant impact on their income. That kick started a restructuring of staffing (not quite to One Man Stores, but the beginning thereof) and organisation. And just as they’d more or less righted the ship on that? Along came the global financial crisis. With GW having already trimmed significant fat, and perhaps hacked a limb off, they were ready to go on that.

There are other examples of “you lucky sods!” of something bad happening, GW addressing it, and then something bad happening to everyone else but not GW, because their previous fix continued to work in those changed circumstances.

Another example is making a half way decently received new edition of 40K, just as WarmaHordes detonated its own mudflaps. Didn’t make that edition excellent, but it did allow them to hoover up disenfranchised WarmaHordes players, just as WarmaHordes once hoovered up disenfranchised GW players.

~Oh very true that was a crazy year seeing Privateer Press making bad choice after bad choice and GW seem to make all the right choices.

It was like both firms swapped CEOs

 Overread wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
GW also doesn’t carry much, if any, debt. And its debts being called in which tends to do for companies. So even if their income was closer to their running costs, slight dips in takings wouldn’t overly query their pitch.

Over the last few recessions/economic downturns it more and more highlights how insanely lucky/smart GW were because not taking on debt meant they never grew half as fast as they "could have"; but at the same time its left them in such an insanely robust position in the market. When you consider how insanely niche wargaming is and yet GW have stores on most major UK settlement highstreets. Granted they are main-highstreet any more but they are still in the decent bit of town in most places.

It's perhaps a very "old school" approach to business, but its weathered the storms every single time because, as you say, there's no big investor or debt holder calling it in suddenly or draining funds so much that the firm has no investment/growth/safety net. Heck GW appears to really hate debt, I think they paid their covid money back to the government in a very short span of time (and I've no idea how many firm actually even managed that)

It has more to do with being a company that is reliant on physical production. Most of the new school business nonsense that churns and burns so rapidly is in the tech industry because you can "grow" by hiring or buying people and then dump them freely if it doesn't work out because most of your expense is in payroll. GW has quite a bit of cost in things that aren't so easy to flip so their growth is more bounded by reality and they have to make more cautious decisions to expand.

FWIW, this is what holds back almost all the competition. No matter how "big" they seem, crossing the bridge from things like metal or resin to HIPs requires a huge investment that even if you can afford it, is effectively betting the entire company. Most of the games that people treat as competition aren't nearly profitable enough to come close.

 kodos wrote:
you can compare them as the collapse of X-Wing won't kill AMG/FFG/Asmodee, neither will it kill the Star Wars game franchise and if anyone launchers another SW ship game it will sell the same way as a new 40k game will sell and the same way GW won't be hurt by a single game collapsing

the big advantage GW has with 40k is that the fans are happy with a new game under the same name every 3 years and the disadvantage of other companies is to think that all games work like that

I mean, no, I think it's more that X-Wing being killed off is a symptom of Asmodee's death spiral as Embracer uses the company as an escape pod for all the debt they just took on, in order to dig out of the hole they got themselves into to try and court a Saudi buyout.

GW also benefit from their own, wholly owned, chain of high street stores.

Sure, not every country has one, or even a proportionate distribution of them. But they’re still the reason GW grew from tiny to medium in the early years, and so came to dominate and redefine the industry.

Because even if GW don’t have stores near you, or even in your country? The historical legacy of those stores has meant GW are the best known wargame company out there. So even online? You’re most likely to be exposed to a GW game.

Though why they, and indeed others, haven’t tried to recapture HeroQuest and the impact that had on my generation I couldn’t tell you.

Just to rub salt into the wound: Lego announced today they're doing a set with 2 different Uglies: an X-TIE with 3 Death Seeds.

Slipspace wrote:

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Again somewhat defending AMG, or at least its staff, because it’s not their fault or within their control that Asmodee bought another company and then dropped two or more game systems into their lap, seemingly without properly hiring new staff.

I still remember when they did their live stream for new stuff. It felt embarrassing to me. Products not kept in shot, few if any close ups. Just someone clearly not comfortable being on camera in an office doing their best in a bad situation. Again, I’m not knocking the persons involved in that live stream, and it would not be fair to do so. But it smacked of “GW are doing it, you will do it, what do you mean proper resources”. So again feels like Asmodee or AMG bigwigs leaving others in the lurch.

Asmodee definitely take a lot of the criticism for how things were handled. That said, AMG's approach to marketing, sales and communication is embarrassing. I get that they weren't keen on X-Wing, nor did they get any say in having it dropped in their laps, but their attitude when they did get it was deeply unprofessional and at times borderline insulting to the X-Wing community. They also decided to shack up with Asmodee rather than staying independent, presumably for the various advantages that gave them, so it seems a little churlish to then complain about having to answer to your paymasters. That's the deal they made, whether they realised it or not.

AMG was never independent. It was founded as a design studio under the auspices of Asmodee from the getgo, after Will Schick and co had a disagreement with Matt Wilson of Privateer Press over developing a Marvel miniatures game. I forget the circumstances, but IIRC Asmodee wanted to contract Privaterr Press to develop the game for them, and Asmodee would publish it (Alternatively, PP was pursuing the Marvel license themselves). For whatever reason, whatever negotiations fell apart or there was a disagreement. From what I was told, Schick, Pagani, and the third guy (Dallas Kemp?) approached Asmodee and pitched setting up AMG with them in charge to do the design work, etc. to cut PP and Matt Wilson out of the equation. The plan worked and they quit PP to pursue MCP under Asmodee.

You are right though, their attitude was insulting and unprofessional, very "papa knows best"

 Easy E wrote:
All Star Wars games suffer from lack-of-factions.

In the Rebellion era you have Rebels, Criminals, and Empire.

In the Republic era you have Separatists, Criminals and Republic.

There is not enough to work with there unless the license gives you free range to make gakk up, which it doesn't.

Yeah, no. In the Rebellion era you can add Zaarin's uprising (which was actually more dangerous to the Empire than rebels and all the high tech BS that came with it) and Corporate Sector, neatly slotting into cooperation with Criminals range as they hired a lot of mercs, and can also have access to older, deliberately weakened Imperial tech. Then expand that into early New Republic vs Thrawn - 7 big factions not enough for you?

In the Republic era you not only have multiple factions in the Separatists range, each big enough to support its own fleet, Republic can be split into Jedi/Clones/local defence forces, both with possibility of cross allying but also allowing to field 'pure' armies. Then you have Katana Fleet project, Stark Hyperspace War (add to criminals if not big enough on its own) and various Rebellion era ships that had stripped down, advanced variants later but now can be made as pristine, still covered in panels Y-Wings, Dreadnoughts, Corellian Gunships, etc, etc, etc.

Plenty you can release without needing to make any new ships up, and we haven't even touched any of the old gak in WEG rpg games, Decipher CCG game, X-Wing/TIE fighter PC games, Star Wars: Rebellion strategy game, Dark Forces series, Dark Empire, Marvel, like really, I can make 20+ ranges with all that gak, and paid professionals couldn't?