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The staff at FFG designed and released Armada, AMG people didn't have any interest in the game so haven't done anything significant except a few print and play cards. FFG were board games, miniatures, and card games focused, AMG are MCP and now Shatterpoint, with a bit of Legion.

But Armada was close to the end anyway. What is really gutting is that with another 6-12 months under FFG's control, we would have seen the Clone Wars releases fleshed out. A 2nd squadron pack for the Republic, a few extra ships for both sides, and some key missing cards for commanders and pilots.

Imperial Assualt - my dream would be a Clone Wars set 2.0, but due to licensing for SW board games that probally would never have happened anyway. Can't see AMG ever getting into the board game space, so in theory if the licence ever came back FFG could produce it, but I believe the majority of their staff who worked on the original moved onto other things and then were let go in the downsizing after their main IPs were given to AMG.

 kurhanik wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:


For those that don't know Embracer group went on a massive spending spree over the years buying various videogame companies and eventually Asmodee but was expecting a massive deal with the Saudi Government, to actually pay off all the debt they took to make all these purchases, that fell through last year. That's caused Embracer to shut down and sell off a lot of studios and other companies they own.

Several game studios have managed to break off from Embracer by "buying themselves" from the investment group and it looks like Christophe and Maud did something similar.

Yeah man if you follow videogame news at all it is so depressing hearing 'game cancelled, 1,000 people laid off' over and over again. Its not just Embracer group, but their antics are a big part of why so many developers are just out of a job on on the streets. The numbers are just stunning, as I think last year was a ridiculous number of people in the industry laid off, and already in March they have basically matched that.

Long story short, its nice to see at least a few people managing to escape that dumpster fire.

I'm never going to forgive Embracer for reviving Timesplitters after all these years and then shutting the studio before they released anything. They'll probably squat on the IP for the next 10 years now before it fully fades out of public consciousness and the original team members involved in the game have long since retired.

Their mad spending spree and decision to develop hundreds of games at once did seem like what I'd do with loads of money though, shame they are run by idiots and half these projects won't happen anymore:

Big board game company
KOTOR remake
LOTR licensing rights
Timesplitters Revival
Tomb Raider rights
Loads of AA studios
Comic book publisher

I forgot that they owned Miniature Market.

 Stormonu wrote:

MaxT wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Idk, i feel AMG is doing great with their games.

Tell that to Star Wars Armada players. They didn't even have the decency to officially cancel it.

Agreed!

I can't recall if FFG was in some sort of financial trouble, but Asmodee's gutting of that company and handing the likes of X-Wing*, Armada off to AMG to let them rot and shutting down the RPG wing was angering.


* Didn't help that X-Wing 2.0 was an initial cluster, and can't seem to break out of mediocrity for releases now.

It's really not a financial struggle as I understand it. They wanted all of FFG's juicy IPs and FFG's owner wanted to be rich so he took and exec job at Asmodee and a nice payday.

Why they gutted FFG has more to do with their buyout strategy. FFG was doing a bit of everything; card games, minis, board games, RPGs, etc. Asmodee decided they wanted each of the studios they had bought up to specialize in one thing. FFG's RPGs went to the RPG company. Minis went to AMG. FFG makes card games now.

It's unfortunate because a lot of FFGs success came from mixing genres. Their board games took elements from RPGs. Their minis games took lessons from card games. They sold card games and minis in a way that appealed to board game players. That approach had weaknesses, but it innovated a lot of genres and brought a lot of new people into the hobby.

Edge Studios, the rpg wing, has been especially frustrating, as they've struggled to keep FFG-published Star Wars and Genesys books in print, have barely released any Genesys content, and mainly focus on Legend of the Five Rings. And even their Legend of the Five Rings work is mostly focused on the D&D 5e conversion they developed with the occasional token release for the old FFG-developed system.

There was one long period there where I legit thought Edge Studios had closed shop and forgotten to announce it to anyone.

bobthe4th wrote:
Imperial Assualt - my dream would be a Clone Wars set 2.0, but due to licensing for SW board games that probally would never have happened anyway. Can't see AMG ever getting into the board game space, so in theory if the licence ever came back FFG could produce it, but I believe the majority of their staff who worked on the original moved onto other things and then were let go in the downsizing after their main IPs were given to AMG.

How they failed to do an Endor wave - with Yoda as a random individual character - I'll never know.

Dysartes wrote: How they failed to do an Endor wave - with Yoda as a random individual character - I'll never know.

Definitely! SW Rebellion got a Rogue One themed expansion so I thought that would happen for IA too.

The multiple model scales for Star Wars is completely baffling to me.

By all means do what GW do and have different games in the same universe exploring different scales of warfare (small warbands up to massive forces), but there’s no need and to me, little sense, in making the associated models different sizes.

If I get into the skirmish/warband scale, I’m then naturally poised to up the size of my collection, and start dabbling in the larger scaled conflicts if it’s the same models with different rules.

From a production point of view it’s also a lot of duplicated effort. You can just do a single box of Storm Troopers. You need to sculpt and produce multiple sets, which are then all competing with each other on the shelf. And if Well Meaning Relative grabs the wrong set as a present? FLGS have more returns/swaps to process. Not to mention some of the UK prices could make GW blush. And even those don’t seem consistent.

A Snowspeeder for instance is a pretty reasonable £32 from Element. But, the X-34 Landspeeder (Luke’s wheels, but with guns) is £54. And that Truck thing? £65.

They’re all over the shop!

I remain baffled to this day, how many people had/have the attitude that if a company makes a new miniature game in the same scale as their old miniature game then it won't be successful because then people will use their old miniatures to play the game. Just intuitively people should stop and realize how backward and silly that logic is. But if they can't do that, they're the anti-Don Draper, at least open your eyes when you're walking through your local game store and notice the gigantic presence of Games Workshop there, a company which never plays these scale games and sells more than anybody.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
By all means do what GW do and have different games in the same universe exploring different scales of warfare (small warbands up to massive forces), but there’s no need and to me, little sense, in making the associated models different sizes.

not like GW his having a unified scale at all (even the models from different kits of the same release vary in scale and size)
Underworlds models being a different size than Warcry and AoS, just that no one cares about the size at all (and those who do are of course just haters that want GW to fail and scale creep does not exist)
saying you cannot use Shatterpoint models for Legion is understandable as they go for a very different design with those, but if just for the size, you cannot use Underworlds models in AoS either (not even talking about Cursed City that is out of scale as well) as the difference is similar

so if you can use a Cursed City hero or Underworlds model in AoS, you can use Shatterpoint Vader or Luke in SW Legion just fine

and for the problem of having multiple Vaders from different games that are all a little different in size, does not really looks to be a problem of having the very same Space Marine hero from the very same game in different sizes because they are getting bigger with each release

Legion just cares about the base size and silhouette for infantry, nothing else matters at all. So go nuts using SP minis on the correct base. No idea if that is true in reverse though.

For MDGs pricing point, I got my two buses (AA5 speeder) for £14 each. So pricing varies depending upon where you get it.

Are they making new Xwing ships or still trying to update retail packs with the old models to the new rules as well as repaints?

Just making card packs and starter sets currently.

X-Wing World Championships are at Adepticon. There's nothing scheduled by AMG as far as reveals go, so it's not looking too healthy. OTOH, there was a recent announcement about a new tournament circuit with official prize support, so who knows any more!

Thanks for the updates. I figured that was the case but thought I might ask to make sure.

Slipspace wrote:
X-Wing World Championships are at Adepticon. There's nothing scheduled by AMG as far as reveals go, so it's not looking too healthy. OTOH, there was a recent announcement about a new tournament circuit with official prize support, so who knows any more!

Yah, a single 30 minute panel that covers Legion, SP and MCP and that is all. Sad state of affairs. Hopefully though they can announce/tease some new Legion stuff and not just show off the cards for the things we know are coming already.

A whole new slew of products for Rian Johnson's upcoming trilogy, the Rogue One film, the new Sequel 2: Rey Boogaloo trilogy, the Lando film, and more? :(

Back to MM...

But not so far back, since this is all about CMON and boardgames. (: Dunno how many of you remember when CMON closed its warehouse (Asmodee acquired MM in Dec 2021) and ran a huge sale (plus an abysmal KS that was really a lottery to buy limited edition stuff they still had in stock), but. after that, MM started selling at discounts some CMON stuff, such as Wrath of Kings and HATE (but not Dark Age miniatures -- NEVER Dark Age miniatures). So, yeah, Asmodee's owning MM meant that Asmodee, a distributor, had a retail outlet (they might own others) to sell their distributed game. However, since, at least for CMON, I haven't seen deep discounts of a game franchise. Everybody hates change and the previous guys always did a better job.

CM on BGG: "December 2021 was when it was announced, but it happened at some point earlier in the year. Strictly speaking Asmodee didn't buy them, but rather Ebracer bought MM first and then later bought Asmodee. Asmodee is Embracer's board game wing though so they got lumped together and while Asmodee wasn't technically the owner you can see from the now edited announcement they were involved in running MM once both were acquired.

Its on Reddit: "Take this all with a grain of salt of course, but I’m guessing Asmodee saw their sales skyrocket during the pandemic and milked them during that for profit, like any corporate company would do. Then, if those two aren’t associated directly with Asmodee, they’re likely just very familiar with the company’s executives and knew Asmodee was looking to sell. (Current owners worked for Asmodee.)

More discussion on BGG : https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3265170/miniature-market-under-new-ownership
Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/1be1bnz/miniature_market_ownership_change/

*****

And back to OT (:

FFG kept pumping out "lifestyle" games, which I think is unsustainable. "Lifestyle" games are those games a gamer will devote their time and money to, such as WH40K and MtG. Companies with long-running lifestyle games typically only will support a single or few lines (GW even got rid of Warhammer Fantasy). What happens when a company has multiple game lines is that they support the ones that make money, and drop the ones that don't, while releasing new lines to see "what sticks". How long they support these new lines looks to vary among companies. My guess is that if an employee at the company likes a particular game line, it's more likely to continue have support.

I dunno how many of you play card games as well as miniature games, but FFG has put out a *lot* of "lifestyle" games over a good period of time. Off the top of my head, with cards, it's been Netrunner, L5R, Star Wars (several games, including the Destiny dice game), Call of Cthulhu LCG, Arkham Horror card game. With miniatures, it's been Star Wars (various, including Legion, Armada, X-Wing, Shatterpoint (sorta)), Runewars, and, way in the past, Battlelore. FFG seems to throw a lot of spaghetti on the wall, leaving customers who've spent hundreds of dollars on their favorite FFG lifestyle game with no further product. BTW, IIRC, FFG has released *another* SW CCG, that's actually pretty good.

RPGs have it even harder. Its low barrier to entry means a ton of RPG systems out there, yet the convention is that you need not only buy-in from a group of gamers, but they have to exist in the first place. As hobbyists grow older, they've pushed RPG books into coffee-table book territory -- and prices -- yet they're not the ones who can meet afternoons for that RPG game. The internet has helped, I guess, but the internet has its alternates to RPGs, I think.

 ingtaer wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
X-Wing World Championships are at Adepticon. There's nothing scheduled by AMG as far as reveals go, so it's not looking too healthy. OTOH, there was a recent announcement about a new tournament circuit with official prize support, so who knows any more!

Yah, a single 30 minute panel that covers Legion, SP and MCP and that is all. Sad state of affairs. Hopefully though they can announce/tease some new Legion stuff and not just show off the cards for the things we know are coming already.

I wouldn't object to seeing more Legion stuff, but isn't it a bit early for that? It seems since Shatterpoint's release Legion releases come at half the speed they used to. With how much they've shown last year, it'll take a while to get through it all unless they ramp up the pace again.

 ced1106 wrote:
Off the top of my head, with cards, it's been Netrunner, L5R, Star Wars (several games, including the Destiny dice game), Call of Cthulhu LCG, Arkham Horror card game.

You missed Game of Thrones and Marvel Champions, but I think you got the rest - off the top of my head, LotR, Arkham Horror and Marvel Champions are the currently supported LCGs, plus the new SW CCG.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The multiple model scales for Star Wars is completely baffling to me.

By all means do what GW do and have different games in the same universe exploring different scales of warfare (small warbands up to massive forces), but there’s no need and to me, little sense, in making the associated models different sizes.

If I get into the skirmish/warband scale, I’m then naturally poised to up the size of my collection, and start dabbling in the larger scaled conflicts if it’s the same models with different rules.

From a production point of view it’s also a lot of duplicated effort. You can just do a single box of Storm Troopers. You need to sculpt and produce multiple sets, which are then all competing with each other on the shelf. And if Well Meaning Relative grabs the wrong set as a present? FLGS have more returns/swaps to process. Not to mention some of the UK prices could make GW blush. And even those don’t seem consistent.

A Snowspeeder for instance is a pretty reasonable £32 from Element. But, the X-34 Landspeeder (Luke’s wheels, but with guns) is £54. And that Truck thing? £65.

They’re all over the shop!

So, lets get this straight. Imperial Assault did not have a bunch of sculpts that needed to be redone for Legion. It had units, but the game had a single Stormtrooper sculpt that you got 6 copies of. Any unit added to the game (which was definitely the focus) necessitated the need for enough new sculpts that trying to reuse the one board game quality sculpt with a molded base was a fraction of the overall effort. There's probably a case for reusing the hero sculpts.... IA certainly gouged players for that nonsense pretty hard, but Legion also just didn't really have many of them in reality. To this day, there's no padawan Ahsoka for Clones and the only crew of the Ghost is Sabine. The first Inquisitors were released on Friday.

Whether that's by design to hopefully deter issues with Imperial Assault players or just that Legion was focused on a different experience, my big issue with the game is how poorly it incorporates heroes into the game. IA sculpts definitely aren't up to the task of a wargame, but Legion really did itself no favors by hitting a pretty low bar for wargame quality. In any case, its really not a case of redone work, trying to sell IA sculpts as a wargame wouldn't really cut it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Geifer wrote:

I wouldn't object to seeing more Legion stuff, but isn't it a bit early for that? It seems since Shatterpoint's release Legion releases come at half the speed they used to. With how much they've shown last year, it'll take a while to get through it all unless they ramp up the pace again.

I wouldn't say so much since Shatterpoint's release. Basically once Clones and Droids had their base wave released, the game slowed down a lot. AMG seems to be adding things as armies now, so the releases kind of seem to come as a big wave of new stuff bundled together. Initially it was the syndicates, then the Mandalorian content, then Ewoks and now Genoshans. The trickle of add ons has dried up, but this is something FFG has always been bad about. Since they start with just two factions and add more a year or two later, they burn out of new stuff for the initial factions pretty early. Ultimately what really killed X-Wing 2.0. They just didn't have new content for Rebel/Empire players who were basically the only factions in 1.0 to compel them to keep playing the new edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ingtaer wrote:
Legion just cares about the base size and silhouette for infantry, nothing else matters at all. So go nuts using SP minis on the correct base. No idea if that is true in reverse though.

Shatterpoint is a very 2D ruleset played on very 3D terrain. It uses a height mechanic to determine LOS and cover that depends more on the terrain than the models.

The bigger issue you'll run into is just that the scale is very different and the base size difference is pretty extreme. I believe it's like 25 mm jump to 40 mm. I'm not sure many of the SP minis would even fit on a Legion base.

Might be it just feels more drawn out now because the only thing I'm really waiting for at the moment is the Bad Batch and they seem to be determined to release just about anything else instead.

Yeah, the Shatterpoint bases are 40mm, which is kind of bogus when AMG already has 35mm bases for Crisis Protocol. No idea why they felt the need to eschew standardization when plenty of models in both games share equally excessive poses.

 Geifer wrote:
Might be it just feels more drawn out now because the only thing I'm really waiting for at the moment is the Bad Batch and they seem to be determined to release just about anything else instead.

Yeah, the Shatterpoint bases are 40mm, which is kind of bogus when AMG already has 35mm bases for Crisis Protocol. No idea why they felt the need to eschew standardization when plenty of models in both games share equally excessive poses.

Bad Batch releases next month!.... for Shatterpoint....

I feel like the base size thing in Shatterpoint is probably more a gameplay/game balance thing than anything. They seem to have figured out some of the quirks of their front to back move stick system and what worked and didn't work with MCPs objective placements. Shatterpoint is even more dependent on models being able to get to specific places and I suspect the extra base size helps with some of that geometry, specifically since you cannot take two move actions and instead still can get a pretty far distance with a take cover push. I'd have to get out my sticks and see what kind of difference it makes with pushes and the larger contesting radius to be sure though.

 LunarSol wrote:
Bad Batch releases next month!.... for Shatterpoint....

Haha, yeah. I already shook my fist in the general direction of where I suspect AMG's company HQ when I found out.

I think I prefer the Legion sculpts by no small margin, though. Even if I didn't have any preference for which game I want models. There's something odd about the Shatterpoint models. Maybe it's the paintjob, but they seem off to me.

 Geifer wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Bad Batch releases next month!.... for Shatterpoint....

Haha, yeah. I already shook my fist in the general direction of where I suspect AMG's company HQ when I found out.

I think I prefer the Legion sculpts by no small margin, though. Even if I didn't have any preference for which game I want models. There's something odd about the Shatterpoint models. Maybe it's the paintjob, but they seem off to me.

It varies a lot. SP is definitely going for big, expressive silhouettes which can be a little hit or miss. Legion tends to go for a lot of "battle ready" poses that stand on their own well, where SP has a lot more interactive poses that make more sense when models are near one another. The new Vader/Luke for example make a lot more sense when put together so Luke is parrying Vader's strike but both models look a little odd by themselves. Another thing is that a lot of the dynamic trooper poses wouldn't work at all in large units, but on the table in the context of the game when there's only a few of them total, they generally add to the board well.

There's definitely pros and cons to each. There's a few Legion sculpts I prefer, though the Grevious model for SP is one of the best sculpts they've done full stop and a huge step up from the little thing they did in Legion. I think maybe the way to describe it is that I prefer how Legion armies look, but I like how Shatterpoint tables look better?

 His Master's Voice wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
That's caused Embracer to shut down and sell off a lot of studios and other companies they own.

Embracer hasn't shut down, otherwise it wouldn't be them doing the selling. They are divesting assets at a staggering rate though, in order to survive long enough for the parts of the company that actually have something coming out relatively soon to produce some cash.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Asmodee going next, possibly in parts.

Man I hope FFG can escape this. I would love some new expansions for the Arkham series of games.