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Shatterpoint has a really wide range available already, and if they're going to keep reprinting it for a while, then it's getting much better treatment than Armada did (killed it overnight with noticeably unfinished GAR and CIS rosters and zero reprints). Launching it with only one mission to play probably wasn't smart, in hindsight.

Starwars deserves a lot better then this cycle of start new game, new scale, kill it and start again.I learned my lesson with the amazing Xwing... Theres no long therm planning here. Just milk it as fast as possible then paint the cow in another colour and do it again.

Dont really see it as a viable investment for me, at this point just collect some random kits to paint and ignore the rest.
To think with that IP they could have a market leader of a game and minis. Missed chance.

Kinda feels like that’s always been Star Wars’ fate when it comes to gaming. A lack of thought beyond “if we license it, they will buy”.

X-Wing 1st Edition had its flaws (turrets too good, too steep a learning curve without a patient tutor), but was a terrific game. And I always appreciated the models all being of the same scale.

OK, playing chase the card would’ve sucked if A) your gaming group was strict on no card, no upgrade and/or B) Your collecting preference/budget didn’t extend to One Of Everything. And it was pretty scummy to offer a fix for drastically underperforming ships, but only if you Bought This Really Big Thing/Bought This Boxed Set.

Overall, said flaws aside? It was a largely affordable game, and when against an opponent of similar skill, bloody good fun.

I sold up before 2nd Ed, so can’t fairly comment further. But I understand it put some backs up with upgrade kits. Also, I wasn’t personally as invested in the Old EU ships as others. K-Wing in particular looks really bad, and not at all Star Wars.

But it had a pretty substantial player base, and was priced such that those who enjoy Star Wars, and appreciate reasonably priced and well detailed ship replicas were buying too.

Then….they nuked it.

 NAVARRO wrote:
Starwars deserves a lot better then this cycle of start new game, new scale, kill it and start again.

But its two incomplete sides in the fiction. hat means game wise you run out of new stuff to sell quickly. So unless it is more of a historicals style (if have my army and I will try different rulesets) the money isn't there long term for a big company.

 NAVARRO wrote:
Starwars deserves a lot better then this cycle of start new game, new scale, kill it and start again.I learned my lesson with the amazing Xwing... Theres no long therm planning here. Just milk it as fast as possible then paint the cow in another colour and do it again.

Dont really see it as a viable investment for me, at this point just collect some random kits to paint and ignore the rest.
To think with that IP they could have a market leader of a game and minis. Missed chance.

Legion is 8 years old at this point and the scale has remained the same throughout, despite moving between studios. Cards have obviously been invalidated in the 2.0 launch but I don't think 7 or so years is unreasonable as an edition cycle. Some of those models from launch are still available (albeit all the soft-plastics will get phased out for harder alternatives but that's generally considered a big upgrade).

It obviously came at the expense of Imperial Assault but that was a very different game and market, with different expectations of the miniature quality.

Shatterpoint didn't replace Legion (and seemingly wasn't ever intended to) and the nature of its design meant that consistent scale between the two wasn't ever going to be an option (blame Asmodee if you wanted it to be).

Which is precisely why I’m surprised Legions is continuing.

The disparity between Imperial and Rebel when it comes to starships is barely there. Ground forces? Much less so, as Rebels were less about standing battles. I hesitate to call them commandos, but it was more that hit and fade guerrilla style attacks. Death by a thousand cuts, rather than everyone in the middle for a big old punch up.

Even on Hoth, the only real land battle we see on screen? The Rebels are only fighting a holding action. Doing what they can to buy time for the evacuation rather than any real hope of seeing off The Empire entirely.

Shatterpoint is really fun. Definitely my personal preference over Legion and sad to see it go. That said, it's a game you need VERY little to enjoy. I felt like I had a very full collection with only a few purchases, which is probably part of the problem with it.

Just to do the Star Wars game opinion round up:

X-Wing 2.0 paid for the excesses of 1.0. Shame as if it had transitioned to a faction focused model and slipped in prequel stuff sooner it might have worked. It did predate the prequel reappraisal crowd a bit though.

Imperial Assault was a board game with a tacked on vs mode that was terrible. The board game largely ran its course ending in you attacking the Emperor on Coruscant. It was also just horribly exploitative. It's a good game but I have no love for the product.

Armada really suffered from being 2 factions with the Empire being WAY WAY cooler at this scale. It never felt like it really took off, even if it was easily one FFG's best. Definitely would have worked better with the Prequel era factions in place.

Funny enough, that's also an issue initially with Legion, which was really bolstered by its Clone Wars starter. I do get why people like this one and I should probably give it another try. Ultimately I found it kind of gamey and didn't implement characters well, which really made Rebels feel kind of forced. I'll probably look into the changes but I'll probably just continue to play Shatterpoint for a Star Wars fix and let something like Warmachine or Gundam take its place instead.

Legion has always seemed more like a board game adaptation of the Star Wars Battlefront video games than any attempt at adapting the films.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Which is precisely why I’m surprised Legions is continuing.

The disparity between Imperial and Rebel when it comes to starships is barely there. Ground forces? Much less so, as Rebels were less about standing battles. I hesitate to call them commandos, but it was more that hit and fade guerrilla style attacks. Death by a thousand cuts, rather than everyone in the middle for a big old punch up.

Even on Hoth, the only real land battle we see on screen? The Rebels are only fighting a holding action. Doing what they can to buy time for the evacuation rather than any real hope of seeing off The Empire entirely.

It's reflected in their playstyles in Legion at least (though I'd argue that Endor also counts, ridiculous as it is and those fuzzy little buggers are in Legion as a Rebel sub-faction). Scarif works well as a Legion appropriate scenario. Bunch of stuff from associated media like the comics/novels.

Not to mention that there's the whole other side of the coin with the Clone Wars era armies, which are much more obvious examples of set-piece battles.

Billicus wrote:
Legion has always seemed more like a board game adaptation of the Star Wars Battlefront video games than any attempt at adapting the films.

There's definitely a lot of inspiration there with a lot of the weapons pulled directly.

Any licensed product has a natural endpoint. If you don't directly own the IP your stuck making things that already exist in the universe, once you run out you're done.

Shatterpoint is weird in that I get they wanted a game that played like MCP but for Star Wars...but they already had Legion.

Shame. Shatterpoint locally had a bit more traction. Although the 'new' Legion has some interest it's mostly similar to the first run and so is a mature game on arrival.

But all games have a live so there we are - but there are still a bunch of characters that we haven't seen.

 LunarSol wrote:
Imperial Assault was a board game with a tacked on vs mode that was terrible. The board game largely ran its course ending in you attacking the Emperor on Coruscant. It was also just horribly exploitative. It's a good game but I have no love for the product.

1, I'll disagree that the vs mode was terrible
2, Can't really say it was complete, to my mind, when we never got Yoda or Ewoks in the game
3, How was it horribly exploitative?

 Dysartes wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Imperial Assault was a board game with a tacked on vs mode that was terrible. The board game largely ran its course ending in you attacking the Emperor on Coruscant. It was also just horribly exploitative. It's a good game but I have no love for the product.

1, I'll disagree that the vs mode was terrible
2, Can't really say it was complete, to my mind, when we never got Yoda or Ewoks in the game
3, How was it horribly exploitative?

I was mostly in it for the board game element, where half the characters were represented by tokens unless you bought wildly overpriced expansion packs.

Usually I'd say it's always a shame to lose a game. But looking at the wide variety of characters I'm not even sure they're ending the game as such, versus just running out of new things to add and thereby completing it.

I blame the sequel trilogy characters. The moment those were announced it was clear they didn't have good choices anymore. And what else is left to add? Jar Jar? Random cantina alien that showed up in a movie for two seconds but got eleventeen EU novels to flesh him out?

If AMG keeps up the rule support and restocks existing kits, I'd say Shatterpoint isn't in a terrible place. Restocks really seem like their core issue. I haven't seen Deadpool in stock since before Deadpool and Wolverine released. Nor Hulk. If they can't even satisfy demand for popular characters or ones that tie in with new Marvel movies, it's probably for the best if they don't keep going the way they have been.

Looks like this is to head off the announcement of a new MCP based co-op board game thing. Seems kind of cool. The ultimate encounters in MCP are neat design space. The internet is of course very angry.

I guess that explains the Shatterpoint proportions on some of the more recent Legion plastics.
Particularly the saber thickness and posing of some recent and upcoming expansion stuff seems more fitting to Shatterpoint.

My thought is they rescaled some in-progress sculpts when they got a heads-up on this, rather than lose the design time & cost.

...and MCP is turning into a boardgame - https://fb.watch/FuW_IysZ4F/

beast_gts wrote:
...and MCP is turning into a boardgame - https://fb.watch/FuW_IysZ4F/

Oh FFS!
You can't claim you don't have staff to support multiple game lines, then split off into new game lines!

Any resources used to design, sculpt, and playtest could have been used to expand the Shatterpoint line, as well as the MCP lines.
I am guessing they are seeing the end of the road for MCP coming and have already pivoted the resources.
Delaying announcing the death of MCP to prevent stock rotting on the shelves, especially after the recent Starter affiliation boxes like X-Men & Spider-foes.

This is way more of an expansion of MCP's Ultimate Encounter designs, just sold in a way that stops them from getting in trouble with the higher ups for wasting time by having an actual product behind it. This is definitely not replacing MCP in any real way unless its somehow the next Zombicide.

 LunarSol wrote:


Armada really suffered from being 2 factions with the Empire being WAY WAY cooler at this scale. It never felt like it really took off, even if it was easily one FFG's best. Definitely would have worked better with the Prequel era factions in place.

Was the combat balanced well between the fighter/bombers and the capital ships? I only observed a very short demo so didn't have any real experience with it sadly. I was hoping that it might have been a dynamic similar to in 40k when playing an elite army like Marines vs a horde force like IG or orks in that both were viable and down to playstyle preferences. I had imagined that the Empire would typically get only a single capital ship like an ISD typically but hordes of TIEs vs rebel fleets with multiple smaller ships but more elite but numerically inferior fighters instead (with variations on that theme coming out with subsequent releases).

 warboss wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:


Armada really suffered from being 2 factions with the Empire being WAY WAY cooler at this scale. It never felt like it really took off, even if it was easily one FFG's best. Definitely would have worked better with the Prequel era factions in place.

Was the combat balanced well between the fighter/bombers and the capital ships? I only observed a very short demo so didn't have any real experience with it sadly. I was hoping that it might have been a dynamic similar to in 40k when playing an elite army like Marines vs a horde force like IG or orks in that both were viable and down to playstyle preferences. I had imagined that the Empire would typically get only a single capital ship like an ISD typically but hordes of TIEs vs rebel fleets with multiple smaller ships but more elite but numerically inferior fighters instead (with variations on that theme coming out with subsequent releases).

I'm honestly not sure. It's not a meta I really followed though I kind of remember it struggled with the fighter/ship balance. I agree with your take but I don't feel like that's the way the game went. A lot of games though kind of ended up being Empire vs Empire that I saw. I think partially because even if a rebel swarm worked, the fighters were extremely unimpressive and unpainted sculpts. Personally I always preferred Epic X-Wing (even over regular X-Wing) but FFG never supported it particularly well.

Yeah, the faction match in any particular game is always up for grab and Imperials fighting each other whether pre or post Endor has long been part of the canon. Since I never played, I can't speak though as to how much fun it actually was within the constraints of the game mechanics obviously.

I liked Epic X-Wing even before it was a thing as I'd run my own homebrew games of something similar at the FLGS but the mechanics got slow and clunky at that model count. It could go tolerably fast if you limited the upgrades for each ship though.



Some of my favorite memories from gencon back in the day were playing in mega-scale Star Wars games run by a fan group with 6ft Star Destroyers and squadrons of Micro-Machine fighters on microphone stands (this was in the mid to late 1990s long before FFG's Star Wars license). I had hoped this game would have emulated that feel at a more realistic scale and price point but I was souring on FFG's treatment of the license at the time with X-wing's new edition as well as things I was hearing about this game (and price point).

 Arbitrator wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I wouldnt be surprised if MCP goes this way after while

I think it's probably safe for a good while yet. People still play MCP even if it's not seeing the highs of the Covid years. The Marvel well isn't quite as poisoned as the Star Wars one yet either.

Shatterpoint was controversial from the off. The Legion players didn't want it for obvious reasons, the bigger scale wasn't appealing to the GW crowd, it was too much of a hobby project for most board gamers. All bad mojo combined seemingly made a lot of even the people who would have bought into it stop and go "hm I'm going to wait and see how it shakes out..." which only hurt the sales further.

MCP's main issue right now seems to be stock, but as far as controversies go... well, you could have much worse ones. Not frontloading the game with all the A-Listers and instead having a mix of the A/B/C/D-listers throughot probably points to a plan for some longevity too.

kinda. i played very intensively for a long time. and the game has alot of problems that are just no addressed.
and the community around us DIED, now that isnt unsual, alot of communities die. but what i found is, near me, the community is the same. if i went t a tournament 50 miles away in either direction, it was same people just traveling
That got boring.
The game isnt dying yet, but condensing into a core of very dedicated players.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I wouldnt be surprised if MCP goes this way after while

I think it's probably safe for a good while yet. People still play MCP even if it's not seeing the highs of the Covid years. The Marvel well isn't quite as poisoned as the Star Wars one yet either.

Shatterpoint was controversial from the off. The Legion players didn't want it for obvious reasons, the bigger scale wasn't appealing to the GW crowd, it was too much of a hobby project for most board gamers. All bad mojo combined seemingly made a lot of even the people who would have bought into it stop and go "hm I'm going to wait and see how it shakes out..." which only hurt the sales further.

MCP's main issue right now seems to be stock, but as far as controversies go... well, you could have much worse ones. Not frontloading the game with all the A-Listers and instead having a mix of the A/B/C/D-listers throughot probably points to a plan for some longevity too.

kinda. i played very intensively for a long time. and the game has alot of problems that are just no addressed.
and the community around us DIED, now that isnt unsual, alot of communities die. but what i found is, near me, the community is the same. if i went t a tournament 50 miles away in either direction, it was same people just traveling
That got boring.
The game isnt dying yet, but condensing into a core of very dedicated players.

I would say that sounds like a lot of games, that are niche and kept alive through dedicated players. Mordheim is just that. The game is doomed when fans destroy it. If you have the minis you can pull it out and teach new players, and it’s what’s kept the game alive and better than ever.

When Xwing and armada went away it was barely talked about, armada wasn’t really it I think. And Xwing was barely even getting views on YouTube which is fairly dire. Much less views than painting videos for shatterpoint get, and even significantly less than battle reports seem to, bit MCP does much better it looks like. So it seems there is interest there for shatterpoint at least.

 NAVARRO wrote:
Someone needs to create a a viable sustainable long therm business miniatures/wargame model that does not rely solely on the constant churn of new minis.

So... the collapse of capitalism?

No actually, unironically, I think that's just about what it'd take. There's a reason tech companies dig their fingers into planned obsolescence as much as they can possibly get away with. See Kill Team delving into Magic the Gathering-style rotating formats to prevent you from just sitting on the same models for too long.

If you guys could convince your government to give quality miniature games public funding so that they could pivot more towards stability, I'd be all for it. But it's so unlikely that even just writing out that sentence feels like a meme!

I'm a big believer in a game isn't dead if people are playing it. I do think though that these sorts of games with lots of special dice and counters and cards are a lot harder to "keep alive" for longer periods. But in the era of 3D printing, really any game can be kept going with dedicated fans. Having support from a company is nice but it's not needed.

But I think what a lot of people of course mean is "fewer people in my local area will play it, so playing it will require much more effort on my part" which is of course totally fair.

 Da Boss wrote:
I'm a big believer in a game isn't dead if people are playing it. I do think though that these sorts of games with lots of special dice and counters and cards are a lot harder to "keep alive" for longer periods. But in the era of 3D printing, really any game can be kept going with dedicated fans. Having support from a company is nice but it's not needed.

But I think what a lot of people of course mean is "fewer people in my local area will play it, so playing it will require much more effort on my part" which is of course totally fair.

These games usually have a dice conversion of some type, so that’s more a theoretical thing that pops up on places like dakka.
I actually think the modern gaming culture is the worst thing for these games, it really creates a problem getting started and getting healthy community’s.
We even see it with games like Mordheim, where I post for weeks(sometimes a month with table work in progress shots.) that we doing a campaign, and people do the whole I just don’t know if I want to buy miniatures for it. Then 5 months into a campaign they suddenly feel ready to commit after being there watching most weekends feeling left out.
Which is actually I think leads into the capitalism issues above.
Star Wars shattererpoint has expensive miniatures, but is a cheap game to play. But people focus on the per miniature price to a extreame. Which means these games are left in a weird place for making money. They ether create ways to milk players to buy more, or they struggle after the first wave, or hopefully can create multiple waves.
MCP I think ironically got a lot of traction with boardgame groups wanting the game, that where not part of the wargaming hobby in these more modern times.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:
Someone needs to create a a viable sustainable long therm business miniatures/wargame model that does not rely solely on the constant churn of new minis.

So... the collapse of capitalism?

That would certainly help.

More realistically, though, the alternatives to miniature churn are -

- player churn (constantly recruiting enough new players that buy new armies to get started),
- a subscription service (providing some sort of ongoing benefit so that existing players keep playing to play the game)
- paid organised play (which requires enormous infrastructure to be widespread enough to be actually profitable)

There's no realistic way to keep a miniatures game going long term without people continually paying for it.