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Title is hyperbole/a riff off the infamous New York Daily News headline during the 1976 Presidential election.

Atomic Mass posted this:



I have to say I'm devastated.

 ScarletRose wrote:
I feel like this is a bit of an inaccurate headline - they're not saying it's cancelled.

Did you not read the first sentence in my post, nor read/watch the content in the link I shared elaborating on the reference I was making with it? Its a perfectly accurate headline, the context is essentially the same. Ford never told New York to 'drop dead', nor did him not giving the city additional funding "cancel" the city, in the same way that AMG didn't say the game is cancelled, nor does them not releasing further product prevent people from continuing to purchase and play it.

And Armada, perhaps even more so than X-wing, seemed to have a lot of stock issues. There were points of times when the basic fighter packs were going for quite a bit on ebay simply because no more had been made.

The stock issues are because everything sells out quickly. Everything sells out quickly because the demand for the product exceeds available supply. Demand for the product exceeds available supply because they only manufacture enough product to cover what they expect to sell based on their sales projections. They only manufacture enough product to cover what they expect to sell based on their sales projections because that is what they regard as being maximally profitable with minimal risk.

The fact that everything is constantly sold out proves that the game is/could be very profitable and is worth supporting, so stock issues aren't necessarily a bad thing in this context.

Voss wrote:
Unprepared small studio under corporate overlords struggles with the backlog of multiple Star Wars product lines dropped in their laps. Goodness me, what a shock.

Armada was the best choice for a new product hiatus, as FFG left it with a legacy of neglect anyway.

I think this is an overly polite read of the situation. It hasn't been publicly stated but the discussion amongst those "in the know" (and I do have direct lines to a few people who worked at FFG and lost their jobs as a result of this) is that AMG was given the option to retain some or all of FFGs design staff and chose not to, and only extended an offer to a couple of people to allow them to interview for their jobs, of which they only hired one, who they fired less than a year later (3 weeks ago in fact). So the unprepared bit is definitely accurate, but I would follow it with "and poorly mis-managed".

Also, FFG left Amada (specifically Armada) with a product development roadmap that Lucasfilm had approved out to 2023, which is far from "neglect". There was a lot of content in various stages of development (scuttlebutt from my contacts says there was at least one more wave of Clone Wars stuff that was basically ready to go in terms of design and development, they only needed to move ahead with production on it). In terms of sales, they literally could not produce product fast enough, the demand for it was clearly there.

Right now I'm thinking its a license issue. Asmodees Star Wars license expires in the 2023-2024 timeframe (if not very early 2025). It takes them 18-24 months to take a product from concept to release. With all the delays and everything its possible that they don't have any optimism to be able to get something out for Armada with enough time on the market to make the investment in time/money/resources worthwhile before the license goes.

It could be that if/when they renew the license things will pick back up and those negotiations are ongoing, but the fact that they felt compelled to post this doesn't leave me with very much hope of that occurring. I think its likely that Disney/Lucasfilm upped the license fee that they were asking for and Asmodee walked. Alternatively, Disney/Lucasfilm want to put it out to bid to see what they can get for it.

Right now, I expect we'll be seeing similar announcements made for X-Wing/Legion within the next 12-18 months.

Yes, Simone Elliott went from managing the Disney license for FFG to managing all of AMG.

I can offer some insight on the GW licensing aspect. There is/was (in the past) no clauses or stipulations disallowing design, production, and sale of competing miniature and war game products. there were clauses and stipulations which, if you squint, could be interpreted as meaning that under certain circumstances, particularly if you're a hard-ass lawyer with a chip on your shoulder and instructions to find a way to break a contractual agreement.

In FFG's case, there wasn't (to my knowledge) any sort of breach of contract type stuff involved. The contract came up for renewal, W was unhappy about FFG and directly competing with its other product lines, and made certain demands of FFG in order to negotiate the renewal. FFG declined those demands, and both companies parted ways as a result, more or less a mutual decision. In the case of certain other partnerships - see my comment about squinting and disgruntled lawyers.

 frankelee wrote:
People see amazingly complex narratives when looking at nothing at all. Armada doesn't sell very well. Its revenue when compared to the costs doesn't cover its manufacture, development, and share of overhead for the company at large. And so it goes bye bye.

This is not accurate. The fact that Armada is constantly sold out and being reprinted and restocked indicates quite the opposite about it, that the game actually sells very well and is more than profitable enough to cover its own costs. When a company like AMG/FFG/Admodee, or really any competent company in this industry, green lights production on a game like this they first analyze expected sales versus the costs to develop and produce the game, inclusive of all overhead and indirect costs. If those costs succeed the revenue generated by the expected sales, then the game doesn't get greenlit. If If the revenue generated only minorly exceeds the costs and it's clear that the ROI on the product line is not as high as what could be generated from investment on a different product, than the game doesn't get greenlit. when the expected sales exceed the costs, and the ROI is acceptable relative to other uses of the investment funds, then the game gets greenlit.

The fact that the game has something like 8 years and a dozen waves of product behind it, and tons and tons of sold out restocks behind it as well, would indicate that the game does sell very well and does cover all of the associated developmental, production, overhead, and indirect costs behind it. If it didn't, all of those expansions would not have been green lake. If it didn't all of those reprints would not have been greenlit. An expansion would not be authorized if the ROI on the expansion didn't meet performance standards. a reprint would not be authorized if the ROI on the reprint would not meet performance standards. We don't need to have hard data in front of us to know that the game sales performance is strong enough to have justified all of the support that it's received to date.

The fact that in this post AMG committed to continuing to reprint and restock existing products would corroborate this. If they were suffering losses on those existing products, they would not be continuing to reprint and restock them. this is just pure common sense.

 frankelee wrote:


As to Armada, I would say, jargon aside, that it quite clearly is not selling well, the prequel era ships were an attempt after a hiatus to jumpstart the product line again, and the revenue they generated was a disappointment that didn't justify the line's continuance.

An AMG employee(well, technically contractor) in the Armada discord literally said that the game continues to sell really well and product continues to actively sell out well in advance of their projections. So, no - you're wrong.

Selling out is a completely unreliable metric, that doesn't tell us anything without other data points. Data points such as them cancelling the game because it doesn't sell well. Also, if anybody wants the new Armada ships, they're widely available online and at retail stores near you, at least in North America. Which doesn't make them feel very sold out anyway.

One of the two Clone Wars starter sets actually did briefly sell out in both the Asmodee and FFG online stores and in many distributors. It was said that they had an early second wave of product for the Clone Wars releases in anticipation of demand (i.e. a "pre-reprint") which is why it didn't completely disappear from shelves. The Venator is also sold out in many places (including Asmodees online store, Fantasy Flights online store was briefly sold out as well but recently restocked (likely a similar second wave/pre-reprint).As far as Asmodee and AMG are concerned, "selling out" means their own inventory is depleted. They don't particularly care if you can go to your local store and buy them, Asmodee was already paid for that product and they have already extracting whatever profit or revenue they can derive from it.

There's nothing particularly telling in their "reprint and restock" promise either, FFG has advanced on-going reprint orders with their Chinese factories for their products they haven't cancelled yet, the developmental costs are already paid for, it would actually be quite normal for a dead game that's not generating acceptable revenue to still get stocked for a year after they decide to pull the plug. They did with Runewars. Not to mention they may well have warehouses full of it that they want to get rid of, and the "reprint" is not going to mean what optimistic fans hope it means. The game is cancelled.

Have you ever done business in China before? An "advance on-going reprint order" can be pulled at any time essentially at no cost. #1 rule of dealing with a chinese factory is never pay up front or make a deposit, because the factory can and will walk away with your money and you have no recourse to see it or what you paid for again. Likewise, FFG has no real obligation to carry through on a reprint order that hasn't entered into production yet. If it did enter production, the more likely thing for them to do would be to cancel any further reprints, ship and release whatever was already completed, and then drop this announcement.

They also don't necessarily have "warehouses full of product" - the industry as a whole, and Asmodee in particular, operate very lean when it comes to how much inventory they retain in their warehouses. The majority of their product orders are delivered immediately to their distributors and retailers, they only keep a bare minimum of inventory for themselves to cover short-term restocks in between reprints, as well as allocating some product to their own direct online sales channel.

The comparison to Rune Wars is also poor. When Rune Wars was shitcanned they announced it via ending their Organized Play program. They actually never ran a reprint for any of the Rune Wars products. While FFG and AMG might have differences in communication, manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, production quantities, etc are all centralized under Asmodee corporate. There is a stark difference in how Asmodee is handling these two games which should be immediately obvious and has strong implications in terms of their relative strengths as revenue/profit generating product lines.

 Polonius wrote:
When I was a wee little Polonius, knee high unto a grasshopper, my Pa took my aside one day. As we sipped on cold sasparilla, he told me, “Son, you’re gonna see alll manner of fancy games. But some will only break your heart. Be wary of pre painted miniatures, naval fleet battles, and licensed properties.”

Then my Ma stuck her head out the window and chimed in, “Also remember that undercapitilization, not incompetence, is what sinks more businesses.”

They were simple folk, but they understood the ways of the world.

Truly wise. This is why I buy absurd amounts of XWing/Armada/Legion product, well beyond reasonable levels. These games won't be around forever, and who knows what they might be replaced with when they go.

A large collection means I can continue playing them indefinitely.

Slipspace wrote:
I'm not sure I buy this idea that Armada was doing fine and this isn't just a purely business-related decision based on poor sales. It may not be completely representative of a game's success, but if you compare the numbers participating in the official world championships for Armada and X-Wing it appears X-Wing was more than 4 times as popular. That agrees fairly well with the local situation pre-Covid where X-Wing tournaments drew around 30 players and Armada tended to be the same group of 6-8 people.

Thats not really saying anything, the size of worlds is fixed by FFG (and I guess now FFG if they continue doing it) and requires an invitation to play (though in some years they have done last chance qualifiers for various games). Also keep in mind that a game of Armada occupies 2x the footprint of a game of X-Wing.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Armada turned me off with the lack of consistent scale and then the up gunning of the rebels. I get why, just didn't like the choices.

Yeah, agreed. Having seen what many of the ships would look like in scale proportional to an Armada Star Destroyer, I understand why they opted to go for the sliding scale, but it would be cool if they had scaled everything down so that the game actually lived up to its namesake and you were playing fleet scale engagements more along the lines of the Battle of Endor or the Siege of Coruscant as opposed to the small task force skirmishes that the game is actually focused on.

AMG is a small company responsible for 4 different games that apparently elected not to retain the majority of the original design staff and fired most/all of those that they did. Lets not pretend that the blame is all on Asmodees shoulders, it may have been Asmodees decision to transfer the projects, but its AMGs responsibility to manage the transition and continued development of those products.

Ancient Otter wrote:

 ced1106 wrote:

I guess, as a footnote, it's unfortunate that Armada is unlikely to be picked up by another company: AEG's Doomtown, Wizard of the Coast's Netrunner, and Hasbro's HeroScape, as examples.

For the record, Doomtown Reloaded was picked up by Pine Box Entertainment after AEG ended it. They kept it going and are currently running a successful KS for a new starter set.

WOTC recently made trademark applications for Netrunner, possibly for digital versions.

Kind of a different situation, these are all tabletop IPs owned by other tabletop companies.

Star Wars Armada is a non-tabletop IP owned by a non-tabletop company. Unless Asmodee has the ability to sub-license the IP on behalf of Lucasfilm and allow a non-Asmodee publisher to produce the game for them under license, etc. - something which I very much doubt they can do - it will not and cannot happen. The fact that the license is itself coming up for expiry within the next couple years makes this a non-starter as well, no publisher is going to cut a deal to do this when the expiration window is this close and they have no control over whether or not Asmodee will have an extension/renewal of the license. Theres essentially no opportunity to see a return on investment here as they are racing the clock to develop, manufacture, and release product before its too late. Any sub-lease like this (assuming its possible under the terms of Asmodees license) will not happen until Asmodee's license is first extended/renewed - something that might still well be a couple years away from happening.

And that assumes that the extension/renewal is something Asmodee intends to pursue. The revelation that theres some licensing SNAFU involving Hasbro (iirc Hasbro has exclusive Star Wars board game distribution rights in North America, which means that Asmodee can design Star Wars board games but can't sell them in the US/Canada unless it goes through Hasbro) leads me to believe that Asmodee might not want to renew the license as the ROI without the board game piece of it might not be there. In other words they are going to continue to push out the Legion and X-Wing content that they have ready to go until the license expires and then they pack it in.