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Only thing I am missing is the AI deck...which somehow I completely missed knowing about its existence. The really sad thing is that only my core set of BSF has been opened and played.

We liked it, but then discovered Imperial Assault...which is also now out of production.

OOP or just awaiting stock?

OOP. FFG killed it last year. The expansion to get is Tyrants of Lothal...not actually a great expansion, but it adds the Death Troopers and the Thrawn agendas.

One of the nice things about IA is that it actually feels like a Star Wars story, and the Imperial player has missions and win conditions just like the Rebel heroes. It uses a modified Descent engine, and we find it quite the blast.

Bummer that it’s discontinued.

I feel a sence of accomplishment after spending the last 4 weeks painting all the figures and expansions

I saw all the card packs at Element Games last year. Sadly I was still only thinking about getting into BSF at the time, they are long gone since. I understand from reviewers that they aren't essential though.

Spent lockdown getting all the models painted and components edged, just waiting until we can meet face to face again so I can give it a whirl...

Wow they are tall. Box is as big ass escalation and comes with new tiles, combat cards, resource cards, strong hold cards

GW 2020 - Cardboard and cards cost more than the plastic.

Maybe gw was so proud of the game designers and sculptors, that they gave them a raise and having me pay the bill

Oh, wow. Honestly, the pictures made the super drones look larger. I guess they shrink the drones they're fixing.

Well, there's some content I'll never interact with unless someone happens to split the game, but short of broken 40k rules I'm not sure what would be worth that to split. (Was already leaning away from such a move; this sealed it. Which sucks, since I like the BSF environment well, just not like that.)

The drones they are making are not spindle drones, but hover drones that block incoming ranged attacks

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/08/25/blackstone-fortress-ascension-the-rules/

I have to admit I’m confused as to exactly what GW was hoping to accomplish with this range.

I mean, I look at big box boardgames like Shadows of Brimstone, and I see active communities that recruit new members, buy tons of expansions, and then explore the other games out out by the same manufacturer (like Fortune and Goory or Last Night on Earth). This is what I thought GW was going to do with BSF, hook a new market.

Instead, they priced it high enough to keep out newbs and casuals, underproduced some extras enough to discourage completionists, and weakwatered the content too much for the actual gamers. Only people completely sold on the 40k universe ever got into this game, and it seems most of them are not talking it up as a great experience.

Did it make money? I’m sure it made plenty. Could it have made a lot more money for the company with a little long term thinking or market research? Absolutely. This seems like kind of an arrogant rookie mistake.

My next campaign will be house rules within a Necron pyramid ship.

I'll base it off of Space Marine Adventures, and use Spacehulk and home built corridors and tiles to expand the range, and include the hexs that come in the boxed set. Who knows, I might even add in the Blood Angel Space marine squads I got from Heroes 2, or a different Inquisitor, now that I have the pattern of how the stats are lined up.

I'm with Bob, though. Its like one or two diehards buy the sets, and everyone else just shows up to play a game, then that's it...


Dummy's should have included stats for the Kill Team cross over teams.

Can you imagine if they sold a main box competitive with Zombiecide on price and content that included a little rules pamphlet with stats for all the GW kits that don’t sell well?

100% with you, Bob. I'm perpetually mystified by the prices on this nonsense.

I love the aesthetic and the variety and run 40k RPGs so the esoteric baddies etc are perfect for me, but as a board gamer I felt it pretty seriously lacking.

I kind of like that they're trying for a narrative focus, but it still feels like it's bizarrely overpriced and broken up. There are literally no expansions that were just so cool I needed to have them. I got some of the rules for cheap, but haven't bought a model past the core. The only people I've seen go all-in are a few very invested in 40k as a setting, and some FOMO fanatics.

Having gotten my fair share of expensive board games, stuff like Gloomhaven (yeah, their minis suck), Kingdom Death, FFG, etc should make GW embarrassed re: their (charitably phrased) light BSF content vs. other co-op dungeon crawl or whatever you call the broad genre.

That's like all I ever really wanted from it.

An updated and tightened up Warhammer Quest... in space. Or even just a Sigmarized return to Quest. Or a Space Hulk style reprint of Quest, which I'd hoped for since Space Hulk got re- released.

I just don't get it. You want people clamoring to collect it all or play the crap out of it? Like you guys said, give some sot of bestiary that lets you stat up all the weird junk in the range nobody buys.

If they'd priced and expanded on it like CMON or Flying Frog this could have been their money printer goes brrrr moment.

 Sacredroach wrote:
OOP. FFG killed it last year. The expansion to get is Tyrants of Lothal...not actually a great expansion, but it adds the Death Troopers and the Thrawn agendas.

One of the nice things about IA is that it actually feels like a Star Wars story, and the Imperial player has missions and win conditions just like the Rebel heroes. It uses a modified Descent engine, and we find it quite the blast.

I believe FFG just reprinted a load of IA stuff. Seen a lot come back into stock in Europe and saw them promoting it on social media. It’s true that they’re not making anything new for it though.

I too bought the final box. The price is ridiculous, of course. But I angrily shaked my fist in front of the screen - that'll show them!

Well, at the end of the day I have nice miniatures, board tiles, some cards and rules. It shouldn't be difficult to expand and tweak the game. Some tables (Vhorne an Grekh getting robbed in a drinking session, UR-025 looses in gambling, Amallyn seduces a Squat to fight with her in the next adventure...), new equipment, characters, opponents (it's kind of a large ship in space - there should be Genestealers) and final bosses (Patriarch, Void Dragon, lost Primarchs turned into mindless mutated monsters, Trazyn, Eldrad, the Red Gobbo - well, anyone but Obsidius Mallex) are easy to create. And as it's not a competitive game all is fine as long as you and the party have fun.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
That's like all I ever really wanted from it.

An updated and tightened up Warhammer Quest... in space. Or even just a Sigmarized return to Quest. Or a Space Hulk style reprint of Quest, which I'd hoped for since Space Hulk got re- released.

I just don't get it. You want people clamoring to collect it all or play the crap out of it? Like you guys said, give some sot of bestiary that lets you stat up all the weird junk in the range nobody buys.

If they'd priced and expanded on it like CMON or Flying Frog this could have been their money printer goes brrrr moment.

Seriously. When I saw that death guard expansion, I was pretty excited, because the idea of cheap expansions for recycled minis and expensive expansions for new content seemed so natural. I don't think my self-control could have held out if they had a dozen cheap scenarios that would have ended up with nice baddie variety that I could use in my RPG stuff or kill team, but those absurd prices...

Just remember, each squad of space marines only costs them $5 to $10 to make, total.

shadowsfm wrote:
Maybe gw was so proud of the game designers and sculptors, that they gave them a raise and having me pay the bill

Wow, though, I thought those were much bigger.

What a way to wrap things up. BSFs has been such a roller coaster. A great starter, a couple nostalgia buttons (overpriced, but still), a pair of chaos characters that don't really fit anywhere, a pretty decent hero and cultist expansion, the way overpriced recycling expansion and finally this wet splat.

All the figures together

Those big drones certainly aren't as tall as I had expected. They look nice though, but what a letdown on what was already an underwhelming way to wrap up the series.

I wonder if they'll ever make use of the various sculpts or digital resources of them outside of BSF. Seems such a waste to have things like a plastic crusader, yet only continue selling bloody finecast versions of them on the GW webstore. As a matter of fact, the majority of sculpts for BSF have been excellent, and it would be a shame if sprue layout and a disappointing expansion model will see them disappear before too long (yes, I picked up a few separately on ebay, plus the nicely priced box of only the cultist models). Perhaps they'll wait until the game is fully out of production to at least offer some of them as cheaper models, when it will no longer affect the sales of the overpriced expansions. I'm sure Necromunda players will happily get an Ambull sculpt at a less-inflated price.

It is a shame they didn't make the Hover Drone token as a standalone mini as well - four or five smaller ones packed onto a standard base would have looked good and made the price a little more palatable. :-/

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:
Those big drones certainly aren't as tall as I had expected. They look nice though, but what a letdown on what was already an underwhelming way to wrap up the series.

I wonder if they'll ever make use of the various sculpts or digital resources of them outside of BSF. Seems such a waste to have things like a plastic crusader, yet only continue selling bloody finecast versions of them on the GW webstore. As a matter of fact, the majority of sculpts for BSF have been excellent, and it would be a shame if sprue layout and a disappointing expansion model will see them disappear before too long (yes, I picked up a few separately on ebay, plus the nicely priced box of only the cultist models). Perhaps they'll wait until the game is fully out of production to at least offer some of them as cheaper models, when it will no longer affect the sales of the overpriced expansions. I'm sure Necromunda players will happily get an Ambull sculpt at a less-inflated price.

Yeah I hope they are available separately beyond BSF- I really like the Ambull and Zoat models but the price and gaming guff that comes with them puts me off.

I also hope they don't dump them, things like the Zoat I'd like to pick up, but I can't justify* the near £100 to get the core game to make the card elements in the set playable.



* It's not that I don't want to own it, just that there are a lot of other things GW makes that I want to own first. Plus its short term nature as a product line, at least by what we can tell, means that GW will likely have it out of production before I clear through my buying list to reach it.

I hope Escalation sticks around for a while, really want the Rogue Trader and Psyker from that one, but can't quite cough up €85,- for two minis I really want.

 Grot 6 wrote:
Dummy's should have included stats for the Kill Team cross over teams.

I was hoping for more player-characters (normal, not solo ones) in the 2020 Annual, but it doesn't look like we're getting one.

 BrookM wrote:
I hope Escalation sticks around for a while, really want the Rogue Trader and Psyker from that one, but can't quite cough up €85,- for two minis I really want.

Your other option would be the Combat Arena game. It has all the heroes from Escalation. That's how I got them and then bought the gaming material on ebay (friend has the cultists).

https://www.thalia.de/shop/home/suggestartikel/ID145746894.html?sq=Combat%20Arena&stype=productName

I also hope they "release" their minis at some point. There are a lot of good ones in there, but as other said, not THAT good to dish out that much money cause of added stuff I wouldn't need.
Also in the WH40K universe: is there any other single or coop game? Cause far as I know this was supposed to be that, but reading other posts here, I shouldn't really consider saving up for it.