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Announcement at Ares Games
Battlestar Galactica – Starship Battles game license to end

*****
Ares Games is very sorry to announce the Battlestar Galactica - Starship Battles combat miniature game is going to be discontinued, due to the end of the license agreement with Universal Brand Development. The contract is due to expire on December 31st and all negotiations to extend it failed to reach a satisfactory outcome.

The expansion Faster Than Light and the Additional Counter Set, announced for early 2021, will be released only as free downloadable PDFs, and no further models will be released. Sales of existing inventory will continue until June 30th, 2021.

Battlestar Galactica - Starship Battles Starter Set.

The end of the game represents a significant loss to us – not just because of the loss of all developed models in the pipeline, now canceled, and of all the work we dedicated to the project for several years - but also because we will not be able to provide to the dedicated player’s community which supported the game the new releases they were waiting for.

Battlestar Galactica Starship Battles was launched in December 2018, when the Battlestar Galactica - Starship Battles Starter Set was released, featuring four ready–to–play miniatures - two Colonial Vipers Mk. II and two Cylon Raiders. Three waves of Spaceship Packs followed, bringing all the main small ships in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series from 2003: Viper Mk.II, Viper Mk.VII, Cylon Raiders, Raptors and Heavy Raiders. The game received multiple awards, including UK Game Expo awards as best miniature rules and best miniature line, in 2019.

What other ships could they have had in the pipeline?

Was that a thing?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What other ships could they have had in the pipeline?

That would be the raptor with a bad gimble with some damaged deck plates from the landing and a joint pack of Starbuck’s and Apollo’s vipers where his wing is blown off and she has to bring in the cat. They are magnetic so they click together so she can land them on the flight deck before the pods retract.

I bought the base game, but I was very disappointed with how they handled the ship packs.

X-Wing gives you the generic pilots & aces in the same package. BSG had you buying each one separately.

That and the very un-intuitive control panels for the ships just killed the game for me.

Love the tv series (both), love the model, don’t want to pay x-wing prices. Give me packs of 10 each for a good price and I’d consider it.

 Theophony wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What other ships could they have had in the pipeline?

That would be the raptor with a bad gimble with some damaged deck plates from the landing and a joint pack of Starbuck’s and Apollo’s vipers where his wing is blown off and she has to bring in the cat. They are magnetic so they click together so she can land them on the flight deck before the pods retract.

I’m not sure if you’re serious.


Anyway, I got a couple of the ships and I was pretty impressed with them. If they had been a bit cheaper, I probably would have bought more than just the two. I guess we’ll see how Miniature Market deals with this announcement.

The biggest problem with IP-based miniatures games is that they eventually run out of stuff to produce. Their choices then are:

- Make stuff up completely. This usually conflicts with the IP holder and is rarely popular with fans.

- Release infinite amounts of 'characters' and other whatevers. Starbuck Skywalker flies their TIE-Raptor into Baltar's Base Star Destroyer or whatever. There are rarely miniatures. They're just variants.

- Moonlight the game. The IP is expensive, so the license must end now.

I still find it strange that they released a Battlestar Galactica game that somehow did not feature the Galactica.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I still find it strange that they released a Battlestar Galactica game that somehow did not feature the Galactica.

It's for the same reason capital ships don't appear in starfighter games.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I still find it strange that they released a Battlestar Galactica game that somehow did not feature the Galactica.

In fairness the Galactica is the iconic ship, but the actual fighters in the TV series tend to do a lot more of the actual fights and have the most action focused moments. Plus the nature of the series is that, for combat, you basically have the Galactica on her own with lots of unarmed larger ships. So in a space combat game you've got to invent things to give you a larger ship battle experience. The PC game did this by doing a whole war before the Galactica fled so you've got loads of ships from the 13 colonies fighting it out with Cylons.

As you say you have to invent things to add. Otherwise you'd have 1 player with several base stars and multiple larger ships and fighters and one player with the Galactica and then just a few token fighter ships as their army - every single game.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What other ships could they have had in the pipeline?

I posted this in the general scifi games thread. Obviously I can't verify the info posted over on BGG but I had similar thoughts on the canon longevity of releases (as well as complaints about the amount of repaints in the initial rollout).

 warboss wrote:

Apparently others have lost their licenses as well according to Andrea midway down the first page of comments on BGG. Maybe they're cleaning house in terms of licenses before the supposed re-reboot for streaming?

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2568529/ares-announces-battlestar-galactica-starship-battl

Andrea Angiolino
Designer @angiolillo
Posted, Dec 31, 2020
First thing - I read around that the license to Slitherine for the Battlestar Galactica Deadlock videogame has not been renewed. Nor the license for Moebius/Pegasus' models.
We are not alone.

Here (in Italian) some details on what happened:
http://www.gioconomicon.net/modules.php?name=News&file=artic...

After checking with Ares Games, they write: "Moulds were already made for the Classic Series fighters (three variants of Viper MK.I and two of Classic Cylon Raider) and prototypal models were reay for Battlestar class starships including the very Battlestar Galactica and for the Cylon StarBase Cylone, together with new models as Viper MK.III, Raptor MK.I and Cylon Razor."

We had already playtested more, like the Blackbird whose rules we released here yesterday:
https://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/showthread.php?33750-Black...

Two expansion/accessories sets have been planned but not approved for printing by Universal, so they will be made available as PDFs: Battlestar Galactica: Starship Battles – Faster Than Light and Battlestar Galactica: Starship Battles – Additional Counter Set.

 Overread wrote:
In fairness the Galactica is the iconic ship, but the actual fighters in the TV series tend to do a lot more of the actual fights and have the most action focused moments. Plus the nature of the series is that, for combat, you basically have the Galactica on her own with lots of unarmed larger ships. So in a space combat game you've got to invent things to give you a larger ship battle experience. The PC game did this by doing a whole war before the Galactica fled so you've got loads of ships from the 13 colonies fighting it out with Cylons.

As you say you have to invent things to add. Otherwise you'd have 1 player with several base stars and multiple larger ships and fighters and one player with the Galactica and then just a few token fighter ships as their army - every single game.

You're looking at this with a very narrow perspective. The limitations you've listed above did not hamper the development of Deadlock in any way.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Overread wrote:
In fairness the Galactica is the iconic ship, but the actual fighters in the TV series tend to do a lot more of the actual fights and have the most action focused moments. Plus the nature of the series is that, for combat, you basically have the Galactica on her own with lots of unarmed larger ships. So in a space combat game you've got to invent things to give you a larger ship battle experience. The PC game did this by doing a whole war before the Galactica fled so you've got loads of ships from the 13 colonies fighting it out with Cylons.

As you say you have to invent things to add. Otherwise you'd have 1 player with several base stars and multiple larger ships and fighters and one player with the Galactica and then just a few token fighter ships as their army - every single game.

You're looking at this with a very narrow perspective. The limitations you've listed above did not hamper the development of Deadlock in any way.

I forgot the name, but did mention the PC game. As I said they achieved it by setting the game before the TV series events - in the first Cylon war situation. Inventing new ships and such to bulk out the game. As I said in the core series (original and remake) its fighters and dog-fights where most of the action is; whilst capital ships do some, the Galactica side is very limited on combat focused ships. So if you try and stay true to the series a dog-fighter game is a more natural choice. Plus you can have character ships and the like

Huh. I didn’t even know there Was a miniatures game.

 Absolutionis wrote:
The biggest problem with IP-based miniatures games is that they eventually run out of stuff to produce. Their choices then are:

- Make stuff up completely. This usually conflicts with the IP holder and is rarely popular with fans.

- Release infinite amounts of 'characters' and other whatevers. Starbuck Skywalker flies their TIE-Raptor into Baltar's Base Star Destroyer or whatever. There are rarely miniatures. They're just variants.

- Moonlight the game. The IP is expensive, so the license must end now.

The biggest problem is that the license can be pulled out from under the game company with little to no notice, even for a healthy game (e.g., Babylon 5 Wars).