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BrianDavion wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

which raises the question....... has FFG ever produced anything good that was ORIGINAL? seems like all their sucesses are stuff that rides on the coat tails of an eistablished IP but I could be missing something

Twilight Imperium and Decent have done well for them.

 AduroT wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

which raises the question....... has FFG ever produced anything good that was ORIGINAL? seems like all their sucesses are stuff that rides on the coat tails of an eistablished IP but I could be missing something

Twilight Imperium and Decent have done well for them.

Hence Runewars. They were trying to lever the Terrinoth setting in to a wargame (and an RPG at roughly the same time). Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, it just didn't take.

The Genysis RPG is their own creation which is doing really well in the 'settingless PnP game' market.

 AduroT wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

which raises the question....... has FFG ever produced anything good that was ORIGINAL? seems like all their sucesses are stuff that rides on the coat tails of an eistablished IP but I could be missing something

Twilight Imperium and Decent have done well for them.

Yup, those were the two I was about to name drop as well. I enjoyed them both when they came out but haven't kept up with either in the editions since though.

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.

 warboss wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

which raises the question....... has FFG ever produced anything good that was ORIGINAL? seems like all their sucesses are stuff that rides on the coat tails of an eistablished IP but I could be missing something

Twilight Imperium and Decent have done well for them.

Yup, those were the two I was about to name drop as well. I enjoyed them both when they came out but haven't kept up with either in the editions since though.

Twilight Imperium was a Dune IP game until copyright issues caused them to wholly rebuild it. Technically, even it was born from an unoriginal source.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

which raises the question....... has FFG ever produced anything good that was ORIGINAL? seems like all their sucesses are stuff that rides on the coat tails of an eistablished IP but I could be missing something

Twilight Imperium and Decent have done well for them.

Yup, those were the two I was about to name drop as well. I enjoyed them both when they came out but haven't kept up with either in the editions since though.

Twilight Imperium was a Dune IP game until copyright issues caused them to wholly rebuild it. Technically, even it was born from an unoriginal source.

I believe you're thinking of Rex, which was indeed a reskin of the Dune boardgame.

 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.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

The Runewars rule set was basically an improved X-Wing with a rank and file spin on it. Better than anything GW has ever produced. It failed for a number of reasons, mostly I would say negligence on FFGs part, but the rules were not one of those reasons.

WUWU wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

The Runewars rule set was basically an improved X-Wing with a rank and file spin on it. Better than anything GW has ever produced. It failed for a number of reasons, mostly I would say negligence on FFGs part, but the rules were not one of those reasons.

It was a mediocre flank and spank game. I know it's trendy to gak on GW but...no. It's not better than everything GW has ever produced.

 AduroT wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

which raises the question....... has FFG ever produced anything good that was ORIGINAL? seems like all their sucesses are stuff that rides on the coat tails of an eistablished IP but I could be missing something

Twilight Imperium and Decent have done well for them.

I'd say Descent has done decently...

ERJAK wrote:

WUWU wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

The Runewars rule set was basically an improved X-Wing with a rank and file spin on it. Better than anything GW has ever produced. It failed for a number of reasons, mostly I would say negligence on FFGs part, but the rules were not one of those reasons.

It was a mediocre flank and spank game. I know it's trendy to gak on GW but...no. It's not better than everything GW has ever produced.

Runewars took the movement dial from X-Wing and tied variable initiative values to each unique maneuver, for each unique unit. Never been anything else like it, and far from a "flank and spank". You've never played it, fine.


GW has been designing games like they are still in the '80s, since the '80s.

The quickest way to kill a game is to announce that there will be no new products for it. Everything after that will become self fulfilling.

Not AMGs fault, they clearly got the mother of all hospital passes from Asmodee corporate.

I’d not bother with those reprints. Not many stores will be daft enough to buy meaningful volumes of stock. No one wants to be left holding the baby

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.

It seems likely AMG have been dumped with these three new games and the reality is they can't cope with them all. Of the three X-Wing is the most historically successful and continues to sell well, though not as well as it once did, Legion seems to have grabbed a good bit of attention and sales (again, judging locally) and Armada looks like the odd one out. I fear for its future.

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.

BrianDavion wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

which raises the question....... has FFG ever produced anything good that was ORIGINAL? seems like all their sucesses are stuff that rides on the coat tails of an eistablished IP but I could be missing something

Besides the various games+settings mentioned in response to this question already, it seems rather unfair to the games designers to attribute the successes only to the IPs. The various FFG games I've played have typically been very enjoyable, fairly intuitive, certainly interesting and largely characterful to the setting they were part of. The settings don't have to be original for the games to be. Let's face it, it's not like Star Wars fans will automatically like something just because it's called "Star Wars". Not that the IPs won't help get people interested to begin with, but it's not the whole story of ongoing popularity and commercial success.

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Runewars was a failure for a multitude of reasons, sculpts, no advertizing, poor rules, generic lore.

which raises the question....... has FFG ever produced anything good that was ORIGINAL? seems like all their sucesses are stuff that rides on the coat tails of an eistablished IP but I could be missing something

Besides the various games+settings mentioned in response to this question already, it seems rather unfair to the games designers to attribute the successes only to the IPs. The various FFG games I've played have typically been very enjoyable, fairly intuitive, certainly interesting and largely characterful to the setting they were part of. The settings don't have to be original for the games to be. Let's face it, it's not like Star Wars fans will automatically like something just because it's called "Star Wars". Not that the IPs won't help get people interested to begin with, but it's not the whole story of ongoing popularity and commercial success.

not at all, but if a gaming company is dependant on a lisence for all of it's sucess that can make them HUUUGELY vunerable to a lisence loss. losing the SW lisence would have crippled them, for example. that said even FFG seemed to reckongize this, hence their adopting the SWRPG system they developed to the more generic genysis system

I have a feeling after this wave of Star Wars Legion releases we wont be seeing much of that in a while either.

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.

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.

It seems likely AMG have been dumped with these three new games and the reality is they can't cope with them all. Of the three X-Wing is the most historically successful and continues to sell well, though not as well as it once did, Legion seems to have grabbed a good bit of attention and sales (again, judging locally) and Armada looks like the odd one out. I fear for its future.

How could there be "poor sales" when 70% of the line was nearly constantly sold out for the last three years, while at the same time people were actually selling ships on Ebay for 150$ or more dependent on rarity?

Every time the game has a release all of my area stores sell out of their stock in less than a week. One store STILL has Venators on backorder for 9 different people. I'm just not sure I buy that line of thinking.

I think it's more likely that Asmodee did what all Has-bros do and made willy-nilly changes on a whim because "MaH PrOfiTs" and AMG is a small company now responsible for four different games.

Ignore! Wrong Atomic Mass thread!

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.

chaos0xomega wrote:
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.

Did Asmodee give them the budget to retain that many extra staff members? Like you said, it’s a smaller company.

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:
Let's face it, it's not like Star Wars fans will automatically like something just because it's called "Star Wars".

Pretty sure the sign of a true Star Wars fan is hating Star Wars.

I know AMG are not FFG, but if the idea is to just kill it off, they're doing it very differently to how FFG have killed off game lines. Ending OP is always the first thing they do.

This news piece on the end of L5R reads very different, for example: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2021/2/17/future-of-legend/

Togusa wrote:

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.

It seems likely AMG have been dumped with these three new games and the reality is they can't cope with them all. Of the three X-Wing is the most historically successful and continues to sell well, though not as well as it once did, Legion seems to have grabbed a good bit of attention and sales (again, judging locally) and Armada looks like the odd one out. I fear for its future.

How could there be "poor sales" when 70% of the line was nearly constantly sold out for the last three years, while at the same time people were actually selling ships on Ebay for 150$ or more dependent on rarity?

FFG/Asmodee have had distribution problems for as long as I can remember. Selling out of a tiny number of ships is not the same as selling out of a huge number of the same. All I can go off is my experience, since nobody has the actual numbers to hand, and it's been my experience across multiple different stores, clubs and other communities that Armada was just not doing as well as either Legion or X-Wing. Hell, you just needed to look at the activity in the official FFG forums before they disappeared to see that.

chaos0xomega wrote:
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.

We ofc do not know the intricacies whether AMG fumbled the handover or Asmodee gave them a huge hospital pass without support, but ultimately the parent company is responsible. They made the decision, they need to get it executed correctly.

Saying that, quintrupling the number of games to manage by a company only a few years old smells like a terrible idea without a REALLY good transition plan.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

deano2099 wrote:
I know AMG are not FFG, but if the idea is to just kill it off, they're doing it very differently to how FFG have killed off game lines. Ending OP is always the first thing they do.

This news piece on the end of L5R reads very different, for example: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2021/2/17/future-of-legend/

Is a slow death better than a quick one tho?

There’s a few store owners on the site. What’s your thoughts? Would you do a big restock of Armada reprint products knowing there no future development?

MaxT wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

There’s a few store owners on the site. What’s your thoughts? Would you do a big restock of Armada reprint products knowing there no future development?

All we 'know' for certain is that the "no development" thing is for the near future. Once the reprints started coming through the distribution network, then yes, I would restock ISDs, and Mon Calamari stuff, fighter packs and so on. I'm hardly a big store though, but we do have a local Armada scene.

> seems like all their sucesses are stuff that rides on the coat tails of an eistablished IP but I could be missing something

As someone who lived back in the days of the CCG glut, one of the signs of a mature market is that you can't release a new CCG without an IP.

CCGs are "lifestyle" games. In a "lifestyle game", the customer is expected to make multiple purchases of different products in the game line, often spending hundreds of dollars on a single game system. This, of course, costs a lot of money, so a customer typically will purchase, beyond casual purchases, only one "lifestyle" game at a time, particularly if it involves painting. Game companies usually only end up continuing making product for one or two "lifestyle" games, while sometimes releasing new ones which may or may not continue to have product released. It's a fuzzy definition to at least separate it from boardgames, which tend to be either single-purchase or some expansion sets (and typically don't have a culture of painting or collecting). Other traits of "lifestyle" games are: that they often face the challenge of continuing to release more product as their games mature; that, if they're based on an IP, they often end up releasing product based on obscure aspects of the IP; that a customer is often expected to only buy products of their faction, rather than buying the entire game line (again, referring to how boardgamers typically buy their boardgames); and that a company will have in production only a few "lifestyle" games; and that a customer is expected to keep up with new product releases (rather than expect older releases to be available, which is how the boardgame market usually works).

Games Workshop and Wizards of the Coast have the most well-known "lifestyle" games: Warhammer 40K and Magic the Gathering. While Games Workshop even had the popular Warhammer Fantasy, it now has Warhammer 40K and Age of Sigma as its "lifestyle" games. In the past, it also had its Space Marine Epic, Man O War, and other "lifestyle" games I forgot. Wizards of the Coast has Magic the Gathering and D&D, with HeroScape, D&D Miniatures, Chainmail, Netrunner, and Star Wars as discontinued "lifestyle" games. (Warhammer Fantasy and HeroScape had different situations than the other games for their discontinuation, though.) (BTW, WizKids had MageKnight, MechWarriors, and HeroClix, with HeroClix still remaining. CMON dropped Kings of War and Dark Ages, and their "lifestyle" game is A Song of Ice and Fire. Mantic Games... okay, I lost track of them. ) In any case, GW and WotC, and other companis typically only have two or so "lifestyle" games in current production.

So back to FFG. Off the top of my head, FFG released a number of "lifestyle" games: Battlelore, Call of Cthulhu CCG, Netrunner, Call of Cthulhu LCG, Runewars, SW Destiny Dice Game, SW X-Wings, SW Armada, SW Legion, Arkham Horror LCG, Legend of the Five Rings LCG, Marvel Crisis Protocol, etc. etc. That's a lot of "lifestyle" games. All had (or should have) a lot of product to buy, and only a few still remain. As for Armada, like GW, I suppose, it's not a matter of if a game sells well, it's a matter of how well it sells compared to other game lines, and maybe even FFG thought Armada customers would buy X-Wing if Armada was discontinued. In any case, when a company is releasing more than one "lifestyle' game, I think it's best to determine which of them are the most popular, since they're the most likely to have continued products released. (You may also want to look at how a company keeps new product being purchased, as it often boils down to "sorry, you can't play the older stuff you bought".)

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.

EDIT: Just to be clear, the examples Doomtown, Netrunner and HeroScape were picked up by other companies, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, FFG, and WotC, though not all of them are still currently printed. I also just remembered that Vampire the Masquerade (?) card game was KS'ed by a new company. Glad to see Netrunner coming back and back the Deadlands card game KS so they can unlock new counters!

 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.