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well, AMG thought lets make a hero focused 10 model skirmish game that has better sculpts and gives the characters justice while also adds the named characters people want to see but FFG will never add to Legion because that game focus on platoons and not heroes
(and people demanding hero models for Legion no matter if it makes sense or not, like you cannot have a Rebels show strike force with 5 heros fighting someone else Storm Trooper army without massively changing the game)

they developed that game long before someone told them that they are now needing to care about Legion too

Don't know why people think that a 1-2 year lead time can be shortened to 3 months just because it is a small team that needs 3rd party machinery to produce the models


in addition, it works for GW, no one complains about different models size from Necromunda or Underworlds and that you can hardly use the models from the main games to play the skirmish games

I don't think Shatterpoint was in the works in 2020. Marvel had just launched, and even if it had been developed initially at Privateer, there was still a lot going on there for them at that time. They had to know getting the FFG lines was in the cards. They were both owned by Asmodée that very spesifically set up AMG as their miniatures wing. No surprise there for anyone outside AMG, at least.

Unfortunately, what works for GW has often been proven not to work for anyone else. Their customers are very forgiving, despite all the grumbling. Additionally, lot of GW cross-system models are meant to be exactly that.

At least local Legion players do NOT look on Shatterpoint as supplement to Legion. Instead they resent it and perceive it as the reason Legion has been receiving less attention. And from what I see online, they are hardly alone in that.

the local group switched to Shatterpoint because that games suits them more as they just want the heroes and always disliked Legion for the amount of troops needed to play said heroes

and a lot of people disliked Shatterpoint from the day it was announced, simply because it is another Star Wars game, for the very same reason people hated Legion in the beginning (because it was another SW game next to Imperial Assault.

and it might have been clear to others that Asmodee will shift the games around to the different departments, but it might not have been clear that the game developers won't follow (which is the reason why Legion did not get the attention, if someone else needs to take care about a game they never played while at the same time the released are already fixed by the Disney for the upcoming years)

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I would have never thought that Star Trek Attack Wing would run longer than X-Wing, but it seems while Wizkids have a very wonky release policy at least they care for their game.

And they haven’t even started on the new ship designs that fans are loving yet. If Wizkids ever stop tripping on their own feet, they could have a solid year of releases again.


Meanwhile in X-Wing…I guess it’s time for the TIE Dagger?

There are also quite a few ships missing from the TNG/DS9/Voy era, most notably Ambassador class. It's quite obvious that wizkids never invested in models after Xindi and the Abramstrek-Faction-Pack. Which is a shame as the rules writing is actually better than in the golden times of the game.

I’d buy at least two copies of a Wolf 359 fleet with Cheyenne, New Orleans, and other rare classes.

I admit that might be a bit more niche than the Ambassador class.

OT Star Wars just doesn’t seem to have the depth of obscure ships representing iconic moments. Other than the shoe and the Star Destroyer with no hangar from ROTJ, of course.

I can't possibly imagine AMG believing that all designers would cross over. I mean, it involved a move. They are not that naive. And they're not that disorganized either - if people quit you hire more.

 Kaptajn Congoboy wrote:
I can't possibly imagine AMG believing that all designers would cross over. I mean, it involved a move. They are not that naive. And they're not that disorganized either - if people quit you hire more.

I doubt AMG had very much choice in the matter, both in getting the Star Wars properties and their staffing levels.

X-Wing was big, but died with the release of version 2. Everyone I know added up the cost of getting all the new card packs they would need for their collections, saw it was hundreds of pounds and simply walked away.

I liked the look of the clone wars era stuff they did, but had no reason to buy them other than to have the models.

I've been playing a lot of legion in the last couple of years, and now fear for its future. From the moment shatterpoint was announced Legion was at risk.

It's so interesting how often people will walk away rather than just continuing to play 1e. I mean I'm sure lots of people did and do play 1e, but I get the impression a lot of people also just dropped the game.

To be fair, I'm not so different, I dropped Hordes years ago when I didn't like the new edition. Still have all my stuff though, and would play a game if I had an opponent. So when lots of people are doing that all at once you'd think maybe they'd just stay with the old community.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I’d buy at least two copies of a Wolf 359 fleet with Cheyenne, New Orleans, and other rare classes.

I admit that might be a bit more niche than the Ambassador class.

OT Star Wars just doesn’t seem to have the depth of obscure ships representing iconic moments. Other than the shoe and the Star Destroyer with no hangar from ROTJ, of course.

How about Lower Decks- with the California, Parliament, and Texas classes, the Titan, Pakled ships.

 Da Boss wrote:
It's so interesting how often people will walk away rather than just continuing to play 1e. I mean I'm sure lots of people did and do play 1e, but I get the impression a lot of people also just dropped the game.

To be fair, I'm not so different, I dropped Hordes years ago when I didn't like the new edition. Still have all my stuff though, and would play a game if I had an opponent. So when lots of people are doing that all at once you'd think maybe they'd just stay with the old community.

It seems like a fomo thing, some people need to chase the meta to keep their interest. i don't understand it either.

i still play the editions of games i think have the best core rules. i just help build the communities in my area of other players who play it-5th ed 40K, N2 infinity, WM/H MKIII(no theme lists). original victory at sea, etc...

 Da Boss wrote:
It's so interesting how often people will walk away rather than just continuing to play 1e. I mean I'm sure lots of people did and do play 1e, but I get the impression a lot of people also just dropped the game.

To be fair, I'm not so different, I dropped Hordes years ago when I didn't like the new edition. Still have all my stuff though, and would play a game if I had an opponent. So when lots of people are doing that all at once you'd think maybe they'd just stay with the old community.

I think a fair amount of people played X-Wing at local tournaments, and once those local tournaments went to 2.0 they didn't have a solid alternate gaming group to move to

Element Games says they’re getting restocks of some of the harder to find expansions for Armada, due for dispatch June 25th.


I went ahead and ordered some collection wants, if they get cancelled then so be it.

 MajorWesJanson wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I’d buy at least two copies of a Wolf 359 fleet with Cheyenne, New Orleans, and other rare classes.

I admit that might be a bit more niche than the Ambassador class.

OT Star Wars just doesn’t seem to have the depth of obscure ships representing iconic moments. Other than the shoe and the Star Destroyer with no hangar from ROTJ, of course.

How about Lower Decks- with the California, Parliament, and Texas classes, the Titan, Pakled ships.

Absolutely. I’m surprised Wizkids aren’t striking while the iron is hot by releasing some of these ships while the show is still on.

 Da Boss wrote:
It's so interesting how often people will walk away rather than just continuing to play 1e. I mean I'm sure lots of people did and do play 1e, but I get the impression a lot of people also just dropped the game.

Yea not quite sure, but in part:

When you forfeit the obvious benefits of an officially supported game it necessarily means you're fortunate enough to have a tight group of like minded gamers you can sequester yourself with, away from the mainstream scene, who are cool with playing fringe unofficial rulesets ... and once you're there, there's better fringe unofficial rulesets to play than some corporation's write-offs.

Hah, that's pretty on the nose.

 Da Boss wrote:
It's so interesting how often people will walk away rather than just continuing to play 1e. I mean I'm sure lots of people did and do play 1e, but I get the impression a lot of people also just dropped the game.

To be fair, I'm not so different, I dropped Hordes years ago when I didn't like the new edition. Still have all my stuff though, and would play a game if I had an opponent. So when lots of people are doing that all at once you'd think maybe they'd just stay with the old community.

While the pattern is certainly not unique to X-Wing, I do think that game might have been especially susceptible to it. The game's balance relied pretty heavily on new releases at times, which might strengthen underperforming ships or strategies, or provide means to effectively mitigate the strengths of overperforming ships or strategies. This was a logical result of the fundamental game structure of having cards for ships detailing their rules, and flexible upgrade cards available to many ships, instead of fixed profiles in updateable books. While the cards might not be altered to balance the game, new upgrades could be added that affected prior cards' impact. Without new releases, that whole system would stop functioning. This system also created rather a lively meta, and a lack of new releases would likely quickly feel stale in comparison to what people had gotten used to. Even if not ground(/game-)breaking, any new release for any faction generally meant new options for you, as some upgrades would be interchangeable with your faction's ships, making new releases quite anticipated from my experience.

Another relevant aspect might be that while people had invested money in the game, this was far less investment than the added time cost of painting an army for most other miniature games. I repainted a few of my ships, and at any event I attended, I'd be one of very few players to have done so. Pre-painted ships made it easy to get into the game, but perhaps also easier to walk away from?

 Da Boss wrote:
It's so interesting how often people will walk away rather than just continuing to play 1e. I mean I'm sure lots of people did and do play 1e, but I get the impression a lot of people also just dropped the game.

X-Wing had a really well-run competitive scene, supported by FFG, which I suspect had some effect on "forcing" people into 2.0. I'd also argue that the end of 1.0 was an absolutely miserable experience from a balance point of view. FFG basically admitted they were trying to break the game at that point in order to figure out what not to do in 2.0. I think they succeeded because 2.0 was a much better game, IMO. The business side of converting from 1.0 to 2.0 was the biggest problem they had. Even then, I never really thought it was all that bad. The individual conversion kits were relatively cheap and FG made an effort to make sure they were generous with the cards in them and the kits remained in production for a long time.

Interesting insights. Would I be right in assuming as well that X Wing drew in a lot of non-hardcore wargamers? The likes of us are used to edition changes and having to rejig things, buy new rules and so on. But if you're a star wars fan who is new to wargaming, it might have been a real shock to find out all your cards were now obsolete and you had to buy new ones. Maybe FFG misjudged the tolerance for the casual wargamer toward that stuff?

 Da Boss wrote:
Interesting insights. Would I be right in assuming as well that X Wing drew in a lot of non-hardcore wargamers? The likes of us are used to edition changes and having to rejig things, buy new rules and so on. But if you're a star wars fan who is new to wargaming, it might have been a real shock to find out all your cards were now obsolete and you had to buy new ones. Maybe FFG misjudged the tolerance for the casual wargamer toward that stuff?

100%; I'd be shocked if a starwars game wasn't bringing in people from outside the wargaming market. That's part of what a game developer wants when they reach out for a huge IP licence outside of the established market. You aren't just getting to make Xwing fighters, you are reaching a vast market of Starwars fans who are not wargamers. Tapping into a pool of potential customers who are not already invested in Warhammer, Warmachine, Infinity and others. Heck that's why GW are investing so much into TV and selling their IP out to Video games and the like. GW are doing their best to tap into those other markets and draw people into their own.

 Overread wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Interesting insights. Would I be right in assuming as well that X Wing drew in a lot of non-hardcore wargamers? The likes of us are used to edition changes and having to rejig things, buy new rules and so on. But if you're a star wars fan who is new to wargaming, it might have been a real shock to find out all your cards were now obsolete and you had to buy new ones. Maybe FFG misjudged the tolerance for the casual wargamer toward that stuff?

100%; I'd be shocked if a starwars game wasn't bringing in people from outside the wargaming market. That's part of what a game developer wants when they reach out for a huge IP licence outside of the established market. You aren't just getting to make Xwing fighters, you are reaching a vast market of Starwars fans who are not wargamers. Tapping into a pool of potential customers who are not already invested in Warhammer, Warmachine, Infinity and others. Heck that's why GW are investing so much into TV and selling their IP out to Video games and the like. GW are doing their best to tap into those other markets and draw people into their own.

Not just that, but X-Wing was vastly more accessible than any typical wargame (especially the widespread and popular ones). No stack of books with hundreds of pages of rules. No assembling and painting. If you know the basics, you could essentially rock up to a store tournament, buy some ships off the shelves, put them together and start playing 5 minutes later. As it turned out, the fact that every expansion was self-contained package of the miniature, accessories (tokens) and their rules was arguably a curse in disguise, making future updates to rules and ongoing cross-compatibility increasingly difficult to achieve. It would be interesting to think if things would have been different if some level of turnover (making older material obsolete) had been present in the system earlier, rather than a big gulf with the new edition. Whether or not it's normalized, paying to replace things you already have never feels great, and 2nd ed XW did not just replace a rulebook, but a lot of components too - which themselves felt as much part of your collection as the ships.

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:
[Not just that, but X-Wing was vastly more accessible than any typical wargame

That's an often overlooked angle.

Wargaming as a whole is losing one of the most accessible entry points it's ever had.

 Da Boss wrote:
Interesting insights. Would I be right in assuming as well that X Wing drew in a lot of non-hardcore wargamers? The likes of us are used to edition changes and having to rejig things, buy new rules and so on. But if you're a star wars fan who is new to wargaming, it might have been a real shock to find out all your cards were now obsolete and you had to buy new ones. Maybe FFG misjudged the tolerance for the casual wargamer toward that stuff?

Yes. The Core Set was really good value and up until Covid the price of individual ship expansions was pretty cheap, especially for pre-painted models. The rules were simple and relatively intuitive at first. Add in the Star Wars factor, and the game drew a lot of non-wargamers into it. Many of the people playing at tournaments don't play any other wargames, or maybe played 40k briefly in the past, but it's pretty common to see hardcore X-Wing players who don't play any other wargames. Those people are probably not quite as exposed to the new edition churn as more seasoned gamers, and that probably didn't help the transition to 2.0.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:
[Not just that, but X-Wing was vastly more accessible than any typical wargame

That's an often overlooked angle.

Wargaming as a whole is losing one of the most accessible entry points it's ever had.

At the same time they were wargamers but not hobbyists.

Prepainted armies are rare in the wargame world and most firms avoid it. I can see Mechwarrior teasing the waters with it right now (with an odd one mech in a pack is prepainted whilst the rest are grey approach - at least the last time I heard about it); but in general both because its costly and difficult, but also because GW sunk a fortune into making "The Hobby" part of the experience.

So I wonder how many got into the SW prepainted all in the box games and just never ventured out. Their first impression is that prepaints are normal; that the models come ready assembled and they can just play the game. They don't have to build or paint; they don't have to pay way more for someone else to do it for them etc...

so its a fantastic IP to draw new people in with a REALLY accessible game; but how many are going to want to invest time into learning new hobbies off the back of it to get further into wargames?



I'm not saying no one did, but just that its a barrier to it being the ideal gateway. Heck who knows perhaps we'll see it again without all the pre-done parts

So the big question? Will the models get cheaper from people dumping stuff? Or more expensive as people try to complete collections? Personally when I saw the box of FFG card needed to play I soured on it. But I always loved the little ships as display pieces or toys. So would love to get some more!

I was all set to swallow my cardboard and character card dislike for armada, but then the ships weren't in scale with each other and many ships were ridiculously up gunned or down gunned in order to allow the rebels and empire to play large fleet engagements with each other.

Currently they are going cheap on a lot of trade groups (unless they have been out of print for a while or never got rereleased) but they are guaranteed to get more and more expensive as time goes on.

Do you have an example of one of these groups for me to look at?

It's had a long "its dying" phase so I feel like a good few panic buyers might have bought out what they wanted already and whatever is left right now was the stuff that was either less popular; or popular but expensive or popular and actually got a few restocks to satisfy demand.

but I 100% expect prices to go up, esp once collectors realise that these are now finite.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Do you have an example of one of these groups for me to look at?

Look for the Mad Doc's Facebook Loot group. X-wing and Armada were listed as being in-scope for no-markup sales of stuff people find in local stores. Join and list your wants.

Sad to hear that X-Wing is dead, but it will absolutely remain an evergreen as far as I'm concerned.

In my experience, X-Wing plays closer to a board game than a wargame. I've had several occasions where a friend was visiting and we managed to play a couple of games without any prior knowledge on their part, which would never have been possible with other games like TOW or Infinity.

So while X-Wing had a large competitive community and the skill ceiling was quite high, I also believe that it also did fairly well on the more casual end of the spectrum, which is not an easy bridge to gap.