The collapse of Star Wars: X-Wing
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- Опубліковано 2 гру 2024
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Another thing that killed the tournament scene in 2nd edition was the introduction of 'hyperspace'. Hyperspace was a game mode that only allowed players to take ships that had been rereleased in 2nd edition, Extended mode allowed players to take any ship that was released in 1st edition and had been converted.
However, they also started naming their events Hyperspace. So you had Hyperspace challenges, which were different to Hyperspace cups, which were different to hyperspace qualifiers, which were different to hyperspace championships etc. None of these titles made it clear which mode the event was in and every 2nd edition tournament my local scene hosted would have multiple players showing up with the wrong format list. These players would then have to buy new ships, take stuff out, borrow from other players, or not play.
This changed X-Wing from being a game that store owners could just 'fire and forget' a tournament and have the players basically run it, into something in which the store owner would have to actually understand what event and format they were running before they could make an event. So unless a store owner actively played the game, they wouldn't understand what they needed to do and it'd cause these issues.
This coupled with the things you mentioned basically killed the game in my local area. If we wanted to play in a tournament, we'd have to either go to a town with a more coordinated X-Wing scene, or attend one of FFGs (quite frankly excellent) Hyperspace qualifiers that they hosted once a year.
X-Wing went from being a top 5 selling miniatures game that at one point outsold 40k, to not even top 10 in less than a year. In early 2020, asmodee laid off a bunch of people and then the pandemic hit. The game never really recovered after that.
I'll miss the game, I played til the 'end'. It was a game I played with my dad and I'll always appreciate that. But I can't see us chasing the fan made content that will inevitably come after this. But we'll see.
Good vid. Thanks for making it.
Really insightful thanks for your comments about hyperspace - funnily enough I have vague recollection about being really confused all the time about something called hyperspace
i guess it all depended on the local scene, hyperspace was fine for me, I liked that it had different meta from standard
@@SiC83 hyperspace was a great idea executed badly.
In 1st edition, a store owner could set up a tournament, take money for tickets, put names in the system and take results. Done.
With the introduction of hyperspace as a format, as well as the various events named 'hyperspace x', store owners now had to make sure their tournament was correct, which if they don't play the game, they don't know how to do. So we'd have people attending tournaments with the wrong list type or an illegal list and they'd have to make changes there and then.
AMG get a lot of flak, but I'll give them credit, they got rid of the terribly named Hyperspace and called it standard.
@@_tensketch i know that stores in my area had a rough relation with xwing too.
Juts to let you know I miss xwing too, I miss the tounaments no matter the format, I miss getting exctited over new meta, I miss watching games and cheering for my favorite players (Ollie, Carson), I miss discovering new synergies or tweaking my lists and getting hyped to try them, I miss xwing podcasts (Radio tcx the most), I miss talking with friends on what are the playing now. AMG has left a lot of resentment.
I think the other issue was how they interacted with Covid. 2.0 hit, it was hard to get the conversion kits, and it was never sorted out, things kind of died off over Covid where a lot of other games companies did well, because people started painting a lot more... and then when we got out of Covid and people were excited to start playing again, there was nothing new and they converted to 2.5 which just fractured whatever remaining community there was.
As I get older, I am more attracted to games systems that are out of production. I am sick of chasing the release dragon. These days I am deeply cynical of any change of edition as it tends to be more about making money than actually improving the game. I have heaps of X-wing and played 1.0 from the start. I bought the 2.0 kits and then never played it again after re-sleaving all the cards. I think I will go back to 1.0. If my mates and I agree to play 1.0 then who's going to stop me. As gamers we don't HAVE to be using the current ruleset. This push to keep up with latest thing is just a marketing device used to keep us addicted to the plasticrack. The thing about dead games is that they are complete. Finite. Done.
Totally agree. That's why I love Imperial Assault. That's why I completed my collection of Runewars.
I also agree, my armada fleets will still be able to be played, I don’t need new updates or things to buy and that’s great
The problem with table top gaming is always finding a community to play with. The easiest communities to find are the ones playing the latest games being pushed by the companies.
Here's my personal take regarding the question of: "how do we best deal with IP licensed games" I think the answer is largely provided by the consumer. I think it's important for all of us to enjoy a game for what it is. We like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dune and other amazing franchises. We want to play in the sandbox of those worlds. A condition of that is that the original creator (or license holder) has control of the creative direction, and not necessarily the game developer or publisher. This is a good thing! We value those IPs because of the creator's original vision, and opening that up to interpretation will dilute it in some ways. It sounds like X-Wing was flirting with that even within the more nebulous bounds of Star Wars IP. There will always be a design ceiling in those situations. I think it's important to ask this question: does it actually matter? I remember having this exact same argument about A Song of Ice and Fire when it first launched. I avoided the game for this reason. 4 years later, they're still making new SKUs, and there are tons of options within the game. I play it and it's my favorite large army war game. I am getting years worth of enjoyment out of my purchases. The ruleset for this game and X-Wing and Armada will ALWAYS exist and so will my models and friends who play it. I will always be able to enjoy the game when I want. Games come and go all the time whether or not a it has a licensed IP. Warhammer Fantasy Battles died, Inquisitor died, shortie Space Marines died, Squats died, Mordheim died, Necromunda and Bloodbowl at one point were dead and are now back, and the list goes on and on. Nothing in life is forever. Treat all games like board game purchases: it's a thing that sits in your closet and you can play with it whenever you want. This is one of the biggest reasons why I love physical games over digital ones and the trend they're following of making everything cloud based and requiring an internet connection.
That's a nuanced approach and I've got to agree with you, although I don't think that should mean we don't analyse why these things might not work and how they could improve their longevity. If you love it, more is often good, right? For example, legion could come out with a larger format game size allowing players to get more kits that already exist (keeping funding going) - as well as "one of' kits they might love to see en masse - droid tanks for example. it could even open the door to "dream kits" currently to big in scale for the game battle size, such as AT-AT or AT-TE walkers.
Nothing lasts forever yes, but I'd rather my preferred game survive long enough to feel complete
@@TabletopTime I agree with what you're saying! It's worthwhile to ask that question because you're right, I do want more fun stuff!
I think the situation just highlights the challenges of creating a product with licensed content. The developer is trading longevity for access to an existing audience. It takes quite a bit of creativity and forward thinking to keep a licenced product alive.
Just had an idea to extend the life of a licensed game: change the game around the miniatures. One way that long term PVP video games stay relevant is by reinventing the game with "medium" level changes. That is to say the game changes don't affect the "feel", but excite the player base to interact with the system again, possibly with models they haven't used or old ones they haven't enlisted in a while.
@@Miniac I agree in principle, but I think that's what AMG has been trying... Basically releasing card pack expansions. For miniature games, I think the problem is that minis are what players are excited about more than cards. I think they need something to get people excited about buying more ships, maybe Primaris Tie Fighters... or more seriously, deluxe/customizable kit versions of existing ships.
The Victory Star Destroyer wasn't first seen in 2015. It's been in the Star Wars extended universe since the 90's. It featured in novels and the Tie fighter computer game
The VSD first appeared in the Han Solo novels in the early 80s by Brian Daly. The first visual depictions were in the WEG SWRPG using concept art from the 70s.
@@russellharrell2747 I've not read those ones, the first things I can remember it being in was the ones I said, the point being they''ve been in Star Wars a lot longer than since 2015
I don't think it really matters whether it was in 2015 or not, the point is, it's not in the films, not many people are going to know about it or care about it
@@Veles343 ok defend inaccuracy cos hey, inaccuracy is cool?
Yeah,this video is very much uninformed about how deep Star Wars fans actually were before Disney began slaughtering it.
The switch to AMG also happened around Covid and AMG had little understanding of the game and community
X-Wing was huge for a while.
In fact it was so popular that there's rumours that GW cancelled their licence to FFG to allow them to create some really excellent board games and RPGs set in the Warhammer worlds.
But yeah, don't really disagree with any of your points.
They're limited in scope for what they can mine and exploit, even before Disney reset canon and scrubbed a few ships.
The intro of 2e was handled relatively well, but perhaps the app should've taken all the cards on as well, rather than selling us those packs.
And COVID... Well, I mean I kinda get that hobbies that had the painting aspect took off, it would've left a game where that isn't part of it behind.
But the Asmodee reshuffle that left Atomic Mass Games holding the game is what really killed it.
FFG and AMG are different offices, in different states, with different development teams, and the re-org put all miniatures games with one office/personnel, and all card, boardgames and RPGs in another. I'm sure the games lost talent when this happened, simply because not everyone can move across the country like that.
That all said - the X-Wing rules are not actually unique. In fact several games have licensed the rules to use.
It's called the FlightPath ruleset - I guess think of it like D&Ds D20 System, or 5E - and is the basis for games like:
Star Trek Attack Wing
D&D Attack Wing
Wings of War and Wings of Glory (WW1 and WW2 dogfighting game)
Sails of War (Napoleonic naval battles)
Wings of War pre-dates X Wing by quite some time it was first released in Italian in 2004. Wings and Sails of Glory are based in Wings of War. They are at best distant cousins of X-Wing with different rules for movement, movement selection, damage, force composition, altitude, randomisation, range and more.
@@erithromycin ah, nice. That makes sense, but I didn't know the full details. Thanks!
Back in the early 80s there was a star trek based game that used miniatures and movement templates. Of course, it was far more complicated than xwing as it was based on the Star Fleet Battles game system, but the movement was similar in that you'd select a maneuver, put down a template and move the ship along the template. I think they were called Starline Miniatures?
@mikewickwd.x The flight path system was licensed from FFG to Wizkids AFTER X-Wing came out. X-Wing was unique at the time, but specifically because it combined the hidden pre-programmed maneuver dials with the maneuver templates. Even Wings of Glory which everyone cites as a predecessor didn't have preset movement dials that you put in at the beginning of the turn, IIRC that game had movement cards that acted like maneuver dials but that you could play from your hand when that plane moved.
@@Tvboy777 not correct. In wings of glory you secretly program 3 maneuver cards at one time, then everyone reveals one card at a time and simultaneously moves their planes according to the programmed maneuver. Between each move, you can take a shot at opponents.
I think it’s a very important point about IPs, with Star Wars the game exists to support the IP. With Warhammer the games are the IP. It may explain 40ks longevity in the face of much more popular IPs existing on tabletop.
I think a big issue was that, with the sequel trilogy, they did nothing new. They made one new ship for Kylo Ren, and everything else is just 'we painted it black, so it's new and unique right?'
Like, there wasn't any new fun ships, even the bombers were laughed at. No one wanted the new stuff.
I don't want to be part of the brigade for hating on Disney for shoehorning in D&I, but Disney have been killing IPs with bad stories and disengaging content.
Any licenses associated with these bland, uninspiring revisions to classic IP is not only going to suffer from a lack of new content to build from, but is also going to be hurt by the declining audience willing to buy into the licenced games.
Mismanagement from the games' producers just accelerates the finite lifecycle of this type of product
For sure, the decline of the Star Wars franchise has been a sad one, one that definitely didn't help the futurity of X-Wing. Putting all these factors together we can see why Dave used the word "inevitable". I used to be excited for Star Wars and their products, but what was once disappointment and frustration has matured to apathy over time. Thus the initial pull of the game that existed upon its inception is significantly diminished. But not all is lost, its decline has led me to be more open to things like Warhammer, and other things. To open my horizons to other talented creators who aren't even apart of a large company.
It didn't help that the sequel trilogy also wasn't liked as much as the older stuff.
Not enough people talk about this. Last Jedi and Rise had barely any new ships. It's hard to sell toys when the movies lack tie-in opportunities. In contrast, toy tie-ins were so important to George he had the whole team up and running before the prequels on Shadow of the Empire which was their test run for merchandising the prequels.
Rogue One expansions were great on other hand, i actually own Saw's Renegades set that worked both in 1.0 and 2.0
The transition from 1st to 2nd edition was the point I tapped out. I only ever played with some friends at their place, with just a bunch of TIEs and X-Wings and B-Wings and whatever, and we looked hard at the new edition and realized that it was WAY too much work and way too much for upgrading. We just said "Naw, we're good" and kept flying our TIEs and X-Wings and B-Wings and whatever.
You missed out. 2.0 is a much better and more balanced game.
@@kyle857Agreed
I got involved with a board game group that had transitioned away from a specific LCG meetup group right after the game was discontinued in a very similar fashion to X-Wing. They had all virtually abandoned the LCG and moved to board games (which suited me, as I didn't care for the card game) but to this day it baffles me that they all quit the game they clearly enjoyed just because the corporate overlord had decreed it was over. Their cards still existed, and the text on them remained. The rules were still there. They had each other. The point is, all the plastic Star Wars ships and cards will still exist and nothing is stopping anyone from playing with them -- to call the game "dead" is just not quite right, if you ask me. Go shoot some space lasers, don't let some bean counter in a suit tell you there is no more Star to War over
The card limitation for upgrades was even worse than you guys described it in version 1.0. If you were a Rebel Alliance player you would need to buy ships outside your faction because that was the only place to get certain upgrade cards that were Universal but just not printed in a Rebel ship pack.
The BTL-A4 Y-wing upgrade card, for example, gave you a whole additional attack every turn, but was only available in the Scum and Villainy 3 ship Most Wanted expansion box. You got 2 of them in the box, but you got a ton of extra stuff you just don't need for your Rebels.
It was a terrible model for consumers, but I loved playing the game and have fond memories of it.
My playgroup was pretty good about trading cards we weren't going to use since most us mostly stayed in one faction. For the ones that were universal that everyone wanted, Ebay was a great source. There were some cards that cost almost as much as the ship they came in so I did wind up buying a couple of ships for that reason. BUT, then I found HOTAC, so I wound up using those ships anyway! YEA!
Could you not just proxy it
@@rakino4418 Proxies were WILDLY frowned on in the early xwing scene, at least around here. No idea if that was universal or not.
@@rakino4418 Depends on your play group and if you want to participate in tournaments (most, at least around here, don't/didn't allow proxies).
To be fair FFG did create a ship for the Epic-Battles expansion!
The Raider II-class corvette, since the Imperium didn't have something in that size.
That ship was also made canon.
Yeah, that's how successful the game was. When they wanted an Epic Imperial ship they asked Lucasfilm for something in canon that would fit the scale of the game and there wasn't anything, so LFL let them design their own and then when Battlefront 2 needed a hero ship for Inferno Squad, LFL said, "Hey, we've got the perfect ship for that".
The Gozanti existed as a clone wars design previously but I guess the Imperial version wasn’t canon until Rebels.
The X-wing computer games from the 90s just used CEC corvettes for their small capital ships. But that was back when designing new ships they looked good with a limited polygon count was difficult to do.
Got in before the sequels were released by going to a Store Championship at a local store. Ended up basically running their X-Wing scene for 5 years. The game store where we hosted weekly game nights almost couldn't fit all of the people we had coming around. I think we topped out around 24, which covered every game table in that small shop. Then 2.0 hit and we struggled to get 4 people a night. Persistence on my part and the store's part to organize events got us back up to a core group of 12-15 players. I moved out of town, but the last big event I ran for them was a Regional Qualifier that attracted 80ish people, so the game seemed pretty healthy. Then I moved to a new town where they only had 4 or 5 people showing up. And then COVID hit and then AMG torpedoed the existing scenario rules and points system and drove even more people away.
It's a series of events, but I think the biggest cause is that AMG is more interested in developing and selling the games they designed. As you say at the end, Legion exists but has not had much support, while AMG has been undercutting it with their own design: Shatterpoint. No one at AMG designed or developed X-Wing and its pre-built, pre-painted miniatures are not in line with the rest of their business model. it was a bad corporate move by Asmodee to re-home it from FFG to AMG after they bought FFG, especially because they moved zero designers over with it.
Armada was excellent. And I really wanted a mon cal fleet. Beautiful, fully painted models. Such a great game that is currently sitting in a good spot balance wise.
For me the game died when they launched v2…. Needing to several buy conversion kits for a substantial chunk of change was not something I wanted to do. Haven’t played since then but still have v1 and a lot of ships laying around so I can play whenever I want to for the rest of my life so in that sense it is still very much alive ;)
You'd be wrong.
For many it died at 2e - yet 2e wasn't bad. Sad situation
@@TabletopTime But it didn't die. Yes many people didn't make the switch over to 2e for a number of reasons but the game did not die. In my local area it was growing throughout 2019 as people matriculated in from 1e or started playing 2e . The last event we had in the beginning of 2020 was the largest ever for our area with about 24 players. That's not a dead game.
What I'm arguing against is the common assertion that people make where the point they stopped playing is the point the game died. Just because any given person didn't buy in to 2e does not make 2e the point the game died.
2ed was waaay better than 1ed, all you needed to switch was a single conversion kit
@Gibbons3457 I don't think he's saying it died altogether, but I know me and my gaming group didn't upgrade and we stopped playing, so for us it died I'm assuming the that's what they ment.
The shift to 2.0 killed X-wing in my area, too, but it was already a very hard game to buy into. Both X-wing and Armada forced you to buy models you didn't want or need to get the little upgrade cards that were OP tournament staples, making it unsustainable for the average gamer. I didn't WANT to buy an ugly-ass K-wing, but I NEEDED it just to get the turrets for my Y-wings? That's such shit. Those cards could have been sold in separate packs, but they knew what they were doing. At least 40K puts everything your army needs in one codex.
Upgrade "cards" are such a scam. Upgrades should just be additional upgrades found in the various books. Tieing them to a unnecessarily restrictive card resource is just evil.
Despite how niche Armada was they still could not keep those people supplied the entirety of the game. The game itself is a solid naval battle sim though.
I was a Tournament Organiser for X-Wing in my local area and pre-COVID was very well received across Victoria. Then Prices went up on Hall Hire, changes to Second edition and a lot of gamer's just not being renewed as older gamer's left the area, meant my Club had to close. X-Wing was great for Demos which i ran at a few Conventions include 1 year at Aus Pax, and i think the best thing about the game was the fact it could be played with more than 2 players. Almost all my miniature games are only playable 1 on 1. Will continue to keep my collection as an avid Star Wars Fan and will continue to play both Star Wars X-Wing and Armada games when i have an opponent interested in giving it a try or wishing to feel Nostalgic. As for the smaller Star Destroyer comment it was first seen in the RPG scene in the old Star Wars RPG by West End Games in 1992 and more saw in Star Wars Rebellion PC Game in 1998 which was my first look at a Starship Fleet battle game and got me hocked on miniature fleet battles going forwards.
GASLANDS scratches that X-Wing itch for me. Move template fun and goodness!
I think I remember playing that one time and made a partybus which was ridiculously fun
That's a pretty fair summary. I dropped X-wing with second, and had stopped buying a lot of the non-film ships before that. When the conversion kits for my collection were more than getting into another game, it just didn't work. Add in I only played casually so didn't really see the issues tournament players were seeing there just wasn't a reason to change for me. Armarda I just never got into, cost and limited scope, it really felt like it should have started with Clone Wars but even then the pool of recognisable ships is pretty tiny.
Legion I think does have some legs, they are switching everything to hard plastic so that indicates some investment. Also the scope is far larger particularly with the disnesy shows to expand things, you only need to look at the sheer amount of 3D sculpts. However, I don't think it has an infinite life span but I accept that. The game will never go away and I really enjoy the hobby aspect with Legion. I think shatterpoint was in development before AMG picked up Legion, and I haven't picked up up so far due to cross over, although some of the sculpts are tempting but that would be buying the game and the scuplts I want to paint rather than fully investing.
I do think you are spot on with licenses though in general they are limited scope, and I think you can see that with games like ASOIF going to quarterly releases. That is not always a bad thing, it depends what you want from a game. I also think a lot miss the perspective on how important tournament play is to game sales, over the years all data I have seen indicates for most games it is maybe 10-15% of the player base, which means a game can have zero tournament scene and maybe survive but if the casual player base drops it the days are generally numbered
, Having had several games be discontinued over the years I now tend to buy more on miniatures I want, I can always find a game system to use them in
What killed X-Wing game for my community here, was the huge cost of switching from 1st to 2nd Edition especially rebasing your entire collection to play the game. Then 2nd edition started with some very odd rules and limitations on what could play in casual and tournament play. The next nail was X-Wing in 2nd edition became a game system overdriven by the international tournament system that cut 90% of the players totally off the game because they were casual players. So the game's heart beat faded away to a dead stop.
Armada is a great game too but Star Wars scope is dog-fighting fighter spaceship and bomber spaceships. This meant that as such as Star Wars fans and X-Wing players loved seeing the huge starships and space battles being played and they wanted to play themselves. It was to much scope for people to spend $$$ on it and they loved that X-Wing as cheap $$$ to buy into and fun to play with friends until 2nd Edition killed it.
😂 huge cost, 1 upgrade kit lol tell me more I’ll get my box of tissues
(Come on…really!?!?!!)
@@lloydpowell5683 when you had top buy more than one upgrade box....yes....huge cost
@@lloydpowell5683 If you had a handful of ships for a single faction one conversion kit was fine but if you were running any of the swarm lists (TIEs, A-wings, Z-95s) you need 2 boxes. Heaven forbid if you collected multiple factions.
Current player of X-Wing here. There's been a decent amount of up and down. And each time there's a shake-up, some of the community gets left behind playing older editions.
There's a good amount of 1.0 players out there, a large ongoing community Legacy project for 2.0. And now a startup for a community version of "2.5" now that AMG have said it's going to be dropped
Personally, I'm still relatively optimistic about the future of the game. There's going to be much, much less growth without ships and cardboard being printed, but the second hand market should still always be there, as is 3d printing and regular printing
But basically, the game will only truly be dead when there's less than 2 people playing it. We don't need a corporate body to run. Community-lead games exist and can thrive :)
A wonderful perspective and attitude and we truly hope it thrives and retains a dedicated community like many of the legacy greats such as mordheim.
@TabletopTime Absolutely. There's currently a board of ~30 people heading the "2.5" community. But we also do have until mid-next year until it's officially dropped. So it's just laying down some ground work, having open discussions and compiling opinions/data currently
Battletech is 40 years old and they sell the core box, and to keep selling they just sell unpainted miniatures with cards. Business is as good as it could be.
Aye Battlefleet Gothic and Warhammer 40k epic are still alive to this day from fan efforts.
Same with 40k. Yes GeeDubs are wankers by trying to force you to buy more overpriced plastic, but it doesn't affect any of us in my club was we are still playing 4th edition 40k with some homebrewed extras for cool models, as GW doesn't get to decide what the hell we do with our models and time. We also still play WHFB, because as far as we are concerned the end times never happened.
2nd edition actually revitalized X-Wing at my FLGS. COVID killed it a bit, because unlike other mini games, there was not really a hobbyist scene for terrain and mini painting to tide the community over during lockdowns. Final nail in the coffin was moving to AMG who didn't understand the game and did their best to remove all the advanced strategy in favor of randomness and luck.
As a massive fan of both games its saddens me alot to see those loose traction and fate away. Getting custom models for the factions is the main reason why I got into 3d printing.
I jumped on this game when it first came out and was super into it too. I'd grown up a big Star Wars fan and the fighters were always the biggest draw for me. Used to play Rogue Squadron all day on the N64! So when it came out I went hard on building my rebel squadron, getting the whole alphabet of star fighters, I even got the Outrider as my big gunship. Then V2 came out and the entire community in my area died out. No one has played since, my ships are all sitting in a tackle box in a closet now.
You need an equivalent of what space marines are to Warhammer. Maybe every few years the tie defender gets retired but look we got a new tie advanced model that we totally won’t retire in 5 years oh hey look a new tie defender!
I expected Armada to be retired. It had the best capital ship combat rule set of any game I have played. But it is dependant on the movies for new ships. Once they're all out, well, that's it. Stagnation.
Xwing died in my area when 2nd came out and we had to update everything. For those of us who got SUPER into it, it was too expensive to update one faction, let alone all of them and then keep up with the new releases. I use them for the FFG TTRPG now. If we want to play XWing we just bust out the old rulebook and play since 85% of my TTG friends have the old rules and models.
7 years ago I went to EU team championships with Turkish team, running a rather old (but brutal against certain lists) tie swarm list. I left the hobby around a year after that.
The first edition was going crazy with the power creep of the new ships, and constantly requiring to buy new ships got me and everyone else tired.
When 2nd ed. came out, half of the people in my hobby group directly dropped due to the extra cost and the other half continued to play 1st ed.
In my group some guys dropped out when they got mad at decisions made by Disney with the universe. Others were just happy to get the main ships. Others weren’t happy with 2e. One guy in my group bought 90% of the range and felt like he had too much so he didn’t get anything else.
I maintain that Armada is one of the best miniatures games ever made. I loved playing it, and it was easy to bring in new players.
It's such a shame that it's so unpopular where I live, and this news definitely won't help lol
I'm getting whiplash from all of these cuts
I personally think it more related to the lack of support under AMG. The company tried to change X-Wing, and when it didn't go how they liked, they gave up. With Armada, they didn't even try. Heck, they didn't even provide enough reprints for Armada. ISDs, Venators, Arquitens, Quasars, Super Star Destroyers, etc. were selling out constantly. Both also had some of their biggest worlds tournaments last year with many new players. It really came down to support and AMG being unwilling or unable to supply it.
This, anyone that played that game at the time can see it was the lack of support from AMG. They literally didn’t release any ships that weren’t designed by FFG after they took over. They initiated a big edition change to 2.5, right after going through that with the edition change to 2.0. It was just bad decision after bad decision. I feel like they were handed a bunch of Star Wars games they didn’t know what to do with when they were already developing there own, and just kind of gave up on some of them.
FF did add to the game, the Imperial Corvette was designed by them
I played the crap out of first edition, and probably have somewhere between $700-100 minimum invested in ships, cards, and periphery content. I got so into first edition that I printed my own custom art cards of my favorite pilots, 3d printed proxies, and even made up ships that hadnt been in the game yet.
My roommates and I built our own dining table specifically with X-Wing in mind, it had built in measurements for the game, both standard and epic, and we did so many home brewed scenarios and free for all matches.
But truly I have to agree with you guys here that the rocky launch of second edition killed the game. as stated above I had already bought all those models and spent so much money, and felt betrayed that I was now required to buy new cards and cardboard to field stuff I already had.
A major business strategy issue was baked into the 2.5 points release. They made generics basically unplayable, which is a monumentally stupid idea if your goal is to sell more models. If a new player acquisition is to yield additional sales, wouldn't you want them purchasing multiple copies of ships to put on the table? Instead, they focused the 2.5 ruleset on loaded-up heroes, which means to field a competitive list, you didn't have to buy as much. In 1.0 and 2.0, competitive lists were often multiple copies of the same ship, meaning new players would often pick up 2 or 3 copies of the same ship upon every release, goosing sales. At one 2.0 tournament event, I played against a guy with 5 Y-Wings and an X-wing. On the table was at least a hundred dollars worth of product, if not more. Instead with 2.5, that list wouldn't even be able to be considered. And with reducing the model count of effective lists, each new player could easily go to the secondary market and buy in without purchasing from Asmodee.
Asmodee tried compensating for this by each new product being model packs of 2-3 ships, because I think they realized their mistake far too late to fix it, and going back on their stated focus on "hero ships" would have been an admission of fault.
Late to the convo, but I also dropped off XWing even before v2, I loved the minis and how it played, but I couldn't stand fighting within the meta. I was fielding Rey and Finn in the Millennium Falcon and Poe in Black 1, it felt GREAT tactically, and thematically, but at the time everyone else was just grinding me in to the ground with 2 IG88s... I hated the idea of being required to buy ships I had zero interest in, just to get cards for strategies I didn't want to play, just so I could win a game.
I was a player of both x-wing and Armada. I competed in events for both systems and this is my opinion.
x-wing failed at the release of 2nd edition. My local gaming story went from 15-20 players to 3 basically overnight. People didn't want to fork out the $80+ for new cards.
Armada failed due to lack of releases. There was a period of about 2 years were they didn't release anything. They also had MASSIVE supply issues in Aus. I really wanted the GAR Venator, but i have yet to find one and probably never will now.
Honestly both games were fantastic WHEN they had FFG backing. I remember the 2016 (or 2017) SE queensland regionals event. There were something like 80 odd xwing players there. Armada has about half that.
It could be said that Star Wars is an IP in decline. Every bad show, and bad movie they release, results in more people walking from the franchise.
At my LGS they haven't been able to sell a single box of Star Wars legion.
My LGS has events for the games, but they are much less frequent than GW games, Historicals, TCGs, and DND. Even Card games I have never heard of outside of the store that only teenagers play get more business and events. Sometimes I look at the models for Legion and think about painting up an AT-ST or something, but the models are almost as expensive as GW models and my store doesn't offer a discount on them like they do for everything else.
Good ol' Fantasy Flight; they took a game that nearly overtook 40K for #1 minis game, and used it for bog roll. 2nd ed. killed it here as well, it went from people playing it every day after class, and small tourneys in local stores on the weekend, to nothing! I kept all my stuff and never bothered with 2nd ed., as I was not going to shell out $450 US to cover my entire collection.
As for starship games, OPR has Warfleets, an has some STLs for it; but nothing else that I'm aware of.
I’m still surprised no one has done Crimson Skies using the flight path system
Played it from mid 1st edition. It was my gateway to tabletop gaming, I loved the game made the jump to 2nd edition but didn’t enjoy as much but still played locally 2.5 (and Covid) killed in in my local area went from all tables full to maybe 3 players. Still have my ships as I was always hoping a reboot might rekindle my love for the game.
Thanks for some very good thoughts and comments on the what and why. I definitely fall into the "casual gamer who dropped out when 2nd edition came out" segment because I didn't want to spend about $200 to buy both new rules and upgrade cards to match the ships I have. Not had. They're still in the basement ready to fly.
The X-Wing community in Copenhagen, DK was pretty good at helping each other by trading cards so people didn't need to buy two of everything if they had wings of the same ship, but even so it was a hard hit financially.
ETA: Not sure if One Page Rules has a Skirmish version of Warfleets, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't possible to just fly smaller lists and have fun :-)
just a timeline note - Shatterpoint was in development prior to the three FFG games including Legion being reshuffled to the studio.
They’ve also been quite smart in their original games about not frontloading all of the most recognisable releases right away.
The anecdotal story of the game being dead after 2nd edition was exactly the same at my LGS and nearby LGS's. Game was rocking, had big tournaments people always in the store playing casuals all the time. Had people who never played a tabletop mini game. Then 2nd edition drop and in the span of a couple month it was completely dead.
One thing people don't mention is that local game stores got stuck holding the bag on first edition inventory. There was a lot still out there and people ordering new product for their shelves when 2nd got announced. The LGS owners near me purposely dropped the game after that. The 2nd edition "new" versions of ships was a real slap in the face of store owners.
If FFG had just released a hardcover codex for 2nd edition a la GW I don't think the game would be in this state now. At the end of the day, the way the cards were used and placed in different boxes was pure greed.
@@tetsuo90000 with conversion kits, that stock wasnt dead, though!
@@rakaydosdraj8405 so in the end the consumer had to pay a "tax" to use the 1.0 stuff when the re-released 2.0 stuff had everything you needed. Why would the consumer pay more for the product.
@@ThePatientHunter If you had more than 3 1.0 ships of the same faction, it was cheaper to get the conversion kit than to rebuy them. And each conversion kit could convert dozens of ships... though spam lists needed two kits.
@rakaydosdraj8405 and that is the rub a lot of people had as it turned in a few hundred dollars to convert collections from 1.0 to 2.0.
X-wing used to be my favourite game. I would go to tournaments for it every month. I have up on it as soon as 2nd edition came out because I had everything in the Scum faction (many of them several times) and the amount I would have had to spend on the card packs was ridiculous. Many people in my local community had the exact same problem and we all quickly just moved on to a new game.
As an old gamer (and star wars fan) I 've seen certainly the Star Wars franchise on tabletop games gone through different products and publishers (still play the WEG OpenD6 2nd edition to this day).
I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head with this. We defo saw a drop in players when 2.0 came out but still had a fairly large local scene. The killer was AMG not wanting the game in the first place and developing no new content for it. All the X-Wing stuff that came out post the crossover was what FFG had already developed. We got no new ships from any of the new shows and then AMG changed the rules to make it objective focused but never did a new starter set. They deliberately scuttled the game so they could get rid. Same with Armada
X-Wing is what got me in to the miniature gaming hobby. Because of it I’ve branched off in to all sorts of other miniature games. Second Edition did bring me back to it for a few months, but eventually I lost interest again.
10:30 young padawan, have you ever heard of wizkids and how they shot themselves in both feet by mismanaging MageKnight and MechWarrior?
Btw i would have never expected star trek attack wing outliving x-wing. Although living in the sense of a zombie being alive somehow.
I loved playing Armada. It came out while I was in college and I would play with a friend in the common area of his dorm. People would walk by and do double takes seeing the ships and then come and check out the game. The problem I had in the beginning was there was a dock worker strike that delayed the initial release of the wave 1 ships after the starter set came out. When the later wave ships came out and gave the Rebels more big ship options the game was really popular in my areas. What I feel did the most damage was there weren’t a lot of big ships in the films and FF wasn’t proactive about introducing extended universe ships quickly enough.
I'm sad Star Wars Armada died before we got any more absolutely gigantic ships like the Super Star Destroyer they made.
X-Wing will forever hold a close and dear place in my heart, it was the game that got me into Table Top War Games. Christmas of 2018 (or 2019, I dont recall) my Dad bought me the 2e core box and some 1e ships and for those two weeks while I was off school we played, and played, and man we fuckin played... Every available weekend? X-Wing. Covid shut down? X-Wing. It wasnt until post-covid did we quit playing as much, lack of space and time on both our parts, his being work and mine being school. Eventually, I moved on from X-Wing into 40k, then Horus Heresy, back to Armada and now Legion.
Without X-Wing, I'd have never learned to paint or discovered this channel.
I owe a lot to X-Wing, and Im gonna miss seeing it on store shelves.
I played for a really short stint in the early days when my brother was in town for the summer and introduced me to it. I loved the mechanics and the dogfight nature of small skirmishes.
Great analysis and info here.
About 2 years before 2.0 dropped, my friend and I were in a weekly game at the local store. Played some tournaments for funsies. Then our first regional tournament was held. So exciting. So many new faces. I saw quickly as I played and watched, that there was an exploit in the meta strategy. Everyone was equipping the same cards, and ships. The handful of us that played with ships we like got slaughtered. Then the next few casual nights were the same. Everyone practicing with the same ships, same cards. There was no fun in that.
That had me wrap up $2500 of gear and tuck it in my closet.
Then I heard about v2.0 and said Nope.
The only other issue I had with the game was how long assembly and teardown took. I take care of my gear and it's still all in mint condition. The squad builder was an easy way to get out of having to sort through all the cards to find what you want.
fortunately no one needs to stop to play these. After about 20 years I still enjoy a game of FASAs brilliant Crimson Skies (talking about great dogfight-games) - basically a more detailed/complicated variant of X-Wing (more movement options/dangerous manouvers, more detailed damage-system, more pilot- and plane-stats to play around with).
I think legion can stick around with how much new star wars media is being made but they need to be willing to create either more factions or more battle forces and flesh out lots of the iconic stuff they've been missing since the beginning
In terms of how to run IP games, I think they should just take a page out of the F2P MOBA universes like League of Legends. Keep rereleasing x-wings and tie-fighters and falcons with new paintjobs, alternate pilots, maybe even alternate dials. There were definitely options folks had to continue playing in that development sandbox (although much easier in 2e than 1e). AMG's 2.5 attempted to fiddle with rules/cards only changes, but honestly I didn't care for their new list-building and dropped out of my local scene with the end of 2.0 play in my area.
Although the transition to 2e wasn't smooth, I still think it was a good move for FFG because it worked to solve many of the development pipeline issues, some of which stemmed directly from the IP issues. When Mandalorian drops and you have this new ship type, how exactly do you balance it with all the previous releases - the lack of printed cost values made sense and is right out of the GW playbook (which has worked though at least 10x WH40K editions). The other critical updates were the cardboard dials and I think this is even more important than the card changes because the dials are the most difficult thing to change/balance going forward. It would have been cool to see more options given to 1e players with PDF print-and-play options, but honestly the bundled kits were absolutely the best choice FFG has if they were going to do a 2e at all. Buying them a la carte would have been a SKU production nightmare and stock issues would have been even worse. If you truly think about the alternatives, it was the best worst option.
I also think the opportunity cost of developing X WIng and pre-painted models vs selling new games where they can sell more models quickly, I.,e.Shatterpoint is a big factor.
I played X-Wing once on Tabletop Simulator, and bought the original starter and the sequel starter (got the sequel one first cause the original was out of stock), also bought the Millenium Falcon, cause it's the Millenium Falcon. Never had anyone close to play a in person game with, so never went further in, and was not going to upgrade my few cards...although I considered it. Armada I wanted, but could never justify the purchase.
I love the ships, but just didn't have the room to display if I wasn't going to be actively playing the game. And they were already painted, no point buying them for build and paint hobby!
We just need a print and play game to come in and fill the void, with it's own lore and ever expanding roster of ships (or create your own faction).
The solution to be able to continue selling things to people is to have a new rulebook for them to buy on a 2-3 year cycle with army books and campaign books 😋You also gotta find your Space Marines for your game. Jokes aside, that is probably true to some extent.
I played X-Wing casually among friends at home. I was buying all the ships, absolutely loved it, and part of the excitement was buying the new ships we'd seen in the new movies, TV shows, and extended universe stuff we'd been consuming. That paired with new ships we discovered through Fantasy Flight's Star Wars roleplay as well. When second edition rolled around it was very much a case of we are absolutely not buying all of the conversion packs, and because the new stuff we would have been excited about was released for second edition we couldn't buy it to use with our first edition collections. Our first edition collections were huge and all included ships for all three factions, and it was too expensive to convert to second edition for very little (if any) actual payoff. We all just lost interest, and then the money we were spending on X-Wing went straight back to GW products again. We even stopped playing the Star Wars roleplay and went back to D&D and spent money on D&D books instead.
Armada player here, at least as far as the community i was playing with i really started to notice the decline during the latter parts of the Disney era of ship. When it seemed like every new wave we got was tied to a recent Disney property. This was a bit of big change from the earlier days when it was clear they were pulling popular EU ships into the game. What really killed my group however was how unfinished the clone wars factions were, while very playable for our more casual players they were simply unfinished and it drove off some of our newer players that were excited to try out ships that never got added.
As a Deep Star Wars EU fan who loved Aramada I will be sad to see it go....but all of your concerns about it are 100% valid.
I played X-Wing in both editions at tournaments, and in my area, the restart was a great thing. Especially in the second edition, more and more new people joined, for example, because of the new ships. Even Hyperspace wasn't a big problem. The point where the game died both in the scene and in the local game stores was after the takeover by Atomic Games and their introduction of mission-based play. At this point, it became like Warhammer or most other skirmish games, losing its uniqueness. Many of us then felt that if it’s like other games, why should I keep playing it if the others are better? At this point, the IP could no longer make up for the lack of uniqueness, and almost everyone here lost interest.
From an outside perspective im cautiously optimistic about Shatterpoint's longevity just because they have SO much iconic IP material to work with. Star wars has some recognizable ships but a MASSIVE amount of recognizable characters, and the way theyve structured the gameplay gives them a lot of room to reuse the same character in a different outfit/pose and make that different sculpt have a different gameplay role (leader vs second in command vs troop). Like, the game's been out a year and they havent even gotten around to printing ANY phantom menace characters aside from padme (they have a darth maul but its specifically based on his post-movie EU appearances), so i dont see them running out of popular IP characters for a while.
RIP star wars legion,
enjoy it while it lasts guys
Yeah. Another good game that they are gonna let die on the vine. Shatterpoint was a stupid idea that no one asked for.
To be honest, I bought some minis just due to the fact that I liked such minis rather than the game.... it was a good game but I liked more to collect and paint smol ships like my Red and white YT 1300.... the quality of their minis its just rieiculously good, like with the foldeabe wings of the x wings or b wings, they even had details inside the turbines.... so as models was fantastic.... but I cannot say how the game was becuz I was only into the ships.
Reminds me of the old Star Wars CCG game from the 90's. There was a point in time when it was a near competitor to Magic the Gathering in terms of popularity. Mismanagement brought the numbers down a tad but it was still a widely played game by the time the prequels showed up in 1999. But then Decipher lost the license to Wizards of the Coast and that essentially ended things.
This was a really cool insight that I struggled to consider till hearing you discuss it. I went all out on these very expensive games but wasn’t a tourney player. It feels a little empty now but hopefully will find some people interested to play it. One main issue I had was the hard requirement for the cards. It was a very frustrating component to manage since the upgrades weren’t sold in bulk for X-Wing and not for Armada until too late. If you have the ships why didn’t ffg just let people build lists digitally on a managed web app and then print out what they needed to play in organized events.
Ur right about the death knell being that people purchasing until they don’t and with the licensing, it’s inevitable the games’ cycles are limited and must come to an end. X-Wing 2.x guaranteed that a portion of the population would not convert due to costs they already incurred. As for armada, the game felt complete after wave 8 and the SSD. Everything after felt unnecessary. If they really wanted to keep it alive they would have needed to find new ways to engage the game like interesting cross-overs with other star wars games, maybe.
Heroes of the Aturi Cluster was the best thing for it
Snap ….. edition 2 killed it for me too …… literally overnight I was out ….. very sad to see it go and have some very fond memories of playing games.
I live in the UK and how you describe what you witnessed with the game is exactly how I saw it. I was a player and collector of the game but the cost wall of 2.0 lead to me saying with a heavy heart I’m out.
As a Legion player I share your concerns. I keep hoping they’ll come out with a Hutt themed faction to keep things going. Shadow Collective was a cool idea too, but not enough models yet.
Id say one of the best ips is middle earth SBG from GW and I dont think anyone has any issues with the made up characters they did. Apart from the dragon emperor he can get right back in the sea
GW have a uniquely good relationship with the LOTR IP if podcast interviews are anything to go by. Also they have an advantage in that the IP is sourced from a broad book and appendices with many references they can play with and depict. Disney is more draconian with their IP
@@TabletopTime Yeh totally agree with that. What would we do without those juicy appendixes
Great game. I never played a tabletop game as much as I did X-wing miniatures. Casual games, tournaments, I even traveled to go to games and events. I started collecting the day the game launched and the sculpts only got better as the years went on. I put it down when 2.5 was released. I didn't mind the conversion to 2.0 and I do think that ruleset was better but the rules bloat became unmanageable after that.. having cards and errata updated via the squad builder meant that if I didn't play for a couple months it felt like starting over, reading piles of rules changes, card nerfs and points changes.. it was too much, even for the serious, less casual, gamer. Again. Great system, awesome toys. Sad to see it go but it lived a good life :)
The Victory Class Star Destroyer is a design based on the original drawings by the sketch artist for Star Wars and first appeared back in 1977 and were statted up for the first time in the West End rpg back in the 90s.
I have never updated to V2 but with my son we still have fun playing the first edition.
On the branching topic of legion/atomic mass games
I talked with a couple game store owners while searching for a saber tank for my legion army. Apparently a bunch of the models are on a "won't be continued" list because they just genuinely hadn't gotten them from atomic mass game for quite a while.
Which sucks cause I adore almost everything in starwars legion.
I got super into X-Wing V1 about a year before V2 came out. I was not a tournament player tho, I just play with a group of friends now and again. And we never got into V2, we just still play with our V1 stuff. And we know which ships are 'OP' so to speak. So when we want a more serious game, we try to get a more balanced list out. If we don't care, we will try random things against each other. We still play to this day, every so often.
I never got into X-Wing, but I did want to at one point. The best things that could help these games is for the Star wars IP itself to popularize the more niche factions or possibly for legion to expand into the old Republic. There are those diehard Star wars fans who will happily collect every single named clone trooper who got 30 seconds of screen time in the prequel trilogy, but for a more general fan they're not going to collect 40 different captains with different colored stripes.
Yes for drop fleet commander. Great game. I liked x-wing, a lot actually, but when 2nd ed came out i refused to change over, felt like gw games all over again and i had already been out of the gw scene for a while and had no intention of getting back into that sort of scene.
For myself, I reluctantly bought the 2.0 core box and 2 Scum upgrade kits because the group I'd been playing with was going to 2.0. But, I never actually opened them. I stopped playing for a while (initially, for life reasons and then a lack of motivation). Then I was invited to a new-to-me group that was still playing 1.0. I eventually left that group for not-game-related issues and haven't played since.
The math of price hikes is both complex and simple, but the main problem is that «normal people» are the last to get a wage increase.
Let’s say a product cost 1 dollar to manufacture, the shop buys it for 2 dollars (so the manufacturer makes a little profit) and sells it for 4 dollars to the customer.
Now the shop hasn’t just *made* 2 dollars profit, after deducting the 2 dollars for purchasing, and deducting the sales tax to the government they also have to deduct the «running the shop»-cost of wages, property rent, advertising, etc etc. So maybe the shop earns 50 cent pr product.
Now lets say manufacturing that cost 1 dollar includes covering:
1. wages to employees
2. material costs
3. manufacturing equipment purchase and repair
4. marketing
5. production of packaging
6. shipping
7. warehouse rental
8. office space
9. computers, phones and office gear
10. electricity
If those 10 parts of the cost each increase with 0.1 dollar due to each party handling each expense on the list having increased costs, «only» a 10% increase, the total cost of the item goes from 1 to 2 dollars to manufacture. (a doubling of the price)
The price of the product to the shop has now increased from 2 dollar to 4 dollars.
Why 4 and not 3 dollars? since everything gets more expensive and the manufacturer also needs a profit, only increasing price to the shop by 1 dollar means less profitt and margin, which is bad business, and since the manufacturers also have other costs outside of those 10 mentioned in this example they need to make more money from each sale to a shop.
So shop buys for 4 dollars, not 2, paying now the price they used to sell the product for. If they sell for 5 they will loose money and not cover their expenses (because power, rent, etc etc has gone up in price). also, if sales tax is 20%, 20% of 5 dollars is 1 dollar. buing the product for 4, selling for 5 and paying 1 of those 5 dollars in sales tax to the government means no money to the shop at all.
6 dollars then - a little income, but after paying increased expenses on rent, gear, employees, etc etc etc less than they made pr product before.
So 7 dollars then - maybe, it might give a slight profitt, 8 would be better because *everything* is more expensive.
So for the consumer, who might be aware that their own electricity bill is up 10%, suddenly has to pay 7 dollars instead of 4 dollars for a product, or for easy math, 8 dollars, a doubling of the price, even though the general price increase in society is just 10%.
Now, to the point:
- if manufacturing prices rise like in the theoretically simplified example above, AND interest/sales are DOWN at the same time … the manufacturer sell less, meaning they make less products or have overstock which costs money to store in a warehouse, while the «steady expenses» are still the same.
So the only sensible play is to kill the product line that is now making less or too little money, and spend resources on those that sell well, or/and fire people from their jobs to cut steady expenses, and/or downscale office space, manufacturing etc etc.
The main problem is that these price increases of «just» 0.1 dollar pr. «link in the chain» end up in the lap of the consumer, who is the last person to get a proper raise to deal with increased cost/inflation happening at the manufacturing and services level.
And this is transferrable to GW as well, they have a huge profit result. The reason for it is they sell millions of units. If you where to divide their profit by the millions of units they sell, you might end up with maybe a dollar cheaper price to the consumer on a pack of jump pack intercessors that cost 50 dollars.
Lets take a pack of miniatures that cost 49 dollars.
If gw sell 1 million of these at 49 dollars and their profit of that pack is 1 dollar they make 1 million dollars.
if gw decreases the price with 1 dollar they make *nothing*.
You save a dollar or pack, gw has *no* profitt.
If they increase by 1 dollar, from 49 to 50, they instead make 2 million dollars profit.
The point is that veeeery small changes in sales price, or manufacturing cost, can make something go from very profittable to no profit at all, or even loss of money. And when you connect that with less interest, lets say a drip in sales of 20-30 %, the only play is to stop spending money making that product.
I sold my collection when v2 was a rumor cause i wanted a fresh start… but then V2 dropped 8ed 40k was in full swing.
I feel that what made Xwing such a bit hit was the lack of good games at the time. 40k was in a bad spot, i think Warmachine wasn’t doing hot, Wh Fantasy was lagging
theres a video on here of someone giving a ruleset that ties the star wars ttrpg, armada, and x-wing all together as a single game system. and i kinda love that idea
I was a casual player with a decent selection of Alliance and Empire ships. It was a mix of original trilogy, new and older ships (from the TWO factions that existed in 1st ed.)
When 2nd ed. came out I was looking at having to split the ships I loved between FOUR (SIX?) factions, Rebel, Resistance, Empire and First Order (and maybe some others, don't remember, care even less) and looking at spending ~$50 (US) per faction to update ("So economical!"), so that would have been $200... the minis sat in my closet for a year or so until I accepted I was never going to use them again (and already have plenty of cool models on display) and sold them. I miss my Ghost (such a cool model) but otherwise never looked back
If you're old enough to remember a game called Ace of Aces, the original core of Star Wars X-Wing game for a more than coincidental resemblance to the handy rotary series of Aces of Aces. That made it a great game by the way.
I think I stopped buying stuff when I stopped playing. And I stopped playing... It was me and a couple of friends mostly, and I think between us we got bored of using the same ships but weren't invested enough to keep buying new ships, aside from one guy who has carried on since then and kept bringing in new ships that outclassed us despite being the same point cost. So:
1. Power creep.
2. Frustration at the points costs (which I suspect were done on guesswork and _some_ maths for the early ships and then the later ones suffered from rounding errors based on trying to fit into those numbers).
3. Too many special abilities being regularly added. If I ever get into W40K again, I'll default to Tau (unless stories about the customisability being taken away are true), but the way stuff kept turning up and forcing me to re-evaluate things was just tedious rather than an interesting challenge because it kept happening before I had a chance to settle on something and try it out for a while; that's a thing more regular players would like, and as an occasional player against someone buying the new stuff, it was just demoralising.
This was still in first edition; my friend got into second edition (and complained about the restrictions on ship lists for different types of matches), but I never got that far.
This conversation sounds exactly like what's being said about trading card games constantly,there so many dropped then discontinued less than a year later
I'm not really familiar with this game or it's history and iterations, but I kind of felt like they could've done this as a standalone game and just collaborated with Starwars later on. Just like how Wizards of the Coast did with their recent collaborations. Coz from what you described, this sounds fun
So this is why all the Armada stuff disappeared.
I was going to buy the Super Star Destroyer, and then it was sold out everywhere overnight.
Of course as soon as I could finally afford it.
I'm glad I grabbed the Republic and Separatist starter fleets when I did at least.
I hate it when they discontinue games like this.
Such a huge investment for a game that doesn't last.
I loved X-Wing. In the last big tourney in Vancouver before V-2, i got right in the middle of the rankings in a 100+ tourney. I ran Miranda, Nym and Resistance Bomber. I always played what i loved. I was excited for V-2 with medium and small based ships can give you half points( hated Kylo with 1 hull left and running away for 45 minuts and you dont get any points
I ran X-Wing events, at my local game store, and after Second Ed. dropped, I saw participation go from 8-12, to 3, to no one, in a matter of a couple of months. I would have nights, where nobody would show up, and eventually, the Store Manager just stopped it all together. It really was heart breaking to see that.
Exactly the same experience here
One of my favourite moments was dodge spamming with a TIE-Fighter (Mauler Mithal) and eventually beating a couple of better ships.
This seriously saddens me, because X-Wing was seriously one of my favorite, if not my ABSOLUTE favorite tabletop game...
When 2e came out, I sold my 1e stuff and bought Wings of Glory (which X Wing was modeled after) and I still play it to this day.
Yooo, I have so much to say about this subject as a big collector of both armada and x wing, but I just noticed we both own that plush squig!
for shatterpoint, and even legion, they could resell existing models with different sculpts. I guess they kinda do that in shatterpoint already where they have multiple versions of the same character. There are currently two Darth Vader's and two Asoka's, so that helps them avoid "running out" of popular characters to sell.
How many times can you sell me the same character? Not many, for most, I'd wager. Sure, the 5% mega fans, or the fans of that particular character but not all...
They have announced Legion is getting resculpts of old soft plastics into hard plastics. Curious if the rules and cards will change too.
@@TabletopTime Each of these "extra sculpts" are actually different characters with their own rules separate from the others. MCP has done this multiple times 3+ on multiple characters and they are all bangers.
@@TabletopTime Works for Heroclix. Look at the Wheels of Vengeance collection-a whole bunch of assorted Ghost Riders, for a start. Then there are things like the epic and double epic warcasters and warlocks in Warmahordes, and even something as simple as mounted and dismounted forms of characters.
2 minutes in .... and the hype is building and I can hear the star wars dogfight music in my head .... damn it guys, you sell a soon-to-be-discontinued game really well.
I can say that in my case in the local scene it already died off well before 2nd edition because the balance was completely out of whack near the end of 1.0. Also, generally speaking, the scene on a National level (the Netherlands) was so hyper competitive I also was completely done with that after a while. For a good few years I was also quite serious, but showing up at a casual tournament only to get lambasted by a team of players all playing the same list for the upcoming Regional was not fun. I think 2.0 refreshed it and for me it was not a huge investment - my collection was relatively large and it felt like a worthwhile investment. X-Wing never was an expensive mini hobby relative to the other brands. The app was absolute doggy doo though on launch.
What killed it for me is that in the end it just devolved into the same hyper competitiveness and when Hyperspace became the main format (which was good, but sometimes took too long for things to change/be taken out/added in) it also could be repetitive. What killed it for me was just the lack of a local scene combined with an intensely sweaty larger scene. Over time it also became more of a bother for me that the objective was just to kill each other, which in 1.0 could result in dumb lists like Dash Miranda but also sometimes you would just get dunked on entirely by some OP stuff in 2.0 as well. They did add objective based play later on, but by then it was too late for me.
You nailed it. I was a casual fan player and i invested in too much on first edition. I was not going to pay for second edition. I still enjoy playing first edition with friends.