OFFICIAL X-wing Development has ended - My take on AMG and this whole mess
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- čas přidán 16. 06. 2024
- X-wing the miniatures game is a tabletop game designed for and marketed to adults 14 years old and above. The videos on this channel covering X-wing are entirely designed to be viewed by the same adult audiences, and are not intended to be viewed by children.
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Important Links:
Official statement from AMG:
www.atomicmassgames.com/trans...
Crabbok (Content creator)
channel: / @crabbok
response video (stream): • The End for X-Wing and...
Sith Takers
response Podcast episode: / amg-admits-defeat
Gold Squadron Podcast
response Podcast episode • Ep. 362 - The Death an...
Discord servers to chat with the community/ find games/ and discuss the future of the ruleset/s
- X-wing TMG 2.5 (continuation of current official ruleset group): / discord
- X-wing Legacy 2.0 (Pre-2.5 rules with updates for new ships and slight rules tweaks): / discord
- Gold Squadron Podcast (content creators and community tournament organisers) Server : / discord - Hry
Gold Squardon Podcast response (to the situation, not to me) just dropped;
czcams.com/video/fAKzFUaGjs4/video.htmlsi=uedAlYXTy6_c28xv
The community is already rising to meet the challenge. This game will probably be more alive than with AMG at the helm!
If i can buy any of the minis I'm broke
AMG: "The cost is too high."
Gamers: "Um....have you seen how much we spend on our favorite games?"
the reality is Asmodee their parent company got saddled with $900m of debt from embracer when they were cut loose. Licenses for star wars are expensive
I have to buy MCP characters on sprue in packs of 2, and they still cost more per unit than small X-wing ships used to when I started playing.
@@DamonLeonin Doubtful they pay money for the licence, instead they probably just share money from the sales.
Something particularly interesting of note when fantasy flight killed off Android netrunner, their community founded and runs a non-profit dedicated to developing printing and running the game
Also…Do you know the sad story of darth bloodbowl?
AMG was never going to produce fully painted models for $15 when the price of their sprue kits are double that. It never fit their over-pricing model. Their price model would have single X-Wing TIE's selling for $60 a piece. The silver lining is that with 3-D printing that we all have access to, this game will live on forever.
They've always been around $30 for small ships and $60+ for anything larger here
Catalyst is producing excellent quality plastic minis for Battletech at a reasonable price, anywhere from about $25-$35 for a box with 4 different minis in it. There is a lot of variety in the minis they produce. The latest new release even has one mini prepainted. AMG quoting costs to produce minis feels like a cheap excuse to me as even a company with no previous miniature producing history like Catalyst can do it.
@@xHypnoHousex ?? What game have you been playing? Even at the most recent MSRP a TIE fighter was $23- For those who started at the beginning, we used to pay $10 per ship from online retailers.
@@urloony the Canadian Exchange Rate game
@@urloony I've never seen an X-Wing expansion for $10cad, that's like a Canadian X-Wing players wet dream.
At some point after 2.5 was announced their official announcement was: "If you don't like it, go away". Tells you everything about their communication skills.
mmhmm!
Yep and a lot of us took that advice. I haven't played since
Community take over or ffg should take the game back go back to 2.0 rules just dog fights and make the current game format optional bring all the banned ships back keep the the option to build your pilot or use the pre build cards most folks in my area quite playing because of the current format my opinion x wing is a dog fight game also bring the big ships back it's a shame we have these ships and can not use them hope ffg takes the game back a keep it going I have vested a lot in the game and now it seems like it's all useless happy to see you're back Nick just like the old days when I first started x wing thanks
I try my best!
Grammer dude.
Don't care about grammar in a chat not writing a thesis. For me this is like jotting notes. If you get my idea then we are good.
@@joehendrson3815 The last every "official" ruleset, points, and fixes before 2.5 is where I'd want to go to. I remember playing it for a few months and it was just perfect. We couldn't find anything wrong with it, we didn't even need the rules anymore, we just knew how to play. It was so smooth.
X-Wing Legacy is a fantastic idea. The game is in a great place, and I've seen fan-run living rulebooks that have run for years and years without official support.
I think at the beginning your giving AMG a bit more credit then they deserve. Go back watch their first video for xwing from AMG. It to me shows exactly how they felt about xwing.
I hope FFG takes it back. 2.0 fixed the game but once AMG took it over x-wing died. Our local store went from
12-14 every week to 4 after 2.5 came out.
Asmodee still owns both AMG and FFG so I don't think it's likely it'll hop from one Asmodee subsidiary to another
They let the lightning out of the bottle when they fired the original dev team. I worry that even FFG might struggle to support it if that happens.
@@ReallyBigBadAndy76 yeah FFG exists more as a brand now than anything else
@@HairyNick They weren't just the devs. They were the people on camera doing weekly live updates and showing us how to play the game. The first livestream with the "new" devs had them making major mistakes while using their own rules!
I started tabletop gaming with X-Wing. 1.0. Then got into legion. Now I play both. But when amg took over, both games took a hit. The way they treated the game designers, the way they produced terrible updates full of typos. Welp.... no way I’m going to buy into another amg game. I’ll play with what I have, casually. I’m not buying anymore legion expansions, either. Great job, Amg.
We missed you! Thanks for the video!
Welcome back man! Its sad what's happened but there is hope
It's not insane to feel positive. AMG released a 'huge ship' then changed the rules so they didn't cover huge ships - great business move there.
The community has always been picking up after AMG.
That tracks.
First. No, a company and ANYONE who that company hires to engage with the customer base NEEDS to be able to hack it and not fold like a whiny bitch the moment customers show their displeasure. If an employee can't handle the heat then they need to NOT ENGAGE WITH THE CUSTOMERS. That responsibility rests with the management.
Second. AMG was NEVER a good fit for X-wing/Armada and they should have been willing to admit that I do something to fix that situation rather that just fail.
Third. Their excuse for why they can't continue ARE absolute bullshit. They could easily have just stopped painting the ships if that was the sticking point. I KNOW it's not the minis themselves, all you have to do is like at other games like BATTLETECH to see that making high quality minis for a reasonable price isn't the actual issue.
While I agree with you overall, I do take issue with your first statement.
I strongly disagree with the "don't like the heat get out of the kitchen" mentality, and don't feel that any job should come any kind of abuse, verbal or otherwise. Needing to distance yourself from a toxic situation doesn't make you a "whiny bitch", let's be totally clear on that. The problems start to occur when a company dissengages from actual constructive critisism, which is what effectively happened here.
What I primarily take issue with was AMG's response in shutting down communication (if that was indeed their course of action in response). It's management's role to facilitate healthy communication with it's consumer base and to ensure the well being of their staff, and at least one of those needs were not met.
@@HairyNick for your average employee I'd agree with you, but there SHOULD be people specifically there to engage with the customers and weed out the good from the bad. The problem is that companies use this mentality as an excuse to not have to deal with what the customers actually want. This isnt just an AMG thing, this is an issue with almost every company in the entertainment industry these days, just look at how these video game companies react to player backlash. None of these companies are engaging with the customers in good faith so OF COURSE the customers will lash out, especially when it's something they actually care about.
I am still surprised that, in all the years X-Wing was produced, the publishers did not publish a book of fun scenarios for those playing at home on kitchen tables. The Yavin, Coruscant and Endor packs came very late in the day. Also, why no pre-painted turbolaser towers and other such dynamic terrain pieces? I'd have bought all that stuff from FFG/AMG, rather than having to go to the secondary market.
Funny you bring that up, it's going to be a topic of some future content relating to alternate play styles. :)
At the tail end of FFG days their last rules document did include a reference to "structures", but it never got any content. In theory they were planning on an official product for towers or similar.
So sad to see this video, but also surprised that they were "supporting" the game up until now. The entire game dropped off my radar after AMG took over, and that's with me going to AMG's website and searching their official announcements for news
Alleged support.
They had the worst announcement model on planet earth. You essentially had to watch their stream and pull pieces here and there.
2.5 stuff it! 2.0 legacy all the way! - this is how I think X-wing should be played from now on. - only I sound like Sean Connery when I say that. 😅
2.0 was peak X-wing, all FFG with lessons learned.
@@markcalhoun8219 The last days of 2.0 (before they fired the OG devs) was almost perfect. All the problems were fixed, the points felt balanced and things were going well.
I was going to get back into the game then that week I had the minis in my online shopping cart they announced 2.5 and I immediately ran away as fast as I could so I am excited to see how things develop to see if I can finally come back. Also we should totally get into contact with the guys who kept Netrunner going and if there is a feasable way to get new printed cards.
Netrunner is a special case. That takes real dedication to get game pieces created on the scale they did. Give's me hope, though!
Been waiting for you to comment on what’s happened!
When waiting for an introvert with ADHD to comment, one often wait rather a long time.
Never understood why AMG were so cool on the *generic* pilots. In my games, we rarely bother with aces. We like a good scrum between generic Ties and X-Wings, etc. Because the AMG points system effectively gave an ace X-Wing pilot (5 or 6 skill) more or less the same basic cost as the greenest rookie (1), it surely gave players no incentive to crowd the table with cheap generics. Had it done so, it might surely have encouraged people to buy more product to increase the number of ships in their collections?
They never understood the core concept, they just wanted to make mario kart but star wars
What Mark said, but perhaps a little less video gamey. If you want a solid snapshot of their design philosophy, take a look at Marvel Crisis Protocol, and you can see how they prefer to design games (not throwing shade at MCP, that game is great but those design elements don't gel with X-wing).
On a business sense, the generic pilots helped sell multiple copies of the same product. Seems silly to me to discourage consumers to buy more than one.
@@shawnrasmussen1460 You nailed it. That studio had never business sense, of course community/buyers respect it's fantasy for them... They think their products are an automatic sale because of the IP, but as a game designing studio their games are crap because of their silly game mechanincs, hope they get what they deserve. Not buying anything from them ever, bunch of liars doing the dirt work so GW stands where is at (other studio from where I'm not gonna buy a bit ever).
Thank you Nick for a positive response and looking forward to the next chapter of X-Wing!
The legacy group is very committed to keeping the game alive. I've been play testing for them for a while now. I feel they take a balanced approach to the game and just want everyone to have a good time playing.
There’s blame all around….Asmodee failed to staff up AMG at the time of the transfer to allow them to go from managing 1 game to 4 games. Asmodee letting the whole line dev team go. AMG not having the staff to develop 4 lines, and not ever understanding the X-Wing and Armada lines. Covid changing the manufacturing and shipping landscape in terms of costs. The final nail I think is the Ebracer debt. Asmodee needs to clear the warehouse of stagnant product, which for whatever reasons describes both lines today.
The only issue we are going to have is there are two groups that will not combine to join into one. The newly releases XWA is most likely going to be focusing on 2.5, where as the Legacy 2.0 people won't talk to anyone outside unless it's advertisement. That just means people will have fun for a little, and then the game will officially die out.
Having different play styles is hardly a hinderance. People within these groups have already largely accepted that.
@@HairyNick I think it is a hindrance if Xwing were to ever come back. You would only come back to half your consumer base. The other half with never join now unless the new created version is really, really good.
@@vh8542 I appreciate that it may feel that way, but I don't feel a "rule set that I slightly don't prefer" is as much of an issue when the game is properly managed. In the case of AMG, the 2.5 ruleset was an issue largly because of all the other elements surrounding it, and the poor justifications for it's implimentation.
@@HairyNick I agree with you. I don't like 2.5 as much and AMG's reasonings over the past few years and now to cut Xwing seem like bs. I just see discussions and debates on GSP discord and others that seems like a fair amount of people will stick with 2.0 or 2.5 or might do some sort of in-between but will never go back to X system or Y system. You won't be able to make them all happy now if Xwing were to ever come back.
Maybe enough people plus new ones.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Glad to hear from you. I've enjoyed your reasoning.
Glad you don't work for Asmodee. Haha. 27:59
at this point i fear that Star Wars legion will slowly slip into this path. Yes yes you can keep bombarding me that Legion isnt going to die because theres more incoming stuff plus the rumoured 2.0. but here is where we need to address the situation at hand. AMG changed X-wing 2.0 to 2.5 into a hot mess, they nullified the game with the most redundant stuff like objectives which i feel isnt right for dog fighting games that include the ROAD shenanigan, they just splotch a layer of nonsense ontop of an already problematic version. Also Shatterpoint isnt an exciting game because you cant kill stuff and its all very objective driven.. So meaning they might just change the face of Star Wars Legion to their liking and kill this beaufitul game Luke Eddy has created. Then, in no time, it will just join Armada and X-wing into the grave. As long as Will Pagani is in charge and Asmodee is cutting corners and communications between AMG and the players are limited to none.. Star Wars Legion might be next.
I'm less worried about Legion. Not because I think AMG are good at curating their games.... I think I've made it clear I feel that's patently untrue, but because the damn game just makes so much money. It's killing it right now, and is cited as being one of the 2 big properties that are money makers for Asmodee in the Star Wars space (the other being Unlimited). As little faith as I have, I can't see a reason even for AMG to not just stay the course and keep collecting that income off that game.
Conversly, X-wing wasn't making them money when they went to 2.5. They had to do something, but rather than listen to the consumers they toyed with core mechanics and made changes that most people hated. Again, poor communication.
Asmodee drove me away from the game with how it was managed. I went to the Sydney tournament in 2018? and had a blast, met some great people. from memory there were 255 competitors., biggest tournament I had ever played. Then not long after the game changed, and I was less inspired. But with these announcements the conversations between the older players in my group has been revitalised, so hopefully with Asmodee leaving, it can be fun again.
The Systems Open in Sydney was 2019, and yes, it was incredible. I made a vlog about it afterwards. :)
Man, ive missed your insights. Stoked to hear your thoughts about the state of the game. A lot of what youve mentioned has actually given me some optimism for the game moving forward. I may even be open to dusting off the old ships when things settle a bit 🙏🏼 good to see your vids in my feed again 🤙🏽
There is no doubt that the X-WIng community will oversee not just the continuation of X-Wing as a game, but its growth. There is a very real loss that no official content will be produced for this game, but it is a massive boon to the casual gamers and bedroom game designers.
Now that there is no official version of the game to monopolise the attention of the player base, everyone is free to gravitate to whatever flavour of the game speaks to them, whether it's 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, some weird hybrid, HOTAC, narrative play, RPGs, Epic games, multi-player games and so on. The constraints on the game itself have been removed, and members of the X-Wing community are free to invest in the game they want to support without being looked down on for being a weird fan variant and not the proper game. There is no proper game, it's all weird fan variants to a greater or lesser degree, and the future is bright.
X-Wing is dead. Long live X-Wing!
What they need to do is release all the cards etc as high definition PDF's so people can print them, and allow the community to 3d print without going after them. I might be able to get the things I want then
This would be a sign of goodwill to us but would never happen. Especially with Disney and Lucasfilm.
2.5 introduction was the Death of Xwing for me and pretty much all of the FLGs in my state. Xwing was huge here before then.
I hope the community agrees to go back to 2.0 that was before the dark times before the Empire.
Yeah same here in my local state. I have no problem with those wanting to play 2.5 but I think wider adoption of Legacy will be key in getting back older player interest.
Great insight and more structured than we managed to be on our ‘angry rant’ podcast where we were firmly in the ‘anger’ stage of grief.
Rich P - Sith Takers.
Eh to each their own. I sure enjoyed your take on it!
I'll be honest, when AMG got a hold of X-Wing and Armada, I knew they were both dead. I've been kind of expecting Legion to crater, but they've been supporting it admirably, though they have been struggling with design decisions made by the previous developers of the game.
I don't know the exact size of AMG, but I don't think they're a big studio. They probably lack the bandwidth to take on more than a couple games, and their design interests seem to lean towards their MCP game. In order for a project within a game studio to flourish, someone on the team (usually in a senior position) needs to champion that project. Keep it in management's eye, and keep the money and support flowing. Otherwise a project will languish and die. In this case, it seems that nobody on AMG's development team was interested in championing the project, and only were acting as a custodian because they were forced to. X-Wing was someone else's baby, and they were long gone.
I do agree that X-Wing could have a lengthy life ahead of it. Guildball and Lord of the Rings have maintained very strong communities despite being neglected by their creators. The FFG Star Wars RPG community created all sorts of tools and resources for the media blackout caused by Disney's exclusivity deal with EA, when FFG couldn't support it. Resources for X-Wing can be pulled from Star Trek Attack Wing (X-wing, but Star Trek), or Dungeons and Dragons Attack wing (X-wing, but dragons), if needed, as Wiz Kids seem to be maintaining support for their 10 year old games. As their entire business model is selling pre-painted minis, it's unlikely this situation will change any time soon.
Great video, and some excellent pieces of analysis. Thanks a bunch for the video.
Thankyou! :)
Good to see you! I think your analysis is spot on.
I'm confident to see again a video from you Hairy!
X Wing will not die, new Organization is on the way to bring gamers from 2.5 and 2.0 back to the table!
I hope we will see soon great tournaments again!
I think the direction is X-Wing Legacy and X-Wing Alliance (as its apparently being called) working together to strengthen one community that likes playing the game in the two different ways presented (2.0 and 2.5) because yes...I do like SOME of the changes that 2.5 brought in and to just discard it feels like it's doing a disservice to people who have bought into and enjoy 2.5.
@@riesstiu2khunning nothing imo. The game was in the best balance state it had ever been right before AMG took over
Removal of bids
@@riesstiu2khunning yeah, bids are great for newcomers 😂🤣
“Oh so you built a squad with 200 points? Yeah, you’re not winning a single game today pal”
With all the tricky rules in xwing, rolling a set of dice after setting dials is not super complex….
@@riesstiu2khunning OMG...
Bids are just good for one thing: making bad players feel smart since they get to move last and just react
And thematically it makes no sense either, none whatsoever
"We left a missile at base so now my force gets to react to whatever the enemy is doing" or "My Soontir is better than your Anakin since... eh.. a TIE fighter stayed at home"
Didn't expect this to blow up but I will weigh in on what my thoughts are. I prefer aspects of 2.5 but am not opposed to it being revised and improved, in the same way that 2.0 players were not happy with the move to 2.5, they seem to be fairly content to hang people who do like 2.5 out to dry with rhetoric like "We can get rid of that 2.5 rubbish" which quite frankly is not helpful. There's clearly 2 different rulesets people enjoy.
On the subject of bids, I do agree with André. It was frustrating to turn up, someone outbits me by 1 point and that 1 point grants them one massive advantage: positional flexibility. It didn't matter what move I performed, these ships would utilise their tools to do the typical thing of "I make sure I can shoot you but you can't shoot me." and any situation that would develop where I would have the advantage, say they park their ship right in front of me...oh no, they boost and now they are out of arc. It was a game of risk aversion based on advanced information.
ROAD changed that, for the better in my opinion. In 2.5 you couldn't guarantee that the move you perform was 100% safe because there was the risk that if you didn't win the roll off, suddenly you were moving first and didn't know where your opponent was moving. It took the advantage that a bid provided and while not eliminating it, it equalised it by giving either side and opportunity to achieve it through dice rolling. This had a knock on effect of introducing a risk vs reward element back into dial play. Many times I have looked at the board state and determined "This move is my best move if I want a shot, but depending on the move order it might cost me. I could do this move to be safe...but it then means I am not getting a shot at all...but I don't know the outcome. I need to decide if I take the risk, or if I play it safe." most of the time I'd take the risk because if you're always playing it safe the game state is never advancing and you're just wasting a round. Sometimes that risk would scupper me and I end up in a bad position, and sometimes the reverse would occur where I have taken a serious risk, but it pays off and I end up in a prime position. You are forced to make decisions and take risks, based on imperfect information rather than "Oh, you're there. I'm just going to boost, barrel roll and...there, you get no shot but I can shoot you. Isn't this game FUN!" Wasn't fun for the poor sap on the other side of the board. Too many times I've turned up, looked at what I was against, saw it had initiative and just felt "Welp...those points I invested into an ace to take counter your ace is wasted because you'll just move after me and make sure I can't shoot you." and even had a new player express that frustration to me at a store weekend tournament we went along to and to me the response of "Well you should have spent one point less..." just didn't feel like the correct response or solution.
I am under no illusions that people have different preferences for this. The way 2.0 does it rewards...skill but skill based on what I call 'perfect information'. If you can always react to what someone has done you have a substantially higher control over what happens that round for both you and your opponent. As I am writing this I am reminded of a Mythbusters episode where they tested an old samurai saying "He who moves first, loses." in which they tested the myth in their usual fashion; a kendo duel. I couldn't find the actual results as in statistically how many times did a certain side lose compared to the other. However I do remember that it was consistently discovered that the person reacting won in a vast majority of instances if not all of them.
2.5 introduces an element of randomness that people believe takes skill out of the game when I'd argue it requires more skill...you need to assess the current board state, the potential board state and take a risk, it's harder to 'wait, see, and adjust with boost/barrel roll'. A key aspect of game design is risk vs reward, if there is no risk for you then the reward is a foregone conclusion.
To argue, I don't like the argument that it 'complicates gameplay'. It's a dice roll, it's not exactly rocket science, and the argument that it confuses newcomers because they have to learn it...they have an entire game full of mechanics to learn each with their own nuances. People will learn. My local community has actually had quite a few new people who have come in and started with 2.5 and they don't seem to be struggling although I do admit this is based on only my experiences.
The 1.5 range ruler was only invented to provide a middle point for the objective, it was inelegant, but unfortunately that's the problem when you want to get to the middle of a 3x3 board and your range ruler doesn't work in the same measurements. However that wasn't conceived at the start of the game so the original designers can't be blamed for that. They needed a way to say "You place this in the exact center" and didn't really have a method for that other than to introduce the 1.5.
I like that scenarios force you to not simply build the most optimal list for one particular objective, you need to consider and adapt to the mission that gets played and have a strategy for it in mind. The argument about scenarios in X-Wing only being 4 is quite frankly a poor one. You and I both know that Armada was designed from the ground up to involve scenarios when that wasn't X-Wings original intent and the implementation of them is even different as in X-Wing. You have a degree of control over the scenario that you play meaning very often it involves you looking at the three options and deciding "Which one works best with my fleet...because I know my opponent has brought these three and planned around these three." once again you're making an optimal choice rather than having to prepare for the possibility of any scenario from a smaller pool. You've already given yourself the advantage by building an optimised fleet for those three scenarios all the opposing player has to do is also make the optimal choice based on their fleet. That sounds like front loading things into the squad building to me. That being said I would definitely not be opposed to seeing either more scenarios introduced and rotated in and out of the game...or even abandoned entirely. I think it would be sad to see them go, but I also know that if we want a unified ruleset, concessions (from both the 2.0 and 2.5 players) will have to be made.
part 1 of 2
Good hearing from you. May not be too long before people will do 3d prints.
They could have used x and use it as a message posting system and then contact x wing u tubers and get their questions answered. That way you get feed back from customers who care about it
Do you think the community will pick up the rules development like how Netrunner has?
%100. Links in the description for the various communities, if you want to watch it happen in realtime.
As some one who saw the writing on the wall a LONG time ago, its un surprising that this has happened. However, in saying that, the game felt similar to old Mechwarrior Dark Age/Age of Destruction in regards to its competitive scene. Especially nearing the end of its life, while there was still a heavy amount of interest in the game, the game had run its course, and for x wing, I feel that the die hards will stick with it for some time, but eventually they will leave slowly until its kept alive by a few randoms at games nights.
Mechanically it was a unique game, that has been translated to other titles (star trek fleet and a DND Dragons game) but they didnt last long.
I could see the mechanics being reused elsewhere, but nothing really stands out yet.
Right now, you will see an uptick of players, but I feel once official support drops, it will drop players like the perverbial hot potato.
And its a shame, as X-Wing is a great game, it has(d) its problems, but for the most part, it was a solid game that was easily picked up and played.
On another note...Anyone selling gunboats?? (Jokes aside, already started seeing some interesting people jumping out the wood work wanting to buy "collections"...sigh
Considering the stagnation in new ship design I would argue the game really hasn't run it's course. It more feels like it's been in a holding pattern for 2 years. Jusdt my opinion. :)
@@HairyNick I don’t disagree there. However in saying that. I can’t see any canon stuff being able to be added by the community with out issues from amg/disney. It’s a tough situation no matter which way you look at it. And depending how trivial amg wants to be they could dcma it(I know it’s probably not the right term but it’s effectively what would happen I feel)
Thank you Nick! You were the channel that my friend recommended when I first came in at the end of 1.0. Honestly, like you, more than anything I’m glad the community has control over the game now.
Love you man! So happy to have you back!
Oh, and the content, right. I should say something about the content.
You nailed it.
If you ever find yourself up in Washington State, we HAVE to have a beer and play some Legacy :D
Good to see you again.
Good to be back.
It's really good to see you on here again. This whole thing has been a huge disappointment. X-Wing shouldn't have gone out like this.
AMG is a trash fire company formed by people that binned and burned their own IP and are sure to eventually capsize AMG just like they capsized PP.
They hate pre-painted / pre-assembled minis, they hate that X-Wing proved that pre-painted / pre-assembled minis proved not only viable but a means of making miniatures games mainstream rather than niche and they HAAAATE the idea that people aside from super-grognards might get into miniature gaming.
So they didn't even try. Demonstrably, they didn't even try. They just want wargames to be inaccessible products with a garbage value proposition, end of story, and are no doubt celebrating that they no longer 'need to deal with' X-Wing - the most successful and amazing TT miniatures game of all time.
I think this video reflects too narrow a focus. Asmodee's initial pacman style rampage that started in 2014 seemed promising, but after Asmodee sold to PAI things have been rough for all involved. Fantasy Flight went from one of the premier Board Games company to a largely spent force very quickly, Asmodee itself has relgated itself to a second division operation, Days of Wonder has totally withered. I don't see much blame for Xwing and Armada as lying with AMG, it's all a product of the corporate take over of hobby businesses by an investment firm, but you dont see PAI and now Embracer prominently displayed on the packaging. The restructuring of the gobbled up companies to focus on a small number of the most profitable product lines may be doing great things for group profits (i have no idea or interest tbh), but it's taken a handful of premier hobby companies and made them increasingly irrelevant to the hobby communities they were vital parts of prior to 2018.
There are bigger elements at play, I acknowledge that. It doesn't excuse what I feel is poor management from AMG. I understand costs had to be cut somewhere, but whose to say it HAD to be X-wing?
I still don´t get why they couldn´t transition to ships on a sprew for both games ....
Good to see, been a while since I stepped away from X Wing but great to hear your take.
Cheers, Mike. :) Good to hear from you, hope you're doing well.
I am not surprised. I think they will return in a couple of years, with ships you build and paint yourself. It takes a long time to design minis first production
Yeah I'ts likely (so long as they are still financially viable in the short term). It's just a shame, I think we were all hoping if that had to happen, it would happen with X-wing. Although at least if they want to forge forward with their 2.5 design ethos, doing it with a blank slate is a much better way to go than pasting it onto an already well thought out system that doesn't gel well with those mechanics.
I hope the X Wing Fanbase finds a way to have 2.0 and 2.5 be available to players with regular balancing and points updates. Maybe turn 2.0 into "Extended" and 2.5 into "Standard". Playing with objectives is fun but so is flying ships around and going PEW PEW.
I think having both available might be key. I'm really keen to play Legacy but I respect 2.5 plays a part in what so many new players enjoy about the game.
Maverick squadron intends to keep playing
Good to see you again Nick. And agreed, good and hopeful things are coming for Xwing.
Nick it's been too long! Hey Nick, what about 3d prints for new ships? And can we please go back to 2.0 . I don't like the pigeon hole load outs or the six rounds. If I want 6 rounds I will do Legion or Armada. It's just not X-Wing. Thanks for being spicy but civil.
I'll be chatting about all of that in future content. :) As I said, wanted to keep that subject matter seperate.
I like "spicy but civil", I might use that....
Bruh did they really make the game 6 rounds? 💀
I stuck with 2.0 (Legacy) when they announced 2.5 and ROAD....sounds like they made some even worse decisions...
It’s no real surprise, to be honest I thought they gave up on x wing when legion took off, they certainly gave up on armada.
Annoyingly they TOLD us ages ago they were giving up on Armada, which gave us hope for X-wing.
The broader view across the entire Asmodee Star Wars License is that X-Wing and Armada have shut down, the cost issue of creating pre-painted miniatures - if it is the actual cause of shutting down X-Wing and Armada - will also impact Shatterpoint and Legion. Star Wars The Roleplaying Game has been at Edge Studios for years and has released no new product. That means the only continuously viable Star Wars product Asmodee owns is the Customizable Card Game.
If the overall license is not already in jeopardy of not being renewed by Disney, it will be if Asmodee can't justify themselves as actually moving product.
I think it's likely Asmodee will keep the license. Disney has to be pleased with the CCG alongside Lorcana. The prophet margin is vastly superior to anything in the miniatures realm and if FFG could ever figure out how to produce enough of any of their products, the CCG will make them big money in the long run (which for FFG is probably 5 years for a variety of bad reasons). X-Wing and Armada are really an AMG problem, they simply hate that they inherited those two lines and simply there to manage the funerals. While Legion fits their sales model better, I think it's days are numbered (I'd give it 2 years max).
I think that is perhaps too optimistic. The profit margin for the CCG has not outpaced the older CCG, and the revenue streams of the two mini games just dried up - after the once profitable TTRPG has been a dormant stream for 5 years now. That isn’t a healthy license
Both Unlimited and Legion are doing exceptionally well for Asmodee atm (I susptect that's why they haven't tried to kill Legion, it might be keeping AMG afloat). I don't think we are quite there yet, but if Asmodee fail to re-allocate or rethink X-wing and Armada, I don't feel like the company is up to the task of properly curating Star Wars gaming universe.
@@HairyNick I'm glad the Legion is doing well and hopefully AMG can manage it. If they push a Legion 2.0 however, it might be the first nail in the coffin. Unlimited is facing serious supply problems with no solution in site. There are no drafts, no organized play, and all pre-orders are getting allocated. SWU might be dead by Christmas.
I converted over to 2.0 can we get a 1.0 conversion if we want to play both?
If we don't need official game pieces, there is very little to stop us playing whatever version we like so long as we have the ships.
Great vid! I especially like the perspective on the lack of communication contrasted against the "Off the record" remarks. Hopefully it'll be a lesson learned for the future.
Here's hoping. Btw thank you for sharing some of that information via your own videos.
FFG gave us years of this awesome game, and now fans will make sure it lives on.
Sad that this is the reason, but it’s great to see you again!
hearing you speak it become more clear that AMG sabotaged x-win on purpose
While I appreciate the frustration, I'd say that's a little too unfair.
Remember Hanlon's razor;
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
(I wouldn't use the word stupidity as it's needlessly cruel, but that's how to adage goes)
Really glad to have you back! - X-wing is dead, long live X-wing!
Absolutely agree with you, this is the best Xwing has felt since their take over. Welcome back Nick!
Yo welcome back.
With the shift away from official development, what's your opinion on homebrew upgrade and pilot cards? Obviously anybody can play with their own cards at home, but do you think there is room for content development within the community?
I would love that, but there's a lot of things we have to iron out before having that conversation. Have to organise and unify the ruleset collectively first.
I will continue watching X-wing content even though a few months ago I put all mine into storage because train wrecks in slow motion are very entertaining I guess. I also feel relieved AMG had finally pulled the plug so we can all move on in at least some direction. And so can the games market. I do not however have any hope that a future exists for the game strictly in community hands. That's just another slow death to wait through. We could fill entire catacombs full of dead games that their communities tried to hold together and are gone now. It's a noble dream, a admirable goal, I don't knock anyone for trying. But the realist in me has seen that wide eyed aspiration face plant too many times for me to be anything but resigned to it's fate. For a game like this to work it needs a administrator that is entirely apart from the various factions of it's player base lest you hear constant complaints of favoritism and good 'ole boy clubs taking over.
I do wonder what the shuffle off from Asmodee from FFG to AMG was all about. I can only speculate a bit giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming that there was a logical reason at all. Perhaps X-wing and Armada were in such a bad state that moving them was it's own hail Mary? Like hey, here take this, see if you can restart these two cash cows that are stalling out? Wouldn't explain Legion though. Maybe it was a scope clause thing where different studios under the Asmodee name needed to have more diversified risk so instead of one giant studio and one tiny studio make them two medium studios? I dunno maybe it was just a dumb exec like when that Fox guy killed the Firefly show. But counter argument if I may: I would think that if you were a small studio starting out, you only got one game to your name and maybe another in the works, and your handed a few more already (at least at one time) extremely successful games, then you would care, and you would want them just to grow your studio if nothing else as a business asset. It seems to me instead of saying AMG "never wanted these and never cared for them" misses that point. I think it's more accurate to say, especially with the whole communication problem, that they weren't expecting these games and didn't have the company structure to utilize let alone capitalize on them? Devil's advocate a bit, that's all. Just to state it here I've never been a fan of their designs, and yeah I've been vocal about it, and very vocal about their, er, redesigns let's say. But I don't think they ever lied about caring. I just think they didn't have the right people there holding their hand through the transition, and let their design ego run wild, and then thought themselves rather too clever and like we all saw it blew up in their face. C'est la vie.
I dunno... looking at Blood Bowl and Guild Ball, and also seeing the community response I can't help but stay positive. Certainly feels like the games got a better shot now than it did a week ago, in any case.
As for Asmodee's reasoning for shifting every Star Wars TT game to one Dev, I'm going to assume it was a bean counter trying to consolidate assets (without understanding any of the nuance). I'ts probably cheaper to license 1 company for SW TT games than 2 *shrugs*. As to the comments about them "not caring", as I said in the video, in lieu of official communication and based on second hand comments wer've heard them say during various events; it's a dissapointly easy conclusion to come to. It doesn't feel reasonable to say this about what is supposed to be a professional games company. Even if it's not true, it's a huge failing that they've allowed the discource surrounding them to devolve like this.
Yes, I think it was ultimately a problem with company recources, horrible communication, and egos. Agreed.
@@HairyNick optimistic or not, the real elephant in the room is how long will it be before the mouse licenses an entirely new Star Wars space combat minis game. There were three before this one and you gotta dig to find those. It will be hard enough for X-wing to survive as anything but a niche oddity without competing against another game. I wouldn't even guess what'll happen when the next one comes out.
That's fine, when and if that happens we collectively decide where to go from that point. Hey maybe it could actually be a great game that we love that would be worth jumping across to for competative play! In the meantime why stress about something that is completely hyperthetical?
2.5 made me stop playing. I loved 2.0 and just couldn't really get behind 2.5 when I played it. Most my friends went on without me but also then stopped as well. There was a want to go back to 2.0 and when we did we realized it wasn't nostalgia, it's a genuinely better rule set.
That seems to be a common story, and one that pretty much describes myself as well. Although I did hang for a bit. Playing 2.5 at the Australian nationals was still a lot of fun. Although I think that spekas more to the core loop of the game, rather than the changes made for 2.5.
“Those crazy bastards did it.”
Perhaps not a good thing for me to have said, but in Australia it's more of an enderaing term.
I fully support it lol
Thanks
After so long.....
Best news. AMG is awful and aren't taking any responsibility for the massive blunder that is the death of Xwing. Now the community can go back to 2.0 and the people that truly love it can carry it forward.
"We cant make as much as we want, so you're shit out of luck", Capitalism is so fucking good!
The Game is dead... long live the Game!
I starting 2.0 for me. Because beginner have to buy hundreds £££
Nah just buy the starter kit and maybe one or two ships, less than 100 euros. You can have a blast
Some of the bulk packs go a long way to help with that. :)
Hi nick you're the best.
Well I do try my best!
Good to see you!
NIIIIICK!!
VIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGILANTE9033!!
2.0 aka legacy seems to be picking up steam and people are going back to dogfighting.
Yup, their Discord server is bursting at the seams.
The real problem is the guys who run AMG are the same guys that killed Warmachine.
There you have it: in the end they do the dirt work for GW, who are the wargaming capo's that can't stand the success of anyone but of their xenophobic trash
@@javierbeverido4579 @javierbeverido4579 I haven't played a game 40k or AoS in more than 8 years. The only GW game I play is Blood Bowl.
However I have recently purchased or played MCP, X-Wing, Legion and Shatterpoint. MCP and Legions's later releases were not on the same power scale as the earlier releases. Shatterpoint while fun was just a re-skin of Arena Rex.
X-Wing, they couldn't really do too much with it except do a 2nd edition to try to drive sales but that didn't go to well. As far as new ships there is nothing to make.
i missed you mate
Condescending mediocrity isn't helping.
Sorry I'm not quite following the grammar here. Are you claiming myself or AMG are mediocre?
@@HairyNick I just know them, so go figure
Nope, not really following you on this one.