When Good Games Get Discontinued

We recently had the news from AMG of X-Wing and Armada getting discontinued. So what do you do when one of your favourite games gets dropped? In this video I ramble a lot and look through some of the games I've held on to after they got cancelled. Some are complete games I'm ready to play when the opportunity arises, others are kept just for the nostalgia factor.
00:00 Intro
04:24 Legend of the Five Rings LCG
11:26 Netrunner Original
13:55 Netrunner FFG
18:11 Imperial Assault
26:02 X-Wing
35:17 Aeronautica Imperialis
43:32 Summary

[@grisch4329]

People need to realize that once you've bought a game, it's yours. This 'live service' model that seems to be sneaking into tabletop gaming is being imposed by us, the players, and we can abandon it whenever we want to.
Once you own models/rulebooks/tokens, they're yours. You can keep playing any edition you want with whatever houserules you want. And those games are often way better. Mordheim is in a fantastic place right now and very much alive and well. GW lost control of Blood Bowl ages ago and they haven't managed to get it back. Sure, they make rules and models for it, but the community decides if they want to use those rules and models.
With Age of Sigmar, I have no interest in the new edition. They've managed to dumb it down to the point where, beyond the listbuilding, it's basically Snakes and Ladders. If I can find enough other players, I'd be happy to keep playing 3rd ed with a few house rules. (Or my ultimate dream, Age of Sigmar with MESBG rules...)
We also need to see through the illusion that the company making the game has a monopoly on game balance. So often I hear people say "Oh, I don't want to play without the latest rules/FAQ because 'it's not balanced'. Utter garbage, but maybe a discussion for another time.

[@optimalgamestate]

100% It does make sense to buy into the new edition if everyone you play with is moving to it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a better game. My current AoS goal is to finish up my Slaves to Darkness army and for my Brother to finish up his Stormcast army. Playing the out of the box written rules that we already have, so 3rd edition, will work fine for a fun game.

[@auroralee]

Brings up the rumors Ive seen floating around that Warhammer Underworlds might have a bit of an uncertain future of support from GW.
Underworlds has always been more of a game night board game for me, and I couldnt care less about all the Rivals decks and card releases they've been trying to make work; but its hard to argue the Underworlds warbands are some of the most brilliantly sculpted and colorful characters theyve done for Age of Sigmar as a setting. So it would be a real shame if we stop seeing such great models for that game if it slowly gets phased out.

[@optimalgamestate]

It's a weird one, I've heard the rumour about Underworlds getting dropped for a few years now, often from people I'd usually trust. I do quite like the Rivals deck change they made, but you're right the key part of Underworlds is the amazing line of models they've been producing. I suspect at least parts of the model line are selling well so the game is a 'success' even if attendance at tournaments isn't great for GWs 'ultimate competitive game'. It's a perfect example for what I'm talking about in this video, if you have a few Underworlds warbands you like, get them all together in a box with their decks prebuilt and you'll have a great ready to play no matter what GW might do in the future.

[@auroralee]

@@optimalgamestate exactly what I have sitting on my shelf at home. My favorites of the past few years just for game nights etc packed away as it's own little competitive meta

[@kraziel]

Cancelled? Poor choice of words. To be cancelled would mean it would have never existed. It means it would have been cancelled meanwhile it was still in development. INSTEAD, what happened, was that Imperial Assault had LOADS and loads of content, big expansions, small expansions, app campaigns, and none of that was cancelled, ALL of it actually launched. So why the hell are you calling it "cancelled"? You mean it just stopped being produced, not cancelled.
It was COMPLETE, not cancelled. What is your expectation? They kept launching expansions for Imperial Assault to this day? I don't get it.
It's a game we play every month. If it was cancelled, we would never have it, or it would've been a failed kickstarter campaign or something.
I hate wheb youtubers do that: "this game is DEAD" "oh it's CANCELLED now"
I'm so done with that.

[@gernorton7166]

That's a very narrow definition of Cancelled you are working with there. TV shows get cancelled all the time, it doesn't mean they were never made. It's a perfectly normal term for the expected ongoing support of a product or offering to be stopped.

[@optimalgamestate]

Hey friend. I'm delighted to hear you're still loving Imperial Assault. Hopefully you got far enough into the video to see me showing off my own collection and where I talked about how the game was still being produced but didn't have new product.
In relation to the use of 'cancelled', I do feel the usage of cancelled in this context is appropriate. FFG stopped development of the game, but kept it in production. I appreciate that the term 'cancelled' has got caught up in the 'culture wars' , but that's not this channel. I would suggest giving a quick google search for any of the games I talk about in this video and 'cancelled', you'll find lots of people using that same phrasing.
That said, since you did go to the effort of posting it's obviously something you feel strongly about. So I've updated the cover and title to use 'discontinued' instead of 'cancelled' (the animated intro remains as it would require a re-upload).
I hope you have a great day and keep playing Imperial Assault!

[@KDB1042]

@@gernorton7166 Yeah, I've never heard anyone call it anything else. 😅

[@kraziel]

@@optimalgamestate Fair enough. I understand other people use the term, and that's precicely my point. It has nothing to do with imperial assault, I just took it as an example, I just think this kind of thumbnail is very misleading, is all. I thought it was about lost games that never existe, prototypes, or something
I appreciate the change, and sorry if I came out as aggressive, it wasn't the intent. I'm just tiresome to see so many "GAME IS DEAD" "OH STAR WARS ARMADA IS NOW CANCELLED" "OH, X-WING IS DONE FOR, NO ONE IS GOING TO PLAY IT EVER AGAIN", and stuff like that
Just like the Warcry drama when "WARCRY IS OVER because they DELETED the original bespoke 1.0 warbands from AOS 4" and stuff like that.

[@nobribefoul]

For a game to continue being played it needs to either have a ton of replayability or organized play support. Kill organized play, you will lose the vast majority of the player-base. If you have a set box and that's it or limited expansions like LCGs it's basically impossible to have prize support. People don't want to admit any of this but you rarely see weekly meetups for card games that are no longer in production. You may see a small tournament at a big tabletop convention or some tabletop sim play but that's likely it.