Imperial Aces

I would expect the HWK-290 to sell about a third or less of what the "top line" ships would. But that's a big cross section of customers. You're getting folks that want the ship for completion, folks that want it for competitive builds, and Jedi Knight fans. But I'd also expect that most HWK-290 purchases are of a single ship, whereas someone might buy 3+ B-Wings or whatever. It does seem like it was a test-the-waters choice, to see if customers would be receptive to non-OT ships but still staying in OT-era, canonical bounds.

I definitely agree that there's a sense that the momentum of the product line has slowed. This time last year, it was HOT. You couldn't buy it anywhere. There was rampant speculation about what the next releases would be. And now that we've had two more waves and they were more or less exactly what was expected...FFG doesn't seem to be providing customers with anything really exciting about the game beyond those big ships which are just not something that most players- even hardcore players- are going to buy en masse.

But we don't know what's going on, really. There could be licensing issues that are preventing other products coming out. For example, they may not be able to produce those starfield tiles because it would legally butt up against board game licensing held by Hasbro. Some of the EU stuff might be under different licensing packages or have different stakeholders involved. Then there's the whole question of Prequel ships- are they worth the risk, financially? Then, there are development issues of reconciling ships from different eras, creating all-new artwork, writing new rules/cards...all of which may not be worth the resources if a Naboo Starfighter sells a quarter as many units as an X-Wing.

The in-store play issue does seem to be substantial. Wizkids are old hands at store support. They know that offering storyline "seasons", having top-notch prize support, and fostering communities of play will sell the game even if its quality is poorer than X-Wing. If I'm into the competitive scene, the game that's giving me a huge fucking DS9 model as an incentive to go to a shop and play every week is the one I'm going to go with.

And Attack Wing has, I think, disrupted X-Wing quite a bit. I've heard here, on TOS, and elsewhere that folks have made the switch. I like both games, and I think the Trek/Wars flavors are different enough for me to have both. That said, I collect Attack Wing differently. I get one of everything, and that makes me happy. But I dont' even have any Dominion stuff yet. X-Wing, three of everything and one each of the larger ships. I can't imagine going mulitples on Attack Wing AND X-Wing.

I think it's too early to declare X-Wing in crisis, but I do think that one of FFG's top 1Q priorities should be to form up a solid plan of what to do with the game over 2014. It's pretty clear that the "wow" factor of the big ships is actually pretty muted (mostly due to those $100 price tags) and the things I've heard people asking for like a scenario book/cards, maps, and terrain don't seem to be materializing. They need to come in strong BEFORE the summer conventions with public plans about what they're doing with the game. Are they going prequels, EU, or repaints? How are they going to improve tournament support?

I mean, hell...I'd buy a set of deluxe templates if they made them. There's all kinds of things they could be doing, but just releasing more ships is actually about the LEAST appealing thing they can do with it right now.

I want to play more XWing, but Attack Wing is just demanding my attention. I'm in two OP events and I'll be running a third which is starting on the 12th (San if you want in let me know I'll provide ships!) So that's all I have time for. And I WILL win one of those DS9 models damn it!

As far as ship purchases, I'm at 3 of each for XWing excluding Ties (6) and XWings (4) and one of each of the large ships. Two more Ties and I'm content until whatever else comes down the pipe.

Attack Wing, I'm targeting two of each, there might be an exception here or there, and one is plenty but a second gives some nice options.

From what I recall, I don't think they have the license for the Prequel stuff. I'm likely wrong, but I think I read that somewhere when they announced they had the license bit it was only for the Original Trilogy. And I'm too lazy to source it now.

They do need to do something and perhaps what that something is is to just polish off a few things, round out with a Rebel Aces and then cash licensing money from WizKids.

VT, that's a great point about the licensing. It could be that licensing the system to Wizkids winds up generating more profit than developing and manufacturing new X-Wing material. If that happens, FFG is less likely to invest capital in it, regardless of the license. And that's an odd situation, to have a competing game on the shelf that's not only competing for sales but also for in-store play with another game that you're earning licensing fees from.

Imperial Aces is slated for release Feb '14 and is labeled at Wave 3.5. After that everything is up in the air. The big ships at some point. Restocks will come out...sometime...

Feb '14 we will see Wave 3 launch for Attack Wing. OP5 should be mostly in the books and people starting to claim OP6 DS9 prizes. Kits should be on order, if not shipping, for the two Single Episode Organized Plays. Wave 4 just a few weeks later. And then Wave 5 a few months after that.

The pace that WizKids is setting is actually breathtaking and invigorating. The pace that FFG is setting is...well...not.

If there's one thing I've learned about selling games, it's that if you can ensure to the customer that they're going to have someone else to play with then you're halfway to closing the sale. That's the strength of in-store play and the importance of tournament support for any kind of CCG/LCG/collectible/a la carte/serial release product. You've got to have that momentum to keep people assured of continuance and of something new always about to come out or happen.

I would have thought that FFG would understand this with their support for Netrunner and their other LCG releases. But yes, Wizkids is definitely outpacing them on that front and it may be impacting how X-Wing is played or even selling.

Of course, if you just play at home with friends, it's a different dynamic. But these kinds of games HAVE to have support to be sustainable. I've seen many games come and go that had faltering or practically non-existant in-store support and the same thing happens every time. People stop buying because they feel like if they get into the game and invest then their opportunities to actually play it will dry up.

Hecatomb and Dreamblade are prime examples. Great games. Dreamblade was actually very great. But if you bought a couple of boxes of it, who were you going to play it with if your friends weren't into it? Not at an FLGS, because you'd either go and there'd be nobody there or they wouldn't be supporting it at all.

There may be a perception among the X-Wing player base that it's in decline because Wizkids is supporting Attack Wing so well. If you go to the Android's Dungeon for X-Wing night and there's three people, and then the next night you go for Attack Wing and there's 20, there's two different pictures of health and you're naturally going to want to be with the better supported game because there's more people to play with.

This is one of the reasons that Magic has never declined. You can go into a store and drop $500 on cards and feel assured that you'll have someone to play with. But you might buy a $50 board game and have no one to play with.

X-Wing is still doing pretty well around here (Ann Arbor and beyond), as there's a regular communication network from a FB group that I created. I haven't been participating much lately, but am trying to scrape time together. There has been a lot of talk about Attack Wing, though. I think FFG simply lacks the deep pockets that WizKids/Hasbro has in order to support organized play. The real explosion of their LCGs has been through ancillary effects (the fans of GoT's books and then the HBO series; Netrunner's base of players of the original game) and not through concentrated support by FFG. But you're absolutely right that having regular players can often mean the continuance of a game. If I'd been able to find regular players for CoC, I might still own it, because I loved the game. Some regular tournaments probably would have helped create that player pool, but them's the breaks, I guess.

And, as I speak, FFG's website breaks out with multiple links to organized play promotion, including for a "non-tournament" game like Descent.

That Descent kit looks pretty awesome and I'll need to see if I can get my local store to order one in.

Regarding the XWing Game Night Kits, I think FFG's self-imposed restriction of not offering exclusives and only component upgrades has made these go largely unnoticed. In the Attack Wing forums OP Events are talked about all the time, AARs and planning for them. No one talks about the XWing Game Night Kits.

Oh, a little off topic, but has anyone else noticed the preview for the 4th Division Battleship for the Dominion? They're finally getting that Umph with the last two releases they've needed.

Michael Barnes wrote: If there's one thing I've learned about selling games, it's that if you can ensure to the customer that they're going to have someone else to play with then you're halfway to closing the sale. That's the strength of in-store play and the importance of tournament support for any kind of CCG/LCG/collectible/a la carte/serial release product. You've got to have that momentum to keep people assured of continuance and of something new always about to come out or happen.

Attack Wing also has the advantage of several factions to work with. X-Wing suffers because there's only two factions and I imagine there's a lot of folks who think playing rebel vs rebel in a tournament is wierd. I certainly do. Could it be that they are going to try and address this by promoting big team style games with the upcoming epic/cinematic mode?

Regardless, I think EU waves are a certainty because repaints and a few new cards are not going to carry the game forward. HWK is pretty good evidence they're coming and since they're going to promote epic play then it's in FFG's best interests to produce new ships. Nobody is going to be happy only having the option of buying Y-Wings over and over. I just can't believe they'd let their biggest money maker stagnate. Repaints are definately a great idea but only if they space them out.

My buddy and I started playing X-wing right before the Kessel Run event. Yep, the chance of winning free models was enough to shell out for a core set and a couple of expansions.

I do not know anyone who plays Attack Wing (the models look like the come from a gumball machine by the way). This might very well prove the point, There were three people buying X-wing stuff at my FLGS and once they started doing bi-weekly tournament games (using the kits by the way), it has jumped to 10 or 12 people. As no one is running Attack Wing, there are no new players.

So the point of having good support/prizes and knowing that there are other people to play with is important, especially in a minatures game. You lose one week and think how if you only had one more of this card or model your squad would be able to beat Dave next time.