Fantasy Flight and Star Wars. Two great tastes that taste great together!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Fantasy Flight and Star Wars. Two great tastes that taste great together!

HidaO-Win: Jun 5, 2013; "And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"

the panacea posted:

loving Amazon Germany deleted my pre-order for 2 packs at 60 euros, claiming they will not get the item!

Amazon UK deleted mine, loving wastrels and hucksters.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2015 15:50

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 23:19

HidaO-Win: Jun 5, 2013; "And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"

the panacea posted:

Already wrote an angry FB post and got a response. Maybe they will honor it.

Where did you post that did any good? I'm interested in action that might actually achieve something.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2015 19:07

HidaO-Win: Jun 5, 2013; "And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"

CitizenKeen posted:

Is this the thread to talk Star Wars Unlimited?

I've got little confidence in FFG to not poo poo the bed; especially post-private equity.

I don't love CCGs, but I hear the rationales. FFG claims they could never get draft / limited formats to work for their LCGs, and they wanted Unlimited to have first class draft support. LCGs sound great if you stay current. You can miss a month. But missing a lot means you're out of the loop and can struggle to get back in due to cost / out of print. (I missed a cycle from Netrunner and never really recovered until Null Signal.) Also, local stores vastly prefer CCGs to LCGs, and it seems like with a focus on Organized Play, limited, and multiplayer as a primary option, FFG is really taking a shot at Magic by going for the FLGS support. Maybe? I don't know, it's not really my jam. But with WotC's new focus on mass market retail and Amazon and Arena, I feel like FLGS is a way to take a shot at the king?

I don't really care about the art one way or the other. It's started to grow on me but I never had strong feelings about it.

Anyway, I was on vacation last week and had pent up energy when the kids went to bed, so I made this: https://www.swudb.com. Obvious inspiration is Scryfall, but it's nowhere near that in quality.

Well, there are advantages in CCGs when it comes to longer term play and onramping new players as well. The big issue here is whether this is a big priority project for FFG or not. I�m a bit skeptical, the frames of the cards look cheap, the art looks low quality and the mechanics don�t seem inspired. The proof of any game is in the playing, but my initial impression is that this is a low budget project to pull in a healthy amount if revenue. I will keep track of it, might buy a starter or two to try it out but I�m wary of buying booster boxes for a game FFG may ditch in a year unless the gameplay is stunning.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2023 11:11

HidaO-Win: Jun 5, 2013; "And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"

I�m going to be the negative guy here because I�ve watched FFG burn card game communities multiple times before.

Star Wars Unlimited looks like a low investment, low cost production that is aiming at extracting as much money as they can from whoever they can convince to buy in, hand Disney their slice of the pie and run the thing into the ground in 2-3 years.

Embracer Group own FFG and a significant chunk of the gaming landscape and their business plan is attaching IPs to a game and seeing how much they can juice sales that way. They are currently in financial difficulty due to a $2b KSA investment not happening and are looking for big hits to draw in cash.

Star Wars Unlimited looks uninspired. Card frames look low quality, art style looks low quality and is in a style which would be simple to switch to AI generation if need be. Art is one of the box expenses on any CCG and FFG offer notoriously poor artist contracts, I know a lot of artists who have sworn off working with them.

FFG cannot consistently run organised play. I�ve worked with them, stuff is often sorted last minute, they tend to contract their stuff out to highly variable quality tournament organisers. I ran stuff for them, but I also had to play in some of the worst organised tournaments ever. The Gencon release tournament for L5R LCG was 5 rounds of play and took 11 hours to run. It took the same time to run the day after. This was a sealed starter event. I would meet people involved in organised play, attempt to develop a working relationship with them only for them to have left the company by the next event. Massive churn on staff, no institutional knowledge of the community or best practice on running events.

FFGs development process does not result in a stable game. They tend to put their best designers on the rules and the base set. This is the easiest phase of the game to design and usually the initial play experience is good. After that the good designers are shuffled on to another game development and less experienced personal slotted into place. By a year into L5R, an intern was lead designer of the game. Playtest was nonexistent, to have a surprise for a Star Wars Celebration they had a guy secretly design a Star Wars Destiny starter in the FFG warehouse. Every character from that starter needed a ban or errata to balance later. They cannot sustain a competitive environment this way, by the time the first or second set is out, abusive cards will be repeatedly appearing in sets necessitating constant bans and restrictions. Players get cheesed off with this and leave. FFGs games are marked by a huge early player base which steadily drain away.

They burned down the Star Wars LCG after five years.

They burned down L5R after 3 years, AEG kept it going for 20 and only stopped because FFG made an offer for it.

They burned down Star Wars Destiny after 4 years.

They burned down Keyforge in 2 years.

If you buy into one of their games, you will probably get a good year of a community if it catches on locally. However, the card game community has been repeatedly scorched by FFG. Magic is currently cannibalising its own player base, Flesh and Blood has its hooks into the hardcore market, Lorcana is looking like a monster, Star Wars is a damaged IP.
I dunno how well this one does, its a risk to get involved.

Put any money into this, knowing the game could well be dead and buried in three years and just fodder on the dead CCG tables at Gencon. I say this because buying boosters to get into a game is not cheap, particularly if the game is going to be a short life thing.

Alright, thats enough of me doom saying, have fun whatever you choose ladles and jelly spoons.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2023 19:57

HidaO-Win: Jun 5, 2013; "And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"

Finster Dexter posted:

This is a thing, I guess.

https://starwarsunlimited.com/how-to-play?chapter=how-to-play

I think I'm done buying booster packs for CCG, especially after Star Wars Destiny, but maybe if it's fun?

I think the closest game to it is Hearthstone. If you played Hearthstone, you probably have a good idea if you�ll dig it or not.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2024 21:45

HidaO-Win: Jun 5, 2013; "And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"

FFG tend to lowball artists, then re-use their art several times so its possible that a lot of the higher end artists just feel its not worth the hassle to work with them.

They also aren�t using the official Star Wars symbols for Rebel Alliance and Empire, instead more generic inspired by symbols.
It�d be strange but possible that the license is a little weird and they can use the characters, but not the characters likeness from the films.

Also possible it�s just a slightly cartoony art style because the game is meant to be more Hearthstoney and they modelled the art style of it.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2024 22:17

HidaO-Win: Jun 5, 2013; "And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"

That Old Tree posted:

As someone who acquired an almost complete set for a song but haven't had the opportunity to play or even read the rules, what was it about L5R that sucked? I got the impression, years after the fact mind, it was generally looked on pretty favorably other than the way releases were scheduled.

CCG or LCG?

I can give you the pros and cons

# ¿ Mar 4, 2024 23:58

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 23:19

HidaO-Win: Jun 5, 2013; "And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"

Dr Aphra makes sense, she can be a 7/7 for 7 who makes two 1/1 droids 0-0-0 and Bt-1who do 4 damage to another unit when destroyed.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2024 20:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Fantasy Flight and Star Wars. Two great tastes that taste great together!