Will Atomic Mass Games Survive 2025?
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- Опубликовано: 4 фев 2025
- In This Episode we talk about what the heck is going on with Atomic Mass Games..
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shatterpoint feels like it killed legion, then fell over and died.
So true...I love SW Legion but it's not getting the releases it needs or deserves.
Which was what like everyone said would happen.
I remember walking into my FLGS and seeing both and immediately just being confused.
'Is.... this a rebrand? Is legion dead? Is this.... an expansion? Why doesn't it say Legion on this if it is an expansion?'
Mutually assured destruction
Shatterpoint murdered Armada, X-wing, and it's now strangling Legion. We all saw the writing on the walls when the "only pdf releases" came out for Armada. When they started changing X-wing rulesets and making stupid decisions that ran the game to the ground
There's a couple of major issues that hit AMG, particularly around their Star Wars games:
1) The pandemic. Legion had a big spike in sales over the lockdowns (similar to GW and similar miniatures games), but it was terrible for both X-Wing and Armada. Pre-assembled, pre-painted miniatures are great for getting people who don't like the "hobby" element of miniatures gaming into playing, and make for very accessible games, but that same lack of hobby element means that there wasn't really anything to do with your new X-Wing/Armada stuff for months/years. People stuck in their houses could happily build and paint minis though!
This also hit supply chains pretty hard, and pre-assembled, pre-painted minis have more steps in that chain to get snarled up or just get more expensive.
2) Asmodee/Embracer consolidating companies and product lines. In late 2020 AMG went from a small company developing two games - MCP already on sale and Shatterpoint a good way into development - to having to work on five games at the same time as Armada, Legion, and X-Wing got added to that roster. As this was largely a cost saving measure, they didn't get much/anything in the way of new staff to help with this, and AMG was already a fairly small studio. Rather than transferring most of the miniatures game developers from FFG to AMG, Asmodee just laid off the FFG staff. (Asmodee also absolutely gutted their organised play division, the effects of which are still being felt by the lack of store-level or above support for most of their games.)
Good games ruined by corporate greed, the executives will get millions in bonuses while the companies are driven into the ground.
AMG shafted the Star Wars Armada players the most. It was dumped on them by the Overlords, we saw some ship card variants that were likely inherited straight from FFG, then nothing. They pretty much took control of a corpse of a game and left it on a compost pile out the back.
The fact that they couldn’t even be bothered to release a republic arquittens card is infuriating.
Stupid to make Shatterpoint 40mm.
yup if it had been the same scale of Legion i probably would have bough into both.
Thats my reason why I did not start collecting/playing shatterpoint and Conquest. I don't like this scale, looks too big compared to other miniatures I own.
1. Interest
2. Enjoyment
3. Annoyance, but still fun
4. Anger
5. Apathy
The stages of Wargamers and their games. The key of any company is to at worst, stop your customer at stage 4. IMO thats their peak love for their game. They've invested so much time and made so many memories that it shows they're all in. Apathy is the death knell.
Demand for Squirrel Girl will be smaller but much more intense lol
Lol facts
I agree companies need to find a balance between keeping core products in stock for beginners and fresh products for veterans. Can't fault them for coming out with squirrel girl, but yes wolverine needs to be in stock. The games workshop equivalent is how many armies need a refresh or more than a small amount of models and yet for a while on almost a monthly basis there was yet another new lieutenant model available for space marines... Public perception and all...
*flashbacks to entire votann line being out of stock for months*
The Votann line is not space marines though. I remember when war dogs for chaos knights were out of stock for an entire edition
Either way thats a grudging
Oh poor Timmy. Even at half price he can't catch a break.
Thanks for suggesting Jonathan's channel - he is super-talented! As an X-wing player, I stopped supporting AMG when they killed that game. Hard to get into their games when they have a history of ditching support for existing games. Glad to hear the LGS perspective on this as I have often wondered how popular games, like X-wing, die on the vine with players wanting to play the game.
Same here. I switched to GW and historicals
@@crafty_android I ended up amassing serious Malifaux and Infinity collections, and still enjoy all the X-wing joy at home. Nice when you know a game is going to be around.
I think it's a resource thing as you said. They don't have the money to make both new stuff and restock old kits so the focus entirely on the former. Which seems like a losing strategy since you're going to see diminishing returns as people cycle out of the game. Thankfully the 3D printing community seems to have picked up the slack, but that seems like a bandaid to a self-inflicted wound.
The chat about things being out of stock was really interesting. Ive experienced some frustration with this for 30k with the salamanders pyroclasts. They were out of stock here in the uk for about 8 months it was nuts, i was checking DAILY and then just stopped caring after a few months and checked back occasionally.
Eventually i just found a good recast and got them instead
Re: Crisis Protocol
The X-Men, Asgardians, Brotherhood, and Web-Warriors Affiliation packs should be evergreen. They should be as ubiquitous as the starter box.
Re: Shatterpoint
It seems like a game no one asked for, and it seems like it killed Legion.
It's frustrating because I enjoy both MCP and Legion. And Shatterpoint steals from both of them. It steals game design from MCP and steals theme from Legion AND steals resources from the company.
AMG should've just spent those Shatterpoint resources creating and promoting new scenarios and game types for MCP and Legion. Example: putting real effort into Legion Skirmish would've revitalized Legion. Instead they divided the fan base with Shatterpoint
On the asmodee website only 43 out of 116 SKUs for Star Wars Legion are in stock. Some items have been out of stock for over a year. I’ve emailed their support asking when they’ll be back in stock and they said that they have no information regarding them.
Their reasoning (from various podcasts and interviews) for the lack of product is twofold. One, some items are getting re sculpted in hard plastic. Makes sense.
Second reason is the rebranding/repackaging into the new legion branding. I really don’t get how this is taking so long though. GW will repackage an entire game line over 2 weeks when a new edition drops, but AMG takes over a year to do it?
I’ll drop a link in a reply to this comment for a Legion product tracker someone is keeping. Interesting to look at for sure
People seem to forget the same guys who design AMG products are the same guys that ran WM into the ground
With too many SKU's.....
How so? I dropped out of Wamachine in early mk3. Is it the same design team?
@@prophet89 yes it is, same people who headed up the highly controversial CID. The game started to turn around when they left, but so much damage was done.
Wildly innacurate
I played and heavily collected the Decipher CCG from the start through to the end of the main films - with full sets of many expansions. After they lost the license I have never expected any licensed table-top product to stay around and I buy in knowing they require me to have friends to play - I don't expect to get pickup games. Star Wars has had so many hobby products and no one really cares to keep them around.
Absolutely sleeve your boardgame cards. I have Kingdom Death and everything is protected with the best. Even the board is protected, but had to find a way to do it myself.
May not help you anymore but people have made neoprene mats (think they may have an official one now too).
Did AMG ever do the raid boss mode they launched the game talking about? I remeber them talking about having ways to play that werent just competitive when they did their first announcement.
Also always fun to hear the legitimately great ideas form the dude with next to no interest in the property. Makes AMG's decions all yhe more confusing.
They do have Boss modes, but there are far too few of them.
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 Glad to hear it. If I can either find ai for it or automate it myself, may try it with my partner. She enjoyed Shatterpoint but would enjoy us doing something more coop more.
AMG knows they only have the Star Wars and Marvel licenses for a limited time. That's how these deals always work. So they're not incentivized to make long lasting investments. The smartest move for them is to make a quick buck while they can and get out of town.
How can it not be a bigger company? They have a license to print USD.... They have the Star Wars license!
The Star Wars license isn’t as shiny as it once was. But I agree, they are entirely mismanaging it
I hope they close down. The way they treated Star Wars armada was shameful. They obviously just wanted the Star Wars license and didn’t care about any of the games that came with it. They just wanted to make shatterpoint, a game nobody asked for and 12 people bought.
Shatterpoint was in development with AMG for quite a while before Asmodee decided to consolidate all of their miniatures games into one company. It's not a case of AMG poaching the licence from FFG, it's Asmodee shuffling corporate balance sheets around and dropping three big games on a small company that was only working on two lines (MCP and Shatterpoint) before that.
AMG is a complete disaster. They killed 2 of the top 10 miniature games of the late 2010s
The problem with all games involving massive licensed IPs is that you can never guarantee the license will be renewed. The result is every game becomes a short term cash grab.
"Will Trench Crusade show up in Old World also is there any Games Workshop outrage in 40k! Scandal!" - The marketing department
I wish it was easier to keep track of what AMG did, but it isn't. I know more of what Joseph A. McCullough is releasing and when than what of the AMG stuff is actually coming. Social media, which is what they say to follow them on to keep up, can be very fickle in what it actually shows me. It is a little like listening to an intewview with one of the Edge Studios guys who didn't get fired when Asmodee yanked the RPGs from FFG said that they could not order more books before they had orders enough for them, they're not allowed to have them in stock themselves. I don't think that Asmodee is doing much else with their miniature games and RPGs than waving at their board game companies while yelling 'Just be like them!'
Star Wars may be eternal, but all their licensed games seem to be flash in the pan.
Despite people calling them "40K killer" every damn time...
That top shelf of minis is threatening to collapse, must be all metal ones
I have no clue as to what is up with the production side of MCP. I think it’s something to do with the Asmodee side. But, that’s just a guess.
In our store Legion and MCP are still popping. We have large communities that play in the store regularly both competitive and casual. Shatterpoint just fell over and died, I have no insight as to why, people just weren’t interested.
The lack of those evergreen kits is why i didnt get into MCP. I didnt want to get into it when it first dropped because i had too many games. 6 months in i couldnt find 3/4 of the models i wanted and i assumed the game was dying.
I guess that means the meme "Rhinos are Free" also means Rhinos are WH40k's most core product, since not only do they apparently never let them go out of stock, but also bundle them with everything? Pretty interesting discussion, regardless.
That is also noticeable in how AMG handle errata/rebalances in (specifically) MCP. Currently character rebalancing is on a 2 year cycle. Feel like it should be on a yearly cycle to be able to keep older models relevant and make people interested in the older kits. Relaunching older models in a 4 model affiliation box would help keep the sku's down to a more reasonable level.
It seems like there are a lot of comments shitting on AMG while ignoring Asmodee’s part in this. Deciding to pile all their miniature war games onto one small studio was downright stupid and bound to cause issues. GW has issues at times balancing multiple games (most of them not dependent on licensing either), and AMG is nowhere near that big.
That was likely Embracer group, not Asmodee. Embracer was likely psuing products around from FFG to AMG to pad out AMGs balance sheet to make it look better, I think Embracers plan was to load up Asmodee with all its debt and then try to sell it off
Is the top shelf of your lefthand figure cabinet (as we see it) bending?
The board is straight, we are bending your mind...
I'll never forgive them for what they did to X-Wing. Hopefully they lose the license and someone else can pick it up.
Man I'd buy tf outta a Days of Future Past set
Does Fox still have a hand in the Xmen IP? There is probably some murky water involved in sorting the Disney IP and 20th C Fox.
Licenses are weird, I think FF had the card based board game license for Lotr when they released journies in Middle Earth. GW still had the Miniature license for the movies, but not necessarily for the Tolkein IP as a whole. It is so confusing.
Negative, Disney purchased 20th Century Fox several years ago and it's all under one roof now). Furthermore, Fox just had film and television rights, they didn't own any merchandising or related rights (though there was plenty of speculation that Disney really limited X-Men merchandise for a while after purchasing Marvel to try to devalue Fox's ownership of the brands, but that ended with Disney's purchase back in like 2019)
My friends and I got into Legion in 2020 during the pandemic as a project to help keep all of us sane. Coming out of the pandemic there was a growing and eager community for it in my city. After the announcement that AMG was taking it over, that shook alot of people's confidence and caused alot of uncertainty and trepidation. We as a community tried to power through that. I think it was early 2023 when the Mandalorian craze was starting to wane and the Dark Troopers and Moff Gideon came out. The community reaction to what was clearly a broken and untested unit in the Dark Troopers was a blow to the community, the local meta was shafted, and people had to start making social contracts for the first time (please don't bring X) instead of just trying out whatever 800 point list they wanted to that day. Then AMG's poorly implemented and poorly thought out rules update was released and it broke the local community, interest crashed, and my friends and I all sold our collections.
I thought about getting into Shatterpoint because there was a small community for it here at some point (not sure anymore) but I said no, the same thing will probably happen. I'd rather play kill team and have a sure thing that will stick around.
X-wing and Armada are dead now, so I think I probably made the right choice.
They kinda did that again with RebelSleepr Cell it just took out the big championship by spamming them.
Rule updates will come.out twice per year next one at Adepticon.
TRENCH CRUSADE MENTIONED
23:30
Also Tim is not in a healthy relationship poor man
Thoughts and prayers to timmy
I'm extremely invested in MCP. I own every unique character up to street release except for 3 boxes. (Yondu/Nova and Man Thing/Elsa Bloodstone are not officially out yet, but some shops have them and have been selling it early even though they're not supposed to. I have them pre-ordered at my FLGS.)
I have been trying to get the Gwenom/Scarlet Spider box and the Monsters Unleashed box since October of last year. That was before the Monsters Unleashed box actually released, but my FLGS was in a dispute with their distributor over balances due that he'd already paid.
By the time the store owner was able to prove he hadn't done anything wrong, the Monsters Unleashed box was sold out. They released in early November and have been out of stock ever since.
After checking back multiple times, my FLGS JUST received the Gwenom/Scarlet Spider box and notified me today.
Don't listen to these fools. Timmy, we love you just the way you are. Never change.
Standing up for Timmy...all class.
All sensible and (for an MCP player) worrying points. A counterpoint is that MCP has a really thriving competitive scene, with big tournaments across the US, Australia, the UK, Scandinavia and the EU. I hope that's enough to keep the game going.
Casual players drive overall sales. You need them for a game to stay around. IMO a healthy balance is something like for every one competitive gamer you'd like to have about 9 casual buyers.
It makes sense when you think about it. Competitive players are rules focused, casual players can purchase any models they like and are more likely just to collect.
If the US adds tarrifs on China manufactured products that isn't going to help AMGs product efforts if the prices go up again. Being a bit cheaper and being a great ruleset and theme and better terrain options the game pplay supports is why I got into and still Play Star Wars Legion.
I'm not from the US, but if that market goes I'm sure I won't be seeing models.
There are a lot of similar things I been find between Toys and miniatures. While both manufactures sometimes don't produce enough ( OG wolverine ) for a game its detrimental. For toys and collectibles while the initial release for wolverine will be good the limited supply later on is what helps sell the figure at a later date. Otherwise if its Too easy to get it goes form shelf to clearance. Toys tend to have a U shaped Demand curve .
Interesting. Do you think they are trying to build up a reserve of demand before reprinting? Do you think that works with miniature games when customers can 3d print alternatives or just give up and go play something else?
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 they are at least aware of their Roster of Good hits that much can be confirmed. ( when I attended non public previews They show us internal character grades / of course the grade go A B C ( no such thing as a D and below but we know.)
During the Pandemic we got some of the best reissues in toys from multiple Toy manufactures. But I think Most of all companies are guilty of slow rolling fan favorite things to exact more by bundling. 2020 GW released like Indomitus + free rules download (heresy).
where can I preorder my tire iron??
All the hot takes in the comments section here just need to listen to the comment at 13:38 again. Good points starting at 17:15 as well: the AMG announcement streams always feature Will & WIll and a third Dev talking about EVERY game they developed and inherited, that's maybe a half dozen total Devs total working on multiple games at once.
It sucks that all the points you make in the video end up in that vicious cycle, it's indeed my experience that the Local Game Stores where I live are quietly clearing out most AMG stock.
They are reboxing the old mcp affiliation into 4 packs.
Unfortunately true. I love the game but as someone who’s actually trying to 100% collect characters in the game the out of stock is killing me. I finally caved and 3D printed a Rhino because he was out of stock for so long. At this point I’d even take crowdfunding for reprints.
5:45 This is true, but horus heresy out of stock is _Insane_ now and has been for about 5-6 months.
Shatterpoint came out strong locally, bunch of events and lots of excited players and a pretty good game (rules writing aside), but then didn't release anything for it for like 9 months - and when the core box came with just the one game scenario, it got dull really fast.
When the second wave came everyone had gone again.
And honestly, the rules are squirrely, if you're coming from ANY other tabletop miniature game. Terrain being more for SHOW than actual effect, line of sight being blocked because it passes over/through a terrain piece, even though you CAN see the target and draw LoS, this irritates people.
From a modeling perspective, I like the new scale, easier to paint, but it makes it impossible to use the minis in Legion or vice versa, and THAT doesn't help.
And then to be frank, the Star Wars franchise has taken a serious hit from the latest Lucasfilms/Disney releases, and it's just not as exciting.
@@TSchrivener absolutely agree with you about the game's scale - it's ridiculous they didn't make it the same as Legion, and have multipurpose kits.
Not the first time FFG/AMG did that though, as Legion used a different scale to Imperial Assault, which made those kits unviable too.
I get that they were all developed independently within the Embracer group - even moreso with Shatterpoint as AMG was (at the time) a separate company to Legion's development team, but surely they (Embracer) had an IP liaison that could have said "oh, Barry is making a SW Miniatures game, I should put him in contact with Kevin who is also doing that."
That said, given the rules and character cards are available free online, and the templates and dice are available to purchase separately (at least in theory - stock issues aside) it isn't hard to just fudge Legion models into the game entirely.
I disagree with your other points. Or rather, I don't see your gameplay criticisms as negatives.
Obviously it's fine if you don't like this style of gameplay, but I really enjoyed it. Was just a shame it didn't ship with 4 or 5 more scenarios - having just that single one for 6 months did deaden my enthusiasm.
@@mikewicked.x Fair enough. I'm an old warhammer (like, 1st edition warhammer) player, and love a good terrain laden table, but Shatterpoint's wonky rules just didn't sit well with me. They DO simplify things, can't argue with that. But that's me.
Timmy looked around then went home and bought them online.
like EVERY other person that shops... view product at huge markup, in person... then go buy at "best price" online
I've noticed in the UK finding somewhere with a good stock of legion is very hard. I hadn't considered it was a production issue, the game is fairly popular at gaming clubs and I wanted to pick up some stuff this year as I was working on GW stuff last year and I switch things up between games I believe you aren't a fan of.. Necromunda, Old World and Legion, then a horde of board games and rpgs.
If they wanted to make a great box they should have done an X-Men first class box with the outfits from the front of the comic. One big box with 5 or 6 models. Pricey but awesome, would have sold like hotcakes.
Shatterpoint was kicking out too much too fast for most to keep up. Then they hosed X-Wing, Armada, & Legion. Bad game plan & management by AMG, and minis for MCP nobody asked for like Squirrel Girl & Gwenpool.
I wish they'd watch this video and have those team vs team boxes. They wouldn't have so many skus.
I know that my past experiences with Warmahordes and Privateer Press has just completely put me off the brand/IP. And now, just thinking about the whole subject, I have almost no motivation to explore newer brands, having seen them come and go over the last 30 years.
Case in point... I was able to sell my old Warhammer, mostly metal, Dwarf army... for a profit, to finance a new, mostly plastic, Dwarf army to build and paint. I’m not sure I could even give away my Hordes Trollkin army, let alone sell it.
Maybe that shouldn’t matter? Maybe I should be looking for other people who loved Warmachine Mk2 and just play the old game?
But, right or wrong, I looked at Shatterpoint and MCP and said... yeah, I give it a year and it’ll be in the discount bin.
Lol, you and me both...
I have a full fa mk2 retribution army. Fully painted,
A nearly full mk2 fa skorne army, about 70% painted, just no motivation to finish painting it...
A full fa mk2 convergence army, fully painted, but this was a painting project.
I was given a full FA grymkin army, by my cousin after it failed to sell. I was bored so i stripped what was painted. It's now fully painted in my display case.
I have my brothers menoth and legion in my storage locker.
I was able to sell my circle and trollbloods back right before mk3 dropped as i said i was going to focus on retribution for the start of mk3 and the move over to skorne. Someone made a low ball offer and I hesitantly took it because it was our soon to be former press ganger, trying to get rwo new peolke into warmahordes.
I still cannot believe how fast mk3 imploded locally. Worse i missed all of it. I played 2 games, i was not happy with what had been done to my dawnguard Sentinels, they felx like cryx models. Before my 3rd game life happened, business/family got in the way. I finally get through that chaos and warmachine is dead... strange and interesting times.
I went in fully ready for mcp/shatterpoint to fail, so I went with the point of view of I will only get one list. It will be something I want in my display case.
For shatterpoint I have both ewok boxes and picked up the dice/measuring tools with prize support.
For mcp I picked up the monsters unleashed box. then at a 35% discount i grabbed blade/moonknight, voodoo/hood, ghost rider. immortal hulk, dice, measuring tools I picked up with prize support. I will be getting man thing/Elsa as well.
AMG made Shatterpoint like a weird power move, like "this is our star wars wargame, our child"; while Legion, Armada and X-wing are the second child. And while Shatterpoint have a lot of releases, no one really care.
After what AMG did to my beloved x-wing (no, not discontinuing the game, bastardizing it before hand, then discontinuing it when people left behind the disgusting crisis protocol in space they had made it), I hope they all go under.
I will never buy a product by AMG. I will never buy a product by their devs when those devs get a job somewhere else either.
These same devs have failed over and over at keeping a game going.
Me? I’m enjoying 40k and Battletech. And 90% of the great times in x-wing I can have in Battletech.
I proposed your idea to my MCP player group and they seemed wholly uninterested since it’s such a competitive game at this point. That’s probably part of the issue.
Yea for sure. We basically maintain a small but dedicated group of casual people that enjoy playing themed games
Thanks for caring. 💚
Did you know that they didn't even playtest the xwing 2.5 rules until after they announced them. In fact the playtesters were still working on the 2.0 points updates at the time
This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. I tried one game of 2.5, and then said never again.
Kinda.
They play tested for a couple of weeks (the rules not the points) and 80% of the play testers said it was a terrible set of changes.
So they got rid of the play testers and went ahead with the changes anyway……
It then killed x wing
They did the questionnaires, did the announcement and then asked one of the Australian groups straight after the announcement. Who then quit
With Crisis Protocol, i spent a around $400-500 to get a ton of kits. I built them all, and then sold them. I sold'm, because after a few months of releases, they went back in and started coming out with new, updated cards for existing characters, and began doing variations on some characters. After seeing this, and after seeing the same issues with Warmachine, and actively/always dealing with it via the GW products, i gave up on it. Its too much to track. If i'm gonna worry about expensive updates on games, i'll just stick with GW since i've already got a ton of GW product sitting in my studio.
And then Disney killed Star Wars and Marvel, so meh. Good luck to them, but too many issues for me.
Shatterpoint was a weird move by AMG. Most of the people interested in the Star Wars IP already played Legion. People like me have enough Legion I don't need another Star Wars game. It definitely split the player base a bit. I also think the way AMG has handled Legion is siubpar. Not that FFG was perfect, but they certainly seemed passionate and released products people wanted for the most part.
My beloved MESBG suffers a lot from the stock situation at GW. Which is a shame because it's such great game, but products like "Defenders' of Helms Deep" (Haleth and Aldor) which I want to finish my Defenders' of Helms Deep army, have been out of stock in Canada for like 2 years. Fortunately the newer stuff, and the popular/core models tend to stay in stock though!
This is the obvious problem with small scale manufacturing. It almost never works long term. Unless you grow the planning, manufacturing and distribution part of the business, all the cool designs in the world don’t help
Shatterpoint and mcp have problems, this is my perspective as a player. I only play them because of my community is invested in them. however i do think both games have solid rules that I mostly like. I am not a fan of shatterpoints active attempts at stopping my redrum hobo tendencies.
I was never invested in the mcu, I am not the guy that is into superheroes. Villains sure? but nothing was saying get me,
until monsters unleashed and elsa/man thing. I will grab I immortal hulk, blade/moon knight, voodoo/hood and ghost rider. Maybe drax and black cat eventually simply for playability. I will make my bundle of monsters work, pad the roster with filler and I am done. I won't be chasing the meta.
my fondness for Star wars is directly tied to my grandfather's love of star wars. It never really did anything for me. I was more interested in things like ewoks, jawas, Bounty hunters and droids. You know the things that make the universe interesting. Jedi/sith yah, no thanks, light sabers not my thing.
So for me, I got my two boxes of ewoks and I am probably done with Shatterpoint purchases. Maybe if they make Bounty hunters less awkward or if we can field pure droid lists I will look at expanding. But I am looking for the oddball niche stuff, not something they should be focusing development time on.
Also, i played warmachine, mcp has had warmachine bloat vibes for along time.
They just don't offer anything I can't get better, elsewhere for me.
MCP seems fun on the surface, but heroscape is right there.
Legion is fine, but it's got "bespoke" dice and mechanics...when OPR/BT is right there.
I hope they stay around for their fans, 100%, but I'm just not getting pulled into their customer base ya know?
Totally fair
This Marvel Crisis Protocol discussion reminds me a lot of the stock issues the FFG had with their miniature lines. AT-43, Runewars, Imperial Assault, and Wings of War were always missing core products that prevented new players from entering the game. And guess what, each of these games is dead...
I think the blame usually fell on how they sourced miniatures from China (via France in the case of AT-43).
I will agree being tied to Asmodee production and distribution hurts mini-games, they are set up for board games. AMG is the one that has products in the pipeline that are interesting to me. Hoping the new Legion core will be good, but that distribution is rough. Let's face it Asmodee is the issue, AMG is just the design studio, and it also affects a song of ice and fire which is CMON. I do wonder though if it is more toxic to the matched play, competitive than those playing at home who are picking up bits as they work through stuff, but that doesn't stop it being an issue. I think the big range refresh into hard plastic has created timing issues for Legion. It with the X-wing and Armada thing has created poor optics. I also don't think Shatterpoint has worked that well, I had MCP and Legion and didn't see the need on the other hand others dropped one or both to move to Shatterpoint. It was rather too close to other games. I would absolutely love them to pass production to someone who understands the miniature market. Which I think could be a challenge for the Gundam game
GW on the other hand locally, people are currently losing interest in the rules for 40k and AoS currently, looking at other rules to play with tired of the constant cycle and design that needs constant tweaks. Prices are becoming prohibitive, particularly as things are looking uncertain globally. Many are just done with the churn. They will still buy GW models to finish projects as I buy some for other projects or a one-off paint project but it isn't that all-consuming hobby now. Which as a hobbyist is really freeing, as I paint the minis I want and will find games that let me use them in a way more enjoyable manner. I think that is why Trench Crusade has caught so many. Not immediately perilous but just cause the profit graph is healthy doesn't mean stuff is rusting under the hood.
... and just two days after this video is published AMG announces bundles of older products. Guardians boxes first, wouldn't be surprised to see more early releases getting this same treatment
It's a good strategy but you can't wait over a year to do it. For example are juggernaut and rhino just going be out of stock until they make it into a collection pack? They need to push these out faster it's hurting their ability to recruit new people.
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 Totally! You did state something about them being at the mercy of the long lead times that come with producing overseas. On their live-streams that they allude to how it is sometimes a couple years for physical product to finally release after development.
In my corner of youtube it seems people like some of their rulesets a great deal. Is it potentially that they are good/great at planting the seed for a game but bad at tending the garden. Do they potentially need to be making games and selling to someone with a different skillset? Is this niche even large enough to support a model like that which is prevalant in other industries?
I ran legion for years at my local store with a good size group. Now I don’t. Shatterpoint was one part of what took the group down as it seemed to be getting the love from Atomic mass where Legion appeared forgotten. The lack of product for Legion especially old kit is beyond believable. How do I get newer players to play when you can’t even supply us starter kits. The new rules are great no one wanted to have to download and print the new cards. Everyone’s basically walked away until AMG got off there ass and will supply new printed cards for there game. Scary thing is our local scene is done with Shatterpiont as good as the game is they feel they are stuck playing the same game every time. Games gone stale. Everyone has gone elsewhere to other games mostly Games Workshop to play. I personally am blaming AMG for killing there games but not surprised as I understand this is the same group the screwed things up at Privateer Press back in the day. These guys need to figure it out
Damn i was really wanting to switch from warhamner to legion
Then this may be a good time, if AMG is going to follow through on their push to reinvigorate the game.
FFG runs things into the ground every time and then move on. I do think Shatterpoint failed for a few reasons. Most people thought it was MCP star wars and it released at the same time as 40k 10th. I bought all the 1st year releases. I'm in Korea, and the only shop selling it lost distribution for star wars somehow, so it can sell mcp but not star wars stuff. Super weird. Now no one is selling star wars stuff here. I ended up selling all of it. Still have mcp. I think mcp has more staying power and will probably keep the company afloat for a time if they don't mismanage things. But yeah no restocks sucks. Especially here, they have limited stock and if something sells out it takes months to restock.
AMG's games are great. Problem is It's not reasonable to fully invest in Legion, MCP, and Shatterpoint (not including all the other mini games out there). Adding Shatterpoint after sending X-Wing AND Armada into the graveyard was super odd. It was clear a lot of people (Star Wars fans) were very upset. They already had a Star Wars miniatures game that was popular in Legion, and should have added skirmish rules (a la Shatterpoint, or what GW did with Kill Team). They could've just moved X-Wing or Armada into a sprue-based, paint-your-own miniatures game if it was a problem with the pre-painted minis. We could have had a unifying campaign ruleset for staging beautiful galactic space battles in the Star Wars Universe. At the end of the day it's easy to second guess from the outside looking in but it should looks really weird from where I'm standing. All that being said I'll continue to buy all the MCP releases as it's a solid game with great minis but I'm super confused on Legion/Shatterpoint. Collecting and playing a 28mm and a 32mm Star Wars tabletop skirmish game with different terrain pieces is excessive even for a plastic-obsessed person like myself. Not to mention the time investment...
Hate and Anger!
FOLKS!! "slinks away"
It appears to me, that they have failed to recognize the magic to keeping a game alive is having your best selling skus in stock all the time. Always the death knell of a game. Unfortunate.
How much blame goes to the vulture capitalists who dumped debt on them. Same evil that killed Toys R Us in the states.
AMG may be facing liquidity issues and keeping everything in print is costly.
It's entirely possible.
Wish I could have gotten to said shop. Saw the add.
Timmy isn't married.
No other company making games (except Hasbro) can be compared to GW. No GW product will go out of stock for long because GW has the manufacturing capacity on this continent and the capital to stop that from happening. AMG can't do that. No one can. Hasbro can't even do it, but they have the capital and industry control that they can get products back on shelf. The other problem is that AMG doesn't make the choices. Disney does. They can't just make whatever they want, and their licenses may not allow them to do what you're suggesting. It's just like the guy on the left said. And I completely agree with the part about people questioning the game if they can't get the product. I believe this is part of what killed Warmachine. The product line was too large for stores to keep in stock, and after so many letdowns, they'll just stop. I've always worried about the same with Legion. Too many skus that the company can't maintain.
Horus Heresy nuff said.
Really uping the Thumbnail game this time
Star Wars Legion is a game I've wanted to get into and I'm finally now buying stuff for it. Hopefully it has another few years left before it goes the way of X-Wing and others.
It's a really fun game with very nice models.
Shatterpoint would have been a much better game if it was just heroes, and maybe even specifically to force users. Generic troops should have been silo'd to Legion. No battle droids, no stormtroopers, etc. But ultimately to a casual, Legion and Shatterpoint felt like deja vu sitting on a shelf. It's hard to feel like Shatterpoint was just a product of someone's ego. And it also really makes me angry how the IP was allowed to transfer to this company to let these fairly healthy products just completely rot.
You’ve seen who works at AT, of course they’re going to cater to the furries with squirrel girl rather than make sure wolverine is in stock.
To be fair, sleeves have way broader consumer audience.
Solid point!
AMG fumbled the bag with XWing TMG. Besides poor management of reprints and the bungled rules change that essentially wiped what was already only half of a community, AMG did nothing to grow the line. If an in-stride design and release was possible under FFG for TFA, then how was it that AMG couldn’t string together a couple Glup Shittos that were being seen on the streaming series?
AMG is hopelessly adrift in a sea of decisions being made by suits who don’t care about gamers. I think your analysis was spot on, but I don’t think AMG has the capacity to pull out of this dive.
Intrusive thought...
I wonder how much of this issue is actually baked into the licensing from Disney. All of their games are licensed through Disney and I could see Disney wanting to have a hand in what gets released when.
Something we will never know!
I enjoy MCP very much
Did you ever talk about the Federal GST "Tax Holiday" or whatever and how it has effected your hobby business? It's such a kinda weird Canadian specific thing to think about. A few percentages can make a big difference for Warhammer stuff.
Also it's funny how the same dudes who say, "no, Warhammer is NOT a toy, it's a mature and adult hobby," suddenly turn to, "yes, you can clearly see that the box indicates twelve and up, this means it is below the age threshold of 14 to quality for the tax break, I will purchase these legally certified toys."
Star Wars had a good run.
AMG seems intent on running into the ground. It's too bad too. They have some good games. Also, I love Squirl Girl.
AMG is busy atm re-sculpting legion to bleed more money out of of legion players... nerfing old stuff to sell new units and increasing model/unit count to sell more models.
Squirrel girl is garbage but why we dont have some of the staple figures. Where is the fantastic four?
Star Wars as a brand has been severely damaged under Disney, so it's understandable that it isn't selling. Star Wars Toys/Merch sales is also collapsing
did the quartering tell you this? its not damaged at all haha. its not got worse. its the same schlock it always was...as for sales... well yeah. theres only so much a franchise can sell before folk tire of it. it comes in waves.
@@kudosbudoso you just admitted it was damaged because Disney made people tired of it?
First: I've forgotten the quartering even existed until you brought it up, so i guess you're the one that listens to him.
Second: Which of these three things are correct about you?
1: You were born an idiot
2: You became an idiot through bad life choices
3: You're just acting like an idiot?
Is it bad form to ask someone who works at an FLGS for a game? I assume you have better things going on.
I just think about how they never had stock and yet made legion from 800 to 1000 points, i just dont get it.
Lol galaxy brain move
So what will happen when there's tarrifs on product from UK, Europe, etc? Atomic Mass might seem good for those that can't afford the others. In the US anyway.
I think it's all manufactured in China though, so still likely to get hit by tariffs unfortunately.
@@Jarval Not sure on Atomic Mass does or not. I know GW and Corvus Belli do most in Europe.
I was looking forward to the new Gundam mini game too.
Its a flawed game. You design your game to be small then it will be very easy to get everything that I will ever want and then that’s it. I dont need to rebuy the old stuff so they need to make new stuff. But it also sends the wrong message of your old stuff will get outdated. They dont have the big games like 40k where you can adjust around the edges and force people to purchase more. Then they can hit a refresh with a new edition rules. The game is capitalizing on people’s fandom but the way people and comic book fandom works is that you find that one character or that one team that you like and you focus on that. Like Captain America is cool but I like Wolverine and the X-Men. That’s it. I got my X-Men and I m done collecting and will play the hell out of them. You make my team obsolete by power creeping them? Cool, Im done playing. I dont want to just buy spider-man and not play my x-men anymore because they are bad now. I will just play the million other marvel game where my x-men are good.
AMG has resorted to useing Grey Squadron Gaming RUclips chalnnel as they marketing news channel for Star Wars Legion.
They just done seam tonhave the resourcing and marketing and organsiatil skills tonreally support their game in a way thst helps their business.
Market forces are pushing sculpt shops into margins, the "PDF Rule/Faction Books" + "FDM Optimized STL Files" for models/tokens/etc (+ stand-in "Paper Mini's"), has vastly shifted market and drove UP pre-printed (that need to be warehoused/stocked) costs. Companies like Victrix, Perry and EM4 will survive (mainly for historical, cheap "bulk" and reprints of "very old" sculpts) .. We have entered the buyer limit/expectation of "Sub $0.33 USD per mini" ... end of an era (and no one that buys/prints STL's needs to deal with "stock/production" limits).
Comicbooks, RPG's & Wargames have shifted formats, remaking these hobbies, and CCG's have "ruined" most of the old communities (as "new" ppl have different goals to "old" ppl) .. "evil" reselling and the ability control your own hobby have "ended" the era of "hobby shops"
All AMG does is push new product. They don’t care about the old stuff and never fix it if the stats on old stuff is terrible.