I'm not sure what caused the drop but signs point to a mass exodus away from the product from a frustrated fan base.

Their annual financial reports have shown a steady decrease in overall sales for years, indicating a shrinking fan base, that they have been compensating for with regular price rises and massive cost cutting that only served to disguise and accelerate the problem, and those measures seem to no longer be working. Just before the big sell off they released a financial report that showed, I think it was, an 11% drop in profits compared to the same time period last year.

But...GWs mismanagement is probably at least partly responsible for letting all the new competition they have flourish, including FFG, so huzzah.

And there was much rejoicing.

****, I was looking forward to a dragon based flight path game. Anything Wizkids touches turns toxic though. The paint jobs will be crap, they'll release a ton of stuff too fast and burn out their fanbase and long-term profits for short-term sales, and the game will be unbalanced on purpose to make you need to constantly buy new stuff.

That is how Wizkids has run almost all of their games from MageKnight to MechWarrior, to Attack Wing. Every Wizkids game eventually self-implodes because that business model cannot be sustained. Of course they don't care because they just move on to the next game.

It really makes me appreciate FFG and X-Wing though. They seem to want to make this game be a contender over the long haul.

It's a bit of a relief too, because now I don't have to worry about spending money on a new game. I can just keep throwing more money at X-Wing which is a great game that deserves it.

I have my doubts that GW's financial situation is quite as bad as folks on the internet would have us think. That being said, I would love to see FFG pickup the rights to some of GW's properties like Gothic and Necromunda. In the case of Gothic though, I wouldn't want to see the property shoe-horned into a flight-path system like X-Wing's. Contrary to the beliefs of certain other manufacturers, capital ships have absolutely no business flitting around the play area like star fighters.

Edit: If the ships moved on a system more in the vein of the CR-90 and Rebel Transport, I would be ok with it.

To be honest, that would be cool. The ships need to 'feel' big and slow. They don't pull 180' course changes and they don't "evade".

As importantly, the feel of 40k fleet combat is very much broadside-to-broadside in space - as well as a lot of carriers launching fighters (that would be tokens if anything on this scale) and lots of boarding actions - and it's doing that last bit in any detail which really would cause trouble without a fundamental re-cranking of the game engine.

Although the rumors are that FF is going to be getting the rights to all of GW's specialtiy games. GW is hurting bad for money and are trying to sell off everything but W40K, WFB, and the LotR/Hobbit tabletop games. So FF might start making miniature games for Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Space Hulk, Battlefleet Gothic, as well as the other specialty games. So we can hold out hope to a fantasy game that plays like X-Wing.

Blood bowl using something similar to the flight path system might be very very interesting, I can see a lot of possibility in that.

A friend and I thought they should do a car wars-esque flight path game of automobile combat. Could get a lot more creative with the obstacles and terrain and such and is a genre that is fairly under developed right now.

This would be a re-invention of GW's Dark Future game

There's always Aeronautica Imperialis which can be brought back from the dead.

That wasn't a bad system, apart from shooting/hit mechanic which meant games went on much longer than really needed. And dials are far better than the cards that AI used.

Hmmm... less bothered about that. Not because I didn't like AI, but because you don't need two "dogfight" games - any FFG-resurrected AI must be extremely similar in practice to X-wing to the point that I'm not sure I'm bothered about both.

Attack wing is - or should be - different, in that even though it's basic mechanics are the same, it is ultimately a capital ship game.

A development of the Epic Play rules to allow warship duels rather than one ship as a campaign mechanic would be cool - and that's something which would be quite unique.

I agree, was just putting it out there...

I don't know who here has played Battlefleet Gothic, but it is probably the best game GW ever released. Other than some balance issues, it was also a lot more fun and intense to play than X-wing. If FF picks that system up, which I pray that they do, they should stick to the original game and just rebalance it and print the ships. Also, it has lots of tokens so it is tailor made for FF.

I don't know who here has played Battlefleet Gothic, but it is probably the best game GW ever released. Other than some balance issues, it was also a lot more fun and intense to play than X-wing. If FF picks that system up, which I pray that they do, they should stick to the original game and just rebalance it and print the ships. Also, it has lots of tokens so it is tailor made for FF.

FFG does love their fiddly bits.