BattleLore is on sale for HUGE price cuts on FFG's web store. What does that mean for BattleLore? Is FFG done supporting it? Or do they just need to push some stock through?

Probably done .

The good thing about this is that now I can start making my own fully fleshed out Latari Elves faction because I won't have to worry they'll make an official one.

As soon as I finish my Iron Dwarves anyway

EDIT: Also, now I have to decide how much of all of it to buy lol

I'm guessing done, too; especially since there's a bunch of Warhammer stuff listed on the same page, which FFG has already announced they're no longer supporting.

It's done.

Yep done..as I surmised after GenCon. No elves or anything else.

Noooo

Maybe they're getting ready for a new print?

I'll still wait until elf announcement for Runewars

It's 99.99% done then - the FFG holiday sale is where games traditionally go to die.

What's peculiar is that FFG, particularly in light of the GW split, (and as said as much by the CEO at GenCon) is making a deliberate strategy to develop, expand and push their own IPs - for obvious reasons, shoring up their own position in the market and giving their company more stability in the event of losing big licences etc

So they've really push Android Netrunner:

- Continuation of the LCG, going from strength to strength

- New board game set in the Android Universe - New Angeles

- Release of Android Source/World book

- Announcement of ANR campaign expansions

Presumably they're going to be doing similar with their Runebound/Terrinoth IP next year, with:

- Worldbook

- Runewars TMG

- They've already released Runebound 3rd Ed + Expansions

You would have thought that Battlelore 2nd Ed would have co-existed and complimented that - they already had an established game.

I imagine they thought any/all of the following:

- Battlelore wasn't actually that good/marketable

- It didn't sell well initially - better to let it die

- It doesn't fit into their current distribution model - i.e it has small, infrequent waves of large expansions, rather than medium sized, frequent waves of small expansions

- It steps on the toes too much of Runewars TMG - despite clearly being a lighter game - what X-Wing is to Armada for example

Ah well - I've got the whole lot, so there's plenty to explore.

What puzzles me is that, if we look at the whole holiday sale of the entire Asmodee group, there's a lot of games that don't look dying. Look at Eclipse, for example (current n.18 in best games of all times on BGG). Or Lewis & Clarke / Discoveries. These are games that sold a lot of copies and are in good "health", and yet they belong to the holiday sale. Are they killing all these lines to go with 2nd editions? It's also odd if they let BT die because there's no replacement game in their catalogue (say what you wish, but a lot of people who got BT won't be getting R:TMG as substitute).

Not saying I disagree with you; just that there are titles in the holiday sale that are curious to find there

What puzzles me is that, if we look at the whole holiday sale of the entire Asmodee group, there's a lot of games that don't look dying. Look at Eclipse, for example (current n.18 in best games of all times on BGG). Or Lewis & Clarke / Discoveries. These are games that sold a lot of copies and are in good "health", and yet they belong to the holiday sale. Are they killing all these lines to go with 2nd editions? It's also odd if they let BT die because there's no replacement game in their catalogue (say what you wish, but a lot of people who got BT won't be getting R:TMG as substitute).

Not saying I disagree with you; just that there are titles in the holiday sale that are curious to find there

Yeah I see your point. I mean contradicting my own point, what's to say that Battlelore in on sale, to get more copies of it out there, counteracting the perceived poor sales it's had thus far, generating more buzz for the system, ahead of the release of the Elves in 2017, as part of the general Runebound/Terrinoth push next year?

One difference between BattleLore's sale and other Asmodee games is the huge discount on BattleLore. These aren't teaser prices; these are clearance prices. I browsed some of the other games and they didn't seem to have as significant a price cut as BattleLore.

I wish I had some extra change lying around, because I'm contemplating getting a second copy of each product. Then I could have more variety for building armies for each faction, and I could also have plenty of units to do mirror matches. I would paint up the armies so that there would be two aesthetics in each faction.

Daqan -- blue faction and white faction

Uthuk -- light-skinned faction and dark-skinned faction

Undead -- white bones and yellow bones

It's a fun dream.

Yeah, I went ahead and order a second copy of everything (except I got 3 more razorwings because razorwings are life) mostly for the mirror matches. I may also experiment with some 'epic' style rules since I'll have 2 boards. If nothing else, I'll have a lot of fun with that stuff.

So, it is a bad time for me to have just bought one of everything?

I had nothing before, but, with the sale, I realized I could deck out the full game for not too much. Now I'm debating getting a couple more of dragons and giants.

I guess, dead or not, I'll be playing some Battlelore!

edit : upon reflection, maybe it's better for me to buy a game that won't grow with expansions anymore. FFG has secured their financial future with me practically having to buy one of everything X-Wing.

What puzzles me is that, if we look at the whole holiday sale of the entire Asmodee group, there's a lot of games that don't look dying. Look at Eclipse, for example (current n.18 in best games of all times on BGG). Or Lewis & Clarke / Discoveries. These are games that sold a lot of copies and are in good "health", and yet they belong to the holiday sale. Are they killing all these lines to go with 2nd editions? It's also odd if they let BT die because there's no replacement game in their catalogue (say what you wish, but a lot of people who got BT won't be getting R:TMG as substitute).

Not saying I disagree with you; just that there are titles in the holiday sale that are curious to find there

Yeah I see your point. I mean contradicting my own point, what's to say that Battlelore in on sale, to get more copies of it out there, counteracting the perceived poor sales it's had thus far, generating more buzz for the system, ahead of the release of the Elves in 2017, as part of the general Runebound/Terrinoth push next year?

Truth is... I don't know. Could be. Could also be that they are killing the line for good. Don't know guys.

But I hate not living in the States, because getting a 2nd copy of everything is not really feasible for me (shipping costs to go over the pond spell bankrupcy)

Scared that it might be the end of BattleLore I got the undead expansions and dragon with giant. Hope they're better than razorwings.

But I really hope FFG is just getting rid of stock before new print and elves, dwarfs and orcs

I don't know guys... on one hand I share your pessimism and your disappointment here. Even if we don't actually know what this discount move really means, it definitively doesn't look like good news for those who hoped in another expansion. Still I can't let my hopes go. Battlelore slowly became my favorite game of all time and I really want to see the full potential of this system.

On the other hand I must say though, that I find this lack of new content really strange. A lot of people on this forum and on BGG keep saying that Battlelore never sold enough to justify more expansions, but I never understood where these people got the information. This game is #112 on Board Game Geek, it's in Tom Vasel's and Sam Healey's Top100 and it gets mentioned on A LOT of top10 lists there on the channel. So it's not like it misses appreciation NOR publicity. I know that these things don't necessarily mean good sales, but they must still count for something. Right?!

Also it seems to me that there's a lot of people asking to see more for Battlelore. We are complaining all the time on this forum and the same thing happens on BGG, at the In Flight Report the question about the elves was one of the firsts that have been asked. Even Tom Vasel said in one of his videos that he hopes to see more for this system. Is it really all a mis-perception then?

Either way... at this point I just wish FFG could tell us whether they want to stop supporting this game or not. At least we could stop spending our time here complaining.

There are a lot of examples in movies/games when a loved title wouldn't sell well. Take 'Firefly' for instance...

Battlelore is a:
-2-player game

-NOT a collectible/tournament game

That makes it a very niche game with relatively low money spent by each fan.

Sure, BL has a lot of passionate fans... But just compare the number of posts/topics in BL2 forum and any SW forum. Scratch that, RW: TMG has almost the same amount of forum activity, and it hasn't been even released yet!

I'd not compare anything to Star Wars, there's simply no match. As for RW:TMG: yeah, true. Also true that the public is different. And to keep up with a miniature game, well.. you need funds. BT and other boardgames are relatively cheap when compared to RW:TMG or Armada or X-Wing. There should be room for all of these

There may be a ton of activity in the RuneWars forums, but has anybody compared the activity there to the pre-release activity here in the BattleLore forums? I bet it wasn't as quiet (though I could be wrong). I'll try to check later.

I just got 1 copy of everything. I am wondering if 2nd core and one more copy of everything is a good idea?

Apologies this game does seem to be clearing out but its a great game and will stay in my collection for years.

Thanks

I just got 1 copy of everything. I am wondering if 2nd core and one more copy of everything is a good idea?

Apologies this game does seem to be clearing out but its a great game and will stay in my collection for years.

Thanks

Except of a 2nd pack of Razorwings, probably, wouldn't do much sense.

the FFG holiday sale is where games traditionally go to die.

Indeed, it doesn't look good for the game line. :-(

I got a Razorwings pack, but they sold out of Dragon, so I'll just skip that. The reinforcement packs aren't much anyway.

I would have liked a fourth faction but I am relieved that we finally have some strong indications that FFG is no longer supporting/developing the game. I love the game and I am glad I was finally able to get all the purple guys pretty cheap so that I can finally say I own all the expansions for an FFG game. Truthfully, there was only two directions for this game: a slow death or the release of way too many expansions way too fast, b/c that's FFG's business model now. The slow death is here. We now only have the five stages to work through, and I'm all the way through them already. I'll be spending my very limited gaming budget on stand alone games w/o too many expansions from now on. I will definitely be staying away from product lines that just coax you into coughing over money every three months for a new reiteration of the same old game play. I already fell for that trap with X-Wing and that took me back to my teenage years trying to collect a certain CCG. Selling off my entire X-Wing collection for way too cheap a few weeks ago was very liberating (in an ironic twist, FFG's release of Rebellion giving me my Star Wars fix let me start crawling out of the X-Wing K-hole).

I would have liked a fourth faction ...

For me, it's not just about having more content; it's about having a complete experience. Runewars (board game) and Rune Age each come with 4 factions in the base set. Over the years, I've really fallen love with the four major factions of Terrinoth. To have such an amazing game that brings these factions' units to life in a tactical skirmish game is fantastic, but it feels hollow with only 3/4 of the factions (and elves are my second favorite faction).

I think of it like if X-Wing put out the X-wing, Y-wing, A-wing, TIE Fighter, TIE Advanced, TIE Interceptor, Slave I , and Millennium Falcon , but never made the B-wing or TIE Bomber. Star Wars fans everywhere would be scratching their heads thinking, "There are 4 major starfighters for each faction from the movies, so how do you not release each one? And why have the Slave I and Millennium Falcon when you could have had all 8 starfighters instead?"

As to that second question, that's how I feel about the Reinforcement Packs. I think the Reinforcement Packs were a big tell early on, but I just didn't want to believe it. I think the Army Packs were just too good of a deal for the consumer, so FFG wasn't making the profit they needed to. Reinforcement Packs are completely inefficient purchases when compared to Army Packs, and I think that was FFG's way of trying to recover some of what they lost by marketing Army Packs the way they did. But people like me took one look at the Reinforcement Packs and said, "Cool, but no thanks," meaning FFG was still losing money on BattleLore. [This is all gross speculation.]

Honestly, at this point I'd be willing to spend $60 per pack for two elf Army Packs just to call the game complete. I hope that FFG will eventually do an elf pack, but I'm not holding my breath anymore.