So a major lesson in irony found in THIS FFG article .

A New Stage of Growth

Do you think the Author jinxed it? Good thing it doesn't mention any other LCGs.

Those were all of the competitive LCGs at the time. Only other one was LotR. AGOT was relaunched and announced at the same time and CoC was already on its way out.

Yeah, but the OP makes a point. 4 years ago, they had a world at their hand with LCGs, and back in 2016, Chris during the InFlight report at GenCon hinted that possibly they had room for one more to develop, and now they just have AGoT 2nd edition and L5R as competitive LCGs. LotR sooner or later will be left dying (with 8K cards, room for expanding more is thinner every day more, and there's the digital implementation coming) so that the company that became famous for the LCG format will have just a couple of titles.

17 hours ago, Julia said:

Yeah, but the OP makes a point. 4 years ago, they had a world at their hand with LCGs, and back in 2016, Chris during the InFlight report at GenCon hinted that possibly they had room for one more to develop, and now they just have AGoT 2nd edition and L5R as competitive LCGs. LotR sooner or later will be left dying (with 8K cards, room for expanding more is thinner every day more, and there's the digital implementation coming) so that the company that became famous for the LCG format will have just a couple of titles.

I'm thinking that until they get another 1 or 2 LCGs out there, that LotR got a stay-of-execution. Any thought they had about closing it earlier (IMO) went out the window with Netrunner.

Well Arkham Horror isn't going anywhere, and they are pretty invested in keeping L5R around. AGOT still seems to have it's fans. So it's not like LCGs are completely dead right now. I wonder what is the right number of LCGs to put out. Was FFG putting out too many and potentially cannibalizing their player base? I think the answer might be yes. I wonder if they just had two competitive LCGs (AGOT and L5R) if local LCG scenes would be more successful since they wouldn't be so factionalized across multiple game LCG systems. Having four competitive LCGs out there at one time to me did feel like too many. Especially when they have other stuff out there potentially in the same space like Destiny and X-Wing that might appeal to the same crowd. Maybe it's healthy that they reduced the number of LCGs out there.

As an outside observer the co-ops seem way easier to sell to casuals since they don't require a sizable local playgroup to be successful. Also the co-ops don't require the same level of commitment on the organized play/tournament support axis and co-op players can police their own card pool to keep the game from being too lopsided. It just feels like a way easier product for FFG to produce. Rather than kill LOTR LCG they've just slowed down it's releases considerably, which is concerning but also sort of welcome since I still like that game (and I'd have to completely cut it if it was releasing on the frequency of AH:TCG). If they ever kill LOTR LCG I think it most likely gets replaced by another co-op LCG. The co-op LCGs feel the most at home in the format IMO. Even if they never put out another competitive LCG I think things like AH:TCG can keep the format alive.

I think 2 cooperative and 4 competitive is a good number. I think the Star Wars LCG was doomed as soon as Destiny caught up with demand, assuming that it wasn't already. If the options were AGoT & SW LCGs for competitive, I wouldn't participate. I don't like AGoT's setting, and there are better SW games. L5R, on the other hand, is amazing and I want more now!

I think that the format is really good for getting players interested - doubly at launch. I think the mechanics and settings need to be different enough to attract different players and not cannibalize the player-base.

I don't like AGoT's setting that much either, but it's the best LCG available, even with the recent silly restriction list and combo-mania. I loved both playing and building decks for the game.
FFG did make a few arbitrary, weird rulings, IMO, and I no longer had time to invest, so I'm currently LCG-less.

On ‎7‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 4:14 PM, phillos said:

As an outside observer the co-ops seem way easier to sell to casuals since they don't require a sizable local playgroup to be successful. Also the co-ops don't require the same level of commitment on the organized play/tournament support axis and co-op players can police their own card pool to keep the game from being too lopsided. It just feels like a way easier product for FFG to produce. Rather than kill LOTR LCG they've just slowed down it's releases considerably, which is concerning but also sort of welcome since I still like that game (and I'd have to completely cut it if it was releasing on the frequency of AH:TCG). If they ever kill LOTR LCG I think it most likely gets replaced by another co-op LCG. The co-op LCGs feel the most at home in the format IMO. Even if they never put out another competitive LCG I think things like AH:TCG can keep the format alive.

I'd like to see more co-op LCGs.

Heroes of Terrinoth (nee Warhammer Quest: The Card Game) is a sort of Co-op LCG lite, which is also good fun; you could easily pass expansions for new heroes, quests and villains in in much the same way as an LCG.

I would like to see a Sci-Fi co-op game, though. If not star wars, then Twilight Imperium might be nice.