Hello there everyone.

Last week I have been to my local store to check the german prices for the V2 packs. Sadly the owner of the store told me that 80-90% of the former buyers didn't convert to V2 and don't plan to do so. That wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't the flagship-store nr. 1 for Germany! Maybe the store will even stop selling x-wing stuff because of the bad sales!!

So...what the heck do I want from you now? I know the german community for sure isn't the biggest around. So I want to know if in your stores there are still enough players around? Why is that important? When I and my friend convert to V2 that means spending 500-700€ just to get the old ships to V2 (without buying the new ones). It would be pretty much a waste if the game is going down and won't be supportet anymore soon. I know this is hard to predict but I am sure here are some tournament- and core-players around that can at least tell how the playerbase developed at their locations.

Don't get me wrong. X-Wing still is my favorite tabletop and I played V2 online a lot to be sure I still love it. And I do. I just would like your opinion about the player-bases at your locations since here x-wing ain't a top-seller any more.

Thanks

Doing well locally in my corner of the UK - we're not at the heights of player numbers we were at during the most popular point of 1st Edition, but we're still usually getting a solid 10-12 people on our casual club nights, and a variable but still decent turnout for our tournaments. While we have lost some players over the last year, that's been much more to do with changing life circumstances than any issue with 2nd Edition.

Our tournaments have been bumping up against capacity.

I would imagine most people who didn't convert to 2.0 were pretty much already done with 1.0 and it was just the very final straw.

Casual/free-play nights have dwindled to 3-4 on my side of town, but there are tournaments every weekend that normally push 14-16+ both days.

My area entirely converted to 2nd Ed

Has there been any changes on the TO and event organizer side? In my experience, communities can very quickly fall apart unless someone actually takes responsibility and makes sure things are happening and people are talking. It almost happened to us twice; once around the triple Jumpmaster meta, and then again at the tail end of 1.0. This can very quickly snowball into a dead community unless TOs, shops etc. can get people hyped up.

You cannot even imagine how glad I am to read that. So we will convert!

It is not that important for me that the local community grows or falls apart. I just want to be sure it doesn't vanish that hard globally and the future of X-wing is safe.

Thanks a lot for all the answers. Feel still free to comment if you did not yet.

Where in Germany are you? Because many of the tournaments that are in reach for me (e: south) are chronically filled out well in advance or close to (15/16, 19/22, ...)

As a side note, I wouldn't immediately buy multiples of the conversion kits. Maybe one of each faction if even that.

My local area (Northern CO, US) has pretty much entirely converted to 2.0, and has had no loss of players from what I can tell.

In my area (Bucharest, Romania) the situation is pretty much terrible. The community was dwindling toward the end of 1.0, and it hasn't got better.

Out of the guys that were playing less and less in 1.0, only 1 has expressed interest in 2.0, and while we got some 3-4 new players, none of them seems really committed yet. So that leaves us with a 2.5 player community down from 15 or so at the height of 1.0 (2 regulars and me, who, although still interested in the game, find myself with less and less time to play).

I'm in Oslo, and the community was reborn for 2.0. We have monthly tournaments now, instead of about every 3, and 24 players signed up for the winter league, about double from last year (the first time a league was organised).

I’m across the globe in Utah, USA, and virtually everyone I know converted to 2.0 the first chance they got. The community is just as strong and healthy as ever, if not more so.

I’m sad to hear the situation isn’t the same in your neck of the world, but if everybody decides not to convert because nobody else is converting then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m glad that you have decided to convert- the more people who convert and start playing and enjoying 2nd ed, the more it will make other players in your community want to convert, too.

Good luck!

3 hours ago, NilsTillander said:

I'm in Oslo, and the community was reborn for 2.0. We have monthly tournaments now, instead of about every 3, and 24 players signed up for the winter league, about double from last year (the first time a league was organised).

Where in Ohio? I'm in Warren and there's still conversions on the wall. Some hard-core and OCD players have converted over but it's slow. Concerned for both casual night at the store and OP play as well.

4 minutes ago, Stoneface said:

Where in Ohio? I'm in Warren and there's still conversions on the wall. Some hard-core and OCD players have converted over but it's slow. Concerned for both casual night at the store and OP play as well.

He said Oslo, so I think he's in Minnesota, Florida, or Norway.

I'm in Dayton, OH, and things do seem pretty slow here, but part of that may just be that Second released during the school year, so high schoolers and college students have other priorities. We'll see how things look next summer.

Probably better to connect with your local community in Germany than to ask about other communities on the other side of the world.

Figure out if they have a facebook page, or just find out what nights they meet up to play and go to the store on that night and see what the turnout looks like for yourself.

my local area (Southern Arizona) is pretty much completely switched over. We have one guy who is adamantly against spending money and a few guys who I haven't seen in a while who I think were getting out of X-Wing anyway. We have more new players than we lost old players, though, so the game is at about the same level.

31 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

He said Oslo, so I think he's in Minnesota, Florida, or Norway.

I'm in Dayton, OH, and things do seem pretty slow here, but part of that may just be that Second released during the school year, so high schoolers and college students have other priorities. We'll see how things look next summer.

DOH! One more indication that I need to get my cataracts removed. Thanks for the correction!

from what ive seen the only players who converted were tournament players. casuals mostly stuck with 1.0

In Italy community had some problem at the end of the first edition, because mismanagement in marketing (people have difficulties acquiring most needed stuff) and because the distributor was loosing the license, so it was not so interested in doing a good work with tournament (and sending kits in time and enough of them). The game suffered a lot for the state of gameplay and meta, and there was some expetations for 2.0

Most shop dropped X-Wing for marketing reasons, so relatively few remained on the spot to convert on 2.0 - the other chose to not risk, and make x-wing a "available on request" product. So the last very addicted veterans dispersed a lot (buying online on UK stores, mainly). Now, the local shops who tryed to go on, or started fresh, have build small but solid communities, very active, but there is nothing organized on national level and that it's quite ... defusing. There is no Tournament hype as before, but, there is a certain pleasure to know you can go in 3 or 4 shop saturday and sunday afternoon and find an X-Wing event, of 10 to 15 people. But there are, and that is the problem, every the same people, rotating from a shop to another. And we are speaking of Rome (a city with 2.5 milion people). So the game has taken several blow. Some for previous management, some from the Asmodee. And some from the previous Tournament Show Enviroment. We are going to have a very hard work to do to rebuilt the community.

And divisive argument such as Extended vs Hyperspace is not helping.

15 hours ago, Tvboy said:

Probably better to connect with your local community in Germany than to ask about other communities on the other side of the world.

As mentioned before I wanted to have a global overview about the player-base. It is not about finding other players around but to be sure the game has a future before investing several 100€.

It is good to see that a solid amount of players has converted so there will be more waves. So the problem seems to affect only a "minor" part of the european markets. That is all I wanted to know.

So thank you very much for all the replies. I am very confident now that switching to V2 shouldn't be a problem.

I can only rely to @GreenDragoon . I’m also living in the middle/south of Germany and here tournament scene and community are even better than before. My own club is thriving and our by-monthly tournament is normally booked out.

Plus especially large events are becoming even larger. Look at UK SOS with nearly 700 possible players. I guess ther German SOS/nationals will also be huge

On 1/4/2019 at 12:57 PM, shadowfriend said:

When I and my friend convert to V2 that means spending 500-700€ just to get the old ships to V2 (without buying the new ones).

If you want to do your local store a favor go ahead. But why do you want to buy 10+ conversion kits?

In my area everyone converted over. The majority of players where happy to see the end of 1.0 and the power creep that went with it. A lot of players played the ships they loved, like the Firespray and X Wings and they were good again. I think there needs some price adjustments for some 2.0 things, but I think that is just a hang over from 1.0 too.

You dont need to convert very ship you own over, only what you can put on the table. I have bought 1 of each kit, I rarely play Rebels so didnt really need them, but with only 1 kit for each faction I have had more than enough cards to play.

15 minutes ago, flooze said:

If you want to do your local store a favor go ahead. But why do you want to buy 10+ conversion kits?

Well...saying the collection is huge is pretty much an understatement - just as an example we have 21 TIE-fighters , 11 Interceptors, 6 Firesprays, 8 Y-wings and so on and so on. And since we play custom format and epic only we need the dials and cards for all of em.

And yes - we would of course buy them at the local store completely. Maybe this will prevent they keep on thinking about dropping x-Wing.

Well then feel free to convert your collection.

Haven't played epic 2.0 but I found playing one faction on extended format was fun, too. In our region we have a pretty active scene with many people going for 2nd edition.