So, as an example, this is not Legion, but there was some kind of supply problem at Gencon. Their article says that one of the L5R expansions would be available for pre-release - it was later stated at Gencon to not be available. Now there's about a million reasons why this could happen, but he fact of the matter is, they called the ball, and ended up wrong, which generally looks bad. This is why I believe FFG usually airs on the side of caution. For Legion they're developing a lot of product in parallel or in batches, as we can see by the serial numbers, and the devs and marketing kind of collab on when to do releases. They want to do a big push at Gencon for the core, so they make sure they have plenty of core sets for pre-release and it doesn't make sense to not also just get inventory and release it sooner rather than later. But then you get the pileup. You have a couple dozen releases queued, in printing. Maybe your Clone Wars commanders are a bit delayed, so you have to push back the whole CW line. Maybe some of your stuff gets leaked, so you have to go to announcement and maybe ship a bit sooner. Maybe the boat carrying your first run of clone wars stuff has sunk, and they have to send it again so you have to rebuild the whole release schedule.

The important thing to remember here is that unlike this digital message, which is instantly transmitted to your screen all of the hobby stuff is physical. It's printed in China mostly, or a little bit stateside or in Germany or wherever. Then it has to get boxed up and boated or flown to FFG warehouses then shipped to customers. There's a lot of points of failure in there, and it's a lengthy process, so you have to be careful what you announce when, otherwise you have customers who are angry for no reason, because their disappointment won't make a container ship move faster. So, they know for sure CW stuff will hit the window marketing decided for Q1 next year, Clone Wars is your big thing for Gencon? Boom, big announcement rollout. Got a few more "surprises" from marketing later, you sit on it, especially if your schedule isn't locked in yet.

41 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

So, as an example, this is not Legion, but there was some kind of supply problem at Gencon. Their article says that one of the L5R expansions would be available for pre-release - it was later stated at Gencon to not be available. Now there's about a million reasons why this could happen, but he fact of the matter is, they called the ball, and ended up wrong, which generally looks bad. This is why I believe FFG usually airs on the side of caution. For Legion they're developing a lot of product in parallel or in batches, as we can see by the serial numbers, and the devs and marketing kind of collab on when to do releases. They want to do a big push at Gencon for the core, so they make sure they have plenty of core sets for pre-release and it doesn't make sense to not also just get inventory and release it sooner rather than later. But then you get the pileup. You have a couple dozen releases queued, in printing. Maybe your Clone Wars commanders are a bit delayed, so you have to push back the whole CW line. Maybe some of your stuff gets leaked, so you have to go to announcement and maybe ship a bit sooner. Maybe the boat carrying your first run of clone wars stuff has sunk, and they have to send it again so you have to rebuild the whole release schedule.

The important thing to remember here is that unlike this digital message, which is instantly transmitted to your screen all of the hobby stuff is physical. It's printed in China mostly, or a little bit stateside or in Germany or wherever. Then it has to get boxed up and boated or flown to FFG warehouses then shipped to customers. There's a lot of points of failure in there, and it's a lengthy process, so you have to be careful what you announce when, otherwise you have customers who are angry for no reason, because their disappointment won't make a container ship move faster. So, they know for sure CW stuff will hit the window marketing decided for Q1 next year, Clone Wars is your big thing for Gencon? Boom, big announcement rollout. Got a few more "surprises" from marketing later, you sit on it, especially if your schedule isn't locked in yet.

i think what's confusing is they announced new product, say its slated for 2020(CW) and Q4 2019(Bunker and escape pod), then go on to say that there is product coming out before the announced product but they don't announce this product. That brings the question of why not announce the product that is coming out this year?

8 minutes ago, jcmonson said:

i think what's confusing is they announced new product, say its slated for 2020(CW) and Q4 2019(Bunker and escape pod), then go on to say that there is product coming out before the announced product but they don't announce this product. That brings the question of why not announce the product that is coming out this year?

Because it’s shore troopers, dewbacks, and Luke/Vader operatives?

Just a guess

2 minutes ago, ScummyRebel said:

Because it’s shore troopers, dewbacks, and Luke/Vader operatives?

Just a guess

Don't think so since they said that the other products in question haven't been announced at all.

That could mean that there's marketing finalization needs doing. It could be they had to make agreements with LFL for the license to announce certain things at certain times. Could just be that they wanted to make Clone Wars announcements because that's the big thing, and somebody was like "okay, we can only write articles to cover like 6 releases by the time this goes live, so you have to pick what you announce". Maybe they just don't want to overload the market with information.

Here's another thought - Rex and Dooku's new keywords, and it seems like R2 and C3P0 (coming with escape pod) keywords are in - but Phase II/B2 and tank keywords are not? If they're written and printed, presumably on the mockup, they probably know what they do, right? Why not just add them. The reason is probably simple, but it could be a lot of things, the announcements are probably the same.

1 hour ago, thepopemobile100 said:

Don't think so since they said that the other products in question haven't been announced at all.

Well that’s just intetesting. I wonder if we will see CW special forces before the second corps unit then.

Or what else is coming for GCW that hasn’t hit yet.

Or. They are working on more than 1 new things and aren’t sure which ones will be ready this year. Simplest answer.

20 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

Or. They are working on more than 1 new things and aren’t sure which ones will be ready this year. Simplest answer.

Lando