No mention of IA.

(Armada was thrown a couple of bones though)

the Q&A wasn’t broadcast. Anyone got any goss on what was asked and answered?

The very last question was asking about any future Imperial Assault physical product. Andrew Navarro said they'd already discussed it at Star Wars Celebration, and that "At present, we're currently not developing any more physical product for Imperial Assault".

Interestingly though, he seemed to choose his words carefully and didn't outright state that there would be no more physical product. When people asked about Runewars and Star Wars Rebellion, he clearly stated he felt they were complete games and that they had no plans to make anything more for them. Who knows, when product development finds some space they could well develop that final Endor box we all hope for!

felt like IA was swept under the rug.

2 hours ago, Spidey NZ said:

felt like IA was swept under the rug.

It wasn’t the only thing, but definitely an InFlight that only gave a crap about three-four properties

13 hours ago, maddwarfer said:

The very last question was asking about any future Imperial Assault physical product. Andrew Navarro said they'd already discussed it at Star Wars Celebration, and that "At present, we're currently not developing any more physical product for Imperial Assault".

Interestingly though, he seemed to choose his words carefully and didn't outright state that there would be no more physical product. When people asked about Runewars and Star Wars Rebellion, he clearly stated he felt they were complete games and that they had no plans to make anything more for them. Who knows, when product development finds some space they could well develop that final Endor box we all hope for!

I hope you're right, but I'm guessing some of their not wanting to outright announce that it's dead is that they're still selling the campaign boxes (and probably making new apps) and they're still running skirmish OP events. Coming out and saying that the game is finished would probably have a negative impact on both (even though I have no idea why that would affect whether people buy the campaign game, people always seem to worry about it for whatever reason).

I'm guessing we'll see an app adaptation of HotE, perhaps around Christmas or Q1 2020 and then FFG will reevaluate. Could be more free app updates, could be a new campaign unique to the app that may or may not be paid, could be a final blister wave or two to balance out skirmish, or they could try and do that with a final boxed expansion and give us a big send off.

As noted, the game ain't dead. I just got around to buying ToL in July. I had a heck of a time finding a store or online retailer with an Ahsoka Tano (clearly that one was a good seller). But it has definitely entered a different, perhaps final stage of its life.

21 hours ago, maddwarfer said:

Andrew Navarro said they'd already discussed it at Star Wars Celebration, and that "At present, we're currently not developing any more physical product for Imperial Assault". 

Someone should warn him that this could be a regular question...

I thought the whole inflight report was pretty poor this year.

final hour looked awful, it's like someone vomited onto a board. There was nothing gameplay wise that made it stand out from the many other arkham horror games.

For a moment I was excited for genesys. After the terrinoth & Android source books I was sure we would get either twilight imperium or arkham horror next. Once they said the players guide had rules for horror settings I thought it must be Arkham... The keyforge setting book was a bitter disappointment.

new ships for x-wing & armada were scraping the barrel.

The new lcg could be interesting, only 1 core set needed and new hero's bought as complete decks. The artwork is fugly. All the other LCGs have amazing artwork, this one looks like the cartoons marvel did back in the 90's. Modern comics don't have artwork this bad. Usually whenever FFG announce a new LCG another one bites the dust, so I can't be excited for this. Besides a day later Eric Lang (who did some amazing FFG LCGs) announced he has done a cyberpunk 2077 card game, that took all my card game hype.

One thing that did catch my eye was the prices, ouch. It's like they are bumping the price in case they get bit with tariffs later.

Yeah, this year seemed kinda weak.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting anything for IA (I've grown wiser than that) but I was hoping for at least something to draw me back in. The Marvel thing piqued my interest (seriously, that's a great license to snag!) even though another company already does an IA-style dungeon crawler with that license... but another card game?

FFG used to be my favorite game company bar none, but this focus on card games is really pushing me further away. I get it- it's a lot cheaper to produce than board games (especially those with minis) but Marvel is an investment you need to lean into, especially now! It just seems so unbearably lazy, to me.

Here's to hoping we can get a proper Avengers board game at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

3 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

Yeah, this year seemed kinda weak.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting anything for IA (I've grown wiser than that) but I was hoping for at least something to draw me back in. The Marvel thing piqued my interest (seriously, that's a great license to snag!) even though another company already does an IA-style dungeon crawler with that license... but another card game?

FFG used to be my favorite game company bar none, but this focus on card games is really pushing me further away. I get it- it's a lot cheaper to produce than board games (especially those with minis) but Marvel is an investment you need to lean into, especially now! It just seems so unbearably lazy, to me.

Here's to hoping we can get a proper Avengers board game at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm in a weird spot with FFG.

Arkham Horror (2e) is up there with my favourite games of all time, but since I already own it and still love it I haven't been very interested in their other Arkham Files stuff. I did try (and I really enjoyed) the card game, but it gets pricey if you try to keep up with everything so so far I've only got the one run of expansions.

They make TI4, another one of my all-time top games, but I know that the only people I'll ever get to play it with are the people who already own it so there's no point in me getting my own copy.

And then of course there's Star Wars, my favourite IP. I've had mountains of fun with IA, both campaign and skirmish, but the way they just kind of stopped with no communication at all (which really hit the skirmish game hard) left a bad taste in my mouth. In theory I'd be interested in Destiny or Legion, but buying into IA so much only to have it stop suddenly has left me not wanting to spend so much money on what will probably be another similar experience.

So that's my odd relationship with FFG in a nutshell: on the one hand they're almost certainly my favourite gaming company (they make 3 of my top 4 games) but on the other hand I find myself not at all interested in buying anything that they're making right now.

Watching Andrew Navarro on stage was like watching Todd Howard at E3. Both FFG and Bethesda have done some truly great games and given me many great times but recently they have both been off their game.

weirdly I think CMON have saved gencon this year, zombicide 2nd edition, cyberpunk 2077 & gods of Egypt (the follow up to blood rage & rising sun).

On 8/1/2019 at 11:25 AM, ManateeX said:

I hope you're right, but I'm guessing some of their not wanting to outright announce that it's dead is that they're still selling the campaign boxes (and probably making new apps) and they're still running skirmish OP events. Coming out and saying that the game is finished would probably have a negative impact on both (even though I have no idea why that would affect whether people buy the campaign game, people always seem to worry about it for whatever reason).

There was 19 players for the 80-seat Imperial Assault North American Championship at GenCon yesterday. Canadian Nationals were cancelled because they announced the event very late and kept registration open for only two weeks.

I think Skirmish players have already gotten the message. 😫

Yeah the In-flight report was probably one of the weakest I have seen.

The only 2 new game announcements were for a quick elder signs spin off it feels like and Marvel champions a LLG but feels off somehow. It didn't help that Fantasy Flight let another studio in on their press conference to show off crowd pleaser the Marvel miniatures skirmish game. X wing just x winged and armada got a bit of what it needed.

Compared to last year where we got Arkham Horror 3rd edition, X wing 2nd edition, Keyforge, GOT expansion, a few digital announcements and starwars clonewars settings announcement.

On 8/3/2019 at 1:24 PM, cnemmick said:

There was 19 players for the 80-seat Imperial Assault North American Championship at GenCon yesterday.

ha ha, still bigger than any new Zealand national Tournament, would have loved that many players. most we have had is 5 players, even in its hay day. your talking to the second best player in all of New Zealand.

1 hour ago, Spidey NZ said:

ha ha, still bigger than any new Zealand national Tournament, would have loved that many players. most we have had is 5 players, even in its hay day. your talking to the second best player in all of New Zealand.

Hey. Being Top 5 in your country is nothing to be ashamed of...

I once won a bronze medal in <insert very obscure team sport>. (never mind that there were only three teams competing)

11 minutes ago, Majushi said:

Hey. Being Top 5 in your country is nothing to be ashamed of...

I once won a bronze medal in <insert very obscure team sport>. (never mind that there were only three teams competing)

we always got top 8, which was nice

7 hours ago, Spidey NZ said:

we always got top 8, which was nice

Dice for everybody!

On 8/2/2019 at 5:50 PM, mulletcheese said:

Watching Andrew Navarro on stage was like watching Todd Howard at E3. Both FFG and Bethesda have done some truly great games and given me many great times but recently they have both been off their game.

On 8/4/2019 at 11:47 PM, EpicBubbleSA said:

Yeah the In-flight report was probably one of the weakest I have seen.

The only 2 new game announcements were for a quick elder signs spin off it feels like and Marvel champions a LLG but feels off somehow. It didn't help that Fantasy Flight let another studio in on their press conference to show off crowd pleaser the Marvel miniatures skirmish game. X wing just x winged and armada got a bit of what it needed.

Compared to last year where we got Arkham Horror 3rd edition, X wing 2nd edition, Keyforge, GOT expansion, a few digital announcements and starwars clonewars settings announcement.

yes, this year was really weak. sadly.

I'm not into the Marvel card game. I get that they can't do a miniatures based game in case they looked like they were ripping off Knight Models, but still.... A decent Captain America model would make my day to paint up.

Card games don't really interest me, the 5-Rings is OK, I play that with my daughter when the mood hits.

IA still has a lot to offer, but with Legion, I think the miniature making/designing people are probably focused on that.

I'll spit the dummy if Legion get 4-LOM and Zuckass before IA.

23 hours ago, TheEldarGuy said:

I'll spit the dummy

Are you an Ozzy? I am, but haven't lived there for yonks.

On 8/6/2019 at 11:49 AM, TheEldarGuy said:

I'm not into the Marvel card game. I get that they can't do a miniatures based game in case they looked like they were ripping off Knight Models, but still.... A decent Captain America model would make my day to paint up.

They did show a marvel miniatures game... From another company. I still have no idea what that was doing in the in-flight report.

Final hour, did they just steal the plot of cthulhu death may die?

On 8/9/2019 at 7:27 AM, mulletcheese said:

They did show a marvel miniatures game... From another company. I still have no idea what that was doing in the in-flight report.

That company is also owned by Asmodee, the parent company of FFG.

A couple of thoughts I had:

Imperial Assault Skirmish is in desperate need of a reboot/rebalance. This is just painfully obvious to anyone who's played more than a couple of games. Currently, FFG has more support for Legion and X-Wing, and has recently been picking up steam with Armada. I personally know that both Legion and Armada have been asking for rebalances of the type that X-Wing now gets routinely, and I know that Alex Davy has said before that he would personally prefer to move all of their miniatures games to a variable-points system.

The problem is that the X-Wing app rollout was... kind of nightmarish. Whatever studio they contracted to do it did a literal <italics>4th-rate job.</italics> It was a mess and is still a mess. Every 3rd party app out there is better than the official one. On the other hand, the points rebalances work GREAT and X-Wing has never been better or more varied meta-wise in its entire 7-year history. But the problems with the app rollout have led to FFG being hesitant to attempt such a system for their other games, at least at this stage. I would imagine it's the subject of some pretty hefty internal discussion at the moment.

As long as Legion and Armada are up in the air for all of this, FFG probably doesn't want to try biting down on the many problems in IA Skirmish. For now, they're making it a nice app-driven co-op campaign game, which is fine. At some indeterminate point in the future, once they have the bugs out with their app developers and variable-point adjustments, maybe they can come back and give IA skirmish a second look, or even give IA a full second edition.

But I wouldn't hold my breath. IA also has the unique problem of two separate card sets per list, each with their own costing systems. Even if they can easily rebalance deployment costs, how easy would it be to adjust the cost of every skirmish card they've come out with? With the deployments, it would be easy to go to a more granular system (say100 points) so the numbers on the card don't really conflict with the actual squad point totals because it's a different ballpark. The skirmish cards, on the other hand, probably don't want or need such a fine-tuned approach. I'd imagine they'll want to revisit the whole skirmish card system as a whole, because that's where a lot of the most broken chains have come from.

But in the meantime, there's quite a lot going on in their other miniatures games. They're trying to roll out Clone Wars for Armada by the end of next year, X-Wing still has dozens of reprints to catch up on plus having 3-4 factions that are far behind on content variety. Legion is already running into some balance issues and they're wanting to change everything over to a totally new kind of plastic, which requires a completely different manufacturing process in the first place. It's really not a bad time to be an FFG supporter or a Star Wars Miniatures gamer (and I thought the In-Flight report was pretty decent if a bit lackluster), it's just tricky for IA Skirmish at the moment because of the quantity of time it will require to fix all its many problems in an effective manner.

I would imagine the minds at FFG are still mulling it over (if IA was dead, they'd have said as much). Perhaps there will be a partial fix within the LotA app, with temporary alternative costs for the existing deployments. More likely, IA Skirmish players will have to wait a few years until X-Wing is fully rereleased and Armada has its Clone Wars and Legion is finally running smoothly, having fully dethroned Warhammer 40k. I have to think FFG would be more likely to revisit IA than to introduce yet another miniatures game. They're running out of scales and themes within the star wars universe anyway; there's only so much you can do! IA will see its time in the sun. We may just have to wait a few years.

8 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

I would imagine the minds at FFG are still mulling it over (if IA was dead, they'd have said as much).

If it were dead, and they say it is, sales would plummet immediately.

By not saying anything they can string a few stragglers along for a few more months in the hopes that there will be new content and support.

As this point, saying nothing or saying something, it's too late either way.

Their customer base isn't stupid. They can see the writing on the wall. And many are leaving for greener pastures.

IA is dead because they are not saying anything.

EDIT; to clarify, IA is only dead from FFG's perspective. Anyone who wants to play it will keep it alive for themselves and those around them. The App may have a few more releases. (maybe)