For those that may have not noticed, FFG has updated the Upcoming tab, now listing each product with a US release date/month. And according to this new updated info, Green Goblin is now scheduled for January, Captain America in February, Ms. Marvel in March, and Wrecking Crew in April. Why? What the heck happened? Cap and Green Goblin were supposed to be 4th quarter 2019, right around the corner, their respective articles still even say so. Wrecking Crew just had their preview put up yesterday. Why bother if it's not gonna be released for another 5 months?

This totally takes the air out of the game for a lot of people. Now before you get all defensive, I'm in no way saying people won't buy these products now, we certainly all still will. However, this game is riding one **** of a high right now and I guarantee this is gonna be nothing but a big let down for everyone, and most will likely be tired of playing the same heroes and scenarios way before January.

I'm hoping this is just another case of FFG's Upcoming section being in total disarray and wrong as always, but with it being updated as of today and adding in the target release month on each product, I'm thinking this bad news could unfortunately be true.

FFG products are in a constant state of delay. They print everything overseas and are at the mercy of their manufacturing partners and customs. Unlike some companies that keep warehoused stock of new releases prior to shipping off to the distributors, FFG's practice is to ship it as soon as it is printed. As long as they follow that model, they're always going to be late. Take any FFG release date, add three months, and then you're likely to have a more accurate representation of when a product will be available.

Look again the dates/months have changed. Yet more evidence that the upcoming page isn’t to be trusted.

basically we know a few things:

- release dates are only reliable a few weeks out. At any given time we are at least 10-14 days from release of the next product, until something updates to ‘shipping now’

- once they start releasing, products from one ‘cycle’ will be released monthly.

3 hours ago, gokubb said:

FFG products are in a constant state of delay. They print everything overseas and are at the mercy of their manufacturing partners and customs. Unlike some companies that keep warehoused stock of new releases prior to shipping off to the distributors, FFG's practice is to ship it as soon as it is printed. As long as they follow that model, they're always going to be late. Take any FFG release date, add three months, and then you're likely to have a more accurate representation of when a product will be available.

I would rather FFG gets the problem fixed.

If this game is supposed to be able to introduce new players to tabletop they want to start behaving like they want to keep them.

It's a shame there are problems but they seem to happen very often. On the bright side I've been setting a bit of money to the side for this game so I should have extra money for the first big expansion when it gets released.

Honestly, from what I understand, this is fixing the problem. It used to be that they'd just pick a release date that would cover any significant delays and if there were no delays the products would just sit around until the release date arrived.

So previously they might say "out June 1st" and it could be spending April and May sitting in a warehouse. Or it couldn't show up until July because of some random problem in the production chain somewhere.

Now they say "out second quarter" and if it's done in April they'll ship it out and announce it'll be in stores in a week, and if it's not ready until June, then it'll still be out as soon as it's ready.

Has anyone again checked the Upcoming page? Now GG has goblin-glided his way out of this list again, Cap is still the man out of time (missing any release date), the Wrecking Crew is about to break out in January and Ms. Marvel is back to development phase with no release date mentioned.

I am not sure what to make of this. I think, the folks at FFG do not want to confuse us and just keep the Upcoming page meaningless.

I’m just not going to worry about it until it’s 2 weeks away from release and they tell us a firm date. It will be here when it’s here - if that’s sooner rather than later, so much the better!

For other LCGs they print, freight and warehouse an entire cycle all at once; it's the only way to control the monthly releases.

Let's assume they're doing the same for the first 'cycle' (Green Goblin, Captain America, Ms Marvel, Wrecking Crew, Thor, [4th hero pack]). So they would have needed the whole cycle ready for November (the original stated release of the first pack).

The core set was probably delayed (from October to November), because the cycle itself wasn't ready until December. That way they can ensure a monthly release. So assuming Cap/Green Goblin comes out in December, there's no delay here, right? Other than the one that's already happened to the core set.

It's not exactly the sky falling. And if the first pack does come out in January instead of December, that's still only one missed release. At least we've got 5 heroes and 3 very replayable scenarios to explore.

It looks like now that the upcoming page only has US release dates for items in “shipping now” (with the single exception of Wrecking Crew) so maybe they’re just going to put the release dates on things when they start shipping and know when they will come out.

But it does look like several items are being released 11/29 so maybe Green Goblin will come out then, but I’m guessing not since it is not in the shipping now, so maybe mid to late December?

1 hour ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

For other LCGs they print, freight and warehouse an entire cycle all at once; it's the only way to control the monthly releases.

That's not always the case. There have been many 'cycles' where an individual pack was delayed throwing off the entire monthly schedule. Back in Netrunner and Game of Thrones first edition, this happened on occasion. Also, look at LotR's current cycle. They haven't been anywhere near a monthly release for a long time. I doubt they're just sitting on product waiting for the right time to sell it to distributors.

For GoT 2nd edition, AH and L5R it does appear they're hitting the monthly release with regularity, so maybe they've changed how they operate.

2 minutes ago, gokubb said:

That's not always the case. There have been many 'cycles' where an individual pack was delayed throwing off the entire monthly schedule. Back in Netrunner and Game of Thrones first edition, this happened on occasion. Also, look at LotR's current cycle. They haven't been anywhere near a monthly release for a long time. I doubt they're just sitting on product waiting for the right time to sell it to distributors.

For GoT 2nd edition, AH and L5R it does appear they're hitting the monthly release with regularity, so maybe they've changed how they operate.

Well exactly - the 3 most recent LCG releases are probably the better benchmark, than older ones.

Yeah, FFG is famous for delays. Hoping this doesn't hurt the fanbase the way it did for Battlelore or 40k:Conquest.

It seems ever since Asmodee took over the Upcoming page Has been largely borked up and inaccurate. I usually roll some chicken bones and go with those results...

-Cal

Disappointing to say the least!

Great way to destroy momentum!

Get it together FFG! 🙈

Well... I was going to say there's a Facebook Event for a Marvel Champions event, which said Cap and Green Goblin would be available there to preview for the first time. But unfortunately the event's description no longer hints at either of those showing up 😕

Edit: so the event description doesn’t mention it, but a sponsored ad does. It popped up again and says “ Join us for Marvel Champions Weekend, where Green Goblin and Captain America will be available to play for the first time!” According to the description, one of the disinfects will have a Q&A, so it seems likely enough they’ll get a preview? No clue what that might mean for release dates though.

They appear to have fixed the upcoming page now:

Green Goblin - January
Cap - February

Ms. Marvel - March

Wrecking Crew - April

I can't believe FFG's delaying it so far back. I feel like they're just killing their own hype. People are gonna be less likely to buy expansions if they aren't thinking about the game anymore. Definitely a huge blow to this game's longevity.

I think we'll have to wait and see because if that page is that reliable, then we have to wait...

The european websites of FFG still propose Q4 2019 for Captain America and Ms Marvel.

Just now, Elrad said:

I think we'll have to wait and see because if that page is that reliable, then we have to wait...

The european websites of FFG still propose Q4 2019 for Captain America and Ms Marvel.

Maybe Europe will get it first? You guys definitely deserve an early release for once haha.

ha ha I don't know, the european websites I know are in French and Spanish so don't know if they're 100% accurate and why a translated version would be released before the orignal one 😉

So it's looking like the packs will release in the announced order, starting in January. That's not too horrendous - only one monthly release window missed.

Delays happen for LCGs. It's unfortunate, but that's just a reality of how FFG does their printing. As Jonboyjon pointed out they seemed to try and mitigate it in the past by shipping entire cycles in advance around the time of Conquest. Though that's gotta be an expensive strategy since they are warehousing stuff now to maintain the 1 a month schedule. Conquest was definitely negatively impacted by these sorts of delays. The gap between the first cycle ending and the first big box released was way too long to hold onto a competitive scene. This being a co-op it doesn't have the same sort of concerns but still you'd hate for it to lose some momentum right at the beginning.

L5R has been a mixed bag in this regards. Things are often delayed and for a while they were doing 6 in 6 release schedules so there would be dead space then a barrage of product. Right now we are in a barrage of product. Star Wars Destiny has it's sets delayed often.

I think right now this is the biggest remaining major issue FFG has with these expandable games. They've made alot of progress addressing issues with these formats over the years, but frequent delays are still a thing. Though this is also a hard problem to fix since most of it is out of FFG's hands.

3 hours ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

That's not too horrendous - only one monthly release window missed.

Two months missed. The packs should have started with GG this month - now going to be January.

1 hour ago, Janaka said:

Two months missed. The packs should have started with GG this month - now going to be January.

It’s not two months missed.

The GG pack might be two months ‘late’ but there’s only one month without a product.

Nov - Core Set

Dec - nothing

Jan onwards - products

12 minutes ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

It’s not two months missed.

The GG pack might be two months ‘late’ but there’s only one month without a product.

Nov - Core Set

Dec - nothing

Jan onwards - products

What Janaka was saying was that the Core was supposed to be a month ago and we should've had GG by now.