Well, I can't say I'm really all that surprised after Asmodee's Atomic Mass Games got to launch Marvel Crisis Protocol and they moved FFG's RPGs to Edge Studio.

Edit: Oh right, and sleeves etc. to Gamegenic as well, but that's less of a sign for me, as having all your brands officially served by a "neutral" subsidiary makes sense.

14 minutes ago, Kwatchi said:

The story behind KM's losing the Marvel TT license is pretty hilarious. One of the dumbest series of business decisions in gaming.

I did some Googling and couldn't find what you're talking about. I did see that after they lost the license they hid it from customers for months, going so far as to lie to them and assure them that they were just in a lull of releases and the game would continue, but nothing about what caused them to lose the license.

22 minutes ago, Kwatchi said:

Like most, I'm not sure what to make of this. My first thought was that this was corporate raider 101 - separate corporate assets into smaller, sell-able units.

Hot housing all the TT games in one group seems like a smart move, but I was never overly impressed by Will Shick's era of Warmachine (not sure how much creative control he actually had mind you and PP looks like a down-trending company of late). A bit of a toss up there for me.

CP minis have always looked iffy compared to the Knight Model's Marvel minis* and the most recent Legion hard plastic is quite good (ok, B1s were tricky to assemble), so I certainly hope we get to keep the Legion design and production staff. Frankly I am hoping the Marvel CP minis quality improves because of this and some of my game group have been pushing for us to try it.

*The story behind KM's losing the Marvel TT license is pretty hilarious. One of the dumbest series of business decisions in gaming.

Who is KM?

I appreciate the optimism here, and I agree with most of the takes.

I'm not sure I really buy the distinction that a dedicated subsidiary is needed for "miniature games", considering the amount of miniatures packed into many FFG games. Legion is likely the closest fit of what's moving over as it is a hobby miniature game, with terrain, modeling and painting. But the other stuff moving is all prepainted... So the move seems to be about more than just hobby focused miniature games.

But as a real question, why is Atomic Mass Games seen as a better option? Have they really proven themselves as a studio with the one game they've released?

59 minutes ago, SoonerTed said:

Knight Model's Marvel minis*

59 minutes ago, SoonerTed said:

Who is KM?

@CountBlah Board game miniatures are a significantly different quality than the current multi-part plastics of Legion.
A "board game" is only sold to each customer on average once, most people don't need 3-4 copies of "Mansions of Madness" to play the game, and all the "miniatures" inside are just glorified pawns. X-wing and Armada are both miniature games despite not having a hobby focus. So if X-wing is selling really well, that doesn't mean "board games" are popular. Being able to look at JUST the profits of AMG to determine how well the "miniature" brands are doing is advantageous for the parent company, and it allows them to sell off a specific part of the business easier. The miniatures brands are also selling to the same stores and similar customers, using the same distributors, and have very similar/the same manufacturing needs. If the brands are seperate, then there are two different groups of employees handling manufacturing for similar products. Combining them allows FFG's manufacturing department to focus on board/card game needs, without having to also deal with the needs of a miniatures game. Much like Asmodee changing the customer service policies (and taking over the customer service in general) the goal is likely to cut overhead by making support teams smaller.

Additionally, ALL of the games might be moving is for licensing reasons. Moving the entire "miniatures" license may have been easier/cheaper than having to get two separate miniature production licenses. So even if the goal was just to move Legion, they may have HAD to move X-wing and Armada.

As for if AMG is "better"... It seems to me that people are assuming the distribution will be better because MCP doesn't seem to suffer from similar shortages. I think this is not an accurate comparison at all, since the style of games are very different, and the demand for each kit per customer is very different. So time will tell, but I don't think it is strictly a "bad" or "good" thing. Only time will tell.

@Caimheul1313 I expect the second bit on licensing is accurate. This likely started as a discussion on Legion but licensing terms caused the decision on what moved or not. FFG is likely still able to create Star Wars board games. But that doesn't exactly excite me, as X-Wing shouldn't be an after thought in this type of decision making.

In terms of AMG, I understand they were hand hired by Asmodee for the Marvel license so this appears to be them doubling down on the people they hired. Not an uncommon outcome. I agree with your comments that it'll just take time to see if distribution changes.

@CountBlah From the outside all we really can do is speculate, it's possible X-wing and Armada were not afterthoughts at all.
I will say that miniature games in general have a different profit path than a board game. Board games are a once and done development for the most part (occasionally expansions happen, but that isn't as certain). Miniature games though require constant development focused on the game, and more playtesting to "balance." I can see there being a lot of duplication of effort if any of the miniatures games are kept in a different company, as opposed to just lumping all of them under AMG. Similar to how Asmodee handles customer support for all of the subsidiaries.

I don't like change, it's strange and scary to me!

The main problem I've had with the MCP game is how many bases they give you in a package. I literally have dozens of extra bases. Anyone need some bases?

So, when do we have to create new accounts on some other site in order to continue keeping up with Legion, and when do these forums effectively shut down?

Well gentlemen, it has been a pleasure memeing with you. Can't wait to have to sign up for a new forum and then figure out who all of you are a second time!

Jokes aside, I'm nervous to see a change like this. I came into Legion and Armada fairly recently, so I'm sad to see the old colors getting lowered. Ultimately, time will tell what this meant for the games, but I'm gonna choose to be optimistic about it!

@evo454 Well, all the RPG forums are still here, and those games were moved over to another Asmodee subsidiary a while ago, so I think we're probably still going to be chatting here?

31 minutes ago, evo454 said:

Well gentlemen, it has been a pleasure memeing with you. Can't wait to have to sign up for a new forum and then figure out who all of you are a second time!

Jokes aside, I'm nervous to see a change like this. I came into Legion and Armada fairly recently, so I'm sad to see the old colors getting lowered. Ultimately, time will tell what this meant for the games, but I'm gonna choose to be optimistic about it!

Im nervous as well. One of the main reasons I bought into Legion at launch was FFG. Ive been playing their board games for years, and X-Wing got me into wargames. Legion still has their "stamp" on it (lots of tokens, custom dice, etc.)

I love FFG as a game company, and its been a shame watching Asmodee carve it up like a turkey after they acquired it.

I hope this brings good changes to Legion, but between this and the RPG announcement earlier this year it really feels like the end of an era.

I am wondering if the major changes will be felt more by MCP than any of the Star Wars licenses... Although with some of the rumored staff changes I may be mistaken.
The sculptors for Star Wars games I presume were freelancers, so I don't think we'll see much change in terms of quality of sculpts.
The distribution is still handled by Asmodee, so little to no change there.
Licensing approval still goes through LFG, so no change there.
AMG has been doing well with MCP I imagine in part as it was the only game they had to work on. Suddenly adding three additional games to the company is likely to cause a bit of churn, and may result in MCP slipping in speed of releases, quality of product, etc.
Stock wise, MCP is a different beast than Legion as I've said here already. For MCP, each customer can only really use the content of one of each box, they don't have as much use for duplicates besides conversions or alternate paint jobs. Legion is a different beast in that regard. Since MCP hasn't had as much of an issue with stuff quickly selling out (again, each customer is on average buying one box, so it is analogous to the Legion characters), I don't know how long it generally takes for substantial reprints to occur. So I don't think the stocking issues are likely to change anytime soon.

Take this with a grain of salt, but it also seems that Alex Davy was laid off, along with some amount of the Legion Organized Play staff, and who knows who else. It is interesting that the article says "key people" without dropping names...
If that particular change is true, then we might see a gradual change in the feel of the rules.

I don't think the game is dead by any stretch of the imagination. I think some things will change, I think many things will stay the same.

3 hours ago, CountBlah said:

@Caimheul1313 FFG is likely still able to create Star Wars board games.

Is it, though? (...Cue people regularly begging for an Outer Rim expansion.)

8 minutes ago, twincast said:

Is it, though? (...Cue people regularly begging for an Outer Rim expansion.)

I think if they couldn't we would be seeing something very much like when the Games Workshop license ended: a complete purge of all the product from the company since even selling the remaining copies I THINK ends up being infringement?

23 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Take this with a grain of salt, but it also seems that Alex Davy was laid off, along with some amount of the Legion Organized Play staff, and who knows who else. It is interesting that the article says "key people" without dropping names...

From what source are you getting that information about Alex?

11 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

From what source are you getting that information about Alex?

A few of the posters are seemingly former FFG employees. Edit: Including this specific poster who is apparently the designer of Forbidden Stars.

If that is the case, that is definitely bad news. I found Alex's Linkin Profile and that still listed him as being at FFG for whatever that is worth.

Boycott Legion until they bring Alex back, with a raise!!!!

10 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

If that is the case, that is definitely bad news. I found Alex's Linkin Profile and that still listed him as being at FFG for whatever that is worth.

Hard to say, since laid off doesn't necessarily mean immediately fired, or just he hasn't gotten around to updating LinkedIn. I know that would be a bit low on my priorities if I was recently notified about losing my job.
I do find it interesting that the designer names weren't explicitly included in the list of "key people." I would think those would be good names to drop to keep the fans from stressing out.
So I'm hoping it is just a baseless internet rumor, but the source seems like it might be credible.

Its confirmed through multiple sources alex is gone as is the main OP guys. conflicting stories on Luke

19 minutes ago, Tirion said:

Its confirmed through multiple sources alex is gone as is the main OP guys. conflicting stories on Luke

Yikes! That suucks. This is worse than I thought...

Good luck with future releases if the key design team (who know the game and how to balance it) have been canned.

On the plus side maybe we will get a printer friendly pdf rulebook? For some reason FFG were so incompetent they could not produce one.

TBH I stopped buying any Asmodee/FFG products when they stopped providing customer service, and I have enough to keep playing casual games of Legion for years to come.