My final rant before the boards close . . .

By Mesrob, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

I have been a big fan of everything FFG for a long time. Like a lot of people, I started off with X-wing and moved on to their boardgames like Descent. With all the layoffs, upheaval, and lines moving to other publishers over the past year, I just wanted to get some stuff off my chest.

I think the biggest reason that FFG is in this scary period of uncertainty, is because they moved away from what made them great. Solid board games. I'm not going to lie, I have thoroughly enjoyed playing X-wing and Legion. Where they went wrong is their foolish and ridiculous ideas that they would be compete with Games Workshop and WOTC. Here are some examples:

RuneWars the Miniatures game: What an absolute disaster. FFG actually thought they were going to compete with Age of Sigmar!! Crazy. That game died such a fast death in my area. ****, they even debuted it at GenCon. Instead of wasting time on this failure of a game, they could have produced more content for Descent 2.0! The game is on clearance everywhere, and they can't sell what they have. Garbage. I played it, it was fun, but they had no chance of getting in Age of Sigmar players. Waste of development time.

Star Wars Destiny: One of the most enjoyable games I have ever played. However, the lack of product for almost six to eight months destroyed the game. Plus, the whole collectability of "Rare" cards made it unfordable for so many. FFG should have never gone down this route. Again, they could have spent their time developing more Star Wars board games, instead of this train wreck. Remember all the people who were hyping this game up as the card game that would take down Magic the Gathering?? Pathetic.

Discover Lands Unknown: Remember all the hype around this board game? FFG can't give this board game away. The game that no one asked for. Disaster.

Keyforge: When it came out, the game was sold out everywhere, it was crazy what people were paying for this game. Again, another game they hyped up as the game that would put MTG out of business. What a joke. This game has died off a quick death, no one cares or plays this game anymore.

Am I missing any other disaster games from FFG? Guess what all these games have in common? They came out and everyone was tripping over themselves to buy into them. Six months later, poof, all dead games. Think about the expansions for Fallout, Descent, SW: Outer Rim, other board games they could have spent developing. Instead we got games that were terrible, and in my opinion, are the reasons FFG seems to be falling apart. It's sad to see what has become of this great company, but we'll see what the future holds. Would love to hear your opinions of my post. Be safe everyone.

Descent had the chance to have so much expansions, it is a rare fact since expansions do sell less than base game, even if I wished for more.

They also do some weird choices : runewars boardgame expansion did not bring what we waited for (new playable races), same for Runebound V3 (could bring more expansions but nothing), Twilight imperium v3 expansion is heavy expensive one for nothing (miniatures for 2 adding players, as if you would play at 8 and only cards for 100 buck)

For sure, Asmodee killed FFG and I'm ashamed they are never going to be what they were again

Edited by rugal

Vision is in short supply, and the tabletop gaming industry is no exception. I think failure is a great thing when it results from experimentation. There is no magic formula for success, sometimes you just have to try and roll the dice, and if you fail in the name of originality and made a good faith effort to create a great game, then I think consumers should be that much more ready to support your successes and understand your failures.

With FFG I see failure originating from a variety of causes, including good ones. On the other hand they've done many things which drive me up a wall: Descent 2nd having tiny 28mm models that don't match anything else from the big manufacturers in scale, the need to make owning upgrade cards some kind of sales scheme wherein they trick idiots to buy multiple copies of expensive models because they say you need a copy of the card to use the rule, the willingness to price products as if they've never played a tabletop game in their life and were just guessing as with Runewars the Miniatures Game ("8 very shoddy miniatures in 4 poses for $25, yes that is a reasonable price that will surely succeed at market") or the soon to be released (and soon to be dearly departed) Descent 3rd edition, a game so poorly conceived of, designed, and priced that it's entirely possible it won't even come out. I don't play X-Wing, but I do find in enjoyable that they basically destroyed their own top-selling miniatures game because of their own stupid card-upgrade scam became unworkable when they tried to reinvigorate sales with a second edition. Whoops-a-daisy!

It is perhaps the saving grace of capitalism though that once the business talent that built it sells the company, the next crop of mediocre minds to run the place are so focused on making a quick buck they crash the whole operation into a ditch, allowing space for the next generation of actual talents to rise.