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So I already fulfilled my pledge and did a long write up over on my blog. Since that is all German I used dark internet magic to translate. Here is why I have a bad feeling about Shatterpoint:
Why do I have a bad feeling about this now? Well, that’s partly due to the past few months, when AMG took over the Star Wars games Aramada, X-Wing and Legion from Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). At that time, AMG only had one game in its programme: Marvel: Crisis Protocol. When a company suddenly has to do the support, marketing and development for not just one but 4 games, you can imagine that it would grate a bit. And it did. Very much so. Armada has been “paused” and nothing is being developed for it for now, X-Wing got a V2.5 update and a few new units but most extremely I personally feel a “slump” of new stuff with Legion.
And it’s not just that less is coming. The new stuff that has been released so far has had problems across the board. Gar Saxon was missing a card, the studio models that were painted for the Swoop bikes and stuck as a photo on the retail box are on the wrong base and the new Battleforce boxes (judging by the ranting on the internet) also have various quality control problems.
And Shatterpoint already has problems too. The original video description at the announcement video [2] even said “It’s about Marvel: Crisis Protocol”. If I were a grumpy old man, I’d say: you can see how much attention to detail went into that. Or maybe not. Also, if you look closely at the trailer [3], you’ll see that a lot of lightsabers are crooked. You don’t see that from every camera angle, but often enough. And if that already appears in the promo shots, then I’m a bit pessimistic about the production quality.
On top of that, AMG often takes a long time to get sold-out games back on the shelves, and now they’re adding a 5th game? So unless AMG have just increased their team, they have even less time per head per system.
Then there’s the effect a game like this in the Star Wars universe will have on Legion: Players will leave. Either because they’d much rather play something like M:CP or Shatterpoint anyway, or because they just “go with the herd” and always have the new hot shit. You could now say “many will buy both systems” and that might be the case if the whole world wasn’t struggling with the rising cost of living right now. Hobby budget is finite. Just like leisure time.
But that doesn’t bode well for me now: AMG is *now* looking for playtesters. But obviously it has already been produced (at least the minis). Now testing rules for a game that is supposed to come out in June? (Yes, everything says “summer 2023” but the press release actually says “June 2023” [4]) Just calculate backwards. 06/23 delivery, 03/23 everything packed in the container, 01/23 everything released for production. So even in the best case scenario, AMG still has 2 months to make corrections if the testers notice something crucial.
My concern is simply that AMG will now keep Legion, Armada and X-Wing “on the drip” and drop them if Shatterpoint is a success. Young Mr D from DICED actually summed it up very nicely in his video [5]. I don’t have much to add, except: I have a bad feeling about this.
Sources:
[1] https://www.asmodee.de/news/star-wars-shatterpoint-angekuendigt
[2] https://youtu.be/RGD_SWtjftk
[3] https://youtu.be/PbPkC9-8HxI
[4] https://www.atomicmassgames.com/s/ShatterpointPressRelease_Final.pdf
[5] https://youtu.be/w8F9NL4JXm0
No @demonsub no hidden questions … not this week.
