Star Wars: Legion, X-Wing & Armada Move To Atomic Mass Games
November 17, 2020 by brennon
In a bit of surprise news last night, the development of existing and future miniatures games set within the Star Wars universe have been moved from Fantasy Flight Games to Atomic Mass Games.
Star Wars // Atomic Mass Games
Shop Star Wars: Legion @ Store.OnTableTop
Asmodee announced that the oversight on the three existing games plus anything new developed for Star Wars on the tabletop would now be handled by the speciality studio of Atomic Mass Games who has been helming the growth of Marvel: Crisis Protocol for the last year or so.
Star Wars: Legion // Fantasy Flight Games
“Atomic Mass is committed to bringing people together through fun games, and Star Wars has been bringing people together through the power of myth and story for over 40 years,” Steve Horvath, Head of US Publishing, said. “Combining their talent with the strength of our current Star Wars games and the limitless possibilities of a galaxy far, far away is going to lead to incredible new experiences for tabletop gamers and Star Wars fans to enjoy.”
Will Shick is now going to be taking the reins on creative oversight of the project and he will be joined by members of the team that helped bring these miniatures games to life as part of Fantasy Flight Games too.
Star Wars: X-Wing // Fantasy Flight Games
What this means for these games, we shall have to wait and see. Having a dedicated miniatures studio looking after the three games means that we could be seeing more output on all fronts. I know a lot of people would certainly like to see more miniatures for both the Age Of Rebellion and Clone Wars in Legion for example.
Star Wars: Armada // Fantasy Flight Games
What personally excites me though is the prospect of getting something new on the Star Wars miniatures front. We've got Legion which deals with reasonably sized battles between heroes, villains and the armies of both sides. X-Wing offers up dogfighting combat whilst Armada takes things to the fleet level. Maybe we could see something more personal, perhaps along the lines of Marvel: Crisis Protocol where a handful of characters go up against each other?
It will be very interesting to see what they do next!
"It will be very interesting to see what they do next!"
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This could be good news – if Atomic Mass can actually produce enough stock of each release both at release and then throughout the following months. My biggest gripe with Asmodee is they are utterly incompetent when it comes to anticipating stock requirements. Every new release is gone in seconds and not seen for months afterwards.
I don’t think that is going to change, it seems Atomic Mass Games is just going to develop these games from now on, stock will probably still be done by whoever did it before.
The stock issue will be one that might stay the same/might improve depending on what happens behind the scenes with Asmodee but with AMG now leading the development of the games I’m hoping we just see MORE stuff rather than massive gaps of nothing.
Yes, time for Old Ben and Yoda (“young” and old) 😉 And Mando and friends
Ah – then I may still have to fight for every model I want! 🙂
If that is the case, then then I hope releases are paced batter, and that balance isn’t impacted negatively.
I’m seeing this as one of the final bits of the disassembly of the house that Christian T. Petersen built. All in the roughly 2 years since he left Asmodee USA.
Something that was so big in the industry diced up into parts.
(I realise Asmodee is now a bigger beast than it was.)
Seems a bit of a shame…
It does make you wonder what will be left for FFG to produce. They still have the LCGs, and the Arkham Horror universe stuff, and Keyforge, and anything Terrinoth related. Maybe making room for some new license acquisition?
I think they wanted to break it down into some manageable parts…
FFG – Board & Card Games
Edge – Roleplaying Games
Atomic Mass Games – Miniatures Games
You’d imagine this means that each group will get to focus on what they do best.
I realised Asmodee’s justification for it… FFG has a goodish name/reputation. Asmodee have really just destroyed a brand, which they presumably paid a hefty price for. They will spend years making these other brands into recognisable names. This might be harder under current conditions, including no in person conventions. Even the branding of FFG’s “In Flight Report” at GenCon will go away, as it is effectively meaningless now. I’ll be sad to see that go as it was one of my highlights of the year. I’m sure Asmodee will have something similar, but it just won’t be the same. As… Read more »
Yep! My thoughts exactly.
I’ve been talking to Asmodee DE and they say that for us nothing will change in regards of what gets here when since
“…distribution remains with Asmodee North America.”
So…. wait and see I guess.
No word on Imperial Assault. I know some will say it’s a board-game, but it’s both star-wars and under miniature games in their forum. Haven’t seen reprints in ages. This seems to verify it’s over…
Or – second edition.
I’m sure I read somewhere (possibly FFG website) that Imperial Assault was no longer supported. That was why I completed my collection before it went out of stock.
I have seen at least one retailer getting restocks. So, not very sure heh
Perhaps no longer supported is wrong, but it sounds like they have no plans to release new physical product for now.
It gets a mention in this video from GAMA in march at around 13 minutes 40…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Pu7RmbCCQ
In the Dakka News and Rumor forums, someone posted a statement by AMG including that they may have a new SW miniatures game. “Will and I have talked a lot about how we can create cool new Star Wars miniatures games that will excite fans and immerse them in the stories they love so much.”
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/793956.page
I haven’t gotten into Legion because of stock limitations. Distribution is so frustrating that it is not worth it for me. If AMG can better the distribution/stock problem I will definitely jump in.
My other concern is price. AMG up to now have produced quality stuff, but at premium (some might say bloated) prices. I will remain cautiously optimistic and keep my fingers crossed.
These time’s are changing for many people.
I realise that this is sort of off topic but I have just read an email from Warlord Games:
“Skytrex & Warlord Games now in partnership!
Warlord Games are proud to announce that we have formalised our long standing partnership with Skytrex by officially acquiring the business and bringing it into the Warlord Games family.”
As @warzan said not too long ago, there are going to be a number of acquisitions in the hobby industry.
@hobbyhub. We were discussing it in Discord. I presume they wanted the O scale scenery they do. Hopefully doesn’t mark the end of 15mm,1/200 and naval ranges
I reckon they are after the 1/600 ancients galleys for their next boxed naval game.
The way Warlord go I woukd be expecting 1/54 scale ships for that project
I am thinking 1/600 for a boxed naval game like Cruel Seas, Black Sails etc.
This has me super excited to say the least. The way AMG has been releasing Marvel Crisis Protocol stuff steadily during a bad 2020 already was impressive while others had a harder time doing so. If this means we can actually get Star Wars miniatures again minus the snail pace, then yea. Bring it on 2021. My body and wallet are ready. (This is gonna hurt)
Sounds new like a good move, as FFG are better at making board games than miniature games.
I just hope the prices of Star Wars Legion boxes doesn’t increases to Marvel Crisis Protocol levels.
I dont feel there is that much more to release and the ranges seem to be pretty complete. Hard to imagine where these games could go.
I really dont see them going for the Sequels, since merchandise based on the new movies isnt selling at all from what I can garner.
Not at all. The problem has been that FFG got distracted and had a scatter gun approach to releases. There are a few key units from the original movie era that we have never seen (Yoda, Old Ben, Imperial Navy, etc.) but we got a lot of EU stuff instead. Then they got distracted even more by releasing the prequal factions and to be honest I just lost interest.
Maybe AMG will bring some focus to the game that has been lacking.
No way, we need Ewok hordes, Tuscan raiders, jawas, a scum faction, Imperial naval troopers, mud troopers, Bespin Security Forces. I could go on and on ?
If they had focused on Legion as a skirmish, narrative driven game, we would have had most of those. It go hijacked by a vocal group of tournament players (much like X-Wing) and went off the rails imho.