Star Wars Imperial Assault reboot?

[sundancer 42901xp 0]

So, I just had a mad man’s idea.

For some time now *all* items over at FFG for Imperial Assault are marked “not available”. Every! Single! One!

First I thought they will close shop on that game. But they just announced a new map, which is unavailable right now.

So, what could that mean? Keeping in mind that Star Wars Celebration is around the corner and Legion just got announced Clone Wars and the jump to models on sprues…. maybe FFG will redo all IA with sprues? Even maybe use the same moulds as for Legion to cut cost and make them sort of compatible?

Whatever it will be I’m betting that FFG will have some news regarding IA at Celebration 2019 either way.

[theamazingmrgParticipant 2703xp 0]

I think there’s enough expansions and additional content for Imperial Assault that FFG must be seriously thinking about a Second Edition, so I can easily see that being announced.

 

I wouldn’t expect a change to the scale of the models though, but possibly more integration with the app.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

It’s highly unlikely that IA will ever switch to sprue based models. IA is primarily a board game and single piece miniatures gives it a level of accessibility beyond the wargamer market.

They might do a second edition, it’s certainly possible as they did the same with Descent.  However I wouldn’t expect anything to be massively different in terms of the miniatures – for Descent 2.0 they actually released some monster conversion kits I think, so you could still use your original Descent content with the new rules.  Given there’s quite a lot of competitive, organised play for IA, I would expect them to do the same and more for IA.  However it remains to be seen, if they do switch to IA 2.0, how well they handle it because the X-Wing update was a bit of a car crash.  Given that IA is every bit as reliant on cards and tokens as X-wing so all of the difficulties they faced with X-Wing they will be faced with again, it will be interesting to see if they have learned any lessons from that experience.

[sundancer 42901xp 0]

You mean they are preparing a “X-Wing V2” move? I don’t know if that would work… that stunt has almost killed X-Wing in my FLGS

[frankeleeParticipant 1364xp 0]

I’d say we’ll have to wait at least a couple more years before they’d do a 2nd edition for this game. Will FFG pay tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to retool all the old IA minis that don’t really sell anymore? I’m gonna say very little chance of that. I know Alex Davy (game designer, not executive) suggested they might do that with old Legion kits, I wouldn’t hold my breath on that either.

[sundancer 42901xp 0]

They already did the retooling to a lot. Most Legion models were available as IA miniatures.  Plus IA is just little over a year younger then X-Wing so it would make sense… but in the end, we’re all just speculating wild 😉

[lawnor 25928xp 0]

What if they are working on some kind of unification with Legion, preferably without making existing products redundant?  That way anything they release for one could be used in the other?  Double the market for their products and give the board gamers a reason to experiment with legion, given they own all those models already?

I should point out that I have no experience of either product so I have no idea how viable this might be.

[sundancer 42901xp 0]

I think the relaunch of a IA 2.0 in the way they did Descent as @onlyonepinman pointed out is the most likely option. IA is, in it’s core, a board game. If you leave the Star Wars licence aside there is not much similar to those games. Except the miniatures. We’ll have to wait two more days I think… or more if FFG doesn’t say anything XD

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 1]

@sundancer If FFG switch to IA v2.0 they may well have to provide some means of converting existing IA products for use with 2.0 because of the competitive play element of Imperial Assault.  If they choose not to offer any kind of conversion kit they risk losing a chunk of their audience.  If they decide to offer conversion kits, a la X-Wing 2.0, then they are facing exactly the same problems all over again.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 1]

There’s a few more potential considerations.  They could be updating IA because it is competing with Legion, especially seeing as it has a skirmish variant with competitive organised play.  I could see a justification for updating IA to version 2.0 and not offering any sort of upgrade kit for existing products and/or no skirmish rules, specifically to try and draw competitive players into Legion.  If they decide to omit skirmish rules in any potential v2.0, this actually makes their upgrade kits a little easier as they don’t necessarily have to update ALL v1.0 products to v2.0.  If Legion isn’t selling as well as they would like because IA’s skirmish game is eating into the potential audience then it makes sense to only support one and remove the skirmish rules from IA in favour of Legion, which is probably seen as a bit of a Flagship product. You may generate a bit of bad will early doors but it’s definitely something they can come back from – whatever they do someone will whinge.

On the other hand, it may also be that they are going to try and unify Legion and Imperial Assault in the same way that GW and Mantic are now doing with their games.  However I don’t necessarily think this is going to be that easy for FFG because of their use of stat cards that are supplied with the miniatures.  GW and Mantic both use books which can be purchased separately meaning each game is accessible without having to buy the miniatures twice.

And here’s another possibility. Imperial Assault is simply being discontinued.  Maybe they feel they’re spreading themselves too thin or rather spreading the market too thin by having so many Star Wars games.

[lawnor 25928xp 1]

When I said unify the two products I didn’t mean rules wise.  I was thinking more along the lines of allowing models from one to be used in both with different rules so a box would have to contain stats for both.  Could also mean they only produce the higher quality (more expensive) version of each model.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

@lawnor I understand what you were referring to, but the FFG model isn’t really conducive to that end.  When you buy models, whether for Imperial Assault or Legion (or, if we’re honest, any FFG game) you get their rules in that specific game in the box with them.  So if you buy a box of storm troopers for Imperial Assault you get Imperial Assault rules cards, in Legion you get Legion rules cards.  Trying to unify the two games would mean either providing two sets of cards in each box, one for each game making them more expensive, or trying to produce a set of Imperial Assault rules that could somehow make use of Legion stat cards which would be difficult given the very different nature of the two games.  Alternatively they could box up the miniatures in both games packaging and provide only rules for one game in that box, but then you have to buy the same miniatures again in order to play both games.  Trying to unify the games so you can use miniatures in both games would be very problematic I think because of the distributed nature of FFG rules.

The reason GW and Mantic have been a little more successful with that approach is that the rules and the models are sold separately.  I can buy a box models (or several because who ever only bought one box?) and then buy the rules for those models in multiple games without having to buy the miniatures twice.

[sundancer 42901xp 0]

So this is just in from “Asmodee Deutschland <[email protected]>” (Asmodee Germany)

Wir möchten euch jetzt schon darüber informieren, dass Star Wars™: Imperial Assault mittelfristig nicht mehr über Asmodee Deutschland zu beziehen sein wird.

Lange Jahre hat uns das Spiel begleitet, nun ist es an der Zeit, das Produkt auslaufen zu lassen. Solange wir das Spiel und die Erweiterungen noch auf Lager haben, könnt ihr diese wie gewohnt bestellen. Wir sagen frühzeitig Bescheid, wenn wir einen genauen Termin für den Lieferstopp kennen. Dies bedeutet auch, dass wir keine neuen Imperial Assault Produkte lokalisieren werden und keine Informationen zu dem Spiel mehr veröffentlichen.

Translation:

We would like to inform you already now that Star Wars™: Imperial Assault will no longer be available from Asmodee Germany in the medium term.

For many years the game has accompanied us, now it is time to let the product expire. As long as we still have the game and the expansions in stock, you can order them as usual. We’ll let you know as soon as we know an exact date for the delivery stop. This also means that we will not locate any new Imperial Assault products and will not publish any more information about the game.

I don’t know if this means FFG is cutting ties with Asmodee Germany or the game is simply been put down. Both would be somewhat disturbing :S

[limburger 21668xp 0]

It is interesting to see that there appears to be nothing even remotely related to IA in their production roadmap.
At the same time the RPG is getting reprints.

btw :  is there a @sundancer clone out there ? 😉

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/293642-asmodee-germany-discontinuing-ia/

Maybe it simply means an end to localized version of Imperial Assault ?

This community run project may be of interest :

About The Project

[sundancer 42901xp 0]

@limburger I am not saying anything! 😉 You lurker! *g*

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