X-Wing is dead. Long live X-wing! (my thoughts)

Don't worry, that'll buff right out.

There was some rather sad news published on the 13/06/2024

AMG's statement on the future of X-wing

TLDR: It's sad. AMG (plus others) suck. I think there's some hope.

Here are my 2¢. Be warned, rant ahead:

As someone who has played X-wing since the grand old days of its 1.0 release, it's pretty sad to see this decision, but not surprising. Asmodee, Disney, and AMG all bear responsibility for the decline that led to this. Asmodee is obviously dogshit for forcing X-wing, and Armada on a company that clearly didn't want them. Disney is the least responsible, but it didn't help that they were in the background releasing garbage movies, and TV, further eroding the SW brand (with the exception of Andor). The forced move, and all the junk Starwars media has not helped the situation.

The biggest culprit is obviously AMG. It takes a special type of incompetence to be given one of the most unique miniature games, and then focus all your effort into making another bland, sci-fi, skirmish game. As if there aren’t a plethora of quality skirmish games competing in that space: Frost/Stargrave, Warcry, Infinity, Malifaux, Necromunda, Bushido, hell even their own game MCP. It's just a terrible decision in the context of the miniature game market. Those other games could come and go, but  I always had time for X-wing, as it was so unique compared to anything else.

Not only was the game fairly unique, it had one huge strength that further set it apart from other mini games: accessibility. X-wing was accessible to the group of time-poor, miniature-game-curious, people. That group didn’t have time to build a 2000pt army, find a table full of terrain, an opponent, and then play a 2-3 hour long mini game. How many other miniature games can you buy a model off of the shelf, and immediately play with it? How many can you play a proper game on a dining table with the box-supplied terrain? How many have simple, tight, themey, fast gameplay, with huge depth? How many can you easily play with your kids? Miniature games like that are few and far between. I personally know scores of people who were brought into the miniature game hobby by that ease of access. That’s why there was a time when X-wing was rivalling 40k as the most played miniature game in the world. It was easy to learn, but hard to master, and didn’t cost much (comparatively) in either time or money.

That’s not even touching on the failures of the 2.5 edition X-wing. To be clear, I wasn’t a hater. I went into 2.5 with an open mind, ready to give it a fair go, and I think it had some admirable goals. The problem was, those goals were almost all poorly executed. The objective missions were lazy, and didn't fit the theme of the game, the squad-building was gutted and bland, and the card-bloat was difficult even for a veteran like myself. Some teething is to be expected, and FFG was far from perfect, but it just became clear as time went on that AMG were just phoning it in. They just wanted the SW licence for other projects. I could have respected that a bit more if they didn’t string the community along with reassuring corporate-speak, where they talked a lot, but said nothing.

I think there’s a silver lining. Firstly, the X-wing community is still filled with great quality people. There have been several other games, with strong communities, that have survived (and even thrived) after the publisher stopped supporting them. The Lord of the Rings miniature game is the one that springs to my mind for me (since I play it). Could this be the future of our favourite pew-pew spaceship game? With the rise of 3D printing, I think it’s even more possible now than ever. You could even have new releases, rather than keeping the game in a kind of stasis. All the community supported games that I’m aware of had a strong centralised voice keeping events going, rules balanced, and just generally keeping the game fresh and relevant. I’m hoping this is the way that X-wing will go, rather than a slide into irrelevance.

Stay classy X-wingers. It was a pleasure to shoot imaginary space lasers with you!