In the middle of last night FFG streamed this years In-flight Report from the safety of their headquarters instead of from a hall at GenCon. Which considering the state of things (especially over there) is a wise decision.
Having watched the stream this morning. I have to say I’m pretty glad I didn’t decide to stay up and watch it live.
My overall opinion of the announcements is meh! I was really left feeling underwhelmed.
This In-flight report was all about expansions and repackaging stuff. Apart from Unfathomable, which they are hoping will be out by the end of September (but we all know what a mess shipping is, so that may slide) we are looking at all this stuff coming out sometime in 2022. I know they said Q1 or first half. But let’s be realistic here. Even with such general indications of when stuff will be coming out. I can’t see the shipping problems being resolved that soon, and expect most of 2022 to be much like it is now. Full of good intentions, but lots of delays.
Arkham Horror lcg, Marvel Champions, and Descent Legend of the Dark got the expansion love. There was a brief recap of the Keyforge hiatus announcement from the other day.
The LoTR lcg core set is getting a revision to make it easier for new players to get into this 10 year old game. Which will also see select story arcs from over that period get reprinted using the new expansion format introduced for the Arkham Horror lcg. They are also making the campaign cards in this revised edition available as a print on demand for existing long term players. Plus two scenarios from a limited edition of the game are getting a reprint.
FFG announced that Twilight Imperium celebrates 25 years next year. Which is pretty cool. How are they celebrating this awesome achievement? They have teamed up with CMoN to produce some graphic novels. There will also be some graphic novels set in the Android universe. And these will be coming to Kickstarter at some point. Which going by the latest CMoN Kickstarter means those of us in Europe are screwed.
The other “big” thing FFG announced is their partnership with a company to run web stores selling official FFG swag based on their IP. With the first web stores being for Legend of the Five Rings. Followed by Arkham Horror, then sometime after that Twilight Imperium.
The whole thing was wrapped up with a teaser for a much requested expansion. A fact the teaser played into.
I did like how the teaser was presented. But still it’s another expansion. And we will have wait for further details. Maybe there will be a bit more at Origins in a couple of weeks. One thing we can be sure of this will be a 2022 release.
know they spent 10 minutes talking about their R&D. But I’d prefer if they had spend that time announcing new games or just done a blog post. This was just filler.
This was FFG just treading water. A holding pattern. Resting on their laurels. It felt like FFG are stagnating. A pity they used to be an exciting company.
You can watch the full In-flight Report here.