In keeping with recent years, FFG have been announcing a couple of interesting things they have in their pipeline prior to GenCon next week. Among the announcements, this one seems to be the biggest so far, which is a bit weird on the one hand, because it seems like such a small game. But on the other hand, it’s a huge thing for the company!
Years ago, Fantasy Flight Games published CCGs like many other games companies – A Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu were both collectible card games, sold in blind-buy booster packs. Then they went down the LCG route, providing all of the cards in one pack every month, which was a huge shift for the gaming community as a whole. But now, they’re going back to the collectible model with a dice game that looks significantly like one of those Dice Masters things, in a move that appears to be designed to get their product into the bigger retail stores.
Is it a good move? Well, of course – getting your product into a wider distribution market is increasing the chances of that product selling, so sure it is. Is it a good move for the company, who had previously been staunchly behind the LCG model? It feels decidedly weird, and the justification for that given in the article feels somewhat clunky, but there are people who like collectible games, so it can’t be denied that a lot of people will probably be really excited for this.
As a rule, I’m not really all that interested by these kinds of games, preferring card games to dice games, but it’s Star Wars, so I’ll likely pick up a couple of starters to see what it’s all about. The more interesting thing, to me, is seeing the artwork for both the Prequels and Episode VII. Given the way FFG usually operate, I imagine they may be paving the way for Prequel-themed games in the future? At any rate, seeing Count Dooku on a card from a game by FFG is really exciting.
What do you all think? Excited or unimpressed?
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