Atomic Mass Games Taking the Reins

 Atomic Mass Games Taking the Reins

I think, at this point, that the majority of Armada players are aware that Star Wars Armada (as well as X-Wing & Legion) have moved development and production from Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) over to Atomic Mass Games (AMG). There was a lot of hubbub about it, and with good reason. People are always wary of change, and for years, the running joke about Armada is that it’s always a hair away from being cancelled. FFG and AMG are both owned by Asmodee, so that was a promising shift, given that AMG has been pumping out a ton of content for Crisis Protocols, and they assured us the shift was simply a common sense move for them because AMG already does minis (and extremely well), and FFG is really more of a board game design company. Additionally, the shift consolidated some staff, resulting in people losing their jobs (and reportedly, this happened quite suddenly for them), which is obviously generally awful. But given current global circumstances, it’s even more terrible. And some of us players knew the designers who were let go, which makes the news that much worse.

All of that aside, it does seem like the move will be a good one for Armada as a game in a vacuum. It sounds as though the folks over at AMG are very excited to take the reins on the game, and we know this not only because they put out a statement, but because they did a livestream on February 3rd saying as much. On Wednesday, 2/3, they talked some about what players could expect as the transition from FFG to AMG actualized. They spoiled a couple of builds, spoiling models of the Recusant (which is, frankly, gorgeous, and probably my favorite), the Providence, and the Pelta (no space wings whaaaaaaaatttttt??). They also showed a couple of cards, which I’m sure we’ll talk about some point down the line. I can say with certainty that I’m very excited for these new ships, as well as the commanders who have been spoiled on the FFG website (I absolutely cannot wait to tinker with Luminara and those awesome Republic aces!). Courtesy of the AMG livestream, we now know we can expect the next wave to drop on April 16th. So, it’s not an immediate drop, but it really is just right around the corner. Exciting stuff!

But in particular, I’d like to point out a couple of things for which I commend AMG and I believe should show Armada fans that we’ve nothing about which to be worried, but lots about which to be excited. The first is sort of tangential: when discussing X-Wing, one of the first things they said was to assure players that they are “not furiously working on a version 3.0 behind closed doors.” They said they like where the game is at and have no intention of creating a new version. Why is this relevant to Armada? Well, because it seems that recreating a game that’s currently working is not how AMG plans to put their stamp of ownership on a game. That’s huge for us, since 1.5 just dropped. Any complaints folks may have about 1.5 aside (most of which are completely based in theory and not practice, since there’s been no widespread Armada since it dropped; I promise, the vast majority of changes are really damn good ones), I think 1.5 puts us in a pretty good place, meaning we don’t want to see a 2.0 (thus kind of sparing our wallets, but not really, because the Clone Wars stuff ain’t cheap, but we needs it because it’s awesome). This also means that AMG seems more interested than FFG in speaking to fan concerns. They weren’t monitoring the chat while the livestream was going on (which I sort of appreciate), but it’s clear that they are aware of fan and player concerns, and were interested in speaking to them. I think it’s a fine line to walk between acknowledging players and pandering to the base (because a lot of us players often think we know EXACTLY WHAT THIS GAME NEEDS, and that is rarely true). Looks like AMG is interested in making the effort to walk that line.

Secondly, and this is huge, we learned that AMG is really focused on transparency. They have announced that they’ll be doing a Star Wars livestream every Wednesday to give us updates about product they’re working on, and that’s way more consistent than anything we’ve seen from FFG. Which is really exciting! They made it clear that the Armada content dropping for the rest of 2021 is all FFG-based, and so because of the pandemic and logistical problems it posed, we won’t see any AMG additions to the product line until 2022. Ultimately, that’s fine. As of April, we’ll have a ton of new content between 1.5 and Clone Wars. Lots to figure out, see where the meta goes, etc. as the country (hopefully!) opens up again with COVID receding into our rearview mirror.

Finally, they addressed Organized Play (OP). I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but this was huge for me. I literally ended up holding my breath while they explained their plans (mainly because they took a deep breath, and looked repentant, and I was worried they were literally going to kill OP, which absolutely would’ve devastated me) for the future of OP. Turns out that the only reason they were taking a big ole’ pause while starting to talk about OP was because they made the decision to cancel Worlds 2021. Which, frankly, is the right decision; their logic also shows us that their heads are “in the right place.” The explanation they gave was that by the time Worlds rolled around later in the year, they could probably safely hold it. But what they could not hold were all the feeder events that led up to Worlds, and so they decided it made more sense to start holding those feeder events in the second half of 2021 so that they could make Worlds 2022 a superior event. I breathed a huge sigh of relief hearing that, because it sounds like they really considered it from a lot of angles, and ultimately, settled on a decision that best serves the meta and the players. Especially given that they talked about reinstating tournaments on the FLGS level. I know we were all extremely disappointed when FFG announced that Store Championships were being eliminated, and the lowest tier of tournament events would be Prime Tournaments (thus replacing Regionals). AMG is looking to roll that back, as well as expand on what FLGS events look like.

I, for one, am very excited. I know there are a lot of question marks. I know that change is inevitable, but not always the change we want to see. But honestly, I’m seeing a lot of reasons to be excited about AMG taking the reins of one of my favorite games.

-IratePooka