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Rank: Octuptarra Droid
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I've always been surprised to see how popular X-Wings miniatures is, considering it's a pretty niche game. In fact, the subreddit for X-Wings currently has 9,125 subs. This compared to just 36 subs for the SWM subreddit. My local gamestore also constantly has X-Wings board game nights, but when I called about SWM they had never even heard of it. Why is X-Wings so much more popular?
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SWM isn't in production any more so everyone who played has probably just lost interest or fans prefer the ship combat more than the ground combat. I could say it was the marketing and advertising that was different but I have no knowledge of any of that so my opinion wouldn't be factual just speculation...like most of this comment lol
I think maybe the fact the game became unbalanced at some points and the introduction to v-sets was a good idea but even the v-sets are unbalanced compared to the overall game.
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#1 reason being that it is still in production by a major game company (FFG) and offers tourney support in the form of league kits and game night kits, while SWM was dropped by WOTC 6 years ago.
People can go in and buy X-Wing off the shelf and start playing while they cannot do so with SWM as game stores don't have any product to sell.
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In terms of why SWM was never as popular as X-Wing is now - I think the collectible marketing format is the main reason. SWM was one of the later games to use the collectible format. Magic manages to survive that way, but there are many players who will not touch games that are marketed in the CCG or CMG format. X-Wing and the other Fantasy Flight games are marketed as boardgames + expansions as opposed to random boosters.
SWM did have regular game nights across the country when it was in production, but I don't think it was ever as popular as X-Wing is currently.
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Are you asking why X-Wing is more popular than SWM right now? That answer is simple; X-Wing is currently in production, SWM has been out of production for 5 years. Not having product on the shelf is a massive difference.
If the question is X-Wing now vs. SWM at its peak, that's more difficult. SWM was actually very popular at its peak, but not to the extent X-Wing is. There are a few reasons for that in my opinion. The collectible nature of SWM turned some people off. It makes more money per player but generally gets fewer players than a set expansions system like X-Wing. Fantasy Flight also hypes and advertises X-Wing much more than SWM ever was. SWM was a tertiary product to WotC, behind Magic and D&D. X-Wing is one of FFG's flagship lines. The biggest difference though in my opinion is FFG's support of organized play. Wizards never did too much; occasional game knight kits with repaints, but nothing like the way FFG supports store championships and regionals. That attracts a lot of gamers.
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Honestly, as much as I enjoy this game, X-Wing is easier to pick up and learn for a first-time player. It's more attractive to a wider audience in that respect.
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Rank: TIE Crawler
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I see many reasons:
Random collectible boosters are the devils work for many.
Also, it's much easier to complete a Wave of 4 ships, than 40 to 60 randomly distributed collectibles with different rarety.
Original trilogy and EU only in X-Wing, vs Prequels included in SWM, again anything Prequel is the devils work for quite some. (As stupid as this may be, since you could just ignore what you don't care for).
Better marketing of value.
X-Wing is quite expensive, but has achieve the image of a premium brand through clever marketing, people believe they pay that much for the Quality and not that they pay that much, because FFG knows they are willing to pay those prices.
WotC destroyed any premium gaming image SWM might have achieved through the really good looking early minis, with the cheap paper maps and flimsy counters from the start.
Much better support:
FFG is very active with a tournament scene and has local conversion version of the game distributed (everything from X-Wing is available in German, the second largest gaming market after the US to my knowledge), I have never seen a booth of WotC to this days at Spiel in Essen, which is the largest gaming convention in Europe. Outside certain circles, even among gamers, the game was largely unknown and often not readily available outside the US.
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Rank: Octuptarra Droid
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I really enjoy the discussion. To clarify my question, I'm comparing X-Wing's peak popularity to Star Wars Miniatures peak popularity. I think WotC did a really nice job with the miniatures, they're actually the only tabletop game I've ever really got into. But yeah I can see how booster packs could turn people off and I agree that their marketing was pretty paltry.
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Echo24 wrote:SWM was a tertiary product to WotC, behind Magic and D&D. X-Wing is one of FFG's flagship lines. The biggest difference though in my opinion is FFG's support of organized play. Wizards never did too much; occasional game knight kits with repaints, but nothing like the way FFG supports store championships and regionals. That attracts a lot of gamers. +1. Even in the golden age of SWM we...or at least I...felt like our game was the red-headed stepchild of WotC.
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Great Question! (it could form the subject of many papers, seeing other folk's ideas on the success story is awesome). this is something I've asked myself for a while, so forgive the waffling or tangential thinking involved  I think there's many factors to why XWing is more popular at 'max.game.popularity' than SWMinis: 1.) Galoob Micromachines --- these sold millions of units, and were of a similar scale. as 'detailed' as FFG's minis are, they're of a similar scale and plastic of the micromachines... There were also probably millions who wanted to get these, but couldn't or only had a few... 2) Nostalgia/Nostalgia for the Computer Game Series... --- the games themselves were freakin' awesome. Being able to have RTS with Space Combat Sim, and Sandbox Universe for custom modded missions etc, it was cool. Some folks just really enjoyed that game... 3) Deck Building Game Elements: the ultra competitive side to people is encouraged ever moreso in FFG stuff, especially in XWing. build your ultimate deck combo, win the game, TKO. the meta-game is much more balanced, but has more combos and less 'auto-includes'/hobsons choices than in SWMinis IMHO 4) the fact that it is well advertised and actively made and prize-supported. 5) Social media, when SWMinis started in '04, was just taking off... a lot of folks that play the game seem to also not use 'social media' as much... 6) People have either cross-posting fatigue (not wanting to post across multiple web-presences), or do not have as much recreational time anymore (the great depression mk 2 is still underway for many people worldwide, very few have recovered or advanced since 08) 7) SWMinis weren't the best value proposition for 'discerning customers' --- the detail many believe was 'sub-par' and not good value for money, with the only decent sculpts being super-rares... verbatim from BoardGameGeek and Geek-n-Sundry... I would disagree, but this must be the prevailing opinion.
Thats a great question! for me, given Murphy's law of the internet, its always been a 'what the? where is everyone?!" (sorta a Fermi-Drake paradox) and especially given the level of fandom a person has to have in order to buy merchandise related to a subset of the sci fi genre (do the back of envelope, assuming 30% of total world population enjoys fiction |0.3 x 7.37billion|, 10-20% enjoys sci-fi |0.1-0.2 x 1-2 billion|, and of those, 1-3% collects stuff |0.01-0.03 x 180-235 million|, and of those, 0.05% seem to do all the posting or customs hehehe |0.1-0.005 x 8 million| : just the law of averages?) When you crunch those numbers to approximate total.market.size, there's a few assumptions underpinning it: a) these people are not all in the one geography, they're distributed non-uniformly, with most being in North America and Asia, b) English is the majority language the game was made in, and which is somewhat a barrier to other folks. Though, limited runs were produced of the minis in other languages - data on which languages and how many units were actually made is difficult to procure... c) we're not discerning between people who bought 1 booster pack total, and folks who collected multiple boosters/singles figures AND retained them... that is an even smaller subset, of collectors to look at it another way, SWMinis' simplicity, has made a few compare it to Chess over the years... Chess has always had something of a stigma, "a certain kind of person plays Chess" --- which is of course complete crud. Anyone of any ages can play chess, yet still that stigma remains... perhaps, if SWMinis is somewhat Chess-like, then SWMinis has a similar stigma attached to it (doubly so, being that a certain kind of person is that level of sci fi fan + only a certain kind of person plays Chess or chess games)... I think SWMinis will have a revival, and is a game which will endure. I am hard pressed to find folks that haven't enjoyed unwinding on a friday or saturday with a beverage of their choosing and swminis It is Chess-like, only better with Star Wars figures, yet without the cost associated with other boutique games, such as Warhammerington40thK That revival will be contingent on a few things: folks continuing to play exhibition and non-competitive games, a stronger competitive circuit, with prize support etc and ultimately, the fanbase learning from NECA and the heroclix example. that's my two shekel
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@Jak/Jakster etc Indeed! You're close with your appraisal of DE being one of the most gaming-rich places on earth (at least, until recently... that is a tangent for elsewhere...) similar to the GCR, lead-adventure.de (which I'm sure you're on...) quantifies rankings etc, as does boardgamegeek and geeknsundry (unofficially in the case of geeknsundry, but based on webtraffic and other factors). Whilst not in the top 10 for sheer volume or turnover, at the per capita level, DE was 1 or 2, with Singapore, HongKong, Japan, India and North America beating out in terms of volume of board games and gamers. DE is miles ahead of places such as AUS or NZ. Essen con is awesome - the Trek-Community is strong in DE (and who doesn't like Traumschiff Surprise or DE Phase II) And, your observation of the language barrier - being able to have the game in Deutsch (or indeed, whatever language is most convenient for the player to play in) is a huge advantage many other games formats have. So long as the core mechanics and rules are the same across the languages (which these days they are), there's no excuse to not make things in the language folks request it in hehehe My Spanish friends were able to trade with their Mexican family to acquire espanol variants of the SWMinis cards, and preferred to play with those. Yet, could not directly order in spanish (there being 3 major dialects). Likewise, New Caledonians were able to acquire french cards from France, but not locally even via order direct... whereas with FFG, you can specify on the order form, from anywhere in the world, what you want your product to be. Japanese has been a little different, as SWMinis is technically classified under "gashapon correctibiru |gaijin|" - Kids Collectibles, Foreign which was difficult to find for a while there. Some cards are still order-able from there in Chinese (simplified) and Japanese, from a collectible store in Fukuoka - the only decent folks who'll export outside Japan for lots of things it would seem. Similarly though, most of the Gundam, Aoshima, Konami, Bandai or Nintendo gashapon are 'region locked', even when you try importing from say, a Bandai Premium Crystal level importer (he can get you the metal Gundam with servos, the works... can't get a tiny rubbery-plastic XWing, because "region locked"? heheh). Want "Kamen Rider" series of Gashapon to give as a gift? good luck, outside of Japan, the other stuff is of a lower quality. Hey, hows about some Astroboy TPBs (replete with Puruto/"Pluto") or animatronic gashapon correctibiru. Sorry, Japan only. Want that alternate mid 2000s Gojira figure range? Book your flight to Japan, because no-one ships out... Some of the Japanese figures of a similar scale to SWMinis are much more detailed. Similarly, the Japanese release of Eaglemoss figures was much much better than in any other geography's release - the Borg, for example, are much cooler and cheaper in the Japanese editions - actually containing transparent plastic and detail, all you need is the lighting kit. I digress; hopefully, there'll be even more live-streaming from Essen in future, as that looks cool!
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Darth_Jim wrote:
+1. Even in the golden age of SWM we...or at least I...felt like our game was the red-headed stepchild of WotC.
Agreed. The best examples were the league kit promos. About half of them were just giving random Fringe characters blue pants. I also remember the metaphorical slap in the face when WotC reorganized the forums and put a guy that didn't even like SWM as the board's community representative (granted, he did eventually come around to a degree, but those were a rocky few months). Wait, no. Remember Dreamblade? WotC threw SWM under the bus to promote the hell out of that game and really only game back when Dreamblade tanked hard and was discontinued a year later. Yet, in that one year, they pumped out almost as many minis as SWM had done in it's entire lifetime at that point.
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EmporerDragon wrote:Darth_Jim wrote:
+1. Even in the golden age of SWM we...or at least I...felt like our game was the red-headed stepchild of WotC.
Agreed. The best examples were the league kit promos. About half of them were just giving random Fringe characters blue pants. I also remember the metaphorical slap in the face when WotC reorganized the forums and put a guy that didn't even like SWM as the board's community representative (granted, he did eventually come around to a degree, but those were a rocky few months). Wait, no. Remember Dreamblade? WotC threw SWM under the bus to promote the hell out of that game and really only game back when Dreamblade tanked hard and was discontinued a year later. Yet, in that one year, they pumped out almost as many minis as SWM had done in it's entire lifetime at that point. The had really good game designers in the past, but apparently no clue what to really do with their games from there. SWM, Dreamblade, the Axis&Allies Miniatures games (especially War at Sea) and probably the D&D Minis( I never played that) are all really good games. All are dead and abandoned. They had the "Dungeon Command" series, an interesting concept with a 12 minis set fixed faction boxes (reprints of the D&D miniatures) and an interesting command System using Cards instead of dice, abandoned after 5 sets. Even the latest entry in the succesful and popular D&D Adventure Series (Castle Ravenloft, Warth of Arshadalon, Legend of Drizzt) Temple of Elemental Evil is not produced by WotC themselves anymore, but licensed to Wizkids, which according to some shows in the poorer production quality (which is a "trademark" of Wizkids). So WotC can't even do their "core-brand" stuff themselves these days? While WotC has released many of my favorite games, I have little respect for or faith in the company.
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kobayashimaru wrote:@Jak/Jakster etc.....
! just to clarify. I'm not jakster, and jakster is not me. our styles aren't even close
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indeed... you live and learn, though most would be applicable in either event. a beverage of your choosing, eh, jak?
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The SWM release and initial popularity dwarfs X-Wing. Gencon was insane the year they released Rebel Storm.
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x-wing was designed with tournament play in mind and not as an afterthought. Fantasy Flight was a small company that made an investment in x-wing. Wizards was a big company who cared that Star Wars bring reliable sales. At that time Wizards was focused on revamping Magic the gathering. new business model, Cores Sets, New Card Designs, Eighth edition released same time as SWM..ect
From 1987 - 1998 West End Games introduced, and gave the world, metal die-cast star wars miniatures.
People would; use them for RPG, customizing and painting, collecting, and whatever else nerds do..
Then dark times... 6 YEARS of no star wars minis.
So SWM absolutely had more immediate popularity on it's launch than x-wing.
When SWM released "NERDGASIM!"...many lgs were sold out of before boosters could even reach the shelves.
We had about 30 players showing up wanting to play SWM competitively. The popularity was so great it forced Wizards to try to develop and support tournament play.
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thats an interesting perspective, DarkDracul. So, it was an initially larger game, that through benign neglect, faded away, whereas FFG was small and got larger over time, the difference being the support and the tournament options. WotC was quite preoccupied with MtG... still is. @EmperorDragon HECK YES! Clix had loads of actually unique tradeshow only sculpts and figures, as did the boutique minis (kingdom death etc), even Milton Bradley had unique Monopoly figures (to scale with SWMinis, I might add... I use Gen. Griev as a proxy, and luke and vader) though what were the promo specials for SWMinis? the same figures, only marginally painted different... pssssh... they would have done well to learn from the Galoob tradeshow model, with a limited print-on-demand set alongside the others... the ultra-collectors could vote on what to make in the 1:1 scale, or in the special single figure packs, and there was also Swarovski and solid gold and silver ones made - a troy-ounce SWMini would be collectible for a lot of folks. micro-glass collectibles are also very collectible, especially such as "Masahiro Asaka" glass or "Eddignton multi-colored |carnival| glass" not to mention the new lazer acrylic methods (imagine a SWMini etched inside of a solid acrylic cube...) and yeah, there are 2 local game stores and 1 in ACT, which have CASES of dreamblade that owe them hundreds hehehe no-one liked the square bases or the lack-luster game play. The few awesome minis, such as that Toxic Waste sludge monster, were like $50 at release, and $1 2 years later... perfect for Fallout -not so great for weird occultic figures which were closer to 1:47 or "army men" 1:46 scale, and the polyvinyl feel was not great either... here's hoping one day, loyal SWMinis-ers take a leaf from Heroclix's story, and go that NECA route or Hasslefree, to have minis made again The custom Rancisis figure is pretty popular in pewter - I'd like to see it evolve into resin one day The goofy monk isn't popular as is- though, the variant head set and the bottom of the figure ARE very popular. The sith probe droid (heavy variant) is also very popular, despite being $35 for 8.7grms of figure. Are pewter the way you see minis heading? (Knight models was 90% of the way there, and would have been awesome)
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kobayashimaru wrote:
the same figures, only marginally painted different... pssssh...
Not even that at times. There are a few promos (such as the ones that were bundled with the Unleashed statuettes) where the only difference was the imprint on the underside of the base. Admittedly though, people did love whenever an A&E mini got a promo, as those actually had round bases.
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