Very bad news for Axis & Allies and D&D fans

Lead D&D and A&A miniatures designer Rich Baker just posted that he's been let go from Wizards of the Coast!

This is, of course, awful personal news for him. Being laid off a week before Christmas sucks. Actually, speaking from experience, being laid off at any time sucks pretty bad, but the holidays is even worse.

It also throws the entire future of D&D and Axis & Allies miniatures products into doubt. WOTC has already indicated it was backing out of the painted miniature category. It appears that Pathfinder may have eaten in to D&D's market share a bit, but I'm inclined to think it's bigger than just one line's market share issues. I've suspected that the "Golden Era" of boxes full of plastic and painted collectible miniatures we have enjoyed over the last decade or so was an artifact of some temporary economic conditions (specifically the price differential between China and USA) and was coming to a close.

I'm not sure what WOTC's plans are for the D&D stuff. They were working on a new set of skirmish rules, but I don't know if that's going to see daylight now.

As far as the Axis & Allies miniatures line go, Baker said that his layoff did not mean any miniatures lines were being canceled and he seemed to offer some hope that he'd be able to work on some projects on a freelance basis. Realistically, I've thjought that the land miniatures line was all but certainly dead already and that the hoped-for Late War set was never happening. There was just too long a break since the last set and it would basically mean restarting the line. I also think Angels 20 (the new air game) is a dead duck. Whatever is already paid for in the pipeline will come out, but I doubt very much there's bee anything new started. I suppose there's a small bit of hope for a Set VII for War at Sea, but it's a slender one.

I think we can also lay to rest any thoughts of a reborn Heroscape. Among the other layoffs was the brand manager for the Avalon Hill and Axis & Allies lines, so even the future of the board games may now be in doubt. I know there was some talk about an exapnsion for Battle Cry and Larry Harris was working on a final set of rules for 1940 Global Axis & Allies. Without someone to guide these along I have my doubts. The sort of intensive attention wargames/RPGs need was never a good fit for Hasbro/WOTC anyway -- they're certainly no GMT!

Overall, a very sad day for fans of a number of popular games.

Heroscape discontinued!

Rather surprising news buzzing around the Scapesphere.

Yes, it's true, Heroscape will be discontinued after the next expansion (due out on Nov. 16) comes out. Apparently the redirection of Herosoape into the D&D universe didn't do the trick for WOTC. Unable to find a marketing/pricing strategy that supported sales targets they ahve pulled the plug, although this is still a popular game by most standards.

Ominously for fans of some other WOTC products (I'm thinking of Axis & Allies miniatures, especially), one of the stated reasons for this decision is for WOTC to concentrate on its core products, namely Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. I wouldn;t be surprised if AAM either stops now or is ended after the 1944-5 set. Likewise I think we can see the end of the tunnel for the War at Sea line, although designer Rich Baker seems to have a commitment for a couple more sets of that one.

Dreamblade -- So what felled it?

Dreamblade was meant to be the "next big thing" in collectible/tradeable games.

Undoubtedly Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro conducted enough market research to persuade them it had potential. It had a big roll out, with big money tournaments and extensive Magic:The Gathering-style store support.

It's a pretty good game, with interesting strategies, an appropriate theme that gave players a sense of what the game was about while providing few constraints for designers, and some innovative ideas.

The physical presentation was top-notch, with a well-illustrated and clearly explained rule book. The miniatures were outstanding, with great art, fascinating and clever sculpts and ending up with an extensive line of 300 different figures from the base set and four expansions.

The game seems to have been generally well-received. On BGG it's rating of 7.39 places it at No. 282 among the tens of thousands of game titles rated by the site. This puts it about as popular as Bang! and World War II: Barbarossa to Berlin. It's owned by 617 BGG folks and has been played some 2,301 times by 273 distinct users, which also makes it pretty popular by BoardgameGeek standards. It has 15 pages of images on the site, another sign of some enthusiasm.

Yet, despite all this, the game ended up getting cancelled by WOTC before it's second anniversary.

I think Dreamblade's fate may illustrate the pitfalls of the collectible format for marketing a game. While obviously a great money-maker for a game company if it takes off, going collectible may raise the bar a lot for a game title. It's either all or nothing. Huge success or death. Despite being pretty darn successful by traditional boardgame standards, as a collectible game DreamBlade couldn't make the cut.

Most of the collectible figure games that have been successful seem to be based on some outside theme, not a self-contained one. It may be a fictional setting like HeroClix or Star Wars, a game universe like D&D or Halo or historical like Axis & Allies or Pirates, but figure-based games seem to need an anchor.

There may be some other reasons why DreamBlade faltered as well. I think the pace of the expansions was a bit too aggressive for most players to keep up with. There was a problem with balance with some pieces. Most tournament winning warbands seemed to have three Scarab Warcharms and most featured multiple rares. One piece (Kitsune) had to be banned.

Still, most collectible games have some problems with balance and Dreamblades expansion schedule wasn't more aggressive than HeroClix, so I doubt these were sufficient.

I know for myself, I'm very unlikely to take a chance on another collectible figure game based on a standalone theme.