Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squads!
 

This is a crosspost from Yawgmoth, who runs the 'planeswalker-arena.board.net' Fan forum for AOTP. Yesterday he posted a new thread:

http://planeswalker-arena.boards.net...pansion-rumors

Full text Quoted below:

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

That's great news.

Long time Heroscaper here--never played MtG. I'm hoping this goes the way of the heyday of Heroscape--lots of expansions and continually building up the variety of units available for each Planeswalker and lasts for years to come. I would love to see more Eldrazi--already painted mine up and they look amazing.

It would be interesting to know what kind of buzz this is game is getting and sales it's generating in order to know if WotC will continue it for long instead of killing it before there's enough variety to really enjoy like Battleship Galaxies.

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

Neato! I just cant wait to get more figures for magic. I think I am done trying to integrate magic with heroscape. At the very least I will use the figures from magic for custom heroscape figures. Thanks for the news.

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

My experience is that their advertising hasn't been very well targeted. I'm a pretty active Magic player and an exceedingly large portion of my MTG playing friends didn't even know the game existed several months after it had been released. Game Shops got skipped over on 1st run of the core set, amazon stepped on their toes for the expansion. This has led to almost nobody playing it in Stores or really talking about it.

I'm a big fan, but I really hope they can turn the corner and get people's attention with the game. Wizards hasn't done much to hype it up on the MTG side so it's just relying on people happening to see it in Wal-Mart/Target/etc

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

;) It seems like they will be adding everything I want, if a bit late. I've collected the game so far mostly as a Heroscape add-on. In the Fall it will finally come into its own, with meaningful army and deck building. Then I'll try to get one or two uninterested Scapers around here back into it!

I could easily argue that this is the amount of stuff they should have included in the first place, but patience seems like it will be a virtue in this case. It does appear odd to see such a large corporation so dedicated to doing a product on the super cheap, when all other hobby trends seem to be going the other way!

But of course they are not selling to us, but to "Mr. and Mrs. America and All The Ships At Sea."

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

Fall isn't going to work. This game is dying on the vine right now. Many people are critical of AotP due to the lack of content released. Other games in this vein (Battlelore, Imperial Assault, etc) are spitting out expansions like no tomorrow. The Magic universe is as large, if not larger, than the Star Wars universe. There is limitless content to be produced. It need to be now, not 8 months from now. In order to be successful, AotP needs quarterly expansion releases. Otherwise, it will be forgotten and never relevant.

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

I think that the game is attempting to put out a base of content before a large advertising push. That's the only thing that makes sense to me with the scale of production vs. the relatively small amount of exposure it's gotten. The game isn't supposed to be popular yet, just developing a small player base while enough content to actually deck and army build is released. That's my hope at least.

What happens with AotP at GenCon this year should be a good indicator for what the plans are for it. It wasn't even for sale at GenCon last year, despite its release date falling during the convention. I heard some rumors of AotP tournaments there, which would be really exciting. This game works much better in a competitive setting than Heroscape does, in my opinion.

It looks like expansions will come out on the same cycle that Magic does, so probably two per year. That's a fine pace for me. I'm not bored of this game yet.

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

At my place where my bunch plays games, we cycle through Heroscape, Magic AOTP, and Imperial Assault, and we never get bored. Ever. Two expansions a year would be fine. That way I can afford to pick up the expansions of a couple of my favorite games, and still afford to pick up the occasional heroscape C3G, C3V, and HOSS figure that comes out.

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

I posited a question and included a poll over at boardgamegeek. Would love to have you guys (and gals) chime in there too. The general perspective over there seems to be this will not be long lived--unfortunately.

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/21910010#21910010

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

That's the general sentiment for the average gamer. They want to like AotP, but it needs more stuff. Even Heroscape fanatics like Vasel don't believe AotP will survive at this pace.

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

It almost feels like the stuff out so far was a prerelease to whet people's appetites and to test the waters for more heroscape-like content, and then come out with the real full product in the fall. An odd marketing strategy though.

Yeah, it sounds like GENCON and ESSEN will be the real test. How much is the company going to push this game? If it's a big push then it will go big, if it's a snooze marketing campaign, then get ready to dump it.

Re: Hot new rumors for the next Major Expansion! Common Squa
 

I'm not familiar at all with board game marketing. Is this a legit marketing model? Are there examples of it working? While I want to believe it, it seems like a strange way of going about things, and not likely to succeed.