Fantasy Flight Games couldn’t attend GenCon this year, but they've still been busy as ever. After having to miss their annual report last year, it’s good to see that they're back with lots of exciting announcements! At the start of the report, Chris Gerber himself welcomes us before getting stuck into what’s to come. Here’s a breakdown of what was covered.
Lord Of The Rings: Journeys In Middle Earth
The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth series is coming to a close. FFG announced the release of Spreading War, the last big box expansion for this set. However, the release of this expansion will be supported in the same way as the core box and Shadowed Path. This means that a full DLC and figure pack will be on the cards too.
Descent
Descent: Legends of the Dark is Fantasy Flight’s most ambitious project by far, and it seems this vast universe is only just getting started. Gerber starts the segment by briefly mentioning Level Up Dice before going on to tease at an upcoming expansion for Descent: Ghosts of Greyhaven. This expansion will act as a standalone adventure that can also be worked into the main campaign in Act I. It's going to be a while before we see anything for Act II, but Gerber reports that development for this is going smoothly. Very few details were shared about this expansion. However, we did get to see a sculpt for one of the foes that might pop up.
Keyforge
Gerber starts this segment by following up on the news the studio released last week that the algorithm powering Keyforge has gone down (you can read more about this here). While Fantasy Flight is still working on this, we get sneak-peak at the next set, the Winds of Exchange. Not only is house Mars getting its long-awaited revival, but Winds of Exchange brings in the game’s eleventh house: the Compacts of Ekwidon. This mercantile house features on the front of the box and runs on exchange and trade. This exciting addition will bring some new mechanics to the game. It will be hitting the shelves as soon as the algorithm is back up and running.
Game Of Thrones: B’twixt
Fans of George R R Martin will be pleased to know that FFG will soon release Game of Thrones: B’twixt. This is, as you can expect, a game of ‘political finesse and calculated backstabbing’. Fitting for the brutal political world of Westeros. This is due for release later this autumn. Keep your eyes peeled for any more announcements in the coming weeks.
Unfathomable
While FFG may have already announced the release of Unfathomable, this report comes with an update for expectant fans. The studio had initially planned for Unfathomable to hit the shelves this September. However, due to unforeseen shipping issues, this is not going to be possible. No definite date has yet been set but it will be before the end of the year for sure.
Arkham Horror: The Card Game
After five years it seems that the Arkham Horror LCG is not slowing down, with two new additions to the family being announced. The first is Machinations Through Time, a standalone scenario pack that gives us a glimpse of Arkham throughout history. This scenario will see investigators jumping between different periods on the hunt for clues as scientists begin to go missing across time itself.
Older Arkham content is also getting a shakeup with the announcement of the repackaging of the Dunwich Legacy cycle. This means that the whole set of cards will be grouped and sold in just two expansions. The campaign and encounter cards will be grouped together as will the player cards. This means players don’t need to worry about missing any elements of the story, it’s all bundled into one neat package. Both Machinations Through Time and these expansions are also expected in early 2022.
Lord Of The Rings: The Card Game
The Lord of the Rings: LCG is Fantasy Flight’s oldest LCG by a long shot, racking up an astonishing ten years of service to its loyal fans. In order to introduce even more people to this world, FFG has come up with the Revised Core Set. Not only does this come with enough cards to allow four players to come together from the get-go, but there are also some new tricks such as campaign cards, boons, and burdens. For those of you who already own the core set, these will be available digitally too. To ease new players into the game, the studio is also planning on re-releasing some of the game’s cycles in the same style as Arkham Horror, with whole cycles being grouped together into an expansion.
Finally, the long-awaited release of the scenario pack containing The Oath and The Caves of Nibin-Dûm have been announced. This pack will be set for release in early 2022.
Marvel Champions: The Card Game
A couple of weeks after the announcement of the Valkyrie hero pack comes the Vision hero pack, the last hero of the Mad Titan’s Shadow wave. It’s been teased that his gameplay revolves around his density manipulation mechanic which gives him some handy durability.
Also in the pipeline is Sinister Motives, the next campaign expansion. This brings about the start of a Spider-Verse themed wave of content and will bring in two favourite heroes, Ghost-Spider and Spider-Man (Miles Morales), along with a host of Spidey’s classic villains, such as Sandman and Venom.
Twilight Imperium And Android
Twilight Imperium will soon be celebrating its 25th anniversary, and Fantasy Flight have got some treats in store. The dynamic universe is expanding, with a set of two graphic novels developed by CMON. These comics are written and drawn by some of the biggest names in comics, including Ron Marz, Andy Lanning, and Dan Abnett. FFG and CMON are working hard to make sure that these comics fit within the established canon of Twilight Imperium.
Twilight Imperium isn’t the only one getting the comic treatment. FFG and CMON are working together to develop a graphic novel set in the Android universe. This graphic novel will feature the work of Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, and Guilherme Balbi.
Star Wars: Outer Rim
To round off the show we get to see a painfully brief glimpse of something that has had many fans excited for a very long time: an expansion for Star Wars: Outer Rim. We get to see that the upcoming expansion is called Unfinished Business, however, that is all we get, but more is promised in the future.
Mic Drop
Just like that, the in-flight report comes to an end. This report came packed with a lot of content for almost every fan to get their teeth into. The announcement of these releases will have fans excited, especially the expansion to Star Wars: Outer Rim. Sadly, now comes the difficult part as we have to wait for these releases to start hitting the shelves! Luckily, it shouldn’t be too long as some of these projects should (fingers crossed) start appearing in your local game stores as early as the new year.