Star Wars Figures

> From: "Tom Sullivan" <starkfist@hotmail.com>

The rumor mill at Origins '98 had the same info. I have not called Scott at
WEG to confirm, but I wouldn't be surprised. They did not have their usual
marketing people at Gama, and I have not heard from some of the people there
in some time.

KR, Geo-Hex
> >

> their Pyramid magazine. It's also been verified from a variety of

Just FYI: West End Games has gone belly-up, and has ceased to
exist. Apparently, this was partially the result of the recent US distributor
problems, and largely because WEG was dragged under by another company owned
by the president of WEG. What this means, of course, is that the 25mm Star
Wars miniatures (already hard to find) will soon be gone entirely. Stock up
now!

> On Tue, 07 Jul 1998 10:45:54 PDT, "Tom Sullivan" writes:

What are your sources on this? The Star Wars RPG is one of the best selling
RPG's on the market, after the WOD and TSR stuff. Can you quote a press
release or anything?

> On Tue, 07 Jul 1998 10:45:54 PDT, "Tom Sullivan" writes:

My source is SJ Games "Daily Illuminator" page, which noted that WEG had fired
all of it's employees, ceased all operations, and was about to file for
chapter 11. Further details came from an article in their Pyramid magazine.
It's also been verified from a variety of sources on Usenet. Apparently, the
future is bleak for the RPG, seeing as how it cost Lucasfilms more to handle
the paperwork involved than they were recieving in profits for it. Life is
sometimes less than
fair....

> From: "John Jeffery Shoemark" <shoemark@acay.com.au>

> > "I have a bad feeling about this...."
John,

I had the opportunity to view the new figures. Marko of Global Games had the
nod from WEG to do the redesign, and they are beautiful! The shame of it all
is that they may not see store shelves anytime soon, if ever. Hopefully,
someone will pick up the license and perhaps Marko can make some kind of deal
to release the figures.

> Just FYI: West End Games has gone belly-up, and has ceased to
The 25mm Star Wars figures have actually been cancelled for several months
now. They were planning to redo them in a 30mm type size. Apparently this was
because the true 25mm size was considered to be "old fashioned". I know they
stopped distribution of these figures outside the US about a year ago because
they had lost the foreign rights for them. I am unaware of WEGs demise but I
know product has slowed down a lot in the last four months. (Until three weeks
ago I was President of their largest distributor in Australia) So, if you want
to use Star Wars figures for Stargrunt grab them quickly, particularly the
Stormtroopers. They have always been the hardest to get a reliable supply of.

Has there been any talk of "official" spaceship minis?

> Geo-Hex wrote:

> > From: "John Jeffery Shoemark" <shoemark@acay.com.au>

> Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 21:54:56 -0500

No. I believe they were planning just the revamp of the current minis and
rules.

KR

> Has there been any talk of "official" spaceship minis?
Apparently
> > this
The
> > shame of it all is that they may not see store shelves anytime soon,

> -----Original Message-----
Not that I have ever heard. Licensing a product such as Star wars is so
complex as to be mind boggling. I wouldn't be surprised if a seperate company
holds the rights to ship minis, if it's been granted at all. Of course there
are the Micro Machines range (of which I've seen more than one FT fleet).
Another problem with SW ship minis is scale. we wargamers tend to be a little
uptight about this. Just think of the ship size differences in the movies and
try and translate that to the games table eg X Wing and
Deathstar- what a difference!

Yes I think that spaceship minis would sell well. Agents of Gaming seem to be
selling a lot of Bablyon 5 ship minis. When the new Star Wars movies start to
be released I'd think that were be a great interest in these. Perhaps WEG
would get Jon TO do a set of rules for Star Wars.

Enjoy,

> At 09:32 AM 7/9/1998 +0000, KR wrote:

While the figures could have used a lot of work and West End Games never did
support the Miniatures Game, the rules do not need to be changed much at all.
For the Universe they were written for, they were extremely well written and
provided a reasonably smooth transition from the Role Playing game to the
miniatures system. I seriously doubt that anyone who is working in "new" rules
for that can improve on them... The reason the game failed is WEG did not
support the product, produced marginal figures (Space troopers look like
walking eggs) and the books were not very attractive (black and white, no eye
candy for a rich
universe...).
Too bad... Now it looks like a Pudding Workshop clone is going to pick it all
up...
        Phil

Gort, Klaatu barada nikto!

> -----Original Message-----

I don't want to get too far off thread with this or seem too pedantic but;
people seem to forget that SW was a very popular system but is showing it's
age design wise. The rules are quite good and the design when first released
was considered state of the art. One thing GWS and others have done in the
last five years is make consumers expect more smoke and mirrors from a rules
system. This is not a bad thing. It makes miniatures gaming more accessible to
the non gaming public (blasphemers!) and in the long run this can only be good
for us fanatics ( and those of us stupid enough to try and make a career of
the hobby) I salute WEG for a good product and mourn the demise of a company
run by nice folk. I hope their product survives.