I’m sure you’d rather see the announcement of Starcraft 2, but at least it’s something to tide over you Zergling fans out there. The Starcraft boardgame will be released in September of this year (and unlike Blizzard, Fantasy Flight is known to get its stuff out on time.) The game will be in the FF “big box” series, like the World of Warcraft boardgame and Twilight Imperium Third Edition. This also means a price tag of $80, which is steep for a boardgame, but they try to make it up to you by including tons and tons of bits.
Full text of the announcement after the jump:
Which race will you fight for?
Three powerful alien races battle for control of the galaxy. Whether you choose to lead the versatile Terran, mysterious Protoss, or voracious Zerg, in Starcraft: The Board Game you’ll command an army like no other in the universe!
Once again, Fantasy Flight Games brings one of the world’s best-loved computer games to your tabletop. Players take control of the Protoss, Terran, or Zerg and battle across multiple worlds. True to the Starcraft legacy, each of the three races features a unique and distinctive play style, and the inclusion of two distinct factions for each race allows for up to six players to compete for galactic dominance at a time.
Including a total of over 180 plastic figures and dozens of unit types, Starcraft: The Board Game features an innovative modular board of varying sizes which guarantees a new experience each and every game. An exciting card driven combat system allows players to modify and upgrade their faction with a wealth of powerful technologies. Players can unleash a Zergling rush, use powerful Protoss shields to halt an enemy invasion, or even send cloaked Ghosts out to guide nuclear missiles to their target.
Starcraft: The Board Game is a game of galactic conquest for 2-6 players, playable in 3-4 hours.
- Over 180 finely-detailed plastic figures in over 25 unique sculpts!
- Three distinct races with their own unique play styles.
- Faithful adaptation of the one of the most popular science-fiction strategy computer games of all time.
- Fast-paced strategy and conflict!
$80 is pretty steep for a board game. Axis & Allies Revised has more pieces than that, and has a scale/depth of strategy that is probably similar to that of this Starcraft Board Game. But Axis & Allies Revised is only about half of that cost: http://www.funagain.com/control/product/~product_id=014679
$80 seems like a rip off to me, unless the game is like, the best damn board game ever.
I agree with Sultan. With a pricetag like that, are you sure fantasy flight is releasing it and not Games Workshop? 😛
For the avid Starcraft fans, it is almost a necessary investment. Even then the $80 is enough to put me off. But on the other hand, I can see if goon dancing/cliff sieging/9 hatch expansion/all the other sorts of strategies/tactics work in the board game. I saw this and immediately wanted to setup a release party for it. This is from your resident SC freak though.
Also, the advantage is that people who are good at turn based games will have the opportunity for vengeance. Unless the board game is real-time, that would be awesome and board flipping would be equivalent do disconnecting.
Oh, and there was a leak about SC:2 being announced May 19th, but it is a lot of speculation.
Release Party: totally happening.
Well, in their defense, Axis & Allies is printed in MUCH larger numbers than Starcraft, so it’s hard to get the price down as much. I’m sure that the pieces are going to be more detailed, and there’s going to be a wider variety of pieces in the game. Plus that’s the full retail, Funagain will be selling it for ~$60.
Take my word for it, this is what they have to charge for the game, not some Games Workshop-esque gouging.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’d love to play the game. I just don’t know if I want to pay $80 to do it, or even $60. I actually think it might be really fun/good, and I would definately be down for a ‘release party’, as long as I’m not the one paying for the darn thing!
It is not even just the volume that A&A is printed that keeps its costs down, but that tooling of its pieces was done a decade ago. So not only can Hasbro crank the volumes to keep the unit price down, but there is no R&D nor pre-production cost to deal with. Oddly enough the most expensive aspect of A&A to produce may be it’s box, which to the best of my knoledge is still produced in the USA by Hasbro Games Division. This is only because China never got their game boxes to work right.
In defense of the $80 tag, the component that FF puts in their games blows the stuff in a avalon hill game out of the water. The pieces are much bigger and have much more detail. Though there may be more bits in AnA, there will probably ne 2-3 times more plastic being used in the starcraft game. On top of that the board sections are typically much more durable as well. As for depth and strategy, if its anything like TI:3, it’ll be more better in that sense as well
80 dolllars is fair for a game that size.. i am a conceptor and i know when it comes to plastic pieces and new craft, the cost rise,.. axis and allies, since the parts are old, they ve been paid for so long now and then the price reduced over the years..
simple logic