Forum is dead largely because the game is functionally dead. There's nothing coming for it of any real substance
This is not true. There is an active community, especially in Spain. If you join their Telegram group you will get overwhelmed. Apart from that there is an active Discord community which was on hold now a bit because of summer and vacations but we will restart the new season with a new tournament. Feel free to join it and enjoy a new season with very cool rules. If you check the Discord you will see that there is even a channel for custom stuff: Layouts for all HexaDomes, new character ideas, a TTS mat... And it is a boardgame. Even Aeon's End and others don't get stuff every month. With thousands of possible team combinations, many cool scenarios etc. you have plenty of stuff to experiment with and if you own all game material it is even better: You don't have to spend more money and can have hours and hours of fun. Plus, I encourage everybody to create own characters and scenarios, proxies and stuff.
That's nice and all but I'm not really talking about that, games need to be seen to have releases to give the impression of life. Don't have to look far into other game systems to see what happens when manufacturer support dries up. Players lose interest, events dry up, retail sales drop off, game eventually gets canned or mothballed pending a relaunch etc. Aristeia has come off a period of having "new stuff" regularly and is now in a dry patch. Without releases keeping it fresh, it will stagnate, its inevitable and happens to all systems left long enough without updates.
I'm not trying to be an arse or anything, I love aristeia and used to be a warcor (playing tonight actually) but TTS doesn't help grow the game as its not shifting boxed retail units, not selling minis, not selling custom mats etc. It's not visible to the gaming communities in stores that might pick it up if they see it being played etc. It's in a merry place for the die hards but you've got to recruit more players in to the game than you lose via the attrition rate of the die hards who move on to other things if you want it to survive. CB have sidelined aristeia for defiance and tag raid and may kill it in the process if they don't maintain the game and give it healthy love and development.
1) The biggest problem Aristeia! has was the Warcors approach on marketing and advertising it via OTT and only a few tabletop channels. I like to compare it to Super Fantasy Brawl, a game many people know about over here, but no one knows about Aristeia!. My suggestion is: CB tends to give big price support to tournaments, which is very nice, but not needed in my opinion. It would be cooler to see them sending some unique goodies like patches for every player rather than big boxes. Ship that boxes to boardgame YouTubers instead and go for additional promotion on those more popular channels. And apart from that, at a point in every products lifetime you have to pause or cancel it because of the lack of sales and waste of ressources and maybe reboot or expand it later. Maybe this is what CB needed the do. We don't know... 2) If you want a game to be visible, you have to be that guy in your LGS to promote it. It always have been this way. The problem for me right now is time. Otherwise I would give demos and "be there" in my LGS every week. Of course, a good official marketing campaign and a big brand helps. It is easier for SW or 40K fanboys to attract new players than for Infinity fans. 3) Maybe CB was too fast with their releases for Aristeia!. But the lack of new releases... does it mean you can't play the game or have fun with it? We got three new scenarios this year and will get another one. And more changes incoming plus two fan characters. I would not call that no support at all. Such content takes time as well. And CB who cares about their games - even their CEO mentions Aristeia! in an article about him as his favorite game right now - has limited ressources. So... be gentle with the Aristeia! team. And maybe take the opportunity, grab the new AGL5 rules next week and start a league in your LGS. Do a proxy (skin) contest, create a new scenario.... and so on. Just have fun with an awesome game!
I would argue the changes coming with AGL 5 are more impacfult and add more freshness to the game that any expansion could have.
For those "in the know" yeah, but doesn't have the same visibility as a physical product. @HarlequinOfDeath I know mate, I did several years on the warcor side. Warcors do what they do, and what they do is wargame with wargamers. We're not marketing trained folk. I built a scene, ran events and leagues etc. Enjoyed it. But now I'm a dad of 2 so retired my warcor status. I love the game and I know there's tons of depth in it, just a very hard sell vs bloodbowl where they get regular edition changes, team releases etc. Aristeia gets an updated competitive pack which is cool and all, but you need to be in a scene already for it to be useful. It doesn't put bums on seats or product on shelves.
Doesn't need necessarily need to be massive manufacturing effort either. Decks, dice, tactics, single aristo blister or whatever. All would be useful to show the game is still alive and kicking
@csjarrat I am a father as well... and I can afford to organize online events and do support for the community at the evenings. Being a whole day at a LGS is much harder and needs some goodwill of my family. And yes, we are not trained in marketing nor we get paid for it. It would have made life much easier with a proper marketing campaign for the game. But now we are here and have to do the best out of the situation. And even I feel sometimes stupid to post over and over again in FB boardgame groups and YT channels about the game but... yeah... I will never stop!
Shipping is so expensive from the US. Wish CB would sell it in their store like the Warsenal terrain... @Koni
I'd love to see some more skins for our Aristo's that don't yet have an alternate skin. It would be cool to be able to do some more stuff to support and help grow the community, I'm planning on putting more content on my YouTube channel as soon as I can and would love to work closer with the Aristeia team ;)