Well, okay, there is that, assuming it comes out. I think Gloomheaven having a good showing on Steam has a lot to do with that game. Journeys in the Dark is done. Questionable if there will even be reprints.

@Caimheul1313 Look, I had a similar discussion a couple of years ago when Netrunner got the axe. Too many people believed Hasbro didn't want to cash a check for the license renewal. Pretty clear it was Asmodee who didn't want to write a check for a game in decline. This has been happening for some time now. The physical game market had a big boom, followed by a bubble, a bubble that didn't burst but vanished 10 months ago. The trimming of the fat and consolidation was already taking place before then. Asmodee has a bunch of board game studios. Those will be consolidated. It's possible they will all be moved to Minneapolis but I doubt that is going to happen for many reasons. Most likely the FFG physical studio will be sold off and those titles put under the umbrella of a larger board game producer. I would say revisit this thread in a years time, but since we can't, pretty clear how this one is going to work out. Not happy about this at all either. Hope you work through the denial.

I think their focus going forward will be on evergreen titles. The brand may be there but the production is clearly winding down. Yes there are some titles that were developed and still coming out. I doubt you will see any of that a year from now. That Star Wars license is complicated. At one point in time Hasbro had exclusive rights to do board games. Who knows what the deal is now. Disney is all in on Star Wars now and merchandising is a huge component of that. Exactly who will be developing those games isn't clear at all. One would think FFG but FFG has been gutted. Safe bet is not them.

F

Asmodee is already a big board game company. Even before the big reshuffle they were shutting down the different IPs. Descent is done as is Android. That SW license is being reassigned. What is left, Arkham Horror? What happens when the current cycle is done? Is there a reason to keep that big FFG headquarters at all? I don't see it being open a year from now for anything. What is left can be reassigned. Sure they will keep the FFG brand on some things, but the people who built FFG are already gone. So yes, FFG is gone. Was great while it lasted.

Hate to say it, but the tale of FFG is coming to a close. Some great games they made for sure, including this one.

Thanks for the list of the remaining things that need to be moved and shuffled around. Seriously no need to keep such a big physical game studio going when they do not much anymore. They may keep the brand around a while for reprints of the old games but I wouldn't expect anything new to be produced under the FFG name a year from now.

Thanks to all those that shared their photos and painting tips in this forum. Really did enjoy them and of course thanks to Sorastro for showing all us IA players the way.

It's just part of the over all FFG shut down. Really sad too, cause FFG was amazing when they were still alive and active.

FFG is a hollow husk compared to 3 years ago. Been in decline for years and this year all but killed FFG. Pretty much all the people who made FFG - FFG are gone. Kinda hard for there to be news when there is no one left to write it. God bless corporatism.

Lando at courage 3 would be an auto include commander. As is ... just doesn't do enough on offense or command. I am not sure those other two command cards will change things or not. Maybe the contingencies cards would play well with an operative who's cards you want in the command deck but you need to play risky like Sabine or Luke.

There are so many good actual video games that table top games won't compete in that space. When things are full swing again in May people will go back. Being locked up inside isn't something people like.

Live viral vaccines is 20th century technology and certainly there is legacy vaccines like oral Polio that get used in 3rd world countries, but no, actual live virus is not used in new vaccines anymore. You may hear of adenoviral vaccines but that is not a true virus. While it is adapted from a virus, it does not contain a genome for adenovirus, cannot replicate in any fashion and only has a small part of COVID 19 so you will make antibodies to that small part of that virus. Unless there is contamination, there is nothing "alive" in the vaccines. Autoimmune conditions are tricky with anything, vaccines included. I don't know what the actual data on these vaccines with sarcoidosis currently stands. Do not go to your corner pharmacy for your vaccine. Go to an actual doctor and remind them of your condition. You may end up getting a recommended vaccine type, there are 3 currently, mRNA which is the one currently out, the adenoviral vector vaccines coming soon and recombinant vaccines, though I am not sure where those stand. Unless you are in a high risk group, such as the sarcoidosis got to your lungs, you may want to wait a bit for that data to come in and for there to be vaccine choices. That should happen in a few months time, so wait a bit means not long. There may be a dosing problem with those mRNA vaccines, although the anaphylactic issues weren't reported as far as I know in trials, so it could be a thawing/mixing training issue happening in the clinics right now. Those issues can be worked out. Anaphylaxis is a huge concern and I had that issue with my cat when he got his rabies vaccine. However, anaphylaxis is easier to handle than serious case of COVID 19. With that said, getting vaccinated at the grocery store pharmacy isn't the best way to go about it. Go some where with an actual nurse that is good at sticking people and trained to handle the vaccine. I am hoping to get the mRNA vaccine myself but yes, those require very special handling, i.e. training, that is difficult to implement. Most of us will be getting the adenoviral based vaccine. I went through that years ago. The liability insurance wanted all staff that worked with live animals to get a tetanus vaccine. The fact I was working with mice without an immune system, in a sterile environment devoid of rusty nails wasn't relevant. If I wanted to continue working I had to get the shot. I had no issues getting a free tetanus shot I was over due for anyways, it was just absurd it was mandatory because there was no scientific reason to have it done. Complete waste of money that could have been used else where. These types of things happen all the time. The system has a great deal of waste and money grabbers. Unless legislation is passed that removes liability for COVID infections from businesses, then yes, expect mandatory vaccinations for employment at many places. Their liability insurance will require it.

FYI, part of the Cares Act in the US was money to cover all health related expenses for COVID 19 infection. Nothing for unrelated health causes impacted by the pandemic. This is probably why the US is the leader in COVID cases. All other industrialize nations pretty much have universal health care and no financial incentive to cover COVID 19 more than any other health condition as all conditions are covered. The US health care system can sell COVID 19 to the government and the government will pay. All one has to do is let the PCR cycle several more times to get the positive result and cash out. It's a massive weakness in the US medical system, which in a normal year "only" has 3-10% of total cost being fraud, totaling hundreds of billions a year. It will be years before "what the **** just happened" is properly understood, including good estimates on fraud. People who are impacted the most from this or any other aliment are those that are old. There is no "stay young forever" diet. No need to shame people on diet or anything else.

The actual answer to your question isn't a political one but a biological one. Beta corona viruses are cold weather "common cold" viruses. In other words they hit during cold/flu season, typically late autumn, winter and early spring. This is best seen in Australia, who being in the southern hemisphere had their winter in June, July, and August and just got completely through their cold/flu season. Here is a pretty good graph showing this phenomena: Australia is much closer to the equator than the US or Europe, which sadly have much longer cold/flu seasons and that season has just begun. So yeah, we will all be able to get vaccinated just in time for summer. Between the vaccinations and that large fusing ball of hydrogen in the sky it's very unlikely Gencon will be unsafe to take place, anymore than any other year, "convention cough" is the norm, but I am not sure they will get the all clear in time. So I doubt Gencon will happen this year. I will say this, please do get vaccinated. It is important. Yes the vaccines were rushed, for good reason, but the technology behind them was actually developed in the 1990s for gene therapy and then adapted to vaccines. It is an "old tech" at this point. The underlining technology has been tested for vaccines for several other diseases, which is why there is high confidence in their safety. Even if you yourself are in a low risk group there are always immunocompromised people, such as cancer patients, where the vaccine will not do them any good directly.

Sorry for your lost. As a cancer biologist I had to explain to my own mother how my stepfather would actually die of pneumonia when he got lung cancer. Yes lung cancer does lead to pneumonia and death. It is a very difficult thing to deal with because you aren't just dealing with cancer, but all the infectious diseases one can get along with cancer, especially when chemo hits the immune system. This is why it is very important for people to understand infectious diseases. If you had a copy of his death certificate (assuming US here) you would see four boxes where causes of death are recorded. For my own stepfather that pasted from lung cancer it was sepsis, right lower lobe pneumonia, metastatic lung cancer, non segment myocardial infarction. What wasn't listed was COPD, diabetes, and kidney failure. When people get very sick, everything hits them sadly. The CDC does track people who die of cancer as cancer but they get more data than just that. So when someone who dies of lung cancer plus an infection, say COVID 19, it is tracked as both actually. That large number you see of all those deaths are rarely just COVID 19 as the sole cause of death. It is important to understand all the comorbidities that occur so the best supportive treatments can be given. People with cancer get treated for a multitude of things, not just the cancer. Again, sorry for your loss and I hope that explains how all this works a bit better and how these numbers are complied and reported. Our for profit media does a very piss poor job of explaining anything but an excellent job of propaganda, shaming and disgusting people so they watch more.

High blood sugar can cause you to crash your car. Death certificates in the US have 4 fields for filling the cause of death, ranked in order of most acute/dire plus an additional field for listing other co-morbidities. There are many people due to poor health that are one infection from death. A good example is cancer. Most people who die of cancer don't necessarily die of direct organ failure due to cancer. The usual killers are infection, drug toxicity or opium over dose. The stay in nursing homes is typically not long. They don't go there to be youthify and get out, they go there to die. They are hospice care for those with terminal geriatric conditions. They too are one infection from death. Death from "natural causes" or "died after a short illness" usually means they died from an infection any normal healthy person would otherwise survive. The great exception is generally some kind of infarction. So when you hear 160,000 people die of COPD each year in the US, many of them died from both COPD and infection. Rarely does just one thing get someone. It is usually a combination, like a tree, a car and high blood sugar. A small percentage of those COVID deaths are just the virus. Most deaths are from a combination of ailments including COVID. So when you hear about excess deaths this year and that number is smaller than COVID deaths and smaller still when accounting for the excess deaths not directly due to COVID, it is because a large portion of those COVID deaths were going to happen this year, no matter what. That is when you are dealing with a population of people of course. There are plenty of individuals one can point to and say, probably would have made it a few more years had they not got COVID. That is of course impossible to know for certain but plausible.

Actually influenza is a very homicidal virus. The numbers you get from the CDC or WHO are estimates because they just don't know. Massive wide spread testing for influenza is simply not a thing because it is not a big news story. There is no funding for wide spread testing. Also influenza is often the first in a series of respiratory infections and kills the same group of people other respiratory infections kills like COVID 19. This happens in populations which have been vaccinated against influenza. These types of infections are the leading cause of death of those under 5 years of age, which COVID19 itself is not much of a factor. The one lesson we need to learn from all of this is respiratory infections are bad, influenza is bad and should not be down played and people commonly die of respiratory infections. Sweden which is just now starting to lock down and mandate masks, is on track to have a record death toll this year, by about 1-3% above average. So when you see these news stories about people dying of respiratory infections, everyone should know this happens every single year. This year we will see a slight up tick in deaths and many of those excess deaths won't be from COVID 19 itself.

We have to accept that all news these days is propaganda, either to serve a corporate interest, a political interest, or simply evangelizing their audience. Even people working at PBS have to tell their viewership what they want to hear if they expect "viewers like you" to continue to pay their pay checks. With that said, not every news story is a lie but its existence was paid for by someone. Figuring out who paid for the story can be hard to do, but when possible, does allow one to know why that story is present and if the information is accurate. Wikipedia falls to those same economic realities and who pays for the fact check and references is important to understanding the validity of any source, including Wikipedia.

Disease and vaccine dependent for sure. Vaccines, despite any past problems, have been the modern medical miracle. In this situation, high risk groups really do need the vaccine, no mater how rushed it may seem. Vaccines are a very mature technology at this point and they are not as rushed at they may seem. Getting an actual disease is what should be considered shaky as organic exposure kills many orders of magnitude higher than adverse events from vaccines. Vaccines are so good people have forgotten how bad diseases can be, COVID19 not actually being one of the bad ones. I can see someone young and healthy passing on being vaccinated but anyone with the slightest risk and those in contact with people who are immunocompromised do need to get vaccinated.

Yes, the best of two available methods of achieving that.

I keep hearing people say "wear a mask". I haven't heard anyone say "clean your mask". I have seen no guidance on how many times per 8 hour shift a worker should disinfect a mask or change into a clean one. I have seen no educational materials teaching people to not touch their mask. Having a germ ridden rag across one's face won't stop viral spread. PPE requires training and compliance with said training. Sterile technique is not trivial to perform. At this point the mask thing has become so political there is little hope to actually educate anyone on how to make them effective. Also known, masks when used properly slow the spread, not stop the spread. Simply wearing a mask won't make a virus go away. Vaccines or herd immunity does that. The myth that if everyone would just wear a mask this whole thing would go away is just that, a myth. It helps slow the spread when properly used. Here is a honest interview of Dr. Anthony Fauci on this topic for those in need of more information. Hoping wide spread vaccination happens soon and gencon happens in 2021.

Hope that continues

Meanwhile FFG is laying off employees left and right. Yeah, they have no interest or desire to control OP kits. In fact, at this point, I am not sure they are even going to do OP kits anymore.