Happy New Year! With the arrival of 2019, it’s time for me to roll out my naval gaming predictions for the year. As with previous years, I’ll be making a total of 6 predictions, which I’ll then re-visit at the end of the year to see how I did. Here goes nothing!

Andy’s UCM San Francisco Class Cruiser (DFC)

Predictions

1. Warcradle Will Successfully Launch Dystopian Wars 3.0 This Year

Full disclosure here; this is a recycling of a prediction I made last year. However, I’m much more certain that Dystopian Wars will launch in 2019 than I was that it would launch in 2018. The Beta test for the new version of the rules has been proceeding well, and I’ve been encouraged by the degree to which Warcradle has  engaged with the community and incorporated feedback into rules tweaks. So, what might a 2019 schedule look like? Well, I suspect that we will see some significant previews in the first quarter of the year, probably culminating in March with some kind of significant showing at both GAMA 2019 and Adepticon, followed by Salute in April. I suspect that making those two shows will be critical to building some buzz for the game, though I wouldn’t be surprised to not see the full re-launch happen until Gencon in August. As for a definition of “success,” in this case I think we can take it to mean a generally positive response from wargaming media and players alike, as well as by strong sales as indicated by at least some of the product being difficult to find at retail immediately after release.

2. The Beta for Firestorm Armada will start in Q4 2019

Warcradle has gone on the record as stating that they want to try and time their releases so that only one product has the spotlight at a time. That’s a sound strategy, but given my assessment that a Dystopian Wars relaunch won’t happen until Q3 2019, it does logically mean that the open Beta for Firestorm Armada wont’ hit until Q4 (ie, October/November/December). This also happens to be roughly a year past the start of the Dystopian Wars open Beta, which makes a certain kind of sense to me.

3. Battlestar Galactica: Starship Battles Will Grow in Popularity

Ares’s new Battlestar Galactica game has been met with rave reviews, and the popularity of the Battlestar license seems to make its popularity in 2019 almost assured. There are a lot of possible expansions for the game, the first of which have already been announced. The continued growth of the game will depend on steady releases in my opinion, which has been a challenge for Ares in the past. Still, I find the prospects of eventually having larger models like the Galactica herself as a part of the game an exciting prospect, so this is definitely one of the game to watch in 2019!

4. Oak & Iron Will Ship On-time to Kickstarter Backers, and will Successfully Transition to Retail

Firelock Games’ new Age of Piracy naval combat game, Oak & Iron, was successfully Kickstarted in December 2018, and has a delivery date of October 2019. This is a risky prediction, as gaming Kickstater projects don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to meeting their goal dates! Still, I feel like there is still a reasonable chance that Oak & Iron will ship on schedule, for several reasons. First, while the campaign was successful, it wasn’t a massive run-away success. From my experience, too much success actually winds up being a detriment to the project delivering on time, since it dramatically increases its expected scale and complexity. Oak & Iron seems like it has hit a sweet spot where it did well enough to ensure the project is successful, but not so much that it collapses under its own wait (which is what I feel happened to Dropfleet Commander, for example). Second, Firelock Games has a good track record of project management and delivering on previous campaigns, experience which I think will help them navigate the shoals of completing this Kickstarter. As for the second part of the prediction, the transition to retail sale, I’ve mentioned in the past on the MBS Podcast that I think Kickstarter is a great way to get a new game funded, but more often than not will not help (or will even actively work against) a game making it to retail sale. Here again, though, Firelock has a proven track record with Blood & Plunder, which gives me hope for Oak & Iron.

5. Games Workshop Will Release A New Starship Combat Game in 2019

This is, again, a recycling of a prediction from previous years. I really think that 2019 is going to be the year that we see some kind of starship combat game from GW, though. In the last few years, the company has successfully revamped both Blood Bowl and Adeptus Titanicus, with both games seemingly having strong sales and a steady stream of new releases. Note that I’m stopping short of calling this a Battlefleet Gothic re-launch; based on how Adeptus Titanicus has been handled, and the few statements GW has made about its plans for a new starship combat game, it seems very likely that whatever ends up coming out will not look much like the Battlefleet Gothic of old.

6. World of Warships Legends Will Launch in 2019, and Boost World of Warships PC Numbers

WoWS Legends, the console version of WoWS, is gearing up for an imminent Beta test. I think that the game will be quite popular among many in the console gaming crowd who have been curious about WoWS, but weren’t interested in making the leap to PC in order to experience it. I also think that the greater exposure a console version of WoWS will bring will also give at least a little boost to the PC WoWS playerbase, which has been stagnant at best (at least for the North American server).

And there you have it! We will see  how I do at the end of the year. Until next time….