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Or if there is, I haven't heard of it. The IP is huge, and there's a massive potential for models, with all the ones from the films of course, but also huge scope for expantion in the extended universe. There is also a mixture of hero units and troop units, some tanks, skimmers, and the potentially pretty cool game mechanics of jedi/the force, with the light side and the dark side etc.

How come GW have never tried this? I don't see why LucasArts would say no given GW's decent handling of the LOTR range (I think the Hobbit range flopped mainly because the films didn't lend themselves as well to a skirmish game as LOTR does. The Hobbit films are also a lot less popular than the LOTR was). It's not like they don't already licence themselves out for toys, sweets etc.

There was, it was a clix game.

That said, for certain IPs, traditional miniature games are considered too much of a niche hobby product, with low profit potential for people to even consider it.

If we ever get a star wars ground based miniature game, it will be very much like X-Wing, where it has a pre-painted miniatures and a lot of boardgame style mechanics to appeal to a bigger boardgaming audience.

This will be like Christmas to you:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=174

Many, many years ago West End Games had a Star Wars miniatures game. It didn't do very well (I believe it was quite expensive, and the miniatures weren't particularly good even by '90s standards. No idea what the gameplay was like) and was soon dumped.

More recently, WotC did a pre-painted, collectible miniatures game that did gang-busters for a few years before they decided to not renew the license in order to refocus on their core brands (MtG and D&D). Despite some rather variable quality in the miniatures, this game was good for what it was (which was essentially a TCG with miniatures).

There were many expectations raised when it was announced that FFG had a license to do Star Wars miniatures games, but we're all still waiting to see if a ground-based minis game eventuates or if they are only interested in the ship side of things.

Have been several.

GW actually gave it a go back in the 1980s (you can find pictures of some of the test Storm Troopers...).

They produced a fairly long running series during the D6 Star Wars RPG era under WEG. WEG might have well continued producing the game till now were it not for mismanagement of the company at the top. When they went bankrupt - the license was revoked and later moved to WotC.

There were Clix as mentioned.

The issue with big licenses is they are complicated to manage. Most companies, while they like the idea are not set up to manage those big licenses - and generally once they come up for renewal, the negotiations and what not that need to go into it make the license not worth the effort.

I remember I used to play one a good 8 or 9 years ago. Prepained minis and boardgame like mechanics, no idea what company produced it. It wasn't that great.

I had a massive AT-AT though, that was pretty cool.

KommissarKarl wrote:
Or if there is, I haven't heard of it. The IP is huge, and there's a massive potential for models, with all the ones from the films of course, but also huge scope for expantion in the extended universe. There is also a mixture of hero units and troop units, some tanks, skimmers, and the potentially pretty cool game mechanics of jedi/the force, with the light side and the dark side etc.

How come GW have never tried this? I don't see why LucasArts would say no given GW's decent handling of the LOTR range (I think the Hobbit range flopped mainly because the films didn't lend themselves as well to a skirmish game as LOTR does. The Hobbit films are also a lot less popular than the LOTR was). It's not like they don't already licence themselves out for toys, sweets etc.

Its the little issue of George Lucas's obsession with keeping the marketing rights.

The prepainted market is still pretty strong, even if they stopped making figures like 456, the stormtrooper in the back, third from the right.

Look here to wet your pants.

http://www.rpgminiatures.com/acatalog/Star_Wars_Miniatures.html


They tried the short lived ship game, but FFG is doing it 110% better with no backwards leaning.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=174&enmi=X-Wing

WOTC.... look.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/24627/star-wars-miniatures-starship-battles

GW getting hold of Star Wars? No. They couldn't afford it with their current trend, and Between GW and George Lucas, it would turn into an E peen contest rater quickly.

I would be much more interested in a star wars tabletop game based around ground battle with miniatures you could assemble yourself. The most fun part for me is putting stuff together and the sense of accomplishment that comes with having a great looking army that started as grey plastic on sprues. That's why I haven't gotten into X wing despite being a huge star wars nerd and a sucker for strategy games.

West End Games had a proper tabletop miniatures battle game. It's biggest strength was that it was easy to convert anything from WEG's massively popular STAR WARS RPG. The miniature were 25mm metal, and decently sclupted. The game was really more of a way for the RPG players to manage large scale conflicts with miniatures, and was defintely weighted toward narrative over competitive play.

In any case, WEG lost their Sta Wars license before Episode I hit, and WOTC picked it up.

WOTC was expereincing success with their prepained, randomly packed, D&D miniatures game, and pushed out a Star Wars miniatures game loosley based on it's Star Wars D20 RPG. They released 20 sets over 6 years and chose not to renew the license after 2010.

The WOTC game was intended to be played on pre-printed gridded maps, of which they produced nearly 20.

Fantasy Flight Games now produces the X-Wing Game, which features larger, prepainted models, and starship skirmishes. X-Wing is quite popular at the moment.

There was, it was a clix game.

There has never been an official "Clix" game with the Star Wars License.
Mage Knight spawned , Actionclix(Halo), Sportsclix(MLB), Horrorclix, Mechwarrior, and HeroClix.
Heroclix was originaly only in 3 flavors DC, Marvel, and Indy.
Heroclix was sold to NECA who now produces small short run sets of heroclix under Various IPs, none of them Star Wars
Mage Knight has recently been revived, but now hindered with a limited model selection and greater price per model, has not lived up to it's previous glory

Sometimes people assume that blind booster pre-painted minis are all "clix" games.

I have and continue to see people mistakenly ID the pre-painted WOTC minis as being "clix" type figures.

They aren't. It's easy enough to tell by their bases. The clix bases are very wide with grooves and a dial in them and a window for the stats to develop in. A non-clix figure just has a plain black base.

WOTC Wizards of the Coast is not Wizkids. Two totally separate and unrelated companies.

All that said and done, I would probably go bankrupt if GW were to drop the LOTR license and pick up the Star Wars one, when the new movies hit.

If they made them the same scale as 40K it would be like printing money.

There is about as much chance of the current GW picking up that kind of license as there is of watching the MTV dance channel for 1 hour and not seeing a northern European with extremely close cropped white hair and an earring - i.e. zero

Weren't there rumours that FFG were working on a tabletop board game?

Okay, it was defintely wishlisting, but being to field Imperial Stormtroopers as you know Imperial Stormtroopers would be too meta to pass up.

I'd rather see a characterful skirmish game like Malifaux full of scoundrels, rogues and interesting characters. I want my female Twi-lek bounty hunter!

Also/or
A Star Wars capital ship game encompasing ships from Clone Wars and Rebellion era.

But that's all wishlisting.

I think our best chance to see an amazing Star Wars game would be if Knights Models picked up the license again and created a fantastic rule set like theyve done with the Batman Miniatures game. their sculpts are really good and have some really solid rules.

With them focusing on BMG and late this year/early next year realeasing both a hardcopy batman rulebook as well as beta pdf rules for the marvel miniatures I cant see that happening though.

One can dream :-)

erratyk wrote:
I think our best chance to see an amazing Star Wars game would be if Knights Models picked up the license again and created a fantastic rule set like theyve done with the Batman Miniatures game. their sculpts are really good and have some really solid rules.

With them focusing on BMG and late this year/early next year realeasing both a hardcopy batman rulebook as well as beta pdf rules for the marvel miniatures I cant see that happening though.

One can dream :-)

A real Marvel miniatures game I'd be all over! ( I don't like Hero-clix.)

As noted above:



I know I had this, wonder if it's still in the loft somewhere.

What is the possibility of Fantasy Flight releasing a Star Wars miniatures game? They've proven themselves via the X-Wing game and a miniatures game will let Fantasy Flight move into a higher level of business.

(IMHO: this, not 3D printing, is the major near term threat to GW.)

I mentioned that a few posts up - read somewhere a while ago that there were rumours, but don't know if that was indeed just wishlisting or there was something more concrete behind it.

Certainly, I think if it were handled in a similar fashion to X-Wing (stock levels notwithstanding!) it would be an absolute gold mine.

A few years ago, Battlefront did an April Fool's gag where they listed a few things, one of which was true and the rest of which were false. One of the false ones was a Star Wars licensed Flames of War game, which I would have surely dumped an obscene amount of time and money into.

Thing is, Star Wars is mostly about individual heroes, or spacecraft battles. Although the movies have ground battles (in fact, all of them except the first one), most of them are not really memorable and some are downright reviled as amongst the low points of the franchise. Hey, anyone want to collect an Ewok or Gungan army?

Some kind of skirmish game, or Space Hulk style boardgame, might go over well.

 Pacific wrote:
I mentioned that a few posts up - read somewhere a while ago that there were rumours, but don't know if that was indeed just wishlisting or there was something more concrete behind it.

Certainly, I think if it were handled in a similar fashion to X-Wing (stock levels notwithstanding!) it would be an absolute gold mine.

If there's still an issue with X-Wing stock levels, I've yet to see it. Maybe the Southern USA is just a better place to shop.

Either that, or us Americans are just stealing all the RoW shipments.

Shameless self-plug, but in my sig there's a link to a simple SW RPG I made, based on d20 mechanics. Might be of interest to some folks here.

On topic, I'd love a Star Wars 28mm game. Even better, Mantic get the license and it catapults them into the big league alongside GW and PP.

Personally I can see some sort of land battle game..

I can see a FoW-esque game with mass battles such as the Battle of Hoth and Genosis..

And I can also see a Skirmish game as well..

But I cant see a Tabletop wargame in the scale of 40k-esque, it would be too much I think, or you have to be really careful in balance imo..

To me I like the land battles compared to the ship combat but I think I am bias towards that (give me a lightsaber over a YT-1000 any day) I didn't really enjoy the ship battle that much hence why I really, really hope I see a tabletop mass battle or skirmish from FF, would love a republic army, or a Mandalorian one..

Backfire wrote:
Hey, anyone want to collect an Ewok or Gungan army?.

Uh... yes?

There have been several over the years but non have really been successful with the exception of X-Wing miniatures.

 adamsouza wrote:
Okay, it was defintely wishlisting, but being to field Imperial Stormtroopers as you know Imperial Stormtroopers would be too meta to pass up.

Dreamforge Eisenkern storm troopers look perfect for the role. They are the love child of Star Wars and WW2, raised by a cuckholded 40k who believes them to be his own.

 Paradigm wrote:
Even better, Mantic get the license and it catapults them into the big league alongside GW and PP.

Ugh, that'd be worse than no Star Wars game. Mantic makes fugly models and I hate their platoon scale rules something fierce.

DrRansom wrote:
What is the possibility of Fantasy Flight releasing a Star Wars miniatures game? They've proven themselves via the X-Wing game and a miniatures game will let Fantasy Flight move into a higher level of business.

(IMHO: this, not 3D printing, is the major near term threat to GW.)

I heard down the grapevine that when FFG got hold of the SW license, there was actually a plan for this. There were models sculpted, rules, etc. But then Games Workshop said that if FFG produced a 28mm Star Wars game, they'd immediately withdraw all licenses for anything Games Workshop related. As that's where a large bulk of FFG's finances come from, they had to back down, and opted to release a game that was no direct competition to 40K instead (namely, X-Wing).

I think 10mm could be the magic scale for SW, small enough in scale for the likes of the Battle Of Hoth to be feasible on a sensibly sized table, but one where it would still be possible to have individual heroes represented and include rules for their influence.