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There's some rather nice cards in the Tie/I booster at least, though. Of course, not an issue if you're printing cards

 AegisGrimm wrote:
That's true. It's game development, but very little model development, other than setting up a plan for the new paint scheme intsead of the standard.

And as I'm just barely getting into the game, I will probably wait to get an Interceptor or two and just get the Aces pack instead, as the paint jobs are really great on top of everything else.

I still want my Headhunters and Assault gunboats, though!

Well, you'll still want one Interceptor for the upgrades, pilots, etc... allowing you the fly the repaints as their new options, or standard ones. Tie Int are just soooo good and you'll likely get some use out of having the one sole extra...

Meanwhile, just when it pulled me out, it sucked me back in.... Last night, after spending a whole day playing WM/H at the FLGS with a big group, I had to buy something (I won't spent 8hrs at a game store taking up space without supporting them...), so I casually picked up a B-wing and a Tie Bomber.... silly me though.... now I don't have core sets and can't play..... or my wave 1 ships, etc..... ;-) Guess i'll just have to remedy that.

Luckily I sold my whole collection for maybe 30% OVER retail.... and can now buy 'em discounted, meaning Wave 3 will just end up being free in the long run. :-p

Unfortunately I am trying to play the game for as little cost as possible. Right now I have a core set and a TIE advanced, and I bulked out my fleets to 75pts each with two micromachine X-wings (same exact scale, but less detail), and a single TIE fighter. I photocopied the generic pilots and dials for each fleet and printed them on illustration board, and made some proxy bases to put them on. I see I have to copy some of the equipment too (two more copies of proton torpedoes to outfit all three X-wings, etc)

There is a fan-made Z95 expansion online that is very high quality, so after printing the cards and dials out and making some quick conversions from ERTL models kits I have, I can field four of them. So for the balance I think I am going to get another Imperial ship to make each force 100pts. Of course until they get reprinted, a core set on amazon is as much as a TIE.....

The real bummer of the game is the need-to-buy of the expansions for all the cards that are available. Luckily I don't play in tournies, so if I am sub par versus what's currently available, it's not that big a deal. I may be able to get a buddy into the game, so anything he gets that I don;t have I can make copies of, and vice versa.

The only proxy model I have right now that is hard to field in friendly games is the YT-300 as a generic ship (also an ancient ERTL model that is 1/270), as I can't get ahold of many card images to make them until I (eventually) get a Falcon box set.

 Manchu wrote:

Well it's expensive compared to what? You say 40k is not a good comparison. Fine. But neither is the WotC SW miniatures game. I would call it misdirection to say that the second comparison is any more valid than the first.

Why?
The same licence (so licence fees would be broadly similar). Prepainted figures that come with their gameplay cards.

What this comes down to is what each individual is willing to spend, so I'm not sure that calling the miniatures expensive is valid. Perhaps a better point would be "I can't afford them" or "I am not willing to spend money on them." Or even, as you originally pointed out, maybe you're not satisfied by the fact that it costs more in Australia than the US, For my part, when I think of the quality of the components, how easy it is to start gaming, the availability of opponents, and the depth of the rules, the MSRP doesn't add up to expensive for me -- and the internet retail prices certainly aren't.

But.. I can afford them and I am willing to spend money on them - so neither of those points work for me. It just happens that I also recognise that they are expensive, for singular little wargaming spaceships. Unfortunately, I've bought all of mine so far from the US and UK, which is the sum effect of the local pricing - and not really an exclusive issue to this game. It's not an expensive game to play or to get into, due to the small number of figures required. At the same time the costs per "figure" aren't cheap. Which is the original point I was making when someone claimed the ships are cheap by comparing them to a space marine captain.

I guess for some folks, 40k isn't "expensive" either. For me, 40k is definitely expensive. It costs more money and time to start playing. I would say that's a totally objective point and I haven't seen anyone convincingly contradict it. On the other hand, 40k is a totally different game/hobby.

40k is also expensive. As you say, it's a very different game which contains a totally different hobby emphasis. Hence it being an irrelevant example.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hulksmash wrote:
Yeah, he can probably make any possible list:

4 X-Wings - $80 (1/2 of 4 Starters)
5 Y-Wings - $75
4 A-Wings - $60
4 B-Wings (not sure, could be 3) - $45-$60
3 Falcons - $90
8 Tie Fighters - $80 (1/2 of 4 Starters)
5 Tie Interceptors - $75
5 Tie Advanced - $75
5 Tie Bombers (Not sure if they are under 20pts or not)- $75
3 Fire Sprays - $90

So all totalled up not including all of wave 4 or wanting to play bigger games and you've got a total of $745 - $760. And if you wanna play bigger games then it it gets crazier.

I was looking at getting 4x of the Interceptors, and probably 2 more Advanced (Vader's bodyguard) and 2 of the bombers. I was also going to settle for 2 Ys and Bs. Any specific reason to have 5 of each of these? (and 3/4 of the Bs)

 AegisGrimm wrote:

-There is a cheap model kit out there that is within about 10% of the scale of the Millennium Falcon, so I can paint up a generic transport (to fill an idea for a pirate squadron) and field two ships at a time from one box.

Link?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
It would only be for Headhunters, because I haven't heard anything about FFG having any thoughts on making them, and they bring back tons of X-wing VS. TIE Fighter nostalgia. I don't have any experience with Shapeways, but the price I quoted is for the best quality plastic option (not the super cheap flexible plastic option). Supposedly people are pleased with stuff in that material. I thought about buying a single ship just to try out the service.

There are some really quite close-in-scale Firesprays in the Micro Machines/Titaniums range from a few years ago out there. I found I have 2 that are just a fraction smaller then the one in the Firespray box. The X-Wings, TIEs, As and Ys are all too big, and the Falcons are way too small. I haven't been able to find my stuff from the last space battles game from WotC, to compare those.

Stuff like the Blockade Runner and the.. um.. ...red blockade runner from the start of AotC are very out of scale but kinda work as "Shuttles" etc for the escort quests.

I really can't see how people can call this expensive, but then I'm jaded thanks to GWs policy of screwing Australia.
I've bought 100 points of imperials and 100 of rebels for less than a battleforce costs over here so that seems like amazing value to me.
sure when you break it down $20 for 1 ship isn't great but $30 for a finecast character is just plain bad.

 AegisGrimm wrote:

-There is a cheap model kit out there that is within about 10% of the scale of the Millennium Falcon, so I can paint up a generic transport (to fill an idea for a pirate squadron) and field two ships at a time from one box.

Link?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
It would only be for Headhunters, because I haven't heard anything about FFG having any thoughts on making them, and they bring back tons of X-wing VS. TIE Fighter nostalgia. I don't have any experience with Shapeways, but the price I quoted is for the best quality plastic option (not the super cheap flexible plastic option). Supposedly people are pleased with stuff in that material. I thought about buying a single ship just to try out the service.

Ah...I don't have a link for the model kit. I know there is a Revell Snap-together that is too small, at only 4 5/16" long. I know the one in particular I am using is from an ancient (about 20 years old) ERTL scenery kit of the Hoth Rebel base, that came with some really low-detailed X-wings that have their s-foils closed (and they are so thin they look like one wing, not two closed together) so I am making them into Z-95's, albeit sub-par ones.

This is a comparison I found of the kit I have and the FFG Falcon (the middle is FFG, right is ERTL kit) The scale is close enough for friendly games.




These are the X-wings from the same kit I am converting using this guy's process:
http://goblinhall.com/2013/02/26/z-95-headhunters-part-i/

I may even invest in a Shapeways Z-95, as I can find some for 5-8 dollars in the decently detailed material so buying one would be a cheap way to see if I like them compared to what some people have said about Shapeways.

 Azazelx wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

Well it's expensive compared to what? You say 40k is not a good comparison. Fine. But neither is the WotC SW miniatures game. I would call it misdirection to say that the second comparison is any more valid than the first.

Why?
The same licence (so licence fees would be broadly similar). Prepainted figures that come with their gameplay cards.

The games are at different scales, have completely different manufacturing and distribution models, have vastly different standards of quality in terms of the materials used in the miniatures and the components, and there is little to no focus on components in one and a great deal of focus on components in the other.

 Manchu wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

Well it's expensive compared to what? You say 40k is not a good comparison. Fine. But neither is the WotC SW miniatures game. I would call it misdirection to say that the second comparison is any more valid than the first.

Why?
The same licence (so licence fees would be broadly similar). Prepainted figures that come with their gameplay cards.

The games are at different scales, have completely different manufacturing and distribution models, have vastly different standards of quality in terms of the materials used in the miniatures and the components, and there is little to no focus on components in one and a great deal of focus on components in the other.

It's still apples to apples. Even if GW is a larger scale game, you can still compare the prices. Compare price per mini, as was said before, GW is still more expensive.

To get into 40K, you need the rule book. So you either pay $100 for it, or spend $120 and get the starter set. What is the starter set for X-wing? $45? Then price per mini, $30 or so for a GW mini, Finecast which most are individual, still have to take off the spure, still have to put together, and still have to paint. So it costs more to get cutting tools, glue, brushes and paint. Then time. X-wing. $15, a bit smaller, but you get a bunch of cards, DON'T have to take off sprue, DON'T have to put together (ok a bit of it, a dial and 2 pegs on a stand) and you DON'T have to glue and paint it. Ok take a $30 X-wing mini. So still paying the same at the store, but again, no glue, paint brushes etc, still cheaper to play.

So to me, per mini X-Wing is so much cheaper than 40K.

You're not arguing with me, davor.

 Manchu wrote:
You're not arguing with me, davor.

no I am not. Reread posts after after and I thought of something else. Long day yesterday no idea what I ment. Sorry.

No prob dude, it's been a convoluted thread recently.

yeah,

 MajorTom11 wrote:
Shapeways is terrible and grainy, I wouldn't put too much stock in that. Paying 10 bucks for a shapeways ship that is 20X worse quality than the 15 dollar FFG ship is not worth it in my opinion...

I've seen photos of some shapeways, I figured the low end material is grainy and that people havn't bothered to clean up..


So this month I figured I'd pop my shapeways cherry and ordered the senators shuttle by TOPO.
I bought the high quality ultra detail material which costs twice as much.
Here's what I got. No clean up done at all.


I plan on completeing the models under side. fixing the engines and detailing the surface.
Then resin casting myself a few so I can have a fleet of shuttles.

Also out there on the internets in this blog by catomighty??. A Lambda has died...

Looks great!

Panic...

I don't know whether to be amused or not that those models have been quite hard to get hold of, and then someone has got one, broken it into bits and posted pics online

yeah,
His blog is linked to above the photo, I fix'd the link.
I get the impression that he was attempting to open it up and fix the wings problem.
But was causing more damage than he was fixing... and then went full hog and blasted it!.

I understand the anger about wave 3 being again in short supply, but 5 bits of ace terrain for £20.
That's a good price! I'm tempted myself!

Panic...

 Manchu wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

Well it's expensive compared to what? You say 40k is not a good comparison. Fine. But neither is the WotC SW miniatures game. I would call it misdirection to say that the second comparison is any more valid than the first.

Why?
The same licence (so licence fees would be broadly similar). Prepainted figures that come with their gameplay cards.

The games are at different scales, have completely different manufacturing and distribution models, have vastly different standards of quality in terms of the materials used in the miniatures and the components, and there is little to no focus on components in one and a great deal of focus on components in the other.

Scale? Bloody hell, your arguments here are becoming ridiculous. Scale doesn't mean a thing. Using that logic, you disqualify the Star Trek Game, Wings of War, et al. In fact, following your argument to it's logical extreme, you can say that the Star Wars game is a unique and special snowflake that cannot under any circumstances be compared to anything. Or do you mean scale in terms of numbers of models? In which case, you're again deliberately being obtuse and either ignoring the argument being made or trying to take it down a different red herring tangent - as you attempted to in your last post when you tried to imply that I either couldn't afford to play the game, or wasn't willing to pay the asking prices. Sorry mate.

Davor wrote:

It's still apples to apples. Even if GW is a larger scale game, you can still compare the prices. Compare price per mini, as was said before, GW is still more expensive.

To get into 40K, you need the rule book. So you either pay $100 for it, or spend $120 and get the starter set. What is the starter set for X-wing? $45? Then price per mini, $30 or so for a GW mini, Finecast which most are individual, still have to take off the spure, still have to put together, and still have to paint. So it costs more to get cutting tools, glue, brushes and paint. Then time. X-wing. $15, a bit smaller, but you get a bunch of cards, DON'T have to take off sprue, DON'T have to put together (ok a bit of it, a dial and 2 pegs on a stand) and you DON'T have to glue and paint it. Ok take a $30 X-wing mini. So still paying the same at the store, but again, no glue, paint brushes etc, still cheaper to play.

So to me, per mini X-Wing is so much cheaper than 40K.

Stupid, cherry-picked arguments can be turned on their head quite easily.
How many figures do you get in an X-Wing starter? 3.
How many in the 40k starter box? 48.
How many in the WFB starter box? 74.
Why choose the most expensive finecast figures as your comparatives when I could argue just as easily that it should be a Skaven clanrat? ($1.75 ea).
Bitching about glue, paint and assembly? As I said, it's a different genre of game. I bet I could get plenty of glue and paint to go with my 74 Island of Blood figures for well less than you could buy 74 X-Wing ships for.

See what I did there? I turned your argument on its head. Perhaps you should stay away from traditional miniatures games if you dislike glue and paint. There's plenty of great boardgames out there where assembly and doesn't factor in at all, and painting is entirely optional.

I don't refute that X-Wing is cheaper and easier to get into than many other games. If you want to argue that it's a cheap price per mini, then you're simply deluding yourself via cherry-picking.


Now you can leave it be - agree to disagree - or you can keep arguing.

 Pacific wrote:
I don't know whether to be amused or not that those models have been quite hard to get hold of, and then someone has got one, broken it into bits and posted pics online

Have they been hard to get ahold of? My local store might be the cause of that...I picked one up 25% off today because they accidentally ended up ordering 20 more for the store than they'd intended to.

Hmmm, haven't bothered to total up how much I've spent on this game so far....let's see how much I've spent so far

What I have on-hand right now:

2 core ($80)
2 X-Wing Boosters ($30)
4 TIE Boosters ($60)
3 Y-Wing Boosters ($45)
2 TIE advanced ($30)
4 A-Wings ($60)
4 Interceptors ($60)
2 Falcons ($60)
2 Firesprays ($60)
2 B-Wings, 2 Bombers, 2 HWK-290 & 1 Lambda ($105 due to pre-ordering)
1 Lambda ($30)
Acrylic Templates from CorSec Engineering ($28)
Game Mat ($40)
Plastic Box for Tokens ($3 - yay for Bass Pro Shops)
Pluck Foam Trays for my Army Transporter ($15)

Total: $706

Pre-ordered or bought online and waiting for delivery:

4 Imperial Aces boxed sets ($96 due to pre-ordering)
Acrylic Tokens from Litko ($71)

Total: $167

Planned purchases:

2 Bombers ($60)
Acrylic Templates from CorSec Engineering ($28)
Acrylic Tokens from Applied Perspectives ($20)
P.A.C.K. 432 with custom loadout ($145)

Total: $253

Grand Total: $1126

No sir, I'm not addicted to X-Wing, not at all.

In all seriousness however, if you're able to spread out purchases over time, it doesn't hurt the wallet that much. The game has been out for little over a year and what I've spent on it is less than $100 a month. I know people who spend more than $100 a month on coffee in the morning so I don't feel so bad about spending this much money for a game I enjoy playing. Hell I've spent WAY more for my Necron army over the years than I have for X-Wing.

Azazelx & Manchu - as much as I like you guys, this relentless tête-à-tête has started clogging up multiple threads now. Think you both need to meet at dawn, single shot pistol, Alpharius as umpire, and then make a gentleman's agreement to be done with it afterwards.

 Zefig wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
I don't know whether to be amused or not that those models have been quite hard to get hold of, and then someone has got one, broken it into bits and posted pics online

Have they been hard to get ahold of? My local store might be the cause of that...I picked one up 25% off today because they accidentally ended up ordering 20 more for the store than they'd intended to.

In the UK at least Tie Bombers are an absolute nightmare to get hold of; just about managed to get one from ebay but most of the shops are sold out, even some of the more obscure ones about 12 pages into a google search! Stuff like the Y-Wing you can forget buying, last look the ebay sharks had them for £25 each (bidding auctions).

UK stockist with Tie Bombers in stock (plus other X-wing stuff)

http://www.thediceshoponline.com/dice/7175/X-Wing-Miniatures-TIE-Bomber-Expansion-Pack

 Azazelx wrote:
Scale doesn't mean a thing.

If you insist on being spoon fed, by all means open wide. Scale is not just a matter of relative size; the word also indicates something about design. This isn't just a matter of rules, either. Production design is also a matter of scale. Blind buy boxes mixing similarly-sized fighters and capital ships is pretty different. Moreover, just in terms of phsyical size, larger models -- especially when made of higher quality materials, at a better level of detail, with better paint jobs -- will cost more than smaller ones -- especially ones made of bent soft plastic blobbed with shiny paint. So while X-Wing miniatures may cost more than WotC's happy meal toys, that's not really the same as saying they're more expensive; at least not in the sense of an adequate comparison. A valid comparison can certainly be made. It just can't prove the point you're trying to sell. And by that same token, a valid comparison to 40k can also be made.

On the topic of ships being hard to find, what keeps people from pre-ordering them? I mean, besides poor planning or idiosyncratic money issues (since you presumably have the money now). Do you guys just want to buy them from the LGS or what?

 Panic wrote:
yeah,

 MajorTom11 wrote:
Shapeways is terrible and grainy, I wouldn't put too much stock in that. Paying 10 bucks for a shapeways ship that is 20X worse quality than the 15 dollar FFG ship is not worth it in my opinion...

I've seen photos of some shapeways, I figured the low end material is grainy and that people havn't bothered to clean up..

Spoiler:

So this month I figured I'd pop my shapeways cherry and ordered the senators shuttle by TOPO.
I bought the high quality ultra detail material which costs twice as much.
Here's what I got. No clean up done at all.


I plan on completeing the models under side. fixing the engines and detailing the surface.
Then resin casting myself a few so I can have a fleet of shuttles.

Also out there on the internets in this blog by catomighty??. A Lambda has died...

Looks great!

Panic...

All of the above is So Very Cool, thanks for posting it

I think I can print out some pretty decent ships with my Form 1, it seems pretty similar to Shapeways' frosted ultra detail. Woot

I'll be looking for unique ships rather than SW ones to try, though. Point me towards them if you know of any!

What do you mean by "unique ships"?

Non-Star-Wars designs, just sweet scifi models.

I printed this recently:



It's a single-pilot ship from the old computer game Descent, but I'd like to have some that are not single-pilot that I could print out bigger.

You can see that that one is several times the size of what it would need to be to look to-scale with a fantasy flight X-wing model. I could print it a lot smaller without the gun barrels, but narrow features like that won't come out on my printer at a scale much smaller than what you see above- the barrels would have to be added later (the diameter of the gun barrels on the X-wing models is silly-small!).

So you want to print these for play with X-Wing minis?

Right now I'm just playing around with the printer to see what's possible. There's been a lot of talk, as Panic posted, that 3D printing isn't yet useful for this kind of thing. While there are big limitations (the gun barrels) I actually think it could be Very useful!

Xia, a board game with ships that will be molded, is going to release three ship models for folks to 3D print and use with their game. I'll spoiler the below soas not to go too far OT:


Likewise, the applications for this game are pretty vast:

-Printing modifications to ships to create variants not-yet-released
-Printing ship debris instead of destroynig your own Lambda shuttle as above
-Printing ship designs for alien races and the like not yet encountered, etc...

The possibilities for application in a game like this are pretty extensive, imo, for those who like to mod games!

 RiTides wrote:
The possibilities for application in a game like this are pretty extensive, imo!

Yep, Shapeways has been loaded with SW designs for a while now.

http://the-white-tiger.deviantart.com/gallery/


might make a good board.

That's the wave 5 release.

INb4 MT11 brings up an issue with the scale and playability!

well technically a to scale star destroyer would be close to 22 feet i believe