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It's looking like the TIE Striker and U-Wing are both built for planet side operations more so then space. And a lot of the artwork seems to support that as well, that while both seem capable of being in space, their bread and butter usage looks to be in an atmosphere, especially IIRC the U-Wing is a troop transport/dropship. So that makes me wonder if we'll get some of the cool airspeeder crafter like the Snowspeeder and V-Wing in an expansion soon. Along with atmosphere based dogfighting rules.

Probably not, what sets the Striker and U-Wing apart from speeders is that even though they are great for planetary work... they still have the capabilities to operate in space, giving FFG a new ship to sell for X-Wing.

Not likely, for two reasons:

1) Making an expansion that isn't compatible with the main game only divides the community and wastes a release slot on a product which won't sell as well as something for the main game.

2) The only difference between the current game and atmospheric combat would be adding terrain and altitude, which would require major changes to the core rules. At that point you have a different game with only superficial similarities to X-Wing, not an expansion.

Don't see this happening. That said, I would love to see a ground-combat system introduced (to the scale of X-wing), to cover stuff that doesn't do space combat (AT-AT's, Speeders, etc.), but which are to big for Imperial Assault. Reason I say "X-wing Scale" is so that stats could be introduced for space fighters to be added.

This would be good - apart from anything else, there are a fair number of existing 1:300 / 1:285 scale wargames which would work very well with some Star Wars miniatures.

 Peregrine wrote:
Not likely, for two reasons:

1) Making an expansion that isn't compatible with the main game only divides the community and wastes a release slot on a product which won't sell as well as something for the main game.

Epic ships aren't strictly compatible with the main game, but they haven't been a disaster (aside from to my wallet). The snow speeder is a pretty iconic ship, probably more so than the A-Wing and B-Wing. I can't see it not selling well. There are quite a few other iconic atmosphere based vehicles... The AT-AT, the Land-crawler, Jabba's barge, the cloud city pod thing, and the Death Star style gun towers.

The only real difficulty I see with things like the AT-AT is that at the assumed speed an X-Wing battle takes place, the AT-AT would be virtually stationary.

 Smacks wrote:
Epic ships aren't strictly compatible with the main game, but they haven't been a disaster (aside from to my wallet).

I disagree on two points:

1) Epic has been a failure. Hardly anyone plays, tournaments are virtually nonexistent, and FFG has quietly dropped all meaningful support for it. The main thing Epic has accomplished so far has been resentment from players who don't like having to pay $100 for upgrade cards to use their normal ships.

2) Epic at least uses the same ships/rules/etc as normal games. It's bigger and has some new ships, but if you have 300 points of normal X-Wing stuff you can play Epic with little more than a quick look through the huge ship rules. That's not at all the same as learning a whole new ground combat game that just happens to use the Star Wars IP.

The snow speeder is a pretty iconic ship, probably more so than the A-Wing and B-Wing. I can't see it not selling well.

I can see it not selling well because there's no reason to buy it, unless it comes with upgrade cards for normal ships. And that's not likely because a ground combat game would likely have different rules and be incompatible with the space combat game, much like Armada and X-Wing are not compatible. A model of an iconic ship might sell to a few people who want one to display on their desk, but most of us aren't going to buy something unless we get to use it in a game.

The only real difficulty I see with things like the AT-AT is that at the assumed speed an X-Wing battle takes place, the AT-AT would be virtually stationary.

And that's the problem: the speed and scale of a ground combat game don't work well with aircraft, much like 40k's flyers are an awkward mess. There's also the issue of representing altitude in a 3d space, which matters a lot more if you bring the fight to the surface where it matters if you're above or below that gun emplacement on the hill. Making a ground combat game that is fun and interesting would require entirely new rules with a superficial resemblance, at most, to X-Wing.

I don't think it necessarily needs any new rules. If you've got a snow or desert mat, then you've got an atmosphere based x-wing game. The same way people sometimes play x-wing on the Death Star mat. The snow speeder and Jabba's barge can slot right into the game without any changes.

Things like the AT-AT would probably need some rules. Maybe something along the line of Epic ships, to represent their slower movement and turning, but I don't think that's much of an obstacle. Even basic terrain, such as rock pillars, don't need to be significantly different from asteroids. People already use 3D asteroids. And just like asteroids, they don't need to be 3D, it's really just personal preference.

If you wanted to add things like hills then I agree that's going to be problematic, not least because the ships and templates are going to be all wobbly on anything but a flat surface. The obvious solution to that, is to play on a flat surface. In which case, I don't think altitude is any more necessary in an atmosphere dogfight than it is in a space dogfight, and space dogfights evidently work fine without it.

With regards to Epic ships being a failure... they were always going to be a bit of a niche thing, due to their size and cost, but that isn't a problem for the snow speeder. The only reason I can think that the snow speeder wasn't in wave 3, is simply because it's a bit unrealistic to have it in a space battle (which some people might not like). But in a low atmosphere dogfight, such as we saw repeatedly in TFA, there is no reason it couldn't be flying alongside x-wings, and shooting up TIEs.

EDIT: Here are some pictures of my AT-AT, and snow speeders (which are adapted from micromachines). I haven't gotten around to buying a snow mat yet, but when I do, I'll probably use it all the time for x-wing.

I don't think altitude and terrain would be that hard a change. With all the clear plastic pegs, height to the base could stand for what 'level' the fighter is at. Like a 3 tier thing. But yeah, I'd be interested in a snowspeeder and v-wing at the very least.

Probably not an expansion but I'd love them to make a stand alone game for the Battle of Hoth, which could then include rules to allow in atmosphere dogfights like we saw in TFA and over the Clone Wars.

I think it was Beasts of War who did ones for Endor and Hoth a few years ago which looked pretty awesome.

X-wing is really more of an abstract exercise with a Star Wars skin than a "Star Wars" game, but given the setting, I wouldn't bother with additional rules - just use a mat that's not black and use rock spires and forests instead of asteroids. The engine power available from Star Wars fighters seems like it's so huge that having to worry about the "energy budget" of changing altitude is like worrying that having a Jack Russel in the passenger seat will affect the acceleration of your Ferrari.

aerodynamic effects might be more of an issue, but even there, in TFA the TIE Fighters seemed to manage fine.

There's nothing about X-Wing that makes space or atmosphere fighting any different in terms of rules. If you think that a three dimensional environment is more important in an atmospere than in space, think deeper.

There are some iconic ships and ground vehicles that would make expanding the game to atmosphere desirable and probably profitable.

Epic was never meant to be for tournament play, nor was cinematic. If all you do is play tournament style 100 point matches, of course epic and cimematic aren't going to appeal to you. That doesn't make them failures. There are those of us that want to play Star Wars, for whom epic and cinematic are the way to play.

 n815e wrote:
If you think that a three dimensional environment is more important in an atmospere than in space, think deeper.

I have thought deeper, which is why I understand that the three dimensional environment is more important. In space combat you can approximate away the third dimension by assuming that, say, a 90* turn to the left while your opponent makes a 90* turn to the right is the same end result as an up/down pair of turns. It's just like how in real-world dogfights maneuvers are mostly done relative to the plane of the turning circle, regardless of how that plane is oriented relative to the ground. It's not a perfect approximation, but it makes sense for the sake of simplicity. But with atmospheric combat you're talking about an environment where the only difference from the space combat game is the existence of the ground and vehicles which can only move on the ground (and at much slower speeds than the aircraft). If you aren't going to represent those things in the rules then why have an atmospheric combat expansion at all?

You can certainly say a pair of models maneuvering around each other can be kept on a plane.
When you have multiple other models in the game, that loses all meaning.

 Peregrine wrote:
If you aren't going to represent those things in the rules then why have an atmospheric combat expansion at all?

Mainly in order to include iconic Star Wars vehicles that aren't space vehicles. I think a lot of fluffy players would enjoy being able to set up battles with snow speeders and AT-ATs.

There might be people who are interested in an accurate simulation of atmospheric combat, but I think the vast majority of X-wing players just want to play Star Wars, and aren't too worried about the abstraction.