Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Peregrine wrote:

You are aware that FFG has produced successful miniatures games that appeal to gamers, many of them former GW customers, right?

Yes, ones with low detail pre-painted models

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Seeing as parents buying stuff for the kids is the target GW customer base, then perhaps GW should be worried?

Not really, like I said the kids will get bored of it or move onto something better. Maybe 40k, therefore increasing GW sales

 Rolsheen wrote:

Peregrine wrote:

You are aware that FFG has produced successful miniatures games that appeal to gamers, many of them former GW customers, right?

Yes, ones with low detail pre-painted models

Lolwut? Have you ever actually seen the X-Wing and Armada miniatures? They are not even close to low detail, and the paint is better than most 40k players can manage.

Not really, like I said the kids will get bored of it or move onto something better. Maybe 40k, therefore increasing GW sales

Why doesn't this same principle apply to GW? Kids will get bored of 40k, and move on to something better, maybe FFG's Star Wars games. You seem to be awfully selective in applying your criticism to non-GW games, claiming supposed weaknesses and then ignoring the fact that those same weaknesses are at least as applicable to GW's games.

Space marines have no weakness and those comparisons do not apply for X reason, remember. Let's ignore that GW have aimed at 12 year olds since about 1992.

Speaking personally, X-Wng works OK with only three factions because it's sufficiently small-scale that we can all buy into the Rebel and Imperial factions, so we never end up with "blue vs blue" scenarios. With 40k, or with Legion, that's not quite such a viable option; if my group all bought into it, we'd end up with quite a few games with the same faction on both sides. In the context of 40k, or most other miniatures games, that's narratively satisfying; the setting is deliberately written so that everyone has a reason to fight everyone else (including themselves). In Star War, that's not the case (outside of the pre-Force Awakens EU, perhaps, and that's a very limited audience), and playing with Darth Vader and the 501st on both sides is disappointing IMO.

Again, personally, having all the cards and tokens included in the miniatures packs is fine if you're buying them for use in Legion. If you just want some Storm Troopers for 7TV, Blasters and Bulkheads or whatever, then it just means they're awfully pricey. Now, if FFG are only interested in sellng their miniatures to people who want to play their game with them, then that's fine, but it does mean I probably won't be buying any. Which is unfortunate, because the old WotC ones were only OK while there wasn't anything else to compare them to.

So you are seriously saying you've never shown up with your Space Marines only to have to do battle with another player who has Space Marines, and might even be the same faction?

We always just call that a training mission. Just because you have a game that winds up being "blue on blue" doesn't mean that it's narratively 'wrong'.

Maybe a bit more flexibility of one's mindset is in order when it comes to playing the game. Play the game, not the rules, and not the fluff; play the game.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Speaking personally, X-Wng works OK with only three factions because it's sufficiently small-scale that we can all buy into the Rebel and Imperial factions, so we never end up with "blue vs blue" scenarios. With 40k, or with Legion, that's not quite such a viable option; if my group all bought into it, we'd end up with quite a few games with the same faction on both sides.

If you go to small 40k Tournaments it is more or less Daddy Smurf VS Daddy Smurf

And for Legion there is the possibility for wide range of factions, first coming up with Rebels and Imperium, Clone Troops and Sith/Droids, Scum and Planetary Forces (each Planet had it's unique troops) and finally New Republic and First Order

If we each faction get several units that are viable it is unlikely that you find yourself in a mirror match with the same units on each side

xraytango wrote:
So you are seriously saying you've never shown up with your Space Marines only to have to do battle with another player who has Space Marines, and might even be the same faction?

We always just call that a training mission. Just because you have a game that winds up being "blue on blue" doesn't mean that it's narratively 'wrong'.

Maybe a bit more flexibility of one's mindset is in order when it comes to playing the game. Play the game, not the rules, and not the fluff; play the game.

No, no, no; you've got it all backwards. Always play the fluff, because otherwise what's the point in having all these nicely painted miniatures? I might as well stick to chess or Risk otherwise.

Did you not read my post? As I said, 40k's setting is written to allow that sort of thing without needing to handwave it away as a "training mission" (which is narratively unsatisfying, IMO). It's also less likely because there's more choice of faction - there's only one Ultramarines player, for example.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Speaking personally, X-Wng works OK with only three factions because it's sufficiently small-scale that we can all buy into the Rebel and Imperial factions, so we never end up with "blue vs blue" scenarios. With 40k, or with Legion, that's not quite such a viable option; if my group all bought into it, we'd end up with quite a few games with the same faction on both sides.

If you go to small 40k Tournaments it is more or less Daddy Smurf VS Daddy Smurf

And for Legion there is the possibility for wide range of factions, first coming up with Rebels and Imperium, Clone Troops and Sith/Droids, Scum and Planetary Forces (each Planet had it's unique troops) and finally New Republic and First Order

If we each faction get several units that are viable it is unlikely that you find yourself in a mirror match with the same units on each side

I don't go to tournaments; I find them unsatisfying. As for the other factions in Legion, we're back to including things from ancillary material I don't recognise (apart from the Clone Wars stuff, obviously, but FFG have shown they're unwilling to go there). Plus, including New Republic, Resistance and First ORder forces doesn't help - that's a different setting. First Order vs Galactic Empire ain't right either.

all IMO, of course. I'm not saying that any of these things are reasons why the game will, wont or should or shouldn't do well; just why it doesn't interest me.

I think FFG dropped a bollock on this one. The SW Franchise is huge and potentially makes GW a very small fish. But, GW games are already established. Veterans already have lage 40k armies, and add to them with a few new models every year. Do you really want to start a whole new 40k scale army again, albeit SW?

FFG should have changed the scale to make it significantly different to 40k. Who here doesn't want to recreate the Ice battles and have lines of AT-AT walkers stomping down a trench system. Can't do that in 40k. FFG should have made this more like 10mm scale or less. People can then field all their favourite Armour and Troops from the films and recreate those epic size battles.

 TheSecretSquig wrote:
Do you really want to start a whole new 40k scale army again, albeit SW?

I think the answer is in how many veteran Space Marine players with multiple companies worth of models are buying heavily into the new Primaris stuff. In my neck of the woods, it's a lot. Depending on pricing, I think many new players would see this as a cheaper alternative to 40k.

I doubt it'll be cheaper per sé, but, like X Wing, I suspect that the price gradient will be much gentler and there'll be ways to easily mitigate the cost if you're not mad keen on playing at sanctioned events.

Will start with a side not than move in to the main point of my post.

The time-tested complaint of "A GW army costs hundreds of dollars for a regular game" is true but not the whole picture.

What you actually buy for a GW game you get to play, you don't buy a stormsurge to get an upgrade for your crysıs suits, you buy a stormsruge to play a stormsurge. So your entire purchase sees table.

FFG games? Hardly so. I got to see a glimpse of FFG development as a Beta tester, i have seen how stuff gets developed and you guys know the results.

How many ships can a x-wing player field, max 8. How many does a player own, dozens at least. The problem comes with purchase usage and company business plans.

FFG 's business plan is literally making you buy kits not for their primary ingame value(the actual model-ship) but making you buy the "upgrade" in the pack. And unless you play the game continously it becomes a drag just to keep along.


I have a 1000$ worth of x-wing and half that in armada sitting in my cabinet right next to me. Half of that at least was bought because of upgrades and "maybe i will play it on the off chance". At least a quarter of the total never saw table and never will.

40K doesn't have that issue, yes stuff will go out of fashion cause of rule changes and meta, but unless FFG changes their business plan they will be two different beasts. Granted they will fight on the same water, but will hardly be in direct competition.

But the "you have to buy the ship for the upgrade" argument only really holds water if you're a) playing in sanctioned events or b) playing in the douchiest community on the planet.

If you're flying casual you can just buy the ships you like/want and use an online squadron builder or print the cards.

Same applies for 40k models, proxy to your hearts desire.

My point on only seeing a fraction of your collection played at a single time stands.

And that makes me sad, x-wing is not playable at a scale of 10+ models. Wish it was.

Yeah, proxy models, up until recently, and quite possibly going forward, you're still going to need a fortune in books to even know what you're doing with your drinks cans and bottle tops. (Which, incidentally, one could also do for X Wing, without spending a penny on rules.)

Equally a fraction of my 40K collection sees table time every time I play, and requires a vast amount more time and effort to get it table ready, even if I don't paint it.

40K also scales badly, although I'm not sure about 8th.

I'm not saying your criticisms of X Wing aren't founded, I just don't see how they don't apply equally to 40K, if in a slightly different way.

It's a Wargame with a total of two factions to play as. Even most of the most popular historical settings like Napoleonic and WWI/WWII has more.

It doesn't have the legs to stand on it the long term, even if they pull from the none original trilogy you get clone wars republic and separatists, and new trilogy 1st order and new republic. Witch haveing stuff like the 1st order fighting drones or the Empire Fighting Clone Troopers are going to start messing with peoples suspension of disbelief for the game.

Star Trek makes more sense for a skirmish level wargame, and the setting rarely ever shows open land based warfare even thow it's implied to happen. Since you atleast can start out with the "Big three" (Feds, Klingons, Romulans) factions, then tone of other major factions that have been showed/referenced/ect. (From Dominion and Borg, or more obscure fan Favorites like Bren and tholians)

I was a loyal 40K and WFB player back in the day (hardcore in the oughts, became much more casual in as of 2010).

I was thinking I could maintain both sets of rules and play both with my friends. When they realized X-wing and Armada were pre-painted, they jumped ship. They still buy 40K, a lot, but it just piles in boxes in a spare room, they don't even play it anymore.

At this point, I pretty much doubt more than one or two of them will bother with Legion. Children seem to get the lion's share of their attention nowadays (heretics). Two of them refuse to see the new movies, even the prequels, because Star Wars is nothing but a waste of time.

Yet, interestingly, everyone, even my X-Wing group, is egging me on to buy the starter and paint it. I guess I have the look of the first monkey to bite into the fruit about me.

I think it'll be a game that will take a little while to find its voice, Release pace will be critical to keep interest up, I think. I also hope the game is more skirmish than 2000-pts-of-guardsmen affair, because that is going to bum me out. As long as they don't introduce flyers...

I feel like FFG is missing a trick with Legion and forgetting one of the advantages of the game, as many people have already pointed out: pre-painted miniatures. It's the same reason that Runewars doesn't seem (anecdotal, of course) to be catching on, and why I don't think it will be much of a threat. Plus, the whole faction thing is going to ruin my suspension of disbelief, and you are much more tightly tied to a specific kind of color scheme, having more in common with historicals in that manner.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:

Peregrine wrote:

You are aware that FFG has produced successful miniatures games that appeal to gamers, many of them former GW customers, right?

Yes, ones with low detail pre-painted models

Lolwut? Have you ever actually seen the X-Wing and Armada miniatures? They are not even close to low detail, and the paint is better than most 40k players can manage.

Indeed. For their price, the paint on the Xwing and Armada is pretty dang good. You'd probably have to pay $20-30 minimum to get a small Xwing or armada ship painted to the standard they come out of the box .

It depends....

Given this is original Star Wars with Luke vs. Darth Vader, it is appealing to an older crowd. How many of those people will jump into the game depends more on the rule and game play than just it being Star Wars. While X-Wing got a big shot of people thanks to the new movie, they released a new starter to take advantage of that.

Most the people I know that jumped into X-Wing did so because it was seen as a zero effort game. No modeling, no painting, just play. A good chunk of X-Wings success is based on the fact that people who hated to model or paint could get into X-wing. Also those who were dedicated to another game could get in without having to build/paint another army. It brought in people into miniature gaming that would have never have thought of trying 40K or anything else.

While I don't see any building being required for Legion, it's not painted. Right there it doesn't look as good on the table. With X-wing, you could have a good looking game with no effort. Legion will require effort to make it look good. Because of that, it won't attract many of the people who got into X-Wing because of ease of accessibility. It won't easily attract people who made X-Wing their second game either because of ease of access either.

It will have to rely on the strength of its rules to get a base started because it is appealing to a smaller number of potential customers than what X-Wing appealed to.

40k and X-WING have there downside with the release system
There is the "buy an Expansion for just 1 card" vs "your whole army is unplayable after the next book release"

I have sitting 20k points worth of 40k stuff on the shelf of different tournament army's
Now I am at the point where I don't buy stuff any more but start the remove colour from old stuff cut them apart and build them according to the new rules. (in-between I was in doubt to kill some old best painted stuff, but with 8th there is no reason to buy new stuff any more)

And here I like the X-WING system more, as the rules don't change and I just "need" cards to get my old painted stuff being viable


If Legion stick with the size of 20-40 models there is also the size advantage over 40k 100 model spam

 Azreal13 wrote:
Yeah, proxy models, up until recently, and quite possibly going forward, you're still going to need a fortune in books to even know what you're doing with your drinks cans and bottle tops. (Which, incidentally, one could also do for X Wing, without spending a penny on rules.)

What is the legitimate source for obtaining the info on the x-wing cards, movement dials and movement templates for free?

There's a few squad builder sites out there, and the X-Wing wikia site. One assumes that they have FFG's tacit approval, since they're still going.

Dials are trickier; you can easily find the allowed manoeuvres for each ship in the table format like you get in the blister packaging, but you'd need to make your own dials.

I would have been more interested if this had involved small groups of rebel heroes fighting imperial villains instead of having random generic rebel troopers and stormtroopers. Like having Luke + Han + Chewbacca vs Bobba Fett + IG-88 etc, with maybe 5-8 characters a side.

I've already painted way too many stormtroopers for Imperial Assault to want to paint them again and the rebel troops are not very exciting as miniatures.

 Lockark wrote:
It doesn't have the legs to stand on it the long term, even if they pull from the none original trilogy you get clone wars republic and separatists, and new trilogy 1st order and new republic. Witch haveing stuff like the 1st order fighting drones or the Empire Fighting Clone Troopers are going to start messing with peoples suspension of disbelief for the game.

And yet, despite this claim, X-Wing is a spectacularly successful game, while Armada and Imperial Assault are at least reasonably successful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 pizzaguardian wrote:
Same applies for 40k models, proxy to your hearts desire.

My point on only seeing a fraction of your collection played at a single time stands.

And that makes me sad, x-wing is not playable at a scale of 10+ models. Wish it was.

Except no, it really doesn't apply the same to 40k. A game of 40k with proxied models is a completely different experience. Yeah, the rules are still mostly the same, but the spectacle of the fight, the reason people play 40k at all instead of far superior alternatives, is gone. Instead of two nicely painted armies fighting a battle you have some cardboard boxes and soda cans with some other cardboard boxes for "terrain". But with X-Wing there is no difference between a game with all of the cards and a game with none of the cards. The models and action on the table are exactly the same, you're just using a printout from a squad builder instead of a card if you have to look up a rule. The cards in X-Wing have zero function from a rules point of view*, they're nothing more than reminders of what the rules for your units are. So the proper comparison would be playing 40k with purchased rulebooks vs. playing 40k with a pirated pdf of your codex.

*Literally, half the time we play games of X-Wing we don't even bother to get out the cards because we all know what the rules are and it's just extra clutter on the table. Having a pile of cards sitting next to the table doesn't enhance the experience at all.

Well, that's one rather extreme example of "proxied models" in 40k ...

However, I agree about the cards in X-Wing; the one-page printout from the squad-builder sites is much less fiddly and annoying than using the cards. Except when using Luke and R2, or any other ship that can regenerate shields and/or damage.

I think claiming people play 40k for the spectacle of the models is pretty presumptuous.

People play for lots of reasons and while I know all about how you enjoy the painted armies and it's YOUR reason for playing it's not THE reason people play.

IF you have the models, sure.

But peregre seems to be inflating good sides of x-wing and bad sides of 40k.

"Oh i dont have to get cards", sure you don't. But you need dials and ships and templates. The exact same argument is used as a negative for 40k as in,

"But it is just not good when 2 armies are not propely painted"

Either being able to proxy is a good thing, or a bad thing.
A proxied X-wing ship is as proper as a badly painted or a proxy 40k model.

My "you have to buy packs just for cards" arguments works only at a tournament scene surely. At that point 40k has the upperhand, cause most tournaments allow counts as models to a pretty liberal degree.

But at a casual setting you only need some tokens and dials for x-wing and ships and no cards for x-wing. Obviously no terrain as well which is a big plus for x-wing.

To be honest, it is apples to oranges for x-wing vs 40k. My issue is FFG 's business plan. You HAVE to keep up with every release for x-wing, not in knowledge but in cash. That is not the same for 40k.

If Legion keeps the same business model, 40k has a slight leg up on it. Like how Legion will have a leg up on 40k with IP. So who knows.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Yeah, proxy models, up until recently, and quite possibly going forward, you're still going to need a fortune in books to even know what you're doing with your drinks cans and bottle tops. (Which, incidentally, one could also do for X Wing, without spending a penny on rules.)

What is the legitimate source for obtaining the info on the x-wing cards, movement dials and movement templates for free?

I've seen people use homemade dials, cardboard and brass pins with manoeuvres drawn on and all. Especially when the dial is spoiled before the release.

You can purchase movement templates from a number of third party sellers in beautiful acrylic... for a lot more than a starter set would set you back, so it's not quite price that is holding you back. You can make your own dice using blanks available at any FLGS, and you could even print your own version of a damage deck on cardstock. Again, if you add all those costs of cheapness, you'll find you're often paying more than a starter set. The rules are free on their website.

Spent $125 on X-Wing in the last 30 days.

Spent $0 on 40k in the 30 days.

Mitochondria wrote:
Spent $125 on X-Wing in the last 30 days.

Spent $0 on 40k in the 30 days.

Spent £105 on AoS in the last week.

Spent £0.00 on X-Wing. Ever.

So what's your point?