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.

I think the volitility of the license precludes it from any lasting dominance.

The mechanics of the FFG games have all looked strong so if it was just a question of figure/rules quality I think they might have had a chance. Less so now that GW isn't actively crapping on their fans though.

If nothing else this thread has reminded me how much I loved the Decipher CCG and am glad I kept my collection.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In summary? Something being a Star Wars license is not in itself a recipe for success, and some could argue that Star Wars over exposure could be its biggest hurdle.

The biggest hurdle is that everything Star Wars has already been done, and done better.

A Star Wars RPG? Eh, it's not as good as the West End Games one.

A Star Wars CCG? Eh, it's not as good as the Decipher one.

A Star Wars MMO? Eh, it's not as good as the SOE one.

A Star Wars miniatures game about space ships? Eh, it's not as good as X-Wing.

A Star Wars action figure? Eh, the 80s did it better.

A Star Wars movie? Eh, it's not as good as the original trilogy.

It's not enough to release a new Star Wars item, you are competing with every other Star Wars product released in that genre. So far, FFG has succeeded by bettering past works (Rebellion is better than SW Risk) or by doing a product without a recognizable SW parent (Imperial Assault, Destiny, X-Wing). Their pnp RPG seems passable at best, and Legion doesn't look like it will compare favorably to other Star War miniature games (even Imperial Assault) or miniature games in general. The Star Wars license is filled with best in class examples, and it's a tough legacy to live up to.

Before there was X-Wing, there was WEG's Star Warriors

Before there was Armada, there was WotC's Starship Battles

Before there was Legion, there was WEG's Star Wars Miniatures Battles and WotC's Star Wars Miniatures game

For every "Best in Class", there's been half a dozen Star Wars stinkers that have been forgotten. I think Legion will be on the better end of the table. I'll buy into it; it doesn't have to depose GW's 40K - it just has to be good enough to stand on its own.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
For the drop in orders, I wonder how much that has to do with the IP versus the products themselves. For example, the micromachines released for TFA and Rogue One were subpar compared to previous micromachines ranges and especially compared to X-Wing minis and those Hot Wheels Die Cast ships (may they rot in warehouse hell). There are no micromachines for TLJ despite there being plenty of starship designs.

I can easily see the following explanation:
1). Company releases crappy toys.
2). Customers realize toys are crappy, don't buy so many of them.
3). Company concludes Star Wars is cold product.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Funkopops release a pheromone. If you are immune to it, please contact the resistance. We need every able body we can get.

That is a possibility - definitely limits the appeal to collectors. Tell you what, here's a trio of pilot figures from the recentish past.

A Legacy Series Rebel Pilot (I think this one is Wes Janson? Gets shot down at the battle of Yavin.



Then we have the single figure version of Poe Dameron from the TFA range (not the Black Series version)



Look at the difference between those two. Legacy Collection features greater articulation and far superior (and objectively so!) detail. Helmet is removable, the webbing isn't molded into the body. Both retailed in the UK for around £10. Guess which I'd rather buy? Guess which looks better in someone's collection, carded or uncarded?

Finally, the most recent one. Resistance Gunner Paige



For my money, she's the stand out figure from TLJ range. Removable helmet and breath mask, nicely detailed, would've preferred additional articulation (oh, and a holster for her Blaster).

The Legacy Collection was the pinnacle of Star Wars action figures. The right mix of breadth of choice, detail of figures and fairly reasonable price point. The more recent ones are simply cheap by comparison. Heck, if I hadn't bought one myself, I'd the Poe figure in particular was a knock off!

@MDG- I hae seen some nerdy posts here on Dakka, but that last one maybe one of the top 10. Kudos my friend.

I wonder how that Poe Dameron figure compares to the original X-wing pilots from Kenner? They look pretty similar, but I haven't seen one in a long time.

 Eldarain wrote:
I think the volitility of the license precludes it from any lasting dominance.

The mechanics of the FFG games have all looked strong so if it was just a question of figure/rules quality I think they might have had a chance. Less so now that GW isn't actively crapping on their fans though.

If nothing else this thread has reminded me how much I loved the Decipher CCG and am glad I kept my collection.

Hear, hear! Still have my 5 binders full of the Decipher cards tucked away in my closet. That game was truly something special. I'd probably still be playing to this day if Decipher never lost the license.

Yeah, the new Star Wars figures are very poor for the RRP. Very rudimentary articulation, given that they were multi jointed a few years ago, and with better detail. But I guess they just decided that making them cheap increased the profit margin. The price of action figures knocks me down though, £9-10 a pop is a lot for a 3 3/4” figure however nicely made.

The Decipher card game was vastly superior to what came after. But Lucasfilm decided the licence should go to Wizards, owned by Hasbro in whom I recall lucasfilm have shares. So you can imagine why they’d happily see the licence go to them. But the CCG wizards made didn’t amount to anything and within a couple years it was being dumped in discount bins and nothing was made for Revenge of the Sith. Simply short term greed on the part of Lucasfilm.

The black series 6" figures, however, are very nice, with good articulation and likenesses.

The last good likeness/posability 3 3/4" figure I got was an ep3 Commander Cody. Hands, knees, helmet came off, revealing clone head.

The worst ones for me were the "power of the force" extremely buff power-lifter physique figures from the 90s. Like some unholy offspring of a 3 3/4 SW figure and a he-man figure.

The Star Wars command figures seem to hit the mark for my son and his cousins. Simple and cheap, you can get a huge force with vehicles for the price of a few storm trooper action figures. Of course, they are not poseable.

Don't know how we got talking about Star Wars figures, but...

I certainly like the more articulate figures, and greatly dislike the return to the Kenner-like figure lack of articulation.

But, the regular figures are toys, better able to withstand the pre-teen antics of those actually playing with them. Seriously - the detailed figures we were getting for a while were fragile. I've had several come apart just attemping to pose them.

The Black Series have thankfully been retained for those of us who like to have the "quality" posable figures. I can live with that.

Besides, I'm about out of shelf space where I can display stormtroopers - there's only so many variations you can make of "white, skull-faced armor with color accents" anyways.

I'm really surprised to hear praise for the old Star Wars CCG. IMO it was a mediocre game at best, with some massive design flaws that only got worse as the game went on. I don't know if the WOTC game was any better, since I never even read the rules for it, but I don't think the old one was much of a loss.

The old one was like an RPG, but a card game. You could train Yoda to fly an x-wing and make him attack the Death Star, or capture and carbon freeze rebel characters. It was hopeless as a competitive game to take seriously because of the vastness of the rules and the volume of niche abilities and activities, but it was a lot of fun.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
The old one was like an RPG, but a card game. You could train Yoda to fly an x-wing and make him attack the Death Star, or capture and carbon freeze rebel characters. It was hopeless as a competitive game to take seriously because of the vastness of the rules and the volume of niche abilities and activities, but it was a lot of fun.

You just described exactly why it was a badly designed game IMO. It kept trying to do all these RPG-like things that worked awkwardly at best in the structure of a CCG. Like, sure, you could train Yoda to fly an x-wing and attack the death star, but what do you do if Yoda is discarded on turn 1 from a force drain? Or if your opponent doesn't bring a death star to destroy? You pretty much had to negotiate with your opponent about what events you wanted to happen, build decks specifically to work with the desired events, and probably introduce a bunch of custom rules ("start the game with Yoda in play, the dark side can't go to Dagobah until after the third turn") to reduce randomness and allow the events to actually happen. And then both players had to forget about winning by the rules of the game and focus on making the cool thing happen. You ended up with an RPG where, instead of buying a rulebook and playing the game, you had to get lucky and pull the RPG rules you wanted out of random packs.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
I think the volitility of the license precludes it from any lasting dominance.

The mechanics of the FFG games have all looked strong so if it was just a question of figure/rules quality I think they might have had a chance. Less so now that GW isn't actively crapping on their fans though.

If nothing else this thread has reminded me how much I loved the Decipher CCG and am glad I kept my collection.

Hear, hear! Still have my 5 binders full of the Decipher cards tucked away in my closet. That game was truly something special. I'd probably still be playing to this day if Decipher never lost the license.

Dude, let's play some decipher! I will break out my undercover spy/mining droid deck. Go on, deploy. I fething dare you!

 Peregrine wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
The old one was like an RPG, but a card game. You could train Yoda to fly an x-wing and make him attack the Death Star, or capture and carbon freeze rebel characters. It was hopeless as a competitive game to take seriously because of the vastness of the rules and the volume of niche abilities and activities, but it was a lot of fun.

You just described exactly why it was a badly designed game IMO. It kept trying to do all these RPG-like things that worked awkwardly at best in the structure of a CCG. Like, sure, you could train Yoda to fly an x-wing and attack the death star, but what do you do if Yoda is discarded on turn 1 from a force drain? Or if your opponent doesn't bring a death star to destroy? You pretty much had to negotiate with your opponent about what events you wanted to happen, build decks specifically to work with the desired events, and probably introduce a bunch of custom rules ("start the game with Yoda in play, the dark side can't go to Dagobah until after the third turn" to reduce randomness and allow the events to actually happen. And then both players had to forget about winning by the rules of the game and focus on making the cool thing happen. You ended up with an RPG where, instead of buying a rulebook and playing the game, you had to get lucky and pull the RPG rules you wanted out of random packs.

Well if you were really serious about doing this, you would have included more than 1 Yoda in your deck so that the unlucky Force drain didn't completely tank your idea. Light Side players had access to their own Death Star location so you actually didn't need to count on the other player to bring one. In fact there was an entire deck archetype, with its own objective card, built on doing the trench run. It was even a fairly strong competitive deck too. You couldn't actually deploy to Dagobah anyway, so getting there would be pretty tough to do by third turn regardless.

 kronk wrote:


Dude, let's play some decipher! I will break out my undercover spy/mining droid deck. Go on, deploy. I fething dare you!

lmao omg the mining droids were such silly nonsense, I completely forgot about those. I shall counter with my Ewok deck and we will have a battle of total mediocrity. Not a single character of ability >2 will hit the table! I shall send my Ewoks forth through your minefields and they will chuck their spears at anything that looks like a droid!

 Peregrine wrote:
I'm really surprised to hear praise for the old Star Wars CCG. IMO it was a mediocre game at best, with some massive design flaws that only got worse as the game went on. I don't know if the WOTC game was any better, since I never even read the rules for it, but I don't think the old one was much of a loss.

You go too far, sir. Not much of a loss? Getting rid of my Star Wars CCG collection was the biggest mistake of my gaming life (I was moving to Japan and shrinking my stuff). They are virtually impossible to get now and cost a fortune - largely because people (smarter than me) still keep the cards.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Well if you were really serious about doing this, you would have included more than 1 Yoda in your deck so that the unlucky Force drain didn't completely tank your idea. Light Side players had access to their own Death Star location so you actually didn't need to count on the other player to bring one. In fact there was an entire deck archetype, with its own objective card, built on doing the trench run. It was even a fairly strong competitive deck too. You couldn't actually deploy to Dagobah anyway, so getting there would be pretty tough to do by third turn regardless.

Ok, sure, the details of a game I haven't played in ~20 years are wrong, but the basic point stands: too many of the cool things you could do required way too much advance planning and effort, and weren't really practical within the structure of a CCG.

Even then the cards were too expensive to get multiples of. But I remember my mum buying me a single booster of Premiere for Christmas and I pulled Darth Vader. Was overjoyed because I could never have got one any other way.

 Stormonu wrote:


Before there was X-Wing, there was WEG's Star Warriors

Before there was Armada, there was WotC's Starship Battles

Before there was Legion, there was WEG's Star Wars Miniatures Battles and WotC's Star Wars Miniatures game

For every "Best in Class", there's been half a dozen Star Wars stinkers that have been forgotten. I think Legion will be on the better end of the table. I'll buy into it; it doesn't have to depose GW's 40K - it just has to be good enough to stand on its own.

I feel that you bring up a good point. We're not exactly delving into completely new territory here- the Star Wars label isn't enough to make the game a massive success. If you make a bad game and put Star Wars on it, gamers will still notice that it sucks.

But the brand does give it a leg up from the outset, and that's a big deal in tabletop miniatures games where momentum matters too much. Fantasy Flight's brand and distribution saturation will combine with the Star Wars brand here to give the game a good start.

If the quality of the minis and rules are what we've come to expect from FFG, then the game is sure to be a hit- at least in the short term- and I wonder about the long term. If FFG play their cards right, it could really be a strong contender for many years to come.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Even then the cards were too expensive to get multiples of. But I remember my mum buying me a single booster of Premiere for Christmas and I pulled Darth Vader. Was overjoyed because I could never have got one any other way.

I was big into the game, and probably had one of the larger collections locally. As a consequence, when some of the more casual players wanted to trade I'd be really hard pushed to find much I wanted from them, whereas they'd frequently find multiple cards they wanted, often that I had several copies of and no immediate use for. In those circumstances, rather than refuse the trade, I'd offer them the chance to buy me a booster for the card instead, that way cards found their way back into the play pool, they got precisely the card they want and, at worse, I ended up with a different rare card I had no use for.

Until one glorious day when a chap went down and picked me up a booster from the from the front of the shop, I handed him the card he wanted, then cracked open the packet to reveal a foil Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight!

That's.....alot of money for low budget models that are closer to those army men packets you buy from supermarkets for a few $ rather than games workshop quality.

Comparison

7 Stormtroopers in unit expansion is $24.95 USD
10 Dreadspears (dark elves) is $35 USD and vastly superior in quality.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
I'm really surprised to hear praise for the old Star Wars CCG. IMO it was a mediocre game at best, with some massive design flaws that only got worse as the game went on. I don't know if the WOTC game was any better, since I never even read the rules for it, but I don't think the old one was much of a loss.

You go too far, sir. Not much of a loss? Getting rid of my Star Wars CCG collection was the biggest mistake of my gaming life (I was moving to Japan and shrinking my stuff). They are virtually impossible to get now and cost a fortune - largely because people (smarter than me) still keep the cards.

Really? are they - damn I recently gave a load of my cards away because they were just gathering dust!

iron_within88 wrote:
That's.....alot of money for low budget models that are closer to those army men packets you buy from supermarkets for a few $ rather than games workshop quality.

Comparison

7 Stormtroopers in unit expansion is $24.95 USD
10 Dreadspears (dark elves) is $35 USD and vastly superior in quality.

Games Workshop prices aren't bad across the board- but they're terrible in comparison to themselves.

For example, for that same $35 you can get ONE independent character (who roughly matches the guys in the box).

GW's quality isn't great across the board either. Most of their larger kits are pretty great, but a lot of their troopers are pretty dull (like the Space Marine scouts with their leather tupes).

I haven't seen the FFG stormtroopers in person yet. While I expect them to be PVC, I don't expect the quality to be all that low.

Basically, FFG has yet to really impress me with their minis, but they're not 'army men' quality.

iron_within88 wrote:
That's.....alot of money for low budget models that are closer to those army men packets you buy from supermarkets for a few $ rather than games workshop quality.

Comparison

7 Stormtroopers in unit expansion is $24.95 USD
10 Dreadspears (dark elves) is $35 USD and vastly superior in quality.

I dont see those as superior in quality at all, stormtroopers have a specific and iconic look from the 70's. they dont need alot. as for gw, those models are just over busy IMO and pretty crappy overall.

 Peregrine wrote:
I'm really surprised to hear praise for the old Star Wars CCG. IMO it was a mediocre game at best, with some massive design flaws that only got worse as the game went on. I don't know if the WOTC game was any better, since I never even read the rules for it, but I don't think the old one was much of a loss.

So like X-Wing then ? ( I think I or Az13 have made the comparison between current bad FFG ideas and bad old CCG ideas)

I thought it was a fairly okay game,the main problem was lots of the fluffy gimmick 'story' decks had no chance against the focussed face smashing decks, the last few expansions was mega-rancor droppings however due to milking the cashcow extra hard before the licensing expired. The WoTC game was mediocre and just felt like a system they already had on hand and justed bolted Star Wars on

Fething pod racing.

iron_within88 wrote:
That's.....alot of money for low budget models that are closer to those army men packets you buy from supermarkets for a few $ rather than games workshop quality.

Comparison

7 Stormtroopers in unit expansion is $24.95 USD
10 Dreadspears (dark elves) is $35 USD and vastly superior in quality.

Ah... I guess the Stormtroopers have some wide open flat areas that aren't quite up to GW lover standards... skulls, spikes or runes on every available surface.

If a model looks exactly like the film version it is copying, why is it considered a poor model?

I'm guessing people somehow think more details = more expensive to make?

It's the only thing that explains the constant justification people offer for GW's alleged higher "quality" and price when what they're actually defending is greater greeble density.

Has SW taking over 40k's spot already? Or is it happening soon?

No matter what happens GW will never be eclipsed by any company for at least the next 10 years. They are far too big to be eaten, BUT they will lose CHUNKS of their market.

Star Wars may be a popular IP, but it's going to take a combination of games from other companies (Warmachine from PP, Bolt Action from Warlord, etc) to "overthrow" 40k. Remember, 40k is the most popular game out there, and the only way to truly beat it is simply to be more popular than 40k, which is extremely unlikely in the wargaming area, even for Star Wars.

The best way to think of GW is simply as the Imperium of Man. It will always have competitors that will conquer it's worlds, but in the end it will all be nommed by the Tyranids.
You can put whatever preferred company as the Tyranids in this analogy, but point being GW will be slowly whittled away from the center stage. It's just going to take a LONG time.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

iron_within88 wrote:
That's.....alot of money for low budget models that are closer to those army men packets you buy from supermarkets for a few $ rather than games workshop quality.

Comparison

7 Stormtroopers in unit expansion is $24.95 USD
10 Dreadspears (dark elves) is $35 USD and vastly superior in quality.

Ah... I guess the Stormtroopers have some wide open flat areas that aren't quite up to GW lover standards... skulls, spikes or runes on every available surface.

If a model looks exactly like the film version it is copying, why is it considered a poor model?

if i ever feel like watching star wars again ill make sure to keep an eye out for those obvious mold lines on the storm troopers armour they just painted over.