Bonus definition: something good that is more than what was expected or required

Following the Decent precedent (not including the Lieutenant miniatures in the base game), it was not expected nor required from FFG to include the Ally and Villains packs in the Core Set.

Now, read this part from my last post again:

Imperial Assault appear to follow the same selling formula than Decent: Base Set, Expension Set and Lieutenant pack(replaced here by Ally and Villain packs). Seeing the success of Decent, I think it's a valid and proven formula that makes a lot of money, what the company is in buisness for. Imperial Assault cost 20$SRP more than Decent and yet has less miniature than this game. Because of the 2 pack included? No. Because it's Star Wars. Make the same game with a generic Sci-Fi theme and it won't sell as much for the same price, even if all villains and allies tokens were replaced with miniatures. Now take Imperial Assault, remove the 2 packs and keep the same price, and it would still sell as much. Why? Because it's Star Wars.

There's only two questions and none of us can answer it:

Do you think they would have sold the game for less if those 2 packs were not included or would it still be 100$? Do you really think it's those 2 packs that raised the price and not the Star Wars name tag?

If it would have been sold for the same price, that's 100$-100$=0$

So, if they would have sell it for the same price anyway and they were not required to include those packs (following the precedent that they didn't do it with Decent), it does qualify as a bonus.

But we don't know. So it's not naive to think that they would have sell it for the same premium price anyway with or without the packs. And it's not because some people do consider it a bonus (in an overprice product) that they are the reason why the economy goes wrong like you said earlier, it's just buying the overprice product in the first place. I have yet to see someone buy into it, or consider doing so, because they included 2 packs in it. We're buying it because it's Star Wars. So I don't see an evil ploy in those 2 packs to make more money; they would have make it anyway, and maybe more by selling them individually.

Now, you can continue to think that they would have lower the price if those 2 packs were not included, but I personally think FFG know the value of the Star Wars license enough to know that people will pay the price for it, bonus or not.

I think Luke and Vader are in the box to make IA more interesting for us to buy.

The 100$ price is probably a fair price taking into account the production costs. You get 34 plastic minis in the box (plus cards, tokens, map tiles, etc.). If the quality of the miniatures is similar to those in Descent, the cost is well worth it.

I don't want to get into an Economics discussion here, but the difference in price with Descent 2nd probably has to do with the fact that, after several years of injecting massive amounts of dollars into the economy (banks' rescues, stockshares buys by the Federal Reserve, etc.) the dollar is weaker than it used to be. I live in Europe and the dollar has lost a lot of its value in the past years (something that will correct itself now that the Federal Reserve has stopped injecting so much money and the European Central Bank has decided to start its own money injection into European economies) so that the difference in € between Descent and IA is really small.

I think the game would have been around the same price as the descent core which i think was about $80, si in a sense we are paying for the ally and villain packs, but that $20 diffference still would be cheaper because alone those packs would likely go for $15-30. So we are most likely getting some small discount. And even if we are not price wise, at least we dont have to try hunting these sets down.

the plastic prices are rising... ok. but nonetheless there are less plastic miniatures in this box than in Descent and still it is more expensive than Descent. So there something odd here, too.

I hadn't noticed this before. That really burns me. It's not just short a few figures, it's short by 8 figures (if you include the 'bonus' figures). That's about a 20% reduction miniatures compared to Descent while the price of the game is 20% more than Descent.

Granted, you get 2 more dice and 11 more custom, double-sided map tiles. Is that a fair trade? I really don't know. I would need to talk to someone who does manufacturing regularly.

It also worried me at first, but then I noticed that there is an error on the Descent product description: it's not 8 heroes and 38 monsters, it's 8 heroes and 31 monsters, lowering the number to 39, so 5 over the number of Imperial Assault(excluding Luke and Vader). Then we have to remember that one of those is the AT-ST. Granted, Descent come with more medium base monsters, but I would be interested to know how it really compare, weight-wise. Then like you said, there is more tiles in IA. Overall, I would think that both game is comparable content wise.

6 heroes versus 8 for Descent, and 8 different type of ennemies versus 9 for Descent. So variety goes to Descent.

Obviously, the Hero/Villain packs fulfill the same purpose as the Lieutenant packs in Descent. So basically, this is like getting D2E with two of the lieutenant packs included. They will probably also have hero and enemy packs as well that add additional minis and avatars. I wouldn't call any of these expansion packs. More like game add-ons. True expansions will add more board elements and scenarios along with additional rules.