a new starter with revised / updated rules and new ships from Episode VII...you betcha.

You understand that is what a second edition IS, right?

not really just an updated and clarified rulebook...not major changes or compatibility issues.

Look at Malifaux or Infinity for new editions of a game.

I would quit. I spend my hard-earned money on a bunch of miniatures that are suddenly useless? No thank you.

Why are so many people worried about this? This is not, and never has been, even the remotest of possibilities. A second edition of the game would be a revised rulebook and a new starter set. Absolute worst case scenario would be a bunch of errata for existing cards. Nothing will EVER invalidate the miniatures or even the cardboard inserts.

People really need to get past their delusions of persecution and actually think about what a second edition of the game would actually be.

I was specifically replying to the person before me who said:

Don't flame me for asking, I'm just looking for opinions.

Does anyone else think that in a miniatures game where successive waves of pieces are released, a company needs to institute some sort of retirement policy?

First, and I only mention this because as I see it, each new wave needs to have something new and exciting to "change the game." This is often the big selling point. If the mechanics are playtested well, then power creep should be held to a minimum. Additionally, in this game's format, the company could always put a new torpedo or astromech droid in the expansion that is meant to mesh better with an x-wing or tie fighter than what it is actually packaged with, thus getting players to drag out those old ships and try new things. That being said, power creep does happen and needs to be managed somehow.

Second, as a veteran of several other TTSGs, without retirement you discourage new players from entering the game and competing with those who have been in the game since the beginning. Right now that doesn't seem like a big deal, because the beginning wasn't all that long ago and the number of ships is relatively small. I hope that the game sticks around a long time and eventually there are hundreds of ships to choose from, but eventually a new player is going to get shut out by the guy that has the "r-wing that came out a couple of years ago, loaded with this gear that came with the tie spectacular expansion, and oh by the way to field that particular 32 point ship you are going to have to drop $$$ or you're never going to be competitive." Then little Betty walks away from the game because as cool as it is, no one wants to loose all the time.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see the game remain perfectly balanced from now 'til eternity, and I would rather that my hard earned money be spent on ships that can be used competitively forever. I think that FFG is doing a great job of allowing a minimum of disruptive elements to make it into circulation and keeping every ship at least somewhat relevant. I just don't want to see this game go the way of soooo many others and loose possible players (and customers) because we the community are being unrealistic about the dynamics of this type of game.

All that being said, If there were going to be a retirement policy, would you rather know about it in advance, or simply let the announcements come out when new sets are released?

Like I said, don't flame me, I'm just trying to open a realistic dialog.

missedtrashday

A retirement policy would make me quit, not a rules revision. Provided all my old minis are still usable, id probably be fine with some kind of update.

a new starter with revised / updated rules and new ships from Episode VII...you betcha.

You understand that is what a second edition IS, right?

You can revise and update the rules without a new edition. If you can't then you are effectively saying that each time a new FAQ comes out we're seeing a new edition.

I don't see anything wrong with putting out an alternative Starter which could be used instead of our current starter. In addition to the damage deck, templates, and tokens it would also include the most up to date rules (granted they may get fixed each time the starter is reprinted). The exact mix of ships and upgrades could be altered in a Starter version 2.0 but that wouldn't mean the game is going to 2.0.

I may have said this earlier in one of the two pages of posts from last year but actually coming out with an entirely new rule set will easily kill my interest in the game. If I go back and look at D&D minis they made a slight rules correct early in the games life which was easy to keep up with but when 4e came around the game suffered a massive shift at which time I stopped supporting it.

One thing I'm wondering is how are they going to add new ships from the new movies??? We have the resistance and first order now not the imperials and rebels? What are they going to do add 2 new factions???

The game is in the best place it's been in years. None of the previous iterations of this game have had this kind of balance since we got Wave 6 and the Phantom nerf.

The only reason a game should ever be rebooted is because it was built on a poor foundation and needs a rules overhaul. X-Wing's foundation, the core rules, are one of the best out there. Simple, elegant, and strategically deep. The devs made some poor choices in the past that led to imbalanced metagames (overcosting X-Wings, Y-Wings, TIE Advanceds and A-Wings compared to TIE Fighters, allowing Phantoms to hit PS9 instead of capping them at 7, etc.), but most of those mistakes have been rectified.

Most people are very happy with where the game is at right now. Rebooting would kill the game, or at best send it back to the tiny player base it had when it first came out.

It's only a rebranding of the existing factions. New names and paint jobs, same factions. This isn't 40k where Space Marines and Blood Angels are different factions for some reason.

I don't think this game is badly designed, but I don't like the way the changes are implemented. Some 'upgrade cards' are little more than errata - making you pay for things that could just as well have been fixed with a PDF file or a little more foresight in an earlier phase. I'd much rather see cards that make the game more interesting than cards that are 'long awaited fixes' or 'nerfs' for other cards. And I don't like it if the new expansions are more powerful than the previous. Some think that's inevitable, but I don't see why.

So if the X-Wing deserves an extra hull point, I hope this will just be a true change, not some upgrade card in a €90,- box, but just a message on the website and perhaps a leaflet in the game stores, with a short mea culpa. We f'd up, sorry, it happens. The X-Wing deserves to be a little better than it was.

It would be a relief to see that game balance does not take a backseat to marketing.

Does anyone else think that in a miniatures game where successive waves of pieces are released, a company needs to institute some sort of retirement policy?

And which ships would you retire?

I would be interested in a Collector's or Deluxe Edition of X-Wing were it to be released. Acrylic tokens, maneuver dials, range rulers and dice with some different alternate art cards and an updated quick reference card would be welcome. Yes, I know there would be an outcry from the diehard competitive community who attend a lot of events to obtain those very items. Still, it's not unheard of in the gaming world and would certainly garner a lot of interest.

I would quit. I spend my hard-earned money on a bunch of miniatures that are suddenly useless? No thank you.

Why are so many people worried about this? This is not, and never has been, even the remotest of possibilities. A second edition of the game would be a revised rulebook and a new starter set. Absolute worst case scenario would be a bunch of errata for existing cards. Nothing will EVER invalidate the miniatures or even the cardboard inserts.

People really need to get past their delusions of persecution and actually think about what a second edition of the game would actually be.

A clean slate. That's what Second Editions are. Wipe it all, new core, do all the expansions again... That's how it works.

Instead of X Wing 2.0 you could just errata/ban a handful of things. Partial point scoring would go a long way.

Partial point scoring? Forgive me, but I don't understand what you mean by that. Could you please explain?

In games that don't finish (because of a timer) instead of just counting up points of destroyed ships you also score for damaged ones based on how much damage you did. For example, on a 12pt Academy Pilot each of its three hull is worth 4 points, so if you hit it twice it's worth 8.

It's a little more complex but it takes away the inherent MoV advantage of big ships: if a Falcon goes up against five TIEs, goes down to one hit point but kills one TIE fighter it wins as it it were never scratched.

Remember how about a year ago there was a substantial group of players who claimed it was *unthinkable* that the game would ever include a third faction?

And then it happened anyway?

That kind of sums up my feelings about the "2nd edition" conversation. It seems like an inevitable step. At some point the game's popularity versus the number of EU releases left that anyone would care about is going to be out of whack (not to mention the steadily increasing overlap between the roles of different ships and the way they play). FFG will either need to retire the system or do something to make all the old stuff feel fresh again. It doesn't feel like the core idea of the game is ever going to get unpopular, or lack a willing customer base -- SW has proven its endurance as an IP and the starfighter angle is one of the most popular elements.

A broad revamp feels like the obvious, logical eventual outcome. Just like a third faction did, 365 days ago.

Right now it is fine but a 2nd edition could be not that far off.

As I had said in other posts if they did make a 2nd edition with new core components they would have to include an upgrade pack for all those with the first edition core set. It would include an updated rule-book and all the 2nd edition components that the 1st core set did not have minus the models.

As for phasing out models/ most likely not. A miniatures game is not like a collectible card game such as MTG of Netrunner where cards are cheap and replacing old ones is not that big of an expense as there is a good chance other cards can fill the same roll. However retiring miniatures is a whole new thing because miniatures cost more and last longer than a card. Now GW may be notorious of retiring models but those are old models which they no longer have the mold for and als the recent ones were because of a lawsuit from a 3rd party manufacture that patent all the codex entries that GW didn't have physical models for (from what I have heard from other retailers).

The game is in the best place it's been in years. None of the previous iterations of this game have had this kind of balance since we got Wave 6 and the Phantom nerf.

The only reason a game should ever be rebooted is because it was built on a poor foundation and needs a rules overhaul. X-Wing's foundation, the core rules, are one of the best out there. Simple, elegant, and strategically deep. The devs made some poor choices in the past that led to imbalanced metagames (overcosting X-Wings, Y-Wings, TIE Advanceds and A-Wings compared to TIE Fighters, allowing Phantoms to hit PS9 instead of capping them at 7, etc.), but most of those mistakes have been rectified.

Most people are very happy with where the game is at right now. Rebooting would kill the game, or at best send it back to the tiny player base it had when it first came out.

One thing I'm wondering is how are they going to add new ships from the new movies??? We have the resistance and first order now not the imperials and rebels? What are they going to do add 2 new factions???

It's only a rebranding of the existing factions. New names and paint jobs, same factions. This isn't 40k where Space Marines and Blood Angels are different factions for some reason.

I feel like the "new" factions are just JJ Abrams being JJ Abrams. We've seen nothing to suggest that the 'resistance' is anything but the (Rebel) Alliance to Restore the Republic or that the 'first order' is anything but a post-Palpatine Galactic Empire. Maybe the rebels and the Empire came to a mutual understanding. Maybe the First Order is a radical splinter group of the Empire that was displeased with the peace treaty with the rebels. Maybe the resistance is a radical splinter group of the Alliance that was also displeased with the peace treaty with the Empire. Maybe the galaxy has balkanized after the death of Palpatine, fractured into a thousand factions, with the First Order being the most zealous of the Imperial remnant and the resistance is an organization dedicated to assisting some of those many factions in resisting the First Order.

In any case, we'll find out in a few months when the book detailing the events in the 30-some years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens comes out.

Right now it is fine but a 2nd edition could be not that far off.

As I had said in other posts if they did make a 2nd edition with new core components they would have to include an upgrade pack for all those with the first edition core set. It would include an updated rule-book and all the 2nd edition components that the 1st core set did not have minus the models.

As for phasing out models/ most likely not. A miniatures game is not like a collectible card game such as MTG of Netrunner where cards are cheap and replacing old ones is not that big of an expense as there is a good chance other cards can fill the same roll. However retiring miniatures is a whole new thing because miniatures cost more and last longer than a card. Now GW may be notorious of retiring models but those are old models which they no longer have the mold for and als the recent ones were because of a lawsuit from a 3rd party manufacture that patent all the codex entries that GW didn't have physical models for (from what I have heard from other retailers).

I hate the bolded statement even in a card game. We will not discuss the boxes of cards I have for a certain ccg that are absolutely USELESS because a better (by affect or cost or both) card has flat replaced it. Just makes you hate spending the money in the first place. That being said I think the above posters are correct in thinking a pack of upgrade cards in a 2.0 release would appease the current customers and give a reason to new customers to still seek out and buy the older models. I mean really, even in the current state how many times has a single model been exinct at FLGS's everywhere? Not even the mighty Internet is immune, there is/was/will be a huge demand for these things vs the available stock. Getting new people into it and giving them the fever for the flavor will just send this frenzy to the next power.

I would quit. I spend my hard-earned money on a bunch of miniatures that are suddenly useless? No thank you.

Why are so many people worried about this? This is not, and never has been, even the remotest of possibilities. A second edition of the game would be a revised rulebook and a new starter set. Absolute worst case scenario would be a bunch of errata for existing cards. Nothing will EVER invalidate the miniatures or even the cardboard inserts.

People really need to get past their delusions of persecution and actually think about what a second edition of the game would actually be.

A clean slate. That's what Second Editions are. Wipe it all, new core, do all the expansions again... That's how it works.

True, but look at Descent 1 > Descent 2... clean slate, sure with vastly different rules... but you could still use your old miniatures via an "upgrade" pack. They did something similar when Talisman transitioned also

The retirement of miniatures has been done in other miniature games of a semi-similar quality as X-Wing: Meaning minis that come with everything you need to play with them in the game.

(Referring here to WizKids games like Mage-Knight and MechWarrior: Dark Age.)

Yeah, Wizkids is not a good thing to take ideas from. This is a company that has had to stop setting up a retail booth at Gencon because of them trying to frenzy up the neckbeards, and blaming everyone else when it blows up in their face.

I really don't know if there will ever be a 2.0. I do know that if this game wasn't Star Wars it would already be in mothballs. The problem isn't that the game can't be balanced or that it's not fun or even that it's mechanically flawed. The problem is that 50% of the cards (ships and upgrades) don't get used 95% of the time. It does seem that FFG is getting better at having good-as-is releases. But this is a problem.

If there's money in it FFG will do it. Whether that's a version 2.0 or ships from the prequel, regardless of what they've said or what the Legion fans say.

Maybe they will add the 2 new factions The First Order and The Resistance after the movie comes out which would bring the faction count up to 5.

The game is in the best place it's been in years. None of the previous iterations of this game have had this kind of balance since we got Wave 6 and the Phantom nerf.

The only reason a game should ever be rebooted is because it was built on a poor foundation and needs a rules overhaul. X-Wing's foundation, the core rules, are one of the best out there. Simple, elegant, and strategically deep. The devs made some poor choices in the past that led to imbalanced metagames (overcosting X-Wings, Y-Wings, TIE Advanceds and A-Wings compared to TIE Fighters, allowing Phantoms to hit PS9 instead of capping them at 7, etc.), but most of those mistakes have been rectified.

Most people are very happy with where the game is at right now. Rebooting would kill the game, or at best send it back to the tiny player base it had when it first came out.

One thing I'm wondering is how are they going to add new ships from the new movies??? We have the resistance and first order now not the imperials and rebels? What are they going to do add 2 new factions???

It's only a rebranding of the existing factions. New names and paint jobs, same factions. This isn't 40k where Space Marines and Blood Angels are different factions for some reason.

I feel like the "new" factions are just JJ Abrams being JJ Abrams....

Well said

Maybe they will add the 2 new factions The First Order and The Resistance after the movie comes out which would bring the faction count up to 5.

Nope just JJ being JJ unless the new factions you want to add are Blingons and oh sorry wrong movie, Blingtroopers and Rolerball Droids.

I'm all for a second edition. The game needed some tweeks last year, but this year those tweeks have become gaping breaches. The spirit of the game's identity as a dog fighting game is under siege. Sweeping change needs to be added to give the edge back to the small based ship vs large based ones.

Or...

They can replace the X-wing and the Tie Fighter that comes in the starter box with a Falcon and a Decimator.

I am wondering, after reading some of the later posts, if this idea would make any difference.

What if we had brackets in the 100/6 game in that big ships fight big ships and fighters vs fighters. Like the large ship bracket would require 1 (at least) large base ship and would only face squads in it's own bracket. The fighters bracket the same, no large bases in the bracket. Then the champion would be top large vs top small. Just an idea, thoughts?

Then the champion would be top large vs top small. Just an idea, thoughts?

Forever hence to be called the "winner's bracket" and "loser's bracket" respectively.

Poor alabaster space cow should not be relegated to the winner's bracket.

Keep trying, though. There's a solution out there, somewhere. Errata C3P0 to "Huge Ship Only" and then we just have to figure out a decent tweak to the Imperials, for example.

A clean slate. That's what Second Editions are. Wipe it all, new core, do all the expansions again... That's how it works.

GW games routinely had players using army lists that were 2 editions out of date. The update to warmachine/hordes was a massive change to the game system that required players to buy a $5 pack of cards. Malifaux just had a second edition that I don't thing changed any component but the actual rulebook, firestorm armada and dystopian wars both had 2nd editions and players could download replacement cards, infinity's new edition didn't result in any need to replace miniatures, it's been a while, but I think commanders edition SSDs for star fleet battles remained useable into captains edition.

I can't think of a single, non-collectible miniatures game that has had a new edition that invalidated a players existing collection. The absolute worst case was Warmahordes players who needed to spend an insignificant amount to buy a new deck of cards.

I really don't know if there will ever be a 2.0. I do know that if this game wasn't Star Wars it would already be in mothballs. The problem isn't that the game can't be balanced or that it's not fun or even that it's mechanically flawed. The problem is that 50% of the cards (ships and upgrades) don't get used 95% of the time. It does seem that FFG is getting better at having good-as-is releases. But this is a problem.

If there's money in it FFG will do it. Whether that's a version 2.0 or ships from the prequel, regardless of what they've said or what the Legion fans say.

As on another thread, I have to ask whether you have any evidence for that or whether you're just speculating. And furthermore, what proportion of game elements need to be regularly used--and at what events, with what level of success--to warrant the game staying out of mothballs?

I'm all for a second edition. The game needed some tweeks last year, but this year those tweeks have become gaping breaches. The spirit of the game's identity as a dog fighting game is under siege. Sweeping change needs to be added to give the edge back to the small based ship vs large based ones.

Or...

They can replace the X-wing and the Tie Fighter that comes in the starter box with a Falcon and a Decimator.

The word is "tweak", and other than your blind assertion I don't see a good reason to think things are getting worse for X-wing in any sense.

And things like "the spirit of the game's identity" are so vague and idiosyncratic as to be useless for communication.