I don't mind the current packaging format, but I do wish they'd include some of these upgrades in more than 1 expansion pack. I'd love there to be more options to get Tactician & Predator than just the Phantom & Defender, even if it takes a wave or two. Those cards are nearly 3 wave old now, it's time to include them with something else like they did with Advanced Sensors.

If the only way to sell epic ships is to package good upgrade cards for the xwing, may be you dont have to spend money on epic and just focus on xwing which is the one you are really selling?

I think there are a numerous different ways to make profit, there is not only one way to do it right.

Most people that buy Epic ships bought the expansions for the big ship to play epic game not the little card that comes with it. Especially when there are so many other ways of acquiring those upgrades. If you can't find one outside the big ship box then you really not looking hard enough.

If your assertion is that card packs would literally be the end of X Wing, then you're going to have to support it with abit more than just your opinion.

1- I say that card packs would be good for customers.

2- You say that this would literally kill X Wing.

If that's your assertion, then prove it.

I have been very explicit on my exact points which you either aren't reading or are deliberately misconstruing my arguments.

This game as profitable as can be for FFG ensures that FFG is more inclined to keep producing X-wing for a longer period of time. Especially given that it is a liscenced IP. It also means FFG will expand the game in ways they wouldn't otherwise, as repeatedly highlighted.

FFG has said, repeatedly, that it is not fiscally prudent of them to make card only expansions. So either you can take that as doing so would make the game insolvent or doing so would cut in to profits too much for thier liking. Even if you go with the second option that doesn't mean that is an preferable situation from a consumer standpoint. Saving a few dollars individually is not preferable to the games expansion in my view.

Stop wasting my time if you aren't going to address anything and instead are going to exaggerate people's positions.

Imperial Aces is older than Rebel Aces and the Imperial Raider. Judge them by their most recent actions, lest you mistake Apple for saints. Royal Guard TIE is also not a fix card.

No. **** that. You're the one that tried to base your argument around "Wouldn't it suck if they did this thing?" for a thing that they'd already done. If you didn't want me to judge them by that criteria, you shouldn't have made that the focus of your argument.

If this whole thing is about whether FFG will lose money on selling useful upgrades separate from models let me just say this: they could sell one copy of Engine Upgrade and package it with 5 Advanced Proton Torpedoes for $10 and they'd make a goddamned killing.

If the EU is the only thing you want out of the Falcon box you're paying $15 each. My way your chickenheaded clucks get 3 for the price of flapjack. If you had xp slinging you'd know how this game really works.

Business sense would also tell you that a card pack is less packaging and easier to move since it sells at a lower price. Volume sales, repeat customers, and cut your product with lower value ****. That's how it's done. Get with it chumps, really.

No. **** that. You're the one that tried to base your argument around "Wouldn't it suck if they did this thing?" for a thing that they'd already done. If you didn't want me to judge them by that criteria, you shouldn't have made that the focus of your argument.

Firstly, you really need to calm down a bit. No, a lot. When the f-bombs start flying you've gone off reasonable discussion and the forums are not the place for you. If this game makes you this angry I have no idea why you put yourself through playing it.

Secondly, everything they've done is in the past. You reading the previous paragraph is in the past. I referred to their most recent actions, and you referred to their actions before that. Their most recent actions are usually more indicative of future practice.

Assuming you're referring to packaging redundant copies of upgrades for existing ships, the most recent three packs containing cards that are considered to be fixes or patches for old ships (Imperial Raider, StarViper, Rebel Aces) contain redundant copies of TIE/x1/ATC, Autothrusters, Chaardan Refit, Proton Rockets and B-wing/E2. The Royal Guard TIE title has enough for the pack it comes with. It's also worth noting that Imperial Aces lacks the two low skill generics as all.

Furthermore, if you look at the Wave 2 Large Ships, they contain redundant modifications. In that sense, Imperial Aces is somewhat anomalous.

Their model does somewhat incentivise buying expansions for cards if you want to run a build that doesn't line up with the cards that come with the packs. But practices such as this suggest that it's an artefact of the model rather than the intent of the model. Yes, they're not about to restructure X-Wing to eradicate that effect but little things like redundant copies are a good indication that it's not their primary intent to push models with upgrade cards.

If your assertion is that card packs would literally be the end of X Wing, then you're going to have to support it with abit more than just your opinion.

1- I say that card packs would be good for customers.

2- You say that this would literally kill X Wing.

If that's your assertion, then prove it.

It's not about what's good for customers. They're not doing this for you. It's about what customers will buy.

If this whole thing is about whether FFG will lose money on selling useful upgrades separate from models let me just say this: they could sell one copy of Engine Upgrade and package it with 5 Advanced Proton Torpedoes for $10 and they'd make a goddamned killing.

If the EU is the only thing you want out of the Falcon box you're paying $15 each. My way your chickenheaded clucks get 3 for the price of flapjack. If you had xp slinging you'd know how this game really works.

Business sense would also tell you that a card pack is less packaging and easier to move since it sells at a lower price. Volume sales, repeat customers, and cut your product with lower value ****. That's how it's done. Get with it chumps, really.

No average person in their right mind is going to pay $10 for five non-randomised half-size cards. You'd buy it, I daresay some people would buy it. Bu they could use that ink and factory time to print more Netrunner packs and tons of people buy those.

FFG has a better grasp of how to run their company than the denizens of this thread do.

Another thing worth noting: if the rumours are to believed, Wave 8 abandons bundling somewhat. Imagine one ship ace packs. That's supposely what half of Wave 8 is like.

If your assertion is that card packs would literally be the end of X Wing, then you're going to have to support it with abit more than just your opinion.

1- I say that card packs would be good for customers.

2- You say that this would literally kill X Wing.

If that's your assertion, then prove it.

It's not about what's good for customers. They're not doing this for you. It's about what customers will buy

right. But since that directly disadvantages the customer, I don't understand why anyone on this forum would be supportive of the practice, let alone be so quick to label anyone who disagrees as "entitled"

Why would anyone NOT want card packs? I mean, apart from that one guy who thinks it would literally destroy X Wing

right. But since that directly disadvantages the customer, I don't understand why anyone on this forum would be supportive of the practice, let alone be so quick to label anyone who disagrees as "entitled"

Why would anyone NOT want card packs? I mean, apart from that one guy who thinks it would literally destroy X Wing

This post begins on something of a tangent, but it gets onto answering that question later on.

Card packs would be nice, and we'll also all like it if all the ships were free. If they announced a card pack tomorrow with all of Rogue Squadron in it I would not be complaining.

There is, however, a difference between that and believing FFG are wrong for not making card packs, that is to say, that we have a right to have card packs made for us to buy at a price we want, that we should dictate what a company sells and what they sell it for and companies that don't provide the product we want at the price we want are morally in the wrong. That, I think, is where the word entitled came in. Too many advocates for card packs end up sounding like this, even if they don't mean to. Likewise, those disagreeing with this perceived entitlement can sound like they're saying effectively "shut up and eat your gruel" and sound like we somehow owe FFG.

Yes, if FFG made card packs priced according to how much people would pay, they'll probably sell. However, it's never that simple.

One major thing that gets forgotten in these threads is opportunity cost. If you produce one thing, you're not producing something else. FFG's assessment is that card packs are neither a thing they want to make nor believe to be viable: they'd sell but you could use that factory time to make something that'd sell more. Even if you completely discount the people who buy ships for cards, ships still sell better. If this game had no upgrades in it at all FFG would probably still make ships with pilot cards than pilot cards by themselves.

They do do shipless content (the conversion kits in Most Wanted are a good example, and the redundant copies are sort of another) but it always comes in a pack with ships. The ship is cheap to make and sells for a lot, and the cards are expensive to design and don't sell for much. Put them together and you've got a marketable product.

So, when you take into account the economic realities, what reasons could there be for not wanting card packs?

It's a little odd how people don't want to buy, say, the Raider for its TIE advanced content and consider Autothrusters coming with the StarViper as a reprehensible practice but are willing to buy packs with barely any cards for only slightly less: the perception of not having "a ship I won't use" seems far more important than the realities. The prices people are suggesting when compared to the content suggests people would be happy with to buy a Viper blister with no Viper in it.

The general public does not operate under this. A plastic ship they'll buy, a plastic ship is attractive on the shelf and the little card packs are not. Again, the ship is cheap to make and adds a lot of perceived value to the product, and the cards are expensive to design and don't add much perceived value to the product. To release card packs they need to do them in a way that's economically viable. The amount of cards in a Wave release simply would not sell without the ship.

So to make the card packs work for general sale they need a lot of cards. Far more than the blisters have. They have to design these cards. The idea a few pages back of releasing old upgrades by wave in Print on Demand packs much like the RPG reference cards aside (and I think that's a good idea personally) this is a huge design burden. Consider how long it takes them to playtest and balance a Wave: they come out every six months.

If you want to see what happens when you push things out faster look at the mess that's WizKid's Attack Wing. It's a strong indicator that X-Wing takes a lot of playtesting. Cloak went through twelve different versions of the Cloak mechanic according to Frank Brooks, and even then it went wrong.

Then consider the amount of cards in a wave. Netrunner releases packs of sixty cards each month and they sell for a bit less than an X-wing blister. These packs are full size cards, have three copies of twenty unique cards. That's 120 unique cards every six months.

To even get close to that, X-Wing's designers would have to pump out cards like crazy.

This means either hiring more designers, which is expensive, or spending less time testing each component. Furthermore, the more cards there are, the harder it is to spot the broken combos, further compounding this. The game either tends towards Games Workshop-ness, where the model components are incredibly expensive (in this case to subsidise the great cost of pumping out so many cards) or the quality drops significantly. Even with all its testing look how Advanced Cloaking Device turned out.

A lot of X-Wing's balancing quality comes from the large amount of testing and balancing each ship undergoes, and this requires relatively slow (ie: the current rate) of component release so everything can go through several design iterations. That number of cards don't sell by themselves so they're packaged with models so that they sell for a practical margin.

Even without these problems, if you're releasing significant amounts of new content in these card packs then to get that content you need to buy the card packs, so you may actually end up paying more with the split distribution than you would now.

In brief, mainstream card only expansions would require far more cards than FFG makes, and producing that many cards would likely require either an increase in design work or reduction in design work per card, resulting in either higher prices or lower quality.

Print on Demand packs of lots of old cards I think is a good idea, but for the reasons above I don't think mainstream card only releases done in an economically viable way are compatible with the nature of the game.

If your assertion is that card packs would literally be the end of X Wing, then you're going to have to support it with abit more than just your opinion.

1- I say that card packs would be good for customers.

2- You say that this would literally kill X Wing.

If that's your assertion, then prove it.

It's not about what's good for customers. They're not doing this for you. It's about what customers will buy

right. But since that directly disadvantages the customer, I don't understand why anyone on this forum would be supportive of the practice, let alone be so quick to label anyone who disagrees as "entitled"

Why would anyone NOT want card packs? I mean, apart from that one guy who thinks it would literally destroy X Wing

Retailers would also probably be annoyed with X-wing getting even more SKUs. FFG already requires tons of shelfspace for their games, especially for the LCGs.

Firstly, you really need to calm down a bit.

Well, you ain't the boss of me. So I don't gotta do nuthin'.

I don't mind the current packaging format, but I do wish they'd include some of these upgrades in more than 1 expansion pack. I'd love there to be more options to get Tactician & Predator than just the Phantom & Defender, even if it takes a wave or two. Those cards are nearly 3 wave old now, it's time to include them with something else like they did with Advanced Sensors.

Another thing worth noting: if the rumours are to believed, Wave 8 abandons bundling somewhat. Imagine one ship ace packs. That's supposely what half of Wave 8 is like.

Thread too long, didn't read; I would say something like and upgrade equipment pack of cards would be nice for players who are tournament centered and don't want the additional ships.

For example, a deck of cards that synergize well with TIE fighters. It would also (I think) allow fantasy flight to patch ships like the TIE advanced without having to have players buy a raider to do so.

This post begins on something of a tangent, but it gets onto answering that question later on....

What pilot skill is John Galt?

...

And the countless people that do exactly that on ebay. Last I checked the going price for an Autothusters was like $6.

And that's money that FFGs could be making, but isn't.

Why would anyone pay $6 for 1 copy of Autothrusters when a $13 StarViper pack gets you 2, along with another 5-6 cards? That's moronic.

This would be like me selling my C3PO for $50, when the Tantive IV only costs $60.

Why would anyone pay $6 for 1 copy of Autothrusters when a $13 StarViper pack gets you 2, along with another 5-6 cards? That's moronic.

*shrug* Dunno.

No average person in their right mind is going to pay $10 for five non-randomised half-size cards. You'd buy it, I daresay some people would buy it.

And the countless people that do exactly that on ebay. Last I checked the going price for an Autothusters was like $6.

And that's money that FFGs could be making, but isn't.

So let me get this straight. Putting two copies of Autothrusters in the StarViper pack, (along with the StarViper, a punchboard sheet of tokens and baseplates, four pilot cards and several other upgrade cards) is gouging, and charging $6 for one upgrade card isn't?

So let me get this straight. Putting two copies of Autothrusters in the StarViper pack, (along with the StarViper, a punchboard sheet of tokens and baseplates, four pilot cards and several other upgrade cards) is gouging and charging $6 for one upgrade card isn't?

I didn't say it wasn't. I'm saying your "Nobody would pay $10 for 5 cards" statement is stupid and wrong.

How come every time you say something dumb and someone points out how wrong you are you try and change their argument into something else entirely?

So let me get this straight. Putting two copies of Autothrusters in the StarViper pack, (along with the StarViper, a punchboard sheet of tokens and baseplates, four pilot cards and several other upgrade cards) is gouging and charging $6 for one upgrade card isn't?

I didn't say it wasn't. I'm saying your "Nobody would pay $10 for 5 cards" statement is stupid and wrong.

How come every time you say something dumb and someone points out how wrong you are you try and change their argument into something else entirely?

For $10 they can get more than 5 cards and a model ship along with all the cardboard needed to play it. Given a choice between that and just the cards, those people choosing only the cards would be stupid.

A valid opinion(though one I disagree with), but not what you said. You said that people wouldn't do it. Not that the people that did it were stupid.

As for the opinion itself: A model, a bunch of cardboard and several cards that I won't use is worth...$0 to me.

A card that I will use is worth $1-$2 to me.

Given a choice between paying $10 for 5 things worth $2 to me, and paying $15 for two things worth $2 to me, simple math seems to dictate that the latter is the one that is stupid.

The one and only time that you need to have legal cards is if you are going to participate in a tournament. If it's not a tournament then it is honestly so much easier to use one of the squad builders and print out a sheet with your full list on it. At least one of them used to use the actual card images so nothing was ambiguous.

Assuming that the people crying foul over the way FFG chooses to package and sell this game actually do want to participate in tournaments it's not tough to borrow an upgrade or 2 from a friend. In fact I've been around enough tournaments to know there are some pretty cool people around that play this game and it wouldn't be the least bit surprising to see a complete stranger lend out a card or two for the day.

Lastly, there are plenty of more than viable lists that don't require a massive cost investment that you could bring to a tournament and do very well with.

The fact of the matter is that X-Wing has been an extraordinarily successful game and continues to thrive. That being said there really is no reason for FFG to change the model.

I haven't come across a single expansion, aces pack or Epic pack that doesn't offer very good value, particularly if you are factoring in the ultra low price retailers like Coolstuff and Miniatures Market. Certain packs/expansions are a downright steal for what you get.

So let me get this straight. Putting two copies of Autothrusters in the StarViper pack, (along with the StarViper, a punchboard sheet of tokens and baseplates, four pilot cards and several other upgrade cards) is gouging and charging $6 for one upgrade card isn't?

I didn't say it wasn't. I'm saying your "Nobody would pay $10 for 5 cards" statement is stupid and wrong.

How come every time you say something dumb and someone points out how wrong you are you try and change their argument into something else entirely?

You seize on small, barely related semantics stripped of all context rather than responding to anyone's point, and toss in some personal attacks to polish it off. I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to respond to you when you seem incapable of holding a civil discussion, at least in this thread.

If someone says "nobody would buy that" it's quite obvious what they mean. The world has seven billion people in it, there'll be one that'll buy just about anything. Bringing that up isn't a counterpoint: it doesn't mean there's a viable market for it. You get a gold star for derailing pedantry and that's about it.

The overwhelming majority doesn't see five non-randomised cards as worth $10, and FFG aren't going to make expansions for you specifically.

If someone says "nobody would buy that" it's quite obvious what they mean. The world has seven billion people in it, there'll be one that'll buy just about anything. Bringing that up isn't a counterpoint: it doesn't mean there's a viable market for it.

But the fact that that is the going rate on ebay means there is. Otherwise, they wouldn't charge that much for it. Because they make their money selling cards at prices that a sufficient number of people are willing to pay.

If people weren't buying them for $6 they wouldn't charge that much.

Just because something gets posted on ebay at a certain price doesn't mean anyone is buying it at that price. Even if it does sell, that doesn't mean there's enough people willing to pay that price for a company to base it's marketing strategy around it, that just mean one person is wiling to pay that price.

Just because something gets posted on ebay at a certain price doesn't mean anyone is buying it at that price.

The example I used wasn't the highest price on ebay, it was the standard price.