I think periodically reshuffling the product line would be a good idea. The current release model works fine for people like me who have been here from the beginning, but it's a little hard on someone starting out a new collection. At some point, you should be able to buy a TIE advanced expansion that includes the title, for example.

The posters bleating endlessly on about these perceived "issues" are simply to impatient to care.

This is a really dishonest way to describe the thread. The vast majority of posters in this thread come across as quite reasonable. You certainly may disagree with their points, but to call it "bleating" is more than a misrepresentation.

But of course, you still get the inevitable bleating from people who wants (nay! NEED) Predator but don't want to buy a Defender OR the Kihraxz. To which I say: get over your sense of self-entitlement.

Beating up strawmen is easy, and granted on this forum it will get you surrounded with a tender loving circle jerk of likes. The posters in this thread are not asking for something for free. In fact the original post which you probably skipped just so you could jump into telling everyone what's what said they'd like repaints repackaged. It should be implied that they are willing to pay for those, which is kind of the opposite of self-entitlement. What is so offensive about telling FFG what you as a consumer want? I don't see how this negatively impacts your play, or really why you even care. How would the OP's dream becoming reality hurt you as a player?

The issue with the original idea in this thread is that it will lead to product shortages. There is plenty of evidence of what FFG would do if they are waiting to reprint something in a different configuration. And once they do it the first time, the wait will get longer, and longer. Because as soon as a new "fix" card is made that should be put into such a "fixed" pack, sales of that pack will dry up. And the levels at which FFG would reprint it with the "fix" would make it almost unavailable. And then you tack on the wait for the reprint to actually happen. You are still looking at least a year before "fixed" packs would be available. Probably more, with FFG keeping their stock up finally.

So, in reality, you would be in the same position as we are know, for all intents and purposes. Unless you want FFG to take a loss on existing stock.

1) There really hasn't been a place to reprint autothrusters.

The TIE Advanced Prototype would have been a perfect place for it. Given that it has a native Boost action.

Good point there or they could of put some in the t-70.

Someone above mentioned that it is tiresome that these threads are created over and over and over. Yes it is. So perhaps FFG should do something to address the cause?

They ARE doing something about this. The posters bleating endlessly on about these perceived "issues" are simply to impatient to care.

• Push the Limit was originally only available in the A-Wing expansion; now you can get it in Imperial Aces.
• Predator was originally only available in the TIE Defender Expansion, now you can get it with the Kihraxz.
• Lone Wolf and Stay On Target were originally both only available in the YT-2400, now you can get it in the Hound's Tooth.

Autothrusters only came out earlier this year; chances are it will be available with a different ship before long as well.

But of course, you still get the inevitable bleating from people who wants (nay! NEED) Predator but don't want to buy a Defender OR the Kihraxz. To which I say: get over your sense of self-entitlement.

If you read my post then what I suggested was that the card should be included within one Wave in order to satisfy the customer base. Releasing Predator in Wave 4 and then not again until Wave 7 is a long, long delay. Since almost every ship with an Elite slot greatly benefits from Predator, it could have seamlessly been included in any expansion released in Wave 5 or 6 in order to get it out sooner.

Lone Wolf is less important as, although it's a good upgrade, it's unique, so there isn't the desire to have multiple copies. Stay On Target is not widely used.

1) There really hasn't been a place to reprint autothrusters.

The TIE Advanced Prototype would have been a perfect place for it. Given that it has a native Boost action.

Good point there or they could of put some in the t-70.

The Tie Advances Prototype needed an EPT, Title, and a missile (Deadeye, the title, and Homing Missile). Add in the ordnance fixes and you have no room for autothrusters again.

Does FFG need to keep the five Upgrade limit for small Expansions? I dunno. We have no evidence at all as to how necessary it is apart from the fact the policy was only broken once 5 waves ago and hasn't been broken since.

You can speculate why, but we'd be grasping at straws.

1) There really hasn't been a place to reprint autothrusters. Wave 7 has no good place for it, while it would take up a space the Wave 8 small ships with boost need for fix-cards. I expect to see it in Wave 9 or an aces pack. Predator wasn't reprinted until wave 7, so this doesn't seem to be that out of place.

2) FFG clearly wants epic ships to contain cards relevant to the standard game. I suspect they're trying to encourage people to try epic by packaging card relevant to the base game into epic expansions. I feel the Tie Fighter in the Gozanti is less arduous simply because the Tie doesn't need much help, though. So, maybe the lesson is they should try to use ships that are already reasonably competitive, but suffer from lack of competitive options, instead? Of course, then we'd have gotten a phantom in the Raider, and like I said a page or two back, the phantom's on a razor-thin line with regards to balance.

3) The forum is a vocal minority. We represent a tiny fraction of FFG's playerbase. FFG is not going to change a fundamental market strategy unless it begins to affect sales. So, I mean, you can still complain. It just isn't going to do much, especially since any major changes to the line need to go through Disney (See all the red tape the raider went through).

1) Wave 7 has two very good opportunities to include Auto-thrusters. Replace the Homing Missiles in the TIE Adv. Prototype or the Advanced Proton Torpedos in the T-70 X-Wing? I know I would value a couple more copies of Auto-thrusters a LOT more than yet more ordnance to sit un-used.

2) Yes they do. But should they be? If the players aren't keen to play epic then why encourage them? Just move those who do want epic over to Armada instead.

3) Very true, we are a tiny proportion, however I think what is sometimes overlooked is that we're a minority who love the game so much that we spend extra time posting messages about it to strangers on the internet and therefore are more likely to accept things that FFG does that those who don't post on here don't accept.

You post a lot about Disney having control over what FFG does and wanting to approve every release. Do you have any evidence of this? With exception to the Raider of course, which was a brand new ship. I can't see Disney sitting down and telling FFG what to do with their very profitable game further than "please include the ships and pilots from the new film this year". They're not going to be going through and individually vetoing specific cards.

LFL has to approve everything FFG releases. That is the nature of the licensor/licensee relationship, especially with a brand like Star Wars. The only question is how much LFL gets involved. Which isn't unprecedented. They forced Episode I content into the old Decipher SWCCG.

The Tie Advances Prototype needed an EPT, Title, and a missile (Deadeye, the title, and Homing Missile).

This is erroneous thinking. FFG has released ships that didn't come with an upgrade for every one of it's upgrade slots.

I'm sure most Imperial players would have preferred to get an Imperial source of Autothrusters over and Imperial source of Deadeye.

I can't imagine than FFG WANTED to use such generic names. The only real explanation is that Disney wouldn't let them make up any new ones.

1) There really hasn't been a place to reprint autothrusters. Wave 7 has no good place for it, while it would take up a space the Wave 8 small ships with boost need for fix-cards. I expect to see it in Wave 9 or an aces pack. Predator wasn't reprinted until wave 7, so this doesn't seem to be that out of place.

2) FFG clearly wants epic ships to contain cards relevant to the standard game. I suspect they're trying to encourage people to try epic by packaging card relevant to the base game into epic expansions. I feel the Tie Fighter in the Gozanti is less arduous simply because the Tie doesn't need much help, though. So, maybe the lesson is they should try to use ships that are already reasonably competitive, but suffer from lack of competitive options, instead? Of course, then we'd have gotten a phantom in the Raider, and like I said a page or two back, the phantom's on a razor-thin line with regards to balance.

3) The forum is a vocal minority. We represent a tiny fraction of FFG's playerbase. FFG is not going to change a fundamental market strategy unless it begins to affect sales. So, I mean, you can still complain. It just isn't going to do much, especially since any major changes to the line need to go through Disney (See all the red tape the raider went through).

1) Wave 7 has two very good opportunities to include Auto-thrusters. Replace the Homing Missiles in the TIE Adv. Prototype or the Advanced Proton Torpedos in the T-70 X-Wing? I know I would value a couple more copies of Auto-thrusters a LOT more than yet more ordnance to sit un-used.

2) Yes they do. But should they be? If the players aren't keen to play epic then why encourage them? Just move those who do want epic over to Armada instead.

3) Very true, we are a tiny proportion, however I think what is sometimes overlooked is that we're a minority who love the game so much that we spend extra time posting messages about it to strangers on the internet and therefore are more likely to accept things that FFG does that those who don't post on here don't accept.

You post a lot about Disney having control over what FFG does and wanting to approve every release. Do you have any evidence of this? With exception to the Raider of course, which was a brand new ship. I can't see Disney sitting down and telling FFG what to do with their very profitable game further than "please include the ships and pilots from the new film this year". They're not going to be going through and individually vetoing specific cards.

The Tie Advances Prototype needed an EPT, Title, and a missile (Deadeye, the title, and Homing Missile).

This is erroneous thinking. FFG has released ships that didn't come with an upgrade for every one of it's upgrade slots.

I'm sure most Imperial players would have preferred to get an Imperial source of Autothrusters over and Imperial source of Deadeye.

1) Every small ship expansion has had at least one upgrade of each type of slot available with the occasional exception of elite upgrades. So there is no room in the T-70 after integrated astromech, actually. The Tie Advanced Prototype needed homing missiles because new players who bought it as their first ship would have no offensive missiles to use with it. I suppose they could have cut deadeye, and I know a lot of veterans would prefer that. On the other hand, the TAP is clearly being marketed as a cheap missile platform, and for that, Deadeye makes more sense than Autothrusters. I'll concede the point that Marketing won out over customer demand here. That being said, none of us have any clue how FFG actually decides how to market individual expansions, so maybe Deadeye did much better in focus testing or something. We don't know.

2) Epic and Armada are very different animals. Armada doesn't actually do epic-scale conflicts at present- Maybe once it's own Epic format with Star Dreadnoughts (Well, okay, you can have 800 vs 800 fleet battles if you really want. Not many people do). It's about the sheer number of models and the size of those models; Kinesthetics and perception play a huge role in tabletop games- it's their main advantage over electronic games these days as games are quickly catching up on the interpersonal interaction level. To illustrate, an apocalypse games of 40k don't feel at all the same as a game of Epic does because the titans are several feet tall instead of at most two inches. So, "Go play Armada," isn't actually a valid comment to Epic fans.

As far as to why FFG packages content for the normal game in Epic ships. I don't actually know. I don't know why they limit the number of upgrade cards in small ships to five, either. We're just making our best guess here, and there isn't enough evidence to hold a grounded discussion.

3) Short of market research, you can't actually make such a statement of the game's general population with much confidence. How much of FFG's sales are through people who got curious and bought one or two ships at Barnes and Noble?

Regarding the level of Disney's interference: I admit this is secondhand because I don't enjoy podcasts or video interviews, but the impression I've gotten from reading people's responses to said developer interviews is that Disney/Lucasfilm have in fact vetoed things on occasion. I don't know how frequently or what the underlying reasons were (Maybe that's in those developer interviews. Maybe not).

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I realize I'm saying, "We don't know," a lot. I guess that's because we're kind of reaching the point where we have to delve almost entirely into speculation, assumptions, and guesswork, and that's not really my cup of tea.

This is about new players and simplifying the gateway to the game.

As I said patching old product with new product is great. It updates our collections with products we are excited to buy.

Refreshing the single ship expansions would make the game easier for new players.

I think it's a waste to keep reprinting what essentially become broken products. As demand for old ships dies down I think a refresh will actually increase demand quite a bit.

I love this game and buy all of it because FFG so clearly cares about giving us a good product.

There's a far simpler way to deal with this issue than refreshing the expansions - which let's face it - will just upset the old timers.

I've suggested it a few times, but because it's such a reasonable and simple solution, and because I didn't get into any arguments with anyone over it, or accuse anyone of being stupid, it never got much traction on here.

Produce a Compendium / Companion set for each wave and faction.

The general idea would be to have a 2 ship box set a little like the Aces packs, that gives a selection of the "essential" upgrades for those ships that were released in later waves - but didn't include any new upgrades - and left out the named pilots from the Aces packs and Blister expansions so you've still got a reason to buy them.

That way new players could get their collections up to speed without having to buy a diverse range of ships they might not want - and existing players can buy it to flesh out their collections of ships and get hold of additional copies of cards they might want more of for those specific ships - without feeling like the set included anything they HAD to buy if a player feels like he's got all the ships and cards from a particular wave he needs.

Perhaps offer alt-art cards and repainted ships as an added incentive.

So for example - the Wave 1 Rebel Compendium would include an X-Wing and Y-Wing. The generic pilots, the named pilots and astromechs from the Transport, The BTL-A4 Title, Bomb loadout, Integrated Astromech, and an assortment of the more popular upgrades and EPTs that go well with those ships (EU for Wedge - Lone Wolf for Luke etc).

If that player wants scum Y-wings he's still got to buy MW - if he wants a transport he's still got to buy a transport - if he wants Wedge he still has to buy the blister - if he wants Luke he still needs a core set - if he wants a T-70 he's still got to buy the T-70 blister.

BUT if he just wants competitive X-Wings and Y-Wings - he buys a Wave 1 Compendium Set at say £5-£7 above the cost of 2 blister expansions.

Problem solved

Thanks

The issue with the original idea in this thread is that it will lead to product shortages. There is plenty of evidence of what FFG would do if they are waiting to reprint something in a different configuration. And once they do it the first time, the wait will get longer, and longer. Because as soon as a new "fix" card is made that should be put into such a "fixed" pack, sales of that pack will dry up. And the levels at which FFG would reprint it with the "fix" would make it almost unavailable. And then you tack on the wait for the reprint to actually happen. You are still looking at least a year before "fixed" packs would be available. Probably more, with FFG keeping their stock up finally.

So, in reality, you would be in the same position as we are know, for all intents and purposes. Unless you want FFG to take a loss on existing stock.

That's a little different from what the OP posted. He's not talking about re-doing the same expansions with fixed cards. He's talking about distinct expansions, not disimilar from the aces treatments. He even notes, as you did that if you put the better cards in the same ship pack, the old stock becomes useless. Logistically I don't think it's impossible, and I don't think it's a bad idea. It certainly is neither bleating nor proclaiming the sky is falling, which is how every single "not glowing" post about FFG is being treated by a lot of regular posters here. By the way, I'm not lumping your response in with that, clearly you've put thought into it and I always appreciate reasonable discourse.

He specifically said reprints should have added cards to them. Not new expansions. Which means any old stock become pretty much unsellable.

I can understand why people have issue with the Transport and Raider. But, Aces and cross buying of ships doesn't seem that terrible to me.

While I interpreted the OP's statement as updating existing expansions as well, more aces packs does seem like a pretty good idea. I've seen a good number of requests for more of them, so I don't think it's too unreasonable to say they'd probably sell well. I imagine the biggest reason we haven't seen more of them is FFG was a bit swamped between Rebels and Episode VII stuff. The good news is that after The Force Awakens hits, the next big Star Wars release is Rogue One the following year, so hopefully FFG will have time to devote to another Aces pack.

I said refresh instead of reprint. A refresh is a new product with the same model of ship as an old product but with a new paint job and a new mix of cards. This means the old package is different and now becomes an out of print rare ship. Want more red x-wings? Act fast because the new one is green.

I mostly feel this is needed for ships with hard patches like the tie advanced. Put the blue one in a blister and give it new upgrades and the X1 title and maybe a second new title that turns the obvious patch into a neat game play choice.

I don't feel buying ships for other upgrades is bad. they are obviously trying to get things to us in numbers we can use with a few exceptions like auto thrusters. I'm sure they will correct that at the next opportunity.

Every time a patch for the x-wing is brought up the designers say "we need an opportunity to release that with a new product"

I'm saying stop reprinting broken products. Instead refresh them.

1) Every small ship expansion has had at least one upgrade of each slot available with the occasional exception of elite upgrades.

So...what I said was completely correct. Not every ship comes with upgrades for all it's slots. And the TAP could have easily had a Mod instead of an EPT.

Also, some ships like the TIE Bomber come with upgrades to fill SOME of their ordnance slots. But not all of them.

I'm saying stop reprinting broken products. Instead refresh them.

Never going to happen. FFG is against rarity. Everything needs to remain available. Which is why I highly doubt that they are going to remove the old damage deck from the original Core.

1) Every small ship expansion has had at least one upgrade of each slot available with the occasional exception of elite upgrades.

So...what I said was completely correct. Not every ship comes with upgrades for all it's slots. And the TAP could have easily had a Mod instead of an EPT.

Also, some ships like the TIE Bomber come with upgrades to fill SOME of their ordnance slots. But not all of them.

1) Every small ship expansion has had at least one upgrade of each slot available with the occasional exception of elite upgrades.

So...what I said was completely correct. Not every ship comes with upgrades for all it's slots. And the TAP could have easily had a Mod instead of an EPT.

Also, some ships like the TIE Bomber come with upgrades to fill SOME of their ordnance slots. But not all of them.

Sorry, I meant to say each type of upgrade slot except for elite upgrades; the original post got eaten. As for why a few ships don't have elite upgrades, I don't know why that's the exception to the rule. I suppose FFG could have reprinted autothrusters instead of deadeye. I'll concede that's rather annoying if you're hurting for autothrusters, although deadeye being in the expansion does make pretty clear sense given that every single upgrade in the pack is centered around being a better ordnance carrier.

1) Every small ship expansion has had at least one upgrade of each slot available with the occasional exception of elite upgrades.

So...what I said was completely correct. Not every ship comes with upgrades for all it's slots. And the TAP could have easily had a Mod instead of an EPT.

Also, some ships like the TIE Bomber come with upgrades to fill SOME of their ordnance slots. But not all of them.

Rebel Aces didn't come with a single cannon for the B-Wing. It had two copies of that indispensible card, Enhanced Scopes.

Rebel aces contained small-base ships. It was not a $15 expansion with a single small ship, which was what I meant. I thought that was pretty clear; My apologies if you misunderstood me.

1) Every small ship expansion has had at least one upgrade of each slot available with the occasional exception of elite upgrades.

So...what I said was completely correct. Not every ship comes with upgrades for all it's slots. And the TAP could have easily had a Mod instead of an EPT.

Also, some ships like the TIE Bomber come with upgrades to fill SOME of their ordnance slots. But not all of them.

Rebel Aces didn't come with a single cannon for the B-Wing. It had two copies of that indispensible card, Enhanced Scopes.

Rebel aces contained small-base ships. It was not a $15 expansion with a single small ship, which was what I meant. I thought that was pretty clear; My apologies if you misunderstood me.

What is the purpose of including multiples ofmthe same card anyway? We all know it's useless for casual play. And as many, many have repeated: if you're a tournament player you should be willing to commit. One Chardaan Refit would have been plenty for Rebel Aces.

1) Every small ship expansion has had at least one upgrade of each slot available with the occasional exception of elite upgrades.

So...what I said was completely correct. Not every ship comes with upgrades for all it's slots. And the TAP could have easily had a Mod instead of an EPT.

Also, some ships like the TIE Bomber come with upgrades to fill SOME of their ordnance slots. But not all of them.

Rebel Aces didn't come with a single cannon for the B-Wing. It had two copies of that indispensible card, Enhanced Scopes.

Rebel aces contained small-base ships. It was not a $15 expansion with a single small ship, which was what I meant. I thought that was pretty clear; My apologies if you misunderstood me.

No, it was not clear to me that Rebel Aces should not be considered a "small ship expansion". But regardless, does it matter? I don't see what purpose it serves to divide the expansions, either the expansions contain relevant cards or they don't.

What is the purpose of including multiples ofmthe same card anyway? We all know it's useless for casual play. And as many, many have repeated: if you're a tournament player you should be willing to commit. One Chardaan Refit would have been plenty for Rebel Aces.

Sorry about that, then.

Regarding the duplication of cards in ace packs: Rebel Aces was designed such that you could use it's cards not only for the ships in it, but another B-wing and A-wing expansion as well. The Raider likewise assumed you might want to use the Tie Advanced /x1 title on all four of your ties and contained four copies of that and ATC.

As for why Enhanced Scopes got two copies... Yeah, my best guess is they overestimated its worth.

This very much is an issue going forward. It's large and painfully complex for new players, and even a number of veterans are getting tired of it. I've never flown more than 3 Interceptors at a time, but I own 9. A-wings? 2 on the table, 5 in the box. I flew dual Falcons in one tournament (and felt dirty for it) but I've gotten a lot of use out of that second Engine Upgrade. I've played a total of 3 epic games, at a cost of $100 per game (but oh, yeah, C-3PO!). I finally gave up with the Raider.

We'll get the usual dismissals that anything could possibly be wrong with this perfect game, but X-wing isn't cheap any more. What's worse, it's VISIBLY not cheap - as mentioned above, if you look at the cost for common builds many of them double or even triple the cost in necessary purchase of useless ships in order to get desirable cards. Knowing what you get in the pack doesn't lessen the pain of having to buy a bunch of unwanted stuff. This is actually common with FFG's models - I've gotten a friend into LOTR and he wants to put his own decks together, but he has to buy a ton of scenario cards he doesn't want or need in order to get the player cards he does. That's a HUGE demotivator.

Yes, "Just proxy" is an option as long as you're niot in a tournament, but I think it's one that leaves a poor taste for many. People WANT to play the game the way it's produced - this is the official way X-wing is designed, and it's what people feel like they should do. In all the time I've been playing X-wing, from demo and casual to Regionals, I've never seen a proxy card beyond a few cases of "I only own one Advanced Sensors but I've put it on all my B-wings".

And it's only going to get worse as time goes on. Can they fix it? Maybe, but I don't believe they will. They LOVE this model, for all the reasons I've come to hate it.

I guess the question is, how is it any different than any other long running game with expansions? And really, the entry is still very fine for this type of game. In fact, the more ships available, the better it is. $100 can get some very different squad types if you are wanting to enter the game.

But, I also don't feel having extra ships is a problem. The models are the main draw for me, and I rarely buy amounts based on what type of squads I can make.

-There is zero reason they can't sell upgrade cards in a pack at a marked up price. Everyone knows how high margins are for card packs. It would be a smart business move. But they use upgrade cards as leverage to sell ships that are obviously not enticing enough to be worth the purchase alone.

This is blatantly false. A very basic understanding of business and/or manufacturing can easily see this. Now, whether you agree with those reasons or not, that's another matter. And, ultimately pointless. As FFG has said that card packs are not in the cards, because of their analysis has shown them to not be a viable product.

We better let Magic the Gathering know that selling card packs is impossible to make money off of.. If you buy that nonesense from ffg, I have a bridge I'd love to sell you.

I guess the question is, how is it any different than any other long running game with expansions?

The difference is in buying just what you want. I started playing Warmachine recently, and wanted to start the Convergance of Cyriss (which is new since I left). I bought Convergance models, and nothing else - the closest thing I got to a "wasted" purchase is that some of the units in the battle box weren't the best.

I knew what to buy, I bought exactly those things, I never had to figure out where a particular upgrade was, and I never had to buy a model that didn't relate to my faction just to get something else. Other games that do use upgrades, such as Malifaux 2E, sell the generic upgrades in a single pack that covers everything. No "Well, I play Arcanists but Seamus has that awesome upgrade in his box, so I guess I'm buying another starter crew..."

That's the real difference. X-wing's model is more LCG than miniatures, but the models are the visibly expensive part of that. It's also worse than FFG's typical LCG model, because you generally get a play set - if Netrunner or Conquest has a card you want, you don't have to buy three packs to get it.

So honestly, there really isn't another parallel - in terms of what you have to buy to play, X-wing has one of the least friendly distribution models I know of. It feels cheap because of the small scale, but that's really the only saving grace.

I guess the question is, how is it any different than any other long running game with expansions? And really, the entry is still very fine for this type of game. In fact, the more ships available, the better it is. $100 can get some very different squad types if you are wanting to enter the game.

But, I also don't feel having extra ships is a problem. The models are the main draw for me, and I rarely buy amounts based on what type of squads I can make.

Malifaux, I was even corrected on the general upgrade pack, it actually has the general upgrades for all the factions.