I just trying to get an idea on how skirmish is doing in various areas. In our meta, the greater Hartford, CT area, we mainly have about 5-6 regular skirmish players. We've tried various things, such as setting up a "come and learn" demo day to try the game out and hopefully grow our meta, but nothing seems to be working.

We even offer people to use our extra stuff if they want to come and play in our game night kit league, with the hopes of them liking it enough to get into the game themselves down the road. We also see a handful of people playing the campaign version, but after talking with them, they just don't seem to want to try skirmish mode.

So I'm just wondering if anyone out there is having success growing their meta. Even the two Store Championships we've had in the area consisted of 7 people and 6 people, pretty much just our regular play group. Whereas Store Championships for other games, such as Thrones and NetRunner, saw an average of 24 people each, with several people traveling hours to get there, it just doesn't seem like Imperial Assault skirmish is really hitting with a lot of people.

I know the game is still in it's infancy to a degree and is really starting to hit its stride, and I know LCG's are a lot cheaper to get into, so therefore more people will probably play those, hence more people at their Store Championships, but the fact that we really didn't get any extra people for our Imperial Assault SCs worries me a bit about how well this game may be doing.

Maybe it's just my area, I don't know. I'm traveling to an Imperial Assault SC in NY next weekend, so hopefully the turnout will be better, but who knows.

It's not just your area; it's this way most places. Definitely hard to grow. Our area - Kentucky - just had back-to-back IA tourneys this past weekend. Saturday was a Store Championship....even had someone drive in from a little over two hours away. Six players at the start, four by the time we finish our three games.

Next day (Sunday), ten players show up to a different shop's regular, non-SC event.

?

How much does it have to do with setup? I've heard that as a complaint for IA, that rebuilding the maps is a pain to the point of not wanting to bother (hence the popularity of the printed maps emerging everywhere). I've heard this kind of grumbling before with Heroscape...no one wants to build maps. Speed of play/convenience might be a big factor here.

How much does it have to do with those who like the campaign? It certainly evokes more of a role-playing experience, so maybe that kind of gamer might not be the competitive type? I've heard that reason a lot.

It doesn't lend itself to the non-miniatures gamer like X-Wing might as the figures aren't painted and maybe the ships seem to be more iconic for the Star Wars experience.

When it comes to committing to lifestyle game such as this, can you afford to only play just one? if so, you might be swayed to try the more popular game instead.

All of these reasons -- except for the rpg/non-competitive one -- certainly crossed my mind before I took the plunge.

How much does it have to do with setup? I've heard that as a complaint for IA, that rebuilding the maps is a pain to the point of not wanting to bother (hence the popularity of the printed maps emerging everywhere). I've heard this kind of grumbling before with Heroscape...no one wants to build maps. Speed of play/convenience might be a big factor here.

Yes, I agree that setup could be a big factor, as I myself hate that factor of the game. A couple of people in our play group have all the maps printed out on vinyl for ease of setup. Instead of putting all the tiles back in numeric order, I actually built each map and then took them apart and placed each map in its own ziplock bag.

That way I don't have to go looking through all the tiles each time, as every piece is there in the bag, I just have to refer to the sheet to put it together, and it saves a good amount of time during setup. However, in order to have all the pieces necessary to have all three tournament maps ready to go, you need to have two of the core sets.

I actually ended up getting out of X-wing and selling all my stuff to get into Imperial Assault, so it's disheartening to see 2-3 dozen people show up for an X-Wing championship and Imperial Assault gets 6. I don't know, I just prefer playing with the iconic characters over the iconic ships.

So I went to that SC in NY this past weekend, which I ended up winning, but the sad thing is that I drove with 3 others from CT, and there were 3 that came from NJ, and that's it! Not a single person from NY showed up. The store owner said 3-4 people regularly show up every week to play, yet none of them showed for the SC, though he's not sure if it's campaign or skirmish that they play.

So if we didn't drive in from CT and the other 3 didn't drive in from NJ, then he would have 0 people show up for the SC. It really kinda makes me worry for this game, as much as I love it.

So I went to that SC in NY this past weekend, which I ended up winning, but the sad thing is that I drove with 3 others from CT, and there were 3 that came from NJ, and that's it! Not a single person from NY showed up. The store owner said 3-4 people regularly show up every week to play, yet none of them showed for the SC, though he's not sure if it's campaign or skirmish that they play.

So if we didn't drive in from CT and the other 3 didn't drive in from NJ, then he would have 0 people show up for the SC. It really kinda makes me worry for this game, as much as I love it.

I was the one who drove in from NJ with my 2 boys.

I think it's worth mentioning that only 1 person at the store seemed to know anything about IA. They had never even read the Tournament Rules document, when they were running a tournament for the game! I mean, they had set up the Mos Eisley Outskirts map for us to play on! Furthermore, an employee was going to play in the tournament so that we wouldn't have a Bye from an odd number of players, but then she backed out, saying that she wanted to be able to watch us play so that she would be able to run IA tournaments better in the future...30 minutes later she was playing in the Attack Wing event, 5 feet away, and she didn't pay any attention to our tournament after that.

So in the end I think that, more than anything else, our dismal turnout is more a factor of the event being run in a store that does not support or even understand the skirmish game. [i would be willing to bet my Return to Hoth set that the regulars who do play IA at the store are campaign players, not skirmish players.]

Having said that, though, I do agree that it's disappointing that there are so few IA skirmish players around. I honestly enjoy IA more than any other tactical skirmish game I've ever played, and I've played a pile of them. There is a Vassal League starting up soon, so hopefully that will help things a little.

I agree with the comments posted above, about the setup times being a barrier. The game is also expensive to get into, especially if it's just for the skirmish mode. I wish that more Campaign players would take the plunge, but from the SC numbers we're seeing, it would appear that a majority of IA players are mostly in it for the Campaign.

Almost none. To be honest, I am starting to give up on playing IA competitively. Driving 2 hrs to a Store Championship that only has 10 players in it is kind of a joke.

Especially when I can play in X-Wing Store Championships locally with 30+ players.

There are quite a few players at our local store in total, but the tournaments end up having between four and six players each time, partly due to availability of when people can turn up. I'm disappointed every time - the X-Wing tournaments get dozens of players.

I'm not sure that setup time is that big a factor in putting people off, to be honest. By the time you've bought into the game and realised how fun it is, the seven or eight minutes of playing jigsaw at the start fades into distant memory. It may not be as fast to setup and play as a CCG or X-Wing, but plenty of people play 40K and that can take an hour just to write your army list, never mind anything else!

A bigger factor is the (perceived) cost of entry. The five of us who play campaign all do so with my boxed set. (Two of the others also bought it later; one of them plays skirmish). Anyone interested in skirmish needs that boxed set - there's no way around it - and it's a sizeable investment up front. You can't, say, just buy a bunch of Stormtroopers and throw down. Whatever else you want in your army, you need that big £70 box, and if all you actually want is a bunch of Stormtroopers you're not getting much in the way of value for money. Or you could pick up an entire X-Wing fleet for half that amount and have all the ships you'll ever need (even though the actual physical mass of components you're getting is much less).

The early skirmish balance seemed to put a few people off, too. Yeah, you can take a fluffy list of Han, Luke and Chewie, but if your opponent brought 4/4 you might as well shake hands, say "gg" and not even bother setting up the map. The nerfs in Errata 2 helped massively, there's no doubt about it, the skirmish game is in a much better place now; but you still see suspiciously many Elite Rebel Saboteurs, Gideons and Luke Skywalkers everywhere you look. This tends to put people off - either because they want a much greater diversity in viable lists, or because they are hardcore WAAC players who'd happily play a broken list but realised you need four big boxes to get enough Royal Guard to play 4/4.

Personally, I love it. It's among the best games I've ever played. Almost always - significant imbalance in list power aside - the player who wins is the one who makes the fewest mistakes, which is exactly how a game should be. Plus it's Star Wars and it's fast and exciting. Even with that recommendation, it seems to be difficult to communicate that to people just how awesome this game really is. And that's something of a problem; our FLGS owner is a huuuuuuuuuuuge Star Wars fan and loves the game, so I know he'll stick with it through thick and thin, but if he wasn't, I'm not sure it makes amazing business sense for him to run an IA tournament where four players turn up, when he could run an X-Wing or Pokemon or Magic tournament and have his store full to overflowing. So it wouldn't surprise me to learn stores elsewhere choose one of those latter options. And I'm not really sure what can be done about it.

My local area is pretty quiet for skirmish. I didn't pick up the game until Christmas, but apparently they tried one event pack last fall and nobody signed up. It is still sitting there and they offered to let me use it as a way to get players out if I wanted to demo, so I might have to do that. Problem is my life is so busy that when I do get a chance to play I just want to play. I understand it is a chicken and egg syndrome, but there isn't much I can do about it. If I could just find another 2 or 3 skirmish ready people then at least we could share the work load. I told them to take my name down and if anyone else asks about Skirmish, email, text, call me or whatever and maybe we can work something out to set up a game night.

Mean while X-Wing has 18 people so far for the SC in 2 weeks.. with more expected to show up. And every LCG has a full roster for a SC as well. IA is literally the only FFG product that has not made the cut this spring.

As of a month ago, pretty much me and one other guy.

Since starting to work at my FLGS I've been pushing it hard, though, playing Skirmish demos with anyone who wants one, selling core sets like crazy.

A month later, we ran a casual tourney and got ten people (with five more who couldn't make it due to an Armada SC at the same time).

Building a community for any competitive game is tough, but worth it.

i believe there are a few reasons for IA's lack of success in the skirmish field.

1. the game is still fairly new. when X-wing was new (wave 1) my local meta only had roughly 4-6 people that would show up regularly and tournaments consisted of about 6-8 people. The numbers gradually increased over the past few years and we started to see much better attendance. Now X-wing nights at our local store (which can only host 6 games simultaneously) has 20+ people showing up regularly and having to be put on a waiting list to get a game in

2. the miniatures are not painted, this is a big one for lots of people i think. Granted i don't care myself because i love painting miniatures, but there are a lot of people that despise painting and won't do it. Which to their own demise won't help grow the game community very fast because passers by won't really be drawn to a game that has miniatures unpainted and look bland as is. Where as myself, i get people always wanting to check out my painted figures when ever i sit down to play. So start painting all your figures already people!!!! that goes for all of you wanting your meta's to grow!

3. procrastination. when a game has a small community, other players will be hesitant to buy in to the game because with a small player base, they might not see enough game play to make their purchase worth it or would rather wait until the game has matured and hope that there is still a community thriving before they dip in

i believe there are a few reasons for IA's lack of success in the skirmish field.

1. the game is still fairly new. when X-wing was new (wave 1) my local meta only had roughly 4-6 people that would show up regularly and tournaments consisted of about 6-8 people. The numbers gradually increased over the past few years and we started to see much better attendance. Now X-wing nights at our local store (which can only host 6 games simultaneously) has 20+ people showing up regularly and having to be put on a waiting list to get a game in

2. the miniatures are not painted, this is a big one for lots of people i think. Granted i don't care myself because i love painting miniatures, but there are a lot of people that despise painting and won't do it. Which to their own demise won't help grow the game community very fast because passers by won't really be drawn to a game that has miniatures unpainted and look bland as is. Where as myself, i get people always wanting to check out my painted figures when ever i sit down to play. So start painting all your figures already people!!!! that goes for all of you wanting your meta's to grow!

3. procrastination. when a game has a small community, other players will be hesitant to buy in to the game because with a small player base, they might not see enough game play to make their purchase worth it or would rather wait until the game has matured and hope that there is still a community thriving before they dip in

I agree with all of this, plus there's also the matter of first impressions.

Many people were turned off by the heavily restricted meta right out of the gate. That was bad, bad, bad for the game, as it would be for any game. Things are very healthy right now--and I hope that will be enough to draw some previously-disenfranchised folks back--but I do think the game is still suffering from that bad first impression.

I started playing in January.

Missed the first Store Champs because I didn't hear about it. They had 4 players.

Next one had 6. The two after that had 8.

Out of those players, about 4-5 were at each tournament which meant there are another 3-4 floating around that didn't make each one.

So we probably have a 10-12 that play competitively.

Melbourne is a bit spread out and a mate and I drove 1hr one way to the last store champs. Not terrible, but can also affect turnout.

Personally I think we've seen some awesome growth in the last few months locally.

I'm trying to get a few more friends in on the action too.

One of the bigger problems I've seen locally is that there's been quite a few clashes with X-wing and Armada store champs. Not so much Armada coz that crowd is even smaller than IA... but we have very solid X-wing turnouts. I know one store had 38 players a few weeks back... some cap out at 24 due to space. I dunno what the turn over rate is for X-wing to IA, and X-wing does have a lot of benefits that IA doesn't, but I think the game appeals to the same type of competitive players. Between like 8 X-wing store champs and 4 IA store champs, people just run out of time.

Other perceived downsides:
Not being pre-painted can be an issue. I think that's part of the lack of immediate appeal... but that's soon overcome once someone starts playing, because the game itself is so strong.

There stigma of 4x4 and having to buy multiple core sets is still floating around a bit. Hopefully people will forget about that over the next few months, though FFG forcing expansion pack purchases for competitive maps is a bit annoying. A new player now has to drop about $300AU just to be tournament legal. I think that barrier to entry is a huge problem for this early in IA's life. FFG should be encouraging growth not making it harder.

Map construction.... We really need to stop perpetuating this issue. It takes 5min tops to set up a map. Less if you're organised and know all the tiles. Is it annoying? Yeah a bit.... Is it a big deal? NO stop making it one.

I agree pre-printed maps would be nice, but if they are expensive, then that's another turn off (see above). Even a paper printed one costs about $20 since you need A2 size paper. Also, carrying 3 rolled up poster size mats is just as bad as a box or folder full of tiles.

I've been playing* imperial assault since release, or the point very shortly after prior to any wave expansions being released. I've only had one group meet up to do campaign, but I have had a plethora of one time demo's gone on to try to get people into the game, but to no avail. I honestly don't know why people aren't wanting to get into it. I mean, I suppose the cost is mighty high to get into skirmish and the core alone is no small fee, much less any expansions you want to play.

but I mean, if it is a game you've enjoyed playing, are you unable to justify spending some money for a hobby (that, in the grand scheme of things, is comparably cheaper to something like MTG, or literally almost any hobby where there is a substantial monetary committment for upkeep) where with IA, you really only NEED whatever you want to play in your lists plus the core. admittidly, they have been trying to force people into buying more sets, making official skirmish maps require new tiles (which I severely disagree with).

Back to the actual topic; I am the only one in my area who has any inclination to play skirmish. Granted Saskatoon suffers greatly from the mentality that we are a big city area, when we actually really are not. but even so, I expected there to be at least one or two other people in the area, or from xwing who would have had interest enough to buy the game to play.

I am told our local store also has tournament kits and release kits and the whole nine yards, but the owner has no interest in hosting the events, and is looking for someone to run them on his behalf (which I tried to do for awhile and failed at, a discussion for a later time).

I am just incredibly lonely in this game here, as I can barely even maintain a campaign group when I am even the one providing everything required to play, and they only need show up.

All in all, I am attributing this failure in the community to a pathetically small population compared to major centers that can justify getting store championships and other larger events.

TL;DR: sad wookie is sad :'(

*Playing is hereby used in the absolute loosest term possible, as I have really only done one (almost) full campaign run from the core set, and although I've bought everything up to the hoth core, excluding hoth expansions, I have barely justified even using the core.

Map construction.... We really need to stop perpetuating this issue. It takes 5min tops to set up a map. Less if you're organised and know all the tiles. Is it annoying? Yeah a bit.... Is it a big deal? NO stop making it one.

Yeah, I agree. There's 10 minutes set aside at the start for map construction, and I don't think I've run out of time yet. (I'm not sure what happens if you do run out of time. Can you not play the game because you took twenty seconds too long to set up the map? Seems unlikely. Or does it just start cutting into playing time? OK, so just build it quicker).

If you're somehow struggling with setup, it takes no effort at all to bag up pieces 1-18 in one bag, 19-36 in another, 37+ and doors in a third, then expansions each in their own bag. Makes finding the tiles that little bit easier. Once you've done that, once, building the jigsaw is trivial thereafter. Setup for this game simply isn't the problem some make it out to be.

Just throwing this out there. As far as quicker map setup goes, what I have done is build the three official tournament maps one at a time, then de-construct them and put all the required tiles into their own large Ziploc bag, with the name of the map written on the bag. Then I only bring those three bags of tiles with me and leave all the rest at home.

That way all the exact tiles for each map are there in the bag and really helps set up the map rather quickly. The only requirement is that you need to have two core sets in order to do this, as there is one of the unique medium tiles that is needed between two maps, and maybe one small outer edge piece. I believe once the new Leia map is added to the rotation and the Kuat or Training Grounds map is removed, can't remember which, then you'll only need one core set to achieve this.

My biggest issue is that it seems most games go to time rather than ending early with a 40 point winner. Therefore, if someone just began the latest round prior to time in the round being called, it can take a while to finish that round. Then it becomes a mad scramble to gather up all your figures, tokens, dice etc., deconstruct the map you were just playing on, find out new player pairings, move all your stuff to your new seat, and then build the new map and deploy your figures in that short amount of time.

Especially the deploying of your figures part. Sure you could just throw them down anywhere and go, but I've found quite a few times it really depends on the map and mission as to how they should properly be deployed, and that sometimes in the mad dash to get the next round going, that I wish I had set up my figures slightly differently.

Map construction.... We really need to stop perpetuating this issue. It takes 5min tops to set up a map. Less if you're organised and know all the tiles. Is it annoying? Yeah a bit.... Is it a big deal? NO stop making it one.

Yeah, I agree. There's 10 minutes set aside at the start for map construction, and I don't think I've run out of time yet. (I'm not sure what happens if you do run out of time. Can you not play the game because you took twenty seconds too long to set up the map? Seems unlikely. Or does it just start cutting into playing time? OK, so just build it quicker).

If you're somehow struggling with setup, it takes no effort at all to bag up pieces 1-18 in one bag, 19-36 in another, 37+ and doors in a third, then expansions each in their own bag. Makes finding the tiles that little bit easier. Once you've done that, once, building the jigsaw is trivial thereafter. Setup for this game simply isn't the problem some make it out to be.

I've actually made some puzzle guides to help with the setup process. They print on regular-sized paper; I actually put the skirmish rulesheet and the puzzle guide for each map in their own sheet protectors/sleeves. It helps to make the setup process a little quicker and easier.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/187822-skirmish-map-puzzle-guides/

Map construction.... We really need to stop perpetuating this issue. It takes 5min tops to set up a map. Less if you're organised and know all the tiles. Is it annoying? Yeah a bit.... Is it a big deal? NO stop making it one.

Yeah, I agree. There's 10 minutes set aside at the start for map construction, and I don't think I've run out of time yet. (I'm not sure what happens if you do run out of time. Can you not play the game because you took twenty seconds too long to set up the map? Seems unlikely. Or does it just start cutting into playing time? OK, so just build it quicker).

If you're somehow struggling with setup, it takes no effort at all to bag up pieces 1-18 in one bag, 19-36 in another, 37+ and doors in a third, then expansions each in their own bag. Makes finding the tiles that little bit easier. Once you've done that, once, building the jigsaw is trivial thereafter. Setup for this game simply isn't the problem some make it out to be.

I've actually made some puzzle guides to help with the setup process. They print on regular-sized paper; I actually put the skirmish rulesheet and the puzzle guide for each map in their own sheet protectors/sleeves. It helps to make the setup process a little quicker and easier.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/187822-skirmish-map-puzzle-guides/

Yeah I've seen these. They're great.

Maybe I'm alone in this but I've never had any issue with assembling maps, even without any special guides. I think I could build all the current tournament maps from memory.

I know that all the junkyard tiles have imperial tiles on the back. I know all the jungle ones have deserts on the back.

Currently I bring my whole box of tiles to each tournament and never have an issue (granted the Hoth ones haven't even been punched out yet so they don't count).

I usually go by size.... the small 2 square connectors, corridors, corners, small rooms, big rooms, odd shapes.

I'll probably organize my stuff into those groups at some stage, but haven't had the need to.

Essentially, once you build a map 5-10 times, it becomes a piece of cake to build.

As for the time issue, the new tournament rules have changed rounds to 65 min + setup. Our last tournament used that format because the TO didn't realize the rules changed. We still had a few games go to time, but much less than before. I don't think any of mine went to time.

Here in FFGC's back yard (Twin Cities, Minnesota), I would say we have about 30+ active skirmish players (our Twin Cities IA group has over 100 members). Several of us (myself included) have purchased multiple cores/TS/Hoth and we have created foamcore templates that map tiles stay in at all times (since we're technically not allowed to use printed maps). We have special portfolio cases we use to transport fully assembled maps. The last store tournament I was at we had four people with foamcore tile templates and if we ended up playing each other, we just passed the template on to a table that did not have one. We had a few games where people had "false starts" since we were ready to go in a couple minutes.

The templates are really easy to build (about 1~2 hours build time) and fairly inexpensive (foamcore can be purchased at most dollar stores for....you guessed it....$1 per sheet.)

4 people showed up to our store champs.

Low turnout in skirmish boils down to this:

1) Most people don't even know that a skirmish option exists

2) Those that do, don't like the setup time

3) The number of options and variables are daunting to new players. And the FAQ really confuses new players even more.

EDITED: typos

Low turnout in skirmish boils down to this:

1) Most people don't even know that a skirmish option exists

2) Those that do, don't like the setup time

3) The number of options and variables are daunting to new players. And the FAQ really confuses new players even more.

EDITED: typos

I don't agree with points 2 and 3

I think it's more like this:

1) Awareness

2) Start up cost

3) Competition (for both time and money) from X-wing and Armada.

Point 3 is also true for event scheduling too. We've had plenty of situations where IA evenings or tournaments are on the same day as an X-wing league or tournament at a different store.

There's only a finite pool of players so they end up having to make a choice.

The start up cost is the biggest problem I think. We can all help raise the awareness and promote the game, but at the end of the day (baring friendly players and relaxed TOs) you need all 3 expansions to play at the lowest competitive level.

If you're borrowing a friends units then it's free. Your friends already owns it all... but if you want to start playing yourself, it's like $300 unless you're happy with just the core set.

While I personally think that X-wing is much more expensive and costs more to get a semi competitive list, the problem is the perception of the core set price.

It's great value coz you get two games and lots of content but the $100-$160 price tag scares the casual crowd away.

They'd rather spend $40 on Pandemic or something. Or they compare with the $50 X-wing core set even though you get heaps less value/content there and it's not even enough to play a standard 100 point game.

As I said above.... Setup time is not a big deal and we all have to stop complaining about it. It takes just as long to get all your xwing cards, tokens, upgrades, rulers, models and asteroids out as it does to set up a map.

Once you've set them up a few times, you remember which bits go where and which bits each map uses.

As for complexity.... well that's personal taste. No one is saying this a game for 5 year olds. No one is saying it's supposed to be simple or easy. 40k, warmachine, X-wing, infinity etc are all just as complex (if not more), with probably far more options to choose from. Same goes for rules and FAQs.

Ya you got it, it isn't really about anything else other than the price. Everyone who sees me playing it or tries the game out just absolutely loves it. But as soon as they ask what the cost is they cringe and walk back over to the X-Wing section or pick up a pack of one of the LCG's instead.

It is a product of it's own curse, you get such great value having the campaign and skirmish the problem is if you don't care about the campaign you're paying a lot for uselessness. I don't know how to fix it at this point. They would have to make a skirmish only box, or at least blister off the skirmish pieces, and then provide printable maps online or to the TO. And that just doesn't seem likely.

Honestly, I don't see how people can cringe as how costly IA is compared to X-Wing, over the long tern, it's bascially the same. The up-front cost of IA is more expensive, but look at what you get:

Imperial Assault vs X-Wing:

Base Game Cost (MSRP): $100 / $40

Model count in above: 37 / 3 (plus all the stuff you need to play, which in IA's case, is a ton more, and includes a "campaign mode".

IA Expansions:

Single Figures: $10, Two figures: $12.50, Three figures: $15, Large models: $20, Mini-Campaign: $40, Full Campaign: $60

X-Wing:

Small Ship: $15~$20, Large Ships/Special Multi-Ship Packs: $30~$50, Huge Ship: $60/$90

When it's all said and done, you're probably spending the same amount of money.

It's the ENTRY cost that turns people off. And yeah, there is the "You have to drop $240 to play in sanctioned tournaments". But those events should be reserved for those who are already balls-deep in the game, not a brand new player.

I'm trying to get some x-wing players in my area to start playing skirmish.

I solved the setup time with pre printed maps. It adds to the cost problem but it was worth every penny.

As for the cost vs x-wing I'd say it's less mainly because you don't need the cards as much. Even if there is a command card that is valuable in an expansion for IA you still only need 1. When you want to fly a crack shot swarm in x-wing you need to buy a lot of extra expansions. The counter would be buying multiple cores sets or big boxes for certain builds in IA (4x4 being the worst).

No one is arguing that Fizz, in fact that is the point I think we are trying to make. The entry cost is what scares people away but in reality they end up paying more for X-Wing or a LCG long term (hard to compare LCG as it isn't miniature). People don't realize the full value of what they are getting until they've opened it up and played a few times, I really didn't.