Also to really hammer home the point on cost, after spending all that money on the Core, Twin Shadows & Return to hoth you may have a lot of models but they are still specific ones.

You still only have 2 iconic Star Wars figures (Darth & Luke) anyone who really wants to play rebels needs to spend even more money, with Luke, Gideon and maybe Dalia being the only really competitive rebel figures available, though I want to make Fenn work soooo bad!!

Basically for the initial buy-in for IA you can virtually be set for life with x-wing (though I'm 70+ expansions into X-wing as well so it's a moot point for me)

You can't really cite cost as the biggest issue for the near-zero Imperial Assault skirmish player pool.

Especially when there are so many other gaming groups that are going strong for systems that have a much, much larger buy-in.

You can't really cite cost as the biggest issue for the near-zero Imperial Assault skirmish player pool.

Especially when there are so many other gaming groups that are going strong for systems that have a much, much larger buy-in.

Well actually you can cite cost in this instance because of 2 important reasons:

1. The existing player base has not hit a critical mass yet
2. The game is still relatively new

I can only assume you were referring to pre-existing table top games like Warhammer fantasy and 40k and the like, which whilst costing considerably more to get into have well established player bases and a history of being actively supported and maintained (whether that support is good or bad is subjective)

A new player looking to get into a table top game looks at IA for $300+ buy in but with a very small player base and little visible OP support in stores compared to $500+ for 40K but sees a well-established player base and highly visible OP options, the safer bet is to go with 40K, particularly in the fact that if you don’t like 40K you're more likely to find someone to offload it to.

Then you can look at much smaller skirmish based games like Mordhiem for far less initial investment. A perceived safer bet due to less initial investment.

A lot of players are in a catch 22 situation, they want to buy in but want to wait till the player-base builds up first, but are unwilling to be the players getting in to help others get in later.

X-wing was like that where I come from, it took a lot of nights where only a few of us turned up but our local player base has now grown sufficiently to build upon itself without active input from some of us "old timers" haha

Don't forget that games like warhammer and 40k have a pretty huge second hand market.

X-wing is now getting big and old enough for that to develop.
It doesn't really exist for IA yet.

Also while the cost of some of those is higher....don't forget that warhammer isn't just a game. It's also an extensive assembly, painting and terrain building hobby. You're not just paying for an army or a unit to use in a game. You're paying for a model kit to assemble and paint.

Just like people who buy tanks and planes that are just display pieces and have no game use at all.

Also don't forget that warhammer is scalable. You can play small 500pt games or huge 3000pt games. IA doesn't have that. You pretty much have to go all in right from the start.
Apart from just the core set, which takes you most of the way, if you want to go deeper, you pretty much have to go straight to the deep end.

It's not quite that easy to compare them.

Ultimately the biggest problem is a high buy in for a small player base. It's harder to justify. Even with X-wing now, there's so much support and great tournament/league turn outs that it's easy to pick up and get sucked in.

HeWhoLaffs, I live near Springfield, MA and am currently looking to get into the competitive skirmish scene for IA. I was wondering where a good place to play weekly with other players would be between your location and mine? I don't mind driving a bit. What store do you guys normally play at, and I would love to play there as well? Any advice will be awesome!

In the end, it just takes local support to make it work. Like any "start up" group, you gotta put in the time. Some have stated, it took a lot of 3-4 people nights, probably weekly for them, to start to see any foot traffic and hopefully convert people.

~D

What effect, if any, did the Force Awakens expansion have on X-Wing? I can't help but think moving towards more current relevant stuff would help drive sales and peak interest. X-Wing has Rebels AND TFA Content now, isn't Poe a super popular pilot? How about Ghost and the Rebels crew? I imagine that is the plan eventually for IA, Rebels episodes are basically just IA missions... but maybe FFG needs to step up on that sooner than later. They should be cashing in on the interest while it is current. The attention to the OT will always be there to cash in on. I really hope they do a Rebels or TFA big box before Endor.

We started with 4 in OKC and am now down do to 2. This is due to competition from GOT LCG. Basically in our community there's a lot of cannibalization involved. People really love X wing and have been playing for awhile, so they don't want to drop more money for another Star Wars game and GOT tis cheaper to get into.

It is annoying how much stuff you have to bring compared to other games with all the map tiles.

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

how can they not know? the core set comes with a rulebook specifically for skirmish play

locating a play group is usually the hardest thing for most games, especially in smaller towns and rural areas

We started with 4 in OKC and am now down do to 2. This is due to competition from GOT LCG. Basically in our community there's a lot of cannibalization involved. People really love X wing and have been playing for awhile, so they don't want to drop more money for another Star Wars game and GOT tis cheaper to get into.

It is annoying how much stuff you have to bring compared to other games with all the map tiles.

I am completely ignorant about the card games but what makes GOT the cheapest? Less expansions? I did notice that LOTR is single or multi player against AI, that is a pretty cool idea for a card game.

GOT is as cheap as the other LCGS as it is the LCG System which means to be have all options available you need :

3x Core ( = 100 € )

1 Pack per month ( = 10 € )

2 or 3 deluxe boxes per year ( each something like 25€ ).

GOT just had a relaunch after ~13 or 14 years this winter so to get everything at the moment you have to pay something like 170€ and it has a large playerbase of veterans from the old version.

What effect, if any, did the Force Awakens expansion have on X-Wing? I can't help but think moving towards more current relevant stuff would help drive sales and peak interest. X-Wing has Rebels AND TFA Content now, isn't Poe a super popular pilot? How about Ghost and the Rebels crew? I imagine that is the plan eventually for IA, Rebels episodes are basically just IA missions... but maybe FFG needs to step up on that sooner than later. They should be cashing in on the interest while it is current. The attention to the OT will always be there to cash in on. I really hope they do a Rebels or TFA big box before Endor.

There was a quite a big bump after the movie. Disney/FFG is also pushing the marketing for X-wing quite a bit now. Ads in magazines etc...

How much of that new crowd stays is a different story.

The thing with X-wing is that it's pretty easy for kids to pick up and play. They aren't the ones who play competitively and build the community (yet) but they still buy a core set and a falcon or firespray etc..

It's not specifically about TFA characters but just a resurgence of star wars popularity in general.

I've been playing campaign mode since release but am only now getting into skirmish (my first tourney, or game even outside of my immediate gaming group, will be the RC next month). I think the reason it took me so long is that I came to the game via Descent, so the campaign is what immediately attracted me. Skirmish seemed like a bonus, but more like a better way to fill time if we only had two players, rather than a mode to focus on. And frankly from my outside perspective skirmish mode is only now hitting its stride, as there are more viable lists from different factions and more interesting approaches (hello Bantha!). The dominance of the 4/4 killed my interest earlier on. That and I don't have a flgs that hosts any sort of tournament scene. Those are the factors that held me off, anyways.

ryanjamal makes another good point.

Dungeon-crawl board gamers (aka Descent players), the core market that this game was targeted to, may not be interested in wargaming (aka Skirmish).

I also started only interested in the campaign, I didn't even look at the skirmish for the first few months. Now it is definitely my preferred way of playing. The campaign is great and a lot of fun and I will continue to explore the new content, but the variety of skirmish is what excites me. I find myself treating campaign like skirmish now and trying out new 'lists' by seeing what I can combo best from my open hand with what they supply.

We seem to be picking up some speed in the Kansas City area. There's a free entry store kit tourney in Lawrence KS in about 6 weeks, hoping we get a decent turnout. Been trying to get some of the XWing folks interested because every now and then you're burnt out on X Wing but you love Star Wars, well...here's IA.

I feel like it's picking up some momentum at the game shop I go to. When the core set came out, I was one of two people locally who picked it up. Now we have 10 people in the local chat group for skirmish and it's growing. This past Monday we had five people playing at casual skirmish night, and two of them were brand new. I know a couple of other people who are interested in the game, too. I was talking with one such person between matches Monday, and he was asking if Lando was in the game yet, so I was able to tell him about the upcoming Bespin wave and Lando's dastardly tricks.

We've got two separate groups of people really down in Exeter, South West. At our Wed night club we have 6-7 people who play and there's another group of similar size that plays up in Crediton (less than half hour drive away)

It seems to be picking up a lot recently and I'm looking forward to having a much larger variety of opponents

There is no one that I know of in Trois-Rivieres, except for 2-3 friends to which I will lend the units. I even had trouble finding enough players to run a regular campaign. I know of only one other guy that also bought the core set. And since I'm already putting efforts to build a community for X-Wing, and more recently Armada, I have no more time to promote yet another game. So I play only the campaign mode of IA.

I'm not even sure that it started even in other city near here (read 1-2 hours away). I never heard about a skirmish tournament being run in a GS 'near' me.

After struggling to get more people playing IA skirmish for forever, we recently had someone at our local shop that plays X-wing regularly stop over to check us out playing IA skirmish and was very interested. After showing him the intricacies of the game, he was very interested. We ran a demo for him, and he was so enthralled with it that he went all in and hopped online and bought someone's full painted collection. He then demoed the game for 3 of his friends that he plays X-wing with and they all got hooked and bought in as well.

So our play group has gone from 4-5 players to 8-9 players just like that. It's crazy and awesome. We are now starting an ongoing league next week and finally don't have that feeling of playing the same couple people over and over again, which can make the game feel very stale. So my advice would be to pester your local X-wing players to try the game out. I know most will not make the jump due to costs of playing both games, but if you can get just one person to get into IA, then maybe he/she will have more sway to getting their other fellow X-wing players to join.