I was thinking about things, trying to ignore all the anti-Resistance stuff, when I thought about something. Scum ships have been with use since wave one!

Check it out:

Wave 1: Y-wing

Wave 2: Slave One

Wave 3: HWK

Wave 4: Z-95

One ship in each wave was carried over into the Most Wanted box! They had been hiding there the whole time!

Wave 5 is a bust, only two ships, but that's ok because BOOM wave six was all scum anyway.

So there you go, something to ponder while the rest of the board goes at each other's throats. Did they plan on releasing a seperate Scum faction from the beginning but decided to keep the game simple at first? Otherwise, look at the HWK, sticks out like a sore thumb. The Firespray alongside the rest of the Empire, a little out of place, no?

Hurray for Scum!

Coming from a Sales background most of my life, the quick answer (without actually working on the board of FFG) I believe is no. FFG is a very clever company with so many excellent games on the market, there is a reason why they are such a successful company. Simply put, they give their customers exactly want they want - hence, Scum & Villainy. I remember back when a third faction was brought up and discussed with (at length) on the forums. There was enough interest expressed, that we were blessed with the third faction that we now have.

However, given that I myself am very partial to thematic flavours and feels to a game, I applaud your observation and I like that it helps to justify, explain Scum & Villainy's existence - in terms of a story line "...had been hiding there the whole time..." agreed!

... Did they plan on releasing a seperate Scum faction from the beginning...

I don't think so.

I expect they looked at each of the ships from the first 5 waves to decide which would fit the faction best. Slave 1/Firespray was obvious, the others will have needed more thought. They decided on neither ship from wave 5, possibly because they had plans at that stage for all the large bounty hunter ships.

I think, if it had been the plan from the start, Imperials wouldn't have had the Firespray.

I just find it odd that one ship out of each of the first 4 waves ended up being scum ships.

That's all.

It must have at least crossed someone's mind at some point around wave 2 that scum was a possibility at least.

I just find it odd that one ship out of each of the first 4 waves ended up being scum ships.

That's all.

It must have at least crossed someone's mind at some point around wave 2 that scum was a possibility at least.

Given that was the wave they gave Firesprays to the Empire, wave 2 is presumably where they decided that scum wouldn't be on the cards.

I suspect it was somewhere around wave 4, when they changed designers, and had started to get the impression that the game really was taking off like crazy.

^see, that's why I started this thread! That's a good observation!

I think that's an interesting observation about the change in designers. I wonder, though, given the limited number of ships available for the Rebels and Imperials, the lack of desire to add prequel ships, and the overall popularity of "TESB" bounty hunters, if we wouldn't have seen those ships at some point anyway in some form.

I don't think they actually had much of a choice as to which ships to give to the newborn Scum faction. Assuming they wanted 4 existing ships to cross over, they couldn't choose any of the TIEs, of course, and I argue even the X-Wing was out of the question, it doesn't make sense to see the Rebel poster ship piloted by non-Rebel-aligned smugglers and bounty hunters.

The same goes for the Lambda, actually: it's the Empire's Mercedes, Rebel stole it once, but it's way too conspicuous to carry around long-term. Let's say the Decimator has the same issues, which you can sum it up as "it's not a good strategy to steal from the Empire and then show it off while doing more illegal stuff".

This would leave them with the following choices in addition to the ones they ended up making:

- YT-1300: Sure, they could make it Scum (they still could), after all that's how it started. But it's too iconic as the ship of a guy who famously sided with the Rebels. It'd create confusion.

- YT-2400: Slightly better choice than the Falcon, but still having a bit of the same issues icon-wise, for people who know who Dash Rendar is.

- A-Wing/E-Wing: They probably decided early on that Scum would be more about slow, heavy freighters than fast elite fighters. The Z-95 fits better as an older, lower-tech escort ship.

- B-Wing: This was probably the more feasible option. I feel like the Y-Wing fits better, though (not knowing much of any EU reason why it does).

And that's it. The fact that they ended up choosing one ship per each of the first four waves might be coincidental.

The Y-Wing and Z95 were used, of I recall correctly in the game TIE fighter is the ships of neutrals and pirates. This makes them an obvious choice to be used with a faction flying 'older' ships.

The B-Wing is a Rebel developped ship would look out of place in pirates hands.

Well military pilots turned pirates like the ships they trained in.

Plus all the real world marketing strategies listed previously.

Love scum!

I still keep the Firespray as my Imperial large ship though.