Xwing is a very nice change of pace, I know what I am buying, I can buy just certain things or a hoard of things but it is always known what I am paying for. The prices also never go up, max value of any card is exactly MSRP divided by how many of the card are present. There is no back alley super nerd charging 200% value cause this card is the new hotness. Oh this card is good? What does it come in? Ok I need X dollars and get extra stuff to boot.

Yeah right! Try buying a Crack Shot or Emperor Palpatine card on ebay.

And it is important to note, that you can not just add new pilots, because then you would have to add the necessary cardboard, which would significantly add to the cost.

I amm also truly curious how many would actually pay $7-8 for maybe 20 cards.

Xwing is a very nice change of pace, I know what I am buying, I can buy just certain things or a hoard of things but it is always known what I am paying for. The prices also never go up, max value of any card is exactly MSRP divided by how many of the card are present. There is no back alley super nerd charging 200% value cause this card is the new hotness. Oh this card is good? What does it come in? Ok I need X dollars and get extra stuff to boot.

Yeah right! Try buying a Crack Shot or Emperor Palpatine card on ebay.

I didn't have to, I bought a Raider, 4 Kiraxz and 2 Houndstooth (teeth?), many on sale, many with store credit, all under MSRP. Ebay sellers sell for what people buy it for. Don't buy an outrageous price and they will stop selling them for it.

The folks are right when they say that the R&D is the expensive part. They could absolutely sell a 5 card pack... for, oh, $10. Or would you just buy the spaceship (and the extra 4 pilot cards) that goes with it for $15? And don't assume they could just stuff multiples into the same pack: That would reduce the total number of sales, so jack the price even higher. Like it or not, people think of cards as 'worth' maybe a fiver for the pack, and wish they didn't pay the ten for the model... when the actual value to produce (factoring in the time and expertise to do it) is easily the reverse.

That said, it's possible we will see a cards-only expansion one day: If they ever decide to release X-wing 2.0, with a refreshed SKU range (old ships still legal, but new ones rearranged in upgrades and updated costs/pilot abilities), they may just sell a packet of updated pilots + prices. If we're lucky, they'll throw in 2-3x generics for every ship to go with the set of uniques for each rebalanced ship so the average player only needs the one pack to do reasonably OK.

Note that this would be rebalanced pilot cards, not upgrades (Unless a couple of upgrades got a particularly egregious rewrite). And probably have some 'contagion' rule in the sourcebook - old cards with the same name count with the rules of the new one, provided that at least one of the new ones exists.

But don't expect big fat sets of new upgrades without buying a ship, even if the ship is already out. That's literally what the Aces packs are all about - and the fact the ship was already designed, sculpted, and able to be manufactured is precisely why they get you more cards-per-model for their price, too.

I think the best solution for both parties are things like the aces/vets packs. Alternate paint ship with a mix of cards that said ship would actually find useful. The barrier to entry for a new player can sometimes be daunting. You cannot put a single TIE engine upgrade in with vets? Or toss in another extra munitions, because bombers? as it is now, if i wanted to use a defender competitively, i would need a tie-d, imperial vets, and a raider just for the baseline defender, let alone any purchases for EPTs and the like. I understand FFG needs to sell things, but at some point enough is enough. Especially if you're interested in multiple games. Just to even participate, you need all the IA expansions for the map tiles, epic ships for xwing, etc.

I understand profit motive. i get it. But again, the barrier to entry can be a little too ridiculous.

Xwing is a very nice change of pace, I know what I am buying, I can buy just certain things or a hoard of things but it is always known what I am paying for. The prices also never go up, max value of any card is exactly MSRP divided by how many of the card are present. There is no back alley super nerd charging 200% value cause this card is the new hotness. Oh this card is good? What does it come in? Ok I need X dollars and get extra stuff to boot.

Yeah right! Try buying a Crack Shot or Emperor Palpatine card on ebay.

I didn't have to, I bought a Raider, 4 Kiraxz and 2 Houndstooth (teeth?), many on sale, many with store credit, all under MSRP. Ebay sellers sell for what people buy it for. Don't buy an outrageous price and they will stop selling them for it.

Yeah my bad,

I did the same thing just about. somehow wound up with 7 Kihraxz.

This isn't happening for several reasons.

1. The Devs said they won't

2. It doesn't follow their business model

3. It could well be problematic for licensing reasons

4. It would be hard for customers to easily understand what they are and why you buy them

5. They can already print cards all they want by making new ships and ace packs

6. The Devs said they definitely are not doing this

The only reason to do this is to let people get all the upgrades they want without buying all the ships and the secondary market handles this well enough.

I guess I did word my post poorly, while super nerds might be charging inflated prices the ability to buy from ffg retailers is static, therefore the price to me personally is never more than msrp. I refuse to value a single card at 50% or more of the box it comes in. The only thing I don't value in any kit is the tokens, I mean really I have literally over 100 shield tokens and target locks...Kinda wishing tokens, obstacles, that kind of thing was sold seperately.

I guess I did word my post poorly, while super nerds might be charging inflated prices the ability to buy from ffg retailers is static, therefore the price to me personally is never more than msrp. I refuse to value a single card at 50% or more of the box it comes in. The only thing I don't value in any kit is the tokens, I mean really I have literally over 100 shield tokens and target locks...Kinda wishing tokens, obstacles, that kind of thing was sold seperately.

A lot of people seem to think I'm suggesting being able to buy things like Palpatine without buying ships. I'm not talking about reprints of cards. That's not at all what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting something like an annual balance pack. It would probably just be a collection of titles and pilots (probably mainly titles). Things that would be useless if you don't have the ships. I don't think there's a need to do this with upgrade cards. I'm not suggesting they do this instead of cards with ships. And they could easily include some ships in with the card pack if they wanted, but as the cards may be for 10+ ships, it doesn't make much sense.

Let's say right now there are 3 ships for each faction that need a little boost. In the current model, that would slowly release an Aces pack or such for each faction that gave them a boost. Of course, it maybe have to be an Imperial Aces 2 pack. That would probably be over a year as they would want to release some new ships as well. In what I'm suggesting, you would simply release one pack of cards. Job done.

An alternative is to put "balance packs" in with each expansion. I'm totally fine with that. Yes, it would contain cards for ships not in that expansion. But I think if it's marked as such it would be fine, and would drive people to buy the ships that match the cards. They kind of did this with the Most Wanted pack (cards for Firespray-31 and HWK-290 but no ships), but that was not for balance reasons.

Basically, I'm just trying to come up with a way to easily balance the game without being restricted to having a ship included for every card in the expansion.

Once you start adding cardboard, you are definitely looking at a 9-10 dollar product. And just because they don't have minis, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will come out quicker.

Once you start adding cardboard, you are definitely looking at a 9-10 dollar product. And just because they don't have minis, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will come out quicker.

Lower manufacturing cost/time, lower shipping/logistics cost, etc. There are many benefits to card only.

That being said, I don't care if they want to include ships or not. They key is that there doesn't have to be a ship for every relevant card (and I don't mean the Most Wanted scenario).

I am both stunned and amazed that this topic hasn't come up before.

I am both stunned and amazed that this topic hasn't come up before.

^--- This made my morning. Had a very nice chortle.

I see what you did there.

Not the first time I said this and won't be the last time.

​STAR WARS: X-WING MINIATURES IS A MINIATURES GAME !

IT IS NOT A CARD GAME !

Pretty sure there are cards involved...

I am both stunned and amazed that this topic hasn't come up before.

I am both stunned and amazed that this topic hasn't come up before.

^--- This made my morning. Had a very nice chortle.

I see what you did there.

Not the first time I said this and won't be the last time.

​STAR WARS: X-WING MINIATURES IS A MINIATURES GAME !

IT IS NOT A CARD GAME !

Then why is it mandatory to have the official CARDS for everything you are fielding in multiples?

No other MINIATURES game requires that to my knowledge.

How about a blister with... let's say... a pink TIE/f with its cardboards tokens and all... and... 50+ revised/errata-ed cards?

Yes?

What? Look, here is the miniature, for the miniatures game, license 100% OK.

I don't really want the large ships, but I do want the cards that come with them and blue-grey TIEs. I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on ships I don't want for a handful of cards I do want.

That's the issue I have.

Nearly all the games I play are at FLGSs and tournaments, so my only opportunities to proxy cards are in games at home against my girlfriend, so I won't bother as I have tons of variety for us both to choose from already. When competing for store prizes, though, I do want access to Palpatine, or the TIE Advanced upgrades, etc.

If I had to buy those cards in a small ship expansion, so be it, but I dislike that they're currently exclusively behind a gate of huge ships with huge pricetags.

The License is for a miniatures game. They are not really able to print cards as a standalone product.

Considering that the dice app applies to all their Star Wars games, I think they have some room to mix their licenses up a bit. This is pretty much a business decision.

If they wanted to print more money for the house of mouse, they would do it... they don't seem interested in making money this way for whatever reason. I really doubt licensing is the issue.

They make more money from selling the model than they would a card pack. This assumption that a card pack would make them more money is silly.

I still question this. Cards are cheap ink a paper, can be mass produced completely in-house without the need for contracting manufacturers or managing foreign logistics, and require much less retail space per SKU than a plastic ship. Plastic ships are manufactured over seas, require building costs, painting overhead, lengthy creation and distribution times, take up much more volume during transport, and require more expensive packaging to protect the items in transit.

The amount of net profit from premium cards is assuredly higher than the plastic model they're using now. The only negative would be the fear of cannibalising their sales due to people no longer buying further ships if all their desired upgrades are more easily accessible.

If they said they won't do it, then I believe them, but I think it would funnel more money into their pockets.

With CAD today it is relatively fast to design a mini, and once you have the (expensive) mould, you can very fast produce huge amounts of ships, even if some hand-painting is required. You can sell the ship for a very long time without any new development costs, even as repaints. So it is a huge win over a ship's "lifetime on sale".

The development time for the model is a LOT shorter than for cards, and a ship model does NOT need playtesting and tweaking in week or months to fit in with previous released ships and thousands of possible combinations. That's what's driving up development costs for the cards, as they have to fit in with all previous released cardboard.

The development time for the model is a LOT shorter than for cards, and a ship model does NOT need playtesting and tweaking in week or months to fit in with previous released ships and thousands of possible combinations. That's what's driving up development costs for the cards, as they have to fit in with all previous released cardboard.

With CAD today it is relatively fast to design a mini, and once you have the (expensive) mould, you can very fast produce huge amounts of ships, even if some hand-painting is required. You can sell the ship for a very long time without any new development costs, even as repaints. So it is a huge win over a ship's "lifetime on sale".

That's perfectly reasonable. The development time on models is very short as all it requires is creating a correctly scaled CAD representation of the desired ship. The manufacturing process is unarguably longer and more expensive, though.

That said, the development time is not relevant to my argument. I'm not asking for new cards to be developed, playtested, and released separately; I want the already-developed, already-existing cards to be more accessible... at least the ones that are exclusive to the huge ships. Those cards have already provided FFG returns on their investment due to the game's massive sales up to this point. A standalone sale of those cards would be almost entirely net profit, as it's an exchange of money for tiny products that are made in-house, cheaper to make, easier to distribute, and easier for retailers to stock.

My point of view on this matter only revolves around the cards that can be used for small ships, but are exclusive to huge ship expansions. I'd like to get legitimate versions without having to invest hundreds on ships I don't want. Removing the exclusivity of those cards from those expansions shouldn't affect the desirability of those expansions; people should be buying big ships because they want big ships.

The folks are right when they say that the R&D is the expensive part. They could absolutely sell a 5 card pack... for, oh, $10. Or would you just buy the spaceship (and the extra 4 pilot cards) that goes with it for $15? And don't assume they could just stuff multiples into the same pack: That would reduce the total number of sales, so jack the price even higher. Like it or not, people think of cards as 'worth' maybe a fiver for the pack, and wish they didn't pay the ten for the model... when the actual value to produce (factoring in the time and expertise to do it) is easily the reverse.

That said, it's possible we will see a cards-only expansion one day: If they ever decide to release X-wing 2.0, with a refreshed SKU range (old ships still legal, but new ones rearranged in upgrades and updated costs/pilot abilities), they may just sell a packet of updated pilots + prices. If we're lucky, they'll throw in 2-3x generics for every ship to go with the set of uniques for each rebalanced ship so the average player only needs the one pack to do reasonably OK.

X-wing 2.0 is completely non-viable. From every aspect it just cannot be done with something like X-wing. From splitting the user base to either sticking stores with unsellable SKU's or eating the costs... it just cannot be done with a good outcome for the players, stores and the company.

The folks are right when they say that the R&D is the expensive part. They could absolutely sell a 5 card pack... for, oh, $10. Or would you just buy the spaceship (and the extra 4 pilot cards) that goes with it for $15? And don't assume they could just stuff multiples into the same pack: That would reduce the total number of sales, so jack the price even higher. Like it or not, people think of cards as 'worth' maybe a fiver for the pack, and wish they didn't pay the ten for the model... when the actual value to produce (factoring in the time and expertise to do it) is easily the reverse.

That said, it's possible we will see a cards-only expansion one day: If they ever decide to release X-wing 2.0, with a refreshed SKU range (old ships still legal, but new ones rearranged in upgrades and updated costs/pilot abilities), they may just sell a packet of updated pilots + prices. If we're lucky, they'll throw in 2-3x generics for every ship to go with the set of uniques for each rebalanced ship so the average player only needs the one pack to do reasonably OK.

X-wing 2.0 is completely non-viable. From every aspect it just cannot be done with something like X-wing. From splitting the user base to either sticking stores with unsellable SKU's or eating the costs... it just cannot be done with a good outcome for the players, stores and the company.

Even Damage Deck 2.0 didn't work...

I don't really want the large ships, but I do want the cards that come with them and blue-grey TIEs. I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on ships I don't want for a handful of cards I do want.

That's the issue I have.

Nearly all the games I play are at FLGSs and tournaments, so my only opportunities to proxy cards are in games at home against my girlfriend, so I won't bother as I have tons of variety for us both to choose from already. When competing for store prizes, though, I do want access to Palpatine, or the TIE Advanced upgrades, etc.

If I had to buy those cards in a small ship expansion, so be it, but I dislike that they're currently exclusively behind a gate of huge ships with huge pricetags.

Yeah, this is my deal as well. Like, I'd love to have Wes and Wampa and The Emperor and stuff like that, but have no interest in dropping the money on huge ships that will never see play and have to be stored somewhere just to get some useful upgrades/pilots. Refusing to put some of this in small ships/card only packs means I either do not get the content or have to hunt secondary markets to get stuff while trying not to may way too much.

I love this game, but Huge Ship exclusive stuff is really pretty terrible, in my opinion.

The folks are right when they say that the R&D is the expensive part. They could absolutely sell a 5 card pack... for, oh, $10. Or would you just buy the spaceship (and the extra 4 pilot cards) that goes with it for $15? And don't assume they could just stuff multiples into the same pack: That would reduce the total number of sales, so jack the price even higher. Like it or not, people think of cards as 'worth' maybe a fiver for the pack, and wish they didn't pay the ten for the model... when the actual value to produce (factoring in the time and expertise to do it) is easily the reverse.

That said, it's possible we will see a cards-only expansion one day: If they ever decide to release X-wing 2.0, with a refreshed SKU range (old ships still legal, but new ones rearranged in upgrades and updated costs/pilot abilities), they may just sell a packet of updated pilots + prices. If we're lucky, they'll throw in 2-3x generics for every ship to go with the set of uniques for each rebalanced ship so the average player only needs the one pack to do reasonably OK.

X-wing 2.0 is completely non-viable. From every aspect it just cannot be done with something like X-wing. From splitting the user base to either sticking stores with unsellable SKU's or eating the costs... it just cannot be done with a good outcome for the players, stores and the company.

Even Damage Deck 2.0 didn't work...

Not sure what you are talking about, everyone who can uses 2.0 because except in the world of all generics it is just a better deck to use. 1.0 is an optional handicap.

The folks are right when they say that the R&D is the expensive part. They could absolutely sell a 5 card pack... for, oh, $10. Or would you just buy the spaceship (and the extra 4 pilot cards) that goes with it for $15? And don't assume they could just stuff multiples into the same pack: That would reduce the total number of sales, so jack the price even higher. Like it or not, people think of cards as 'worth' maybe a fiver for the pack, and wish they didn't pay the ten for the model... when the actual value to produce (factoring in the time and expertise to do it) is easily the reverse.

That said, it's possible we will see a cards-only expansion one day: If they ever decide to release X-wing 2.0, with a refreshed SKU range (old ships still legal, but new ones rearranged in upgrades and updated costs/pilot abilities), they may just sell a packet of updated pilots + prices. If we're lucky, they'll throw in 2-3x generics for every ship to go with the set of uniques for each rebalanced ship so the average player only needs the one pack to do reasonably OK.

X-wing 2.0 is completely non-viable. From every aspect it just cannot be done with something like X-wing. From splitting the user base to either sticking stores with unsellable SKU's or eating the costs... it just cannot be done with a good outcome for the players, stores and the company.

Even Damage Deck 2.0 didn't work...

Not sure what you are talking about, everyone who can uses 2.0 because except in the world of all generics it is just a better deck to use. 1.0 is an optional handicap.

Because 1.0 is still legal, even though that wasn't the intention.

I've been in the rabbit hole for a few weeks. It's good to see that it's business as usual on the boards.

Cheers

Baaa