The point of multiple factions is mainly about identity. With a miniatures game it takes days and weeks and months (and sometimes years) to purchase, construct, model, and paint a full army. At the end of that, you want your army to have a unique point of view, strategy, and aesthetic. To that end, multiple factions make this easier and you get fans who ardently support their chosen faction ("I'm an Eldar player" or "I'm a Haqqislam player") and the lore behind it.

Yes, thank you. Most people on the FFG forums have never played traditional tabletop minis games and aren't really very aware of what they are like and how important faction identity is to the experience.

Historically, FFG has not understood this. They are new to minis games and sell them in an strange model where you have to buy models from other factions to get the pieces you need for your own. They have managed to get away with this because the games have 2 factions, or in the case of X-Wing they added a 3rd faction after everyone was accustomed to the model. But this does not scale to more factions. People aren't going to buy 3 or 4 or 5 factions worth of models to get cards for their own faction, they will instead just not play the game at all.

X-Wing barely gets by with three factions, and it had the advantage that you often only need to buy ONE model and you're done. Runewars won't have the advantage, because a full sized game there is not 3-4 models on the table as X-Wing often is. You'll need to buy a lot more models which means more cost and when you multiply that by more factions as well it quickly becomes unbearable for normal players.

So, it's going to be interesting to see what FFG does. Will they sell the game in a more conventional way? Will they sell card packs so you can get your upgrades without buying a ton of extra models? Will they make all the upgrades faction-specific? Or will they push the community too far and watch the game die on the vine?

You do know that many minature wargames have 2 player starter boxes? Examples would be Warhammer 40K, Age of Sigmar, Warmschine, Hordes, Malifauy, Infinity , Flames of War, Beyond the Gates of Antares and surely more.

Lots of minis games *have* two-player starter boxes, but they are an option. You can also buy a one-player starter or just build your army from individual blisters. FFG games are somewhat unique in that if you don't buy the starter there are units and upgrades that you cannot buy individually and only come in the starters.

I know, i also wrote about single army boxes though i did not mention blisters and we don't know yet if they are doing the same with the starter sets as they did in X-Wing and Armada, i hope we will see single army starter sets with rules and all the tokens you need to start playing down the road sometime.

It wants to be something a guy like me might give a go.

I am not adverse to the idea of painting some things particularly with some proper hand holding I don't have to dig through all of the internet to find.

I don't like all the fiddly modeling aspects so the reduction on that end seems good.

I don't like the looser aspects of movement in miniatures games that don't have a board so the move templates thing gives this a lot of appeal.

I trust these guys with the gameplay since I've played X-wing and Armada.

I more interested in an interesting game than showing off a bunch of models I built so they seem to have that covered.

I'm not over the moon about this. I'm mostly not that keen on the fantasy aspects but it has a great deal more of my attention than the things that GW does both FB and 40K.

The main reason I never considered X-Wing and sold it off was the distribution model. I don't want to buy models I don't want to get rules/cards to use for models I already have. If they avoid that and treat this more like an actual miniatures game I'll probably go all in (if the gameplay is there). If it mimics X-Wing's distribution I'll give this one a pass as well.

This is my biggest concern as well. I am all for the dial activation system and the template maneuver system, but the distribution model of the upgrade cards really bothers me. It smacks of "pay to win" which is not the type of game I'm interested in. If you go look at the "hot" lists for Armada or X-Wing you'll see that the top lists have upgrade cards that come from a single model from a faction other than the list faction. While I applaud FFG's business model as it appears to be successful, that type of game leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The point of multiple factions is mainly about identity. With a miniatures game it takes days and weeks and months (and sometimes years) to purchase, construct, model, and paint a full army. At the end of that, you want your army to have a unique point of view, strategy, and aesthetic. To that end, multiple factions make this easier and you get fans who ardently support their chosen faction ("I'm an Eldar player" or "I'm a Haqqislam player") and the lore behind it.

Yes, thank you. Most people on the FFG forums have never played traditional tabletop minis games and aren't really very aware of what they are like and how important faction identity is to the experience.

Historically, FFG has not understood this. They are new to minis games and sell them in an strange model where you have to buy models from other factions to get the pieces you need for your own. They have managed to get away with this because the games have 2 factions, or in the case of X-Wing they added a 3rd faction after everyone was accustomed to the model. But this does not scale to more factions. People aren't going to buy 3 or 4 or 5 factions worth of models to get cards for their own faction, they will instead just not play the game at all.

X-Wing barely gets by with three factions, and it had the advantage that you often only need to buy ONE model and you're done. Runewars won't have the advantage, because a full sized game there is not 3-4 models on the table as X-Wing often is. You'll need to buy a lot more models which means more cost and when you multiply that by more factions as well it quickly becomes unbearable for normal players.

So, it's going to be interesting to see what FFG does. Will they sell the game in a more conventional way? Will they sell card packs so you can get your upgrades without buying a ton of extra models? Will they make all the upgrades faction-specific? Or will they push the community too far and watch the game die on the vine?

I agree with dboeren, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with this game. From watching the Team Covenant video they are obviously incorporating facets of most, if not all, of their current "minis" games. I'm sure that this game will sell well with the super-competitive crowd that FFG seems to cater to with their miniatures/LCG games but the question is how well will it sell with the casual and/or "fluff" gamers.