I am gonna rant a bit, som bare with me.

I was thinking about tournaments that are open to the public. Say in a game store. People come and look at the ships and recognize the ships. The ones they usually don't recognize are the rare scum ships. If you've watched the movies you know a Tie from an x-wing, and you know what the falcon is.
When you run a paratanni list and someone in the crowd comes to have a look they understand nothing.
In short. I think playing rebel/empire in tourneys vs rebel/empire and scum is better for recruiting people to the game.

What scum got goaing for it is that the faction adds more fun and variety to the game. The game is richer. To vison the game without scum is maybe impossible today. But it startet without them. The pros obviously outweights the cons.


But would it not be ok to ban scum from some smaller homemade tourneys, if there is something at a convention for ppl to look at. Would it not be better only to recognize the two most known factions?

I know FFG wants to earn the most money and sell all their products, and I enjoy the game, but think objectivly with recruiting as the only goal(they can discover the scum faction later on). How fun is it to watch hundreds of mindlink-list games and let it be your intro to the game?

Run discussion.

I think casual games are what more people drop by to watch, so the tournaments may not matter as much as you think in terms of player recruitment.

What got me hooked was the scum faction honestly. Because this was a game where I didn't have to fly only rebels or imperials but could build a squad with only my favorite bounty hunters, or some of them plus some backup criminals, or...

Yes, I'm a huge fan of the old EU and I always was drawn more to the stories involving bounty hunters, pirates, or organized crime like Black Sun or the Hutt cartels. That was just as fun or more so to me than the good vs evil epic going on around them.

Tournies aren't for recruiting. You hook people with local game nights, at local stores. Lead them down the path. Here's the starter. Here's luke, wedge and Biggs. Oh you want to dive in? Here's the ghost. It was in rogue one. Look at it's attack value. Neat right?

Now let's play a game.

You cant possibly recruit while also being engrossed in your own performance at a tournamemt.

How fun is defeat all those mindlink lists and get a nice position into a tournament?

I disagree. Depends on the tournament scene. I discorvered x-wing while playing at a warhammer fantasy tourney some years back. After having played my game I had some time before the next round started. I walked over to look at the ships. Had I looked today I don't know if I would have had the same impression.

Tournaments are as much for recruiting people as anything else. Had a couple of people ask questions while I was running a tournament just this past weekend at the local store. It's visible play of a game. That said, no the players should not be answering questions and selling it.

I also disagree we should be banning scum to make things more recognizable. Sure, you can make special events anyway you want... but I don't think you'll see 'official' formats excluding anybody.

Not knowing what the ships are doesn't necessarily hurt recruitment. I had someone come up and say "What is that ship?" And I was like " It's the Ghost from the show Rebels". Some people only know the original trilogy. Seeing other ships on the table can peak their interest to actually go watch Rebels, or read the EU books. Telling someone that the YV-666 is Bossk's ship "You remember Empire Strikes Back with all the bounty hunters? Bossk is the lizard guy." And they are like "Oh, that dude is badass." It peaks their interest and they may have always liked the bounty hunter scene in Empire, but never dabbled in EU to find out enough about them.

Banning things based on how likely people are to recognize them seems like a bad idea. The tie defender is the most popular Imperial fighter currently I believe and outside of a video game who knows what those are?

I say ban everything not instantly recognizable. Like, someone might not instantly know what a focus token is or what it does, so ban those. And what do those symbols on the dice mean? Ban them. And what are those thin, cardboard things that people keep staking dealing out when the die is rolled? I don't know and I'm scared; ban them

Parattanni uses two ships introduced in Rebels (which gets over a million viewers an episode), and pilots who are/were recurring characters in TCW and Rebels and are are decently recognizable (and are popular among people who watch those shows. Fenn Rau a pretty cool guy). They're a terrible example of an obscure ship list.

While getting new players is a concern for FFG, they also need to keep as many of their old players as possible as well. Banning an entire faction just to cater to maybe enticing a few new people wouldn't be worth the cost of the already established players who would be alienated due to their favorite faction/list being banned.

Like UnitOmega said, there is enough recognition of the ships from the SW cartoons so that they can draw in those fans. And, like wurms said, most of the big bounty hunter pilots are in the original trilogy and can be a link for people.

Now, if you want to stage a purely Rebel vs. Imperial home brew tournament at your local game store to get people interested, go for it. Tournaments you run yourself can put limits like that in, if the players are okay with it. But at official tournaments, big or small, all three factions should be allowed because that is the reality of X-Wing and it is better people know that before getting into it then suddenly finding out that it's not just X-Wings and Tie Fighters.

Well, most of the people doesn't recognize EU ships, and not everybody identify easily an A wing, B wing, Y wing, Tie advanced or Interceptor. You know, those ships had very few time on screen in the original movies.

Maybe FFG should impose a rule for tournaments to only play with X wings, Falcon (only one per game), Ties and lamda. All the plays "palpAces vs FatHan" as in the old good days...

Nothing attract more new blood than a 5 years old game stagnated in only 4 miniatures...

8 hours ago, arolig said:

I am gonna rant a bit, som bare with me.

I was thinking about tournaments that are open to the public. Say in a game store. People come and look at the ships and recognize the ships. The ones they usually don't recognize are the rare scum ships. If you've watched the movies you know a Tie from an x-wing, and you know what the falcon is.
When you run a paratanni list and someone in the crowd comes to have a look they understand nothing.
In short. I think playing rebel/empire in tourneys vs rebel/empire and scum is better for recruiting people to the game.

What scum got goaing for it is that the faction adds more fun and variety to the game. The game is richer. To vison the game without scum is maybe impossible today. But it startet without them. The pros obviously outweights the cons.


But would it not be ok to ban scum from some smaller homemade tourneys, if there is something at a convention for ppl to look at. Would it not be better only to recognize the two most known factions?

I know FFG wants to earn the most money and sell all their products, and I enjoy the game, but think objectivly with recruiting as the only goal(they can discover the scum faction later on). How fun is it to watch hundreds of mindlink-list games and let it be your intro to the game?

Run discussion.

Tournaments should consist only of X-wings and TIE fighters because that's the name of the game.

7 hours ago, wurms said:

Seeing other ships on the table can peak their interest... It peaks their interest

Pique. Piques.

6 minutes ago, spacelion said:

Tournaments should consist only of X-wings and TIE fighters because that's the name of the game.

Point of order, only X-Wings are in the name of the game. Thus all lists should be nothing but 4X.

12 minutes ago, ObiWonka said:

Pique. Piques.

Okay so the third faction. There are some pros and cons to the 3rd faction. I might list or describe some but keep in mind there are some limitations based on the fact that the scum.

First the Bad news.

1. Less recognizable ships . People know the X-wing, its on the box for crying out loud. People also know the TIE Fighter, those two ships go hand in had. People don't know the MA-3 Scyk Interceptor, Star Viper, or even the Z-95 Headhunter. Scum has all the ships that are not really central to the lore. Very few ships that were in the movie were not on the Imperial or Rebel side. Millennium falcon became the rebels hero ships, Cloud cars and Sail Barges cannot leave the atmosphere. So beside the Y-wing and Slave-1 which were already ships that Rebels and Imperials (on contract) have. What ships do scum have that are in the movies? Well those two are it.
2. Upsetting Asymmetrical balance . The game was designed with two sides. That is as clear as any other fact. Thus the balance between the traits were clear. Rebels had the shields and the firepower, higher pilot skill and cost more. Imperials had the agility and the positioning and can swarm and block the enemy with cheap ships. There were ships that crossed over but for the most part the factions were considered asymmetrical and equal at the same time. Then came the scum. They sort of fit somewhere in between the two and thus the asymmetrical balance was disturbed.
3. Game was not originally developed for more than two factions . Might be sounding redundant but that is also a clear fact. Sure adding a faction late goes hand in had with ruining asymmetrical balance. It came in late to the game way late with 5 waves and two years of meta established. As a added faction that had to fit while not being rebels 2.0 (or imperials 2.0 for that matter). A 3rd faction was not predicted therefore all the changes to the meta were rather drastic. For the most part scum was really the low end of the totem poll with bro-bots not exactly able to crack the point fortresses or catch arc dodgers that ran the meta. As for builds, it was what they could displace from the already established builds. Bro-bots was if you take a look at it sort of a better buzzsaw shuttle build. Heck the Disney movie releases only have two ships, one for the Rebel or rebel like side, and one for the Imperials or imperial like side. No scum in the movie releases.
4. The start of the cross faction ships . With already 16 ships (8 per faction) for the other two and Waves releasing no more than 4 new ships Scum being late to the party had to borrow a few ships. 4 to be exact along with 3 new ships. Because of that Scum was also behind and again it became hard to shake off the Rebel 2.0 faction concept while remaining its own faction. If it had more agility and arc dodging it would become Imperial 2.0. Also being behind the other two waves it took at least 7 waves before it caught up in terms of numbers of ships (then the Disney Movies came out). Scum seems to be behind the other two factions in terms of ships. Also with cross factions being a thing you can expect a few more cross faction ships to go through from Reb imperial to more scum Imperials thus blurring the lines between the factions bring it closer to Rebel 2.0 or Imperial 2.0 status.

So that is all the bad scum has done. Now lets talk about all the good.

1. Expanding the source material . With scum a faction many of the non-Imperial ships that didn't fit with the good guys could now be called upon. Characters like jabba can be played without stuffing him on some Imperial shuttle (which could seem out of place at times). Ships from the EU or extended cuts like the Hounds Tooth, Aggressor don't have to be loaned to the Imperials the way Slave 1 was.
2. Variations in the meta with cyclical balance . Okay before scum there was something like this in the meta with Swarms beating Turrets, Turrets beating Arc Dodgers, and Arc Dodgers beating Swarms. But Scum made it so that there is a third faction into the mix with more than just one faction beating the other faction. Furthermore factions bringing their own twist on meta builds means that a swarm from one faction would play differently than a swarm from another faction.
3. Reducing the mirror . If the meta was balance with every faction being even, you would have blue on blue matches 50% of the time. With scum that drops down to 1/3 which is very significant. Faction mirrors often include the same list unlike cross faction mirrors. Some people like mirror matches but for me it reduces it to a game of chess with dice. Now I do like chess (as long as there is no dice) but chess is rather unthematic to me and doesn't exactly fit Star Wars fighter battles.
4. More options to play . You no longer have to be the good guy or the bad guy. You can now be the well just don't care guy. More options means there is more ways for you to play and you can play how you want without having to switch factions. Scum can have swarms as well as aces. Imperials can have fat turrets, Rebels can have blockers. It gives more design space for FFG to develop and gives more options for players who don't want to play either Imperials (or Rebels).

24 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Okay so the third faction. There are some pros and cons to the 3rd faction. I might list or describe some but keep in mind there are some limitations based on the fact that the scum.

First the Bad news.

1. Less recognizable ships . People know the X-wing, its on the box for crying out loud. People also know the TIE Fighter, those two ships go hand in had. People don't know the MA-3 Scyk Interceptor, Star Viper, or even the Z-95 Headhunter. Scum has all the ships that are not really central to the lore. Very few ships that were in the movie were not on the Imperial or Rebel side. Millennium falcon became the rebels hero ships, Cloud cars and Sail Barges cannot leave the atmosphere. So beside the Y-wing and Slave-1 which were already ships that Rebels and Imperials (on contract) have. What ships do scum have that are in the movies? Well those two are it.

Quadjumper . And lancer is in rebels, which isn't as big as the movies, but is still new canon and seems fairly popular

1 hour ago, VanderLegion said:

Quadjumper . And lancer is in rebels, which isn't as big as the movies, but is still new canon and seems fairly popular

Popular among Star Wars fans. Not among people who simply enjoy the movies. As for the Quadjumper, again it had less screen time than Mon Mothma. Unlike the Bothans, you at least got to see it get blown up so I'll give it that.

Bounty Hunters are pretty iconic too! When people stop by to see you flying a Scum faction, just tell them your pilots are crafty, trigger-happy bounty hunters, and they'll be even MORE hooked.

Also, Scum and Rebels are basically the same thing once the Empire attacks them and forces them to join in the Rebellion

11 minutes ago, phild0 said:

Bounty Hunters are pretty iconic too! When people stop by to see you flying a Scum faction, just tell them your pilots are crafty, trigger-happy bounty hunters, and they'll be even MORE hooked.

Yup, that really works. First thing I did when I was getting into xwing was pick up a most wanted and a jumpmaster because bounty hunters. I did a little bit of comparing the xwing packs online before settling on the JM, the other candidates were the Hounds tooth and Slave 1 (minor hindsight being I ended up with them all anyway). I had those two packs before I even owned a core set because the guys I was playing with let us share the essential core set pieces. Of course, we all ended up with our own core sets eventually, and a lot more ships ....

I hate token and dice bloating. Scum do that ad nauseam. So it's hard to not develop a bias and rain fire down upon them when allowed... But I think they've got enough iconic ships and looks that it's still recognizably Star Wars.

Scum is lame. Shouldn't have been included

This thread is bad and you should feel bad.

1 hour ago, Lobokai said:

I hate token and dice bloating. Scum do that ad nauseam. So it's hard to not develop a bias and rain fire down upon them when allowed... But I think they've got enough iconic ships and looks that it's still recognizably Star Wars.

The Empire also does the same thing.

Soontir had 3 tokens how many years before Attani Mindlink ?