More Factions... Pros and Cons

A quick survey of the different ways that it seems FFG would handle a Clone War era release, and how we might end up with 8 factions in just one release cycle

edit: sorry about having 2 blog posts on the front page at a time... I'll space them out more, typically one's off the screen by now but I just saw that both are up front right now

Unlikely to get 8 factions. We only have 3 right now. More subfactions however could be possible since 2 of those 3 have 2 sub factions each. At the most I'd say 5 factions with republic and CIS being the 2 new ones. Maybe they'd each get a couple of sub factions too.

well we have 5 now, if you went through and looked at card roundels... might FFG have a plan for that?

No we have 3 factions. 5 sub factions. Not the same thing. There is a difference which allows room in game and ship designs.

The cleanest option I have heard suggested is replace the Empire and Rebels as the overarching faction with Light Side and Dark Side. The. You add the Republic subfaction to the Light Side with the Rebels and Resistance, and give the Separatists to the Dark Side with the Empire and First Order. Scum pretty much stays the same.

That's a good idea. Change those two factions names and then the sub factions that we have can remain as is and new ones added.

It was an idea @markcsoul suggested on another thread that I really liked.

First, I don't think X-wing Miniatures needs saving. It's still doing quite well. I also think variety is the spice of life and adding prequel ships will not hurt the game one bit. A lot of people hate the EU ships but don't swear off the entire game because of them. Personally, I don't buy any Resistance or FO ships. I might someday, if they put out something that doesn't look like an OT repaint. To each their own, I say.

2 hours ago, Toqtamish said:

No we have 3 factions. 5 sub factions. Not the same thing. There is a difference which allows room in game and ship designs.

This.

If they wanted to add the Republic and CIS as subfactions to the Rebellion and Empire, then I'd be totally down. But if they try and make new separate forces out of it, no way.

2 hours ago, SabineKey said:

The cleanest option I have heard suggested is replace the Empire and Rebels as the overarching faction with Light Side and Dark Side. The. You add the Republic subfaction to the Light Side with the Rebels and Resistance, and give the Separatists to the Dark Side with the Empire and First Order. Scum pretty much stays the same.

Absolutely this. Any other way they would try to do it would be stupid.

7 minutes ago, DarthEnderX said:

This.

If they wanted to add the Republic and CIS as subfactions to the Rebellion and Empire, then I'd be totally down. But if they try and make new separate forces out of it, no way.

Absolutely this. Any other way they would try to do it would be stupid.

Probably.

I really don't think it's a big deal either way. People will either buy them or won't. Or they may buy them for the cards and not play them. There's no way adding Clone War era ships is going to ruin the game. There's no fixed formula stating what ships must be played with certain other ships.

Like Shakespeare once said, "Much Ado About Nothing".

I am all for more subfactions. As I pointed out elsewhere (with a difficulty pointed out by SabineKey about balance), stop making the ships be defined by the factions, and let the pilots determine the faction--and mix and match as needed. So an N1 could be both a Rebel and a Republic ship, depending on the pilot card chosen.

The game needs saving??

1 hour ago, Kehl_Aecea said:

The game needs saving??

For the first time ever, people in my local area are talking about setting the game aside. Too many ships that don't see playing time. Starting to get expensive and favorite ships are shelved for gimmicks (their words, not mine)

My city is one of, if not "THE" legendary test market for entertainment and normal goods in the US. "Bloated", "token heavy", "power creep", "lack of variety" etc are common complaints with X-Wing. Doesn't really matter if the critiques are valid or not. There's a downward trend. And our city is scary good at showing where these type of things go. We're the last to jump on something new and the first to bail.

If you don't know how test market cities work, google it

Cool thing is, lots of companies sell and advertise things around here the rest of you never see. Horrible thing is, we get a lot of stupid products that deserve to die. But when something established starts to slip... we give knowing glances... Sometimes things rally. But not by staying more of the same.

I don't like the dichotomy between saving and ruining. Perhaps there's some middle ground, eh?

20 hours ago, Stefan said:

I don't like the dichotomy between saving and ruining. Perhaps there's some middle ground, eh?

Touché. How about help or hurt?

I would be perfectly happy to have Clone Wars in the game. I don't know how they'd do factions. I know the Wizards of the Coast minis game did clone wars and rebellion era ships and just had two factions "Light Side" and "Dark Side" With Rebel and Republic ships being light side CIS and Imperial for the Dark side.

Not sure how it'd work for X-Wing. I sure wouldn't want extra factions. But it's tough to say the Republic fits Imperial or Rebel factions well. Clone Wars is weird largely due to the fact that Palpatine is leading both sides. There would literally be 3/5 factions in the game led by Palpatine. Imagine Republic Palpatine VS Imperial Palpatine games....