Sales aren't what X-Wing's is, but it's better than Armada and most of the rest of their miniatures games, so there is a long line for the ax ahead of IA.

Having watched a few of the Legion demo vids from Gencon, I don't think Legion is a credible threat to IA either. I'm sure it will cannibalize some of the IA market at first, but I wouldn't worry about it.

7 hours ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

Rumblings at Worlds this past year were that Rebellion was dead, but they came out with the Rogue One as a last hurrah. Look at Star Wars LCG? It had a good following and they still produce stuff years after it laid down to rest on its death bed.

I couldn't imagine people regarding Rebellion as a "dead" game at any point. It's a pretty robust game in the box already, and you're not getting all of those Leaders out in every game, so there's going to be a lot of replayability just around that. Luke being recruited then sent off to become a Jedi is certainly a good thing for the Rebels, but you can't count on him showing up at any specific point, or at all. This keeps the game from becoming too algorithmic.

Even playing with the same opponent time and again, your own meta game will develop. Maybe one time you'll psyche them out by putting your base right near the heart of the Empire when you always go for the remote systems. Your friend will fall neatly into that routine and you'll buy valuable time. Then when they see how you pulled one over on them, future games will reset the bluffing again.

"You wouldn't be crazy enough to pull that stunt again, would you?"

*cue Princess Bride analysis paralysis scene*

So I was ambivalent about the Rogue One expansion; on the one hand that movie was really awful and I'm in no hurry to play it in board game form, but mechanically the expansion adds some good ideas like targets for missions, Jabba the Hutt with bounties, so there's *some* good content to be had, though I'm not sure if you can just put the Rogue One specific content in the recycling bin and still have the new material work?

Anyways, back to Imperial Assault's future;

Well, not just yet. Star Wars LCG. I really love playing this game but never get to play it because nobody plays. It was originally revealed to the world back at GenCon 2011 I believe, as a co-op game where you run missions vs an Imperial AI. You can find relics of it on BoardGameGeek if you're interested. People cried and complained and it was scrapped in a favour of a competitive 1v1 game which nobody played, thus pleasing no one in the process.

I'm always amazed that a new cycle comes out for this game. I played in the Canadian Nationals for it last year and had a great time even though I did terribly. I think it was the first time I actually played the game in about 3 years at that point.

So no really back to IA;

The greatest thing about IA is that even if they stopped producing content for it after Heart of the Empire, you're still left with a not insubstantial amount of content to play campaign with. You just need one other player and the two of you can be off, with one player controlling 4 heroes, and it'll be a good time. There's two small campaigns you can resolve in 4 games, and the larger ones which take about 10 or so to finish if you're bold enough.

I feel there's this weird perception of the game in the community; skirmish players don't typically do campaign and vice versa, so when you turn up to your local event and play with 5 other people for a Store Championship, it seems like the game isn't doing well, but don't forget the players hanging out at someone's home doing that campaign because one person has the box, and the rest don't want to all buy one too, along with many other boxes, just so they can all play skirmish matches at the game night when they can accomplish the same goal (get the group together to play a Star Wars game) for a fraction of the cost with the campaign material.

It was originally sold as a game of two worlds and continues to be as such. The campaign was the obvious design focus, but Organized Play also got more involved along the way and Skirmish considerations are now clearly not being passed over just to ship the box on time. Whenever that is.

So even if the app never comes and the game "dies", much like in real life, the game is never truly "gone", as long as you keep that love for it in your heart, and break it out once in a blue moon with a friend or friends to enjoy blasting Stormtroopers and choking out that Rebel Scum.

Yeah, AI is a great game, even if they slow down greatly on the new content. The problem is they will have a bottle neck with artist modeling and production with Legion around just like with Descent and Runewars. Descent is still a great game even if nothing as been done outside the digital side for over a year. AI may be handle the same way for a while, with all the resources going into the digital side of the game for now. The app will sell what has already been made. We'll see new stuff once Legion has cooled off. Hopefully we will get a small figure wave with a few fixes in the interim.

While comparing to Descent seems like an obvious choice - it's really hard. Descent doesn't have the competitive Skirmish version, and at this point, as a campaign game, Descent has so much stuff. There is no particular need to get more.

53 minutes ago, aermet69 said:

Descent has so much stuff. There is no particular need to get more.

It doesn't matter how much stuff is already out there. If descent stopped getting new content for long enough new players would stop buying it in case a 3rd edition was due to be released.

There is also a gap in the classes and a handful of things in the conversion kit that were never re-released. If they stopped now the game would feel incomplete.

The lack of doing anything about Mercenaries will do more damage to this game than releasing a game like Legion. The lack of doing something (either nerfing them or giving more power creep elsewhere) about the current environment (which has gone on for far too long) will kill off this game... not a different game like Legion.

15 hours ago, NuSair said:

The lack of doing anything about Mercenaries will do more damage to this game than releasing a game like Legion. The lack of doing something (either nerfing them or giving more power creep elsewhere) about the current environment (which has gone on for far too long) will kill off this game... not a different game like Legion.

NuSair, I want you to know this is completely not aimed at you, but just a lot of the doom and gloom around lately and about the state of the game.

I get what you're saying, but we should be literally weeks from a huge new release that has the potential to shake everything up. If they were to nerf anything, even hunters, right now it would have unseen consequences that would do who knows what to the game. I mean, we already have a number of people calling to undo the nerf of the Royal Guards, Officers, and Sabs, which was extremely necessary at the time (and even certain levels of the nerf are still necessary - at least the RG's buffing each other and Officer moves dropped to 2 movement points).

And honestly, we can only truly make the argument for hunters being "OP" since Worlds (so *almost* four months, all of which we have had a new wave announced). Before that it was ramping up and no one could say one way or another. Sure a lot of people were thinking hunters could legitimately be strongest leading up to worlds but there wasn't nearly enough hard data to make that a certain claim. I can remember seeing nothing about Weequays being awesome before our group started coming around to them in January this year and even in February when our regionals happened I don't remember seeing anything like our list on the boards before hand.

We have to remember that IA isn't a video game where the designers can just hot fix something and then undo it later if it was a mistake or more things come out to balance it and now it needs to be undone. And honestly, this community turns into an echochamber of despair rather easily whether it's, "there's never going to be any news" or "hunters are so overpowered nothing else can work" or "the app is never ever going to come out" to "legion will destroy IA"

I mean, reading these boards has gotten semi-depressing to me and I love this game. It's literally the only board game I devote time to in my adult life with a family. Are there some things I think FFG could do a lot better at? **cough** news spacing **cough** and more, yeah! But seriously the game is just about to get a huge content dump and a new game is announced but the IA sky is falling.

And again, this isn't directed at you or even just this topic thread, but just the whole IA downer so prevalent currently. So if I'm what I'm saying isn't helpful to the community, I'd be glad to take it down.

The press conference last week didn't mention much with Armada or IA. Armada now has an awesome Wave 7 and FFG have stated there will be a new SW product on FF2. It might be the SSD or something new but....

A new core set for IA with revised rules based on Rogue One? RO is simply screaming out for an IA set of some kind. XW had a new core set so why not IA (and revised rules might fit alongside the new App).

3 hours ago, Masterchiefspiff said:

NuSair, I want you to know this is completely not aimed at you, but just a lot of the doom and gloom around lately and about the state of the game.

I get what you're saying, but we should be literally weeks from a huge new release that has the potential to shake everything up. If they were to nerf anything, even hunters, right now it would have unseen consequences that would do who knows what to the game. I mean, we already have a number of people calling to undo the nerf of the Royal Guards, Officers, and Sabs, which was extremely necessary at the time (and even certain levels of the nerf are still necessary - at least the RG's buffing each other and Officer moves dropped to 2 movement points).

And honestly, we can only truly make the argument for hunters being "OP" since Worlds (so *almost* four months, all of which we have had a new wave announced). Before that it was ramping up and no one could say one way or another. Sure a lot of people were thinking hunters could legitimately be strongest leading up to worlds but there wasn't nearly enough hard data to make that a certain claim. I can remember seeing nothing about Weequays being awesome before our group started coming around to them in January this year and even in February when our regionals happened I don't remember seeing anything like our list on the boards before hand.

We have to remember that IA isn't a video game where the designers can just hot fix something and then undo it later if it was a mistake or more things come out to balance it and now it needs to be undone. And honestly, this community turns into an echochamber of despair rather easily whether it's, "there's never going to be any news" or "hunters are so overpowered nothing else can work" or "the app is never ever going to come out" to "legion will destroy IA"

I mean, reading these boards has gotten semi-depressing to me and I love this game. It's literally the only board game I devote time to in my adult life with a family. Are there some things I think FFG could do a lot better at? **cough** news spacing **cough** and more, yeah! But seriously the game is just about to get a huge content dump and a new game is announced but the IA sky is falling.

And again, this isn't directed at you or even just this topic thread, but just the whole IA downer so prevalent currently. So if I'm what I'm saying isn't helpful to the community, I'd be glad to take it down.

It won't let me 'like' this post twice, so I'll just have to come out and say it directly. I really like this post.

The app is going to change everything.

On August 23, 2017 at 8:17 PM, Rikalonius said:

If FFG wanted to make money I'd already have purchased a Zuckass and 4LOM.

I have to agree, I love Imperial assault, but if feels sometimes like they ignore the obvious heart of the empire a clawdite shapeshifter, who the **** told them to do that instead of 2 famous bounty hunters....

I am also surprise that they would introduce The emperor surrounded with a cast of nobodies.

4 hours ago, Salex215 said:

I have to agree, I love Imperial assault, but if feels sometimes like they ignore the obvious heart of the empire a clawdite shapeshifter, who the **** told them to do that instead of 2 famous bounty hunters....

I am also surprise that they would introduce The emperor surrounded with a cast of nobodies.

Well, we already have pretty much everyone associated with the Emperor:

Darth Vader

Royal Guards

Royal Guard Champion

Stormtroopers

Not sure who else they could have included - those goofy advisors?

21 minutes ago, FSD said:

Well, we already have pretty much everyone associated with the Emperor:

Darth Vader

Royal Guards

Royal Guard Champion

Stormtroopers

Not sure who else they could have included - those goofy advisors?

Tarkin is pretty much the only other major canon character to not appear for Empire yet. (apart from all the nobody Officers that occasionally get force choked by Vader)

Mara Jade if you open it up to Legends (but that's a can of worms best left closed I believe)

Well and we still need Yoda . I mean, we'll be fine without scout troopers or ewoks or tarkin, imho, but Yoda is a must have.

2 minutes ago, Willange said:

Well and we still need Yoda . I mean, we'll be fine without scout troopers or ewoks or tarkin, imho, but Yoda is a must have.

I feel pretty confident that we'll get all of those (sans Tarkin) in the next expansion. Each faction is getting its iconic support unit, one wave at a time. It's Rebels' turn next!

-ryanjamal

Mercenaries are such an easy fix, just cut off their access to unlimited focus tokens and they won't be broken anymore. Errata Gideon and C-3PO so they can only focus Rebels. I would love if they just banned Temp Alliance so that Rebel figures wouldn't have to be balanced for 2 factions instead of just 1, but I don't think they are willing to take such a drastic step.

Bringing back 4x4 Royal Guards and Officers to combat Mercs is a terrible, terrible idea. The list is extremely boring and requires a minimum of a 2nd Core set to play. Nobody should have to buy a 2nd core set just so their faction can compete.

I do think Vader 2.0 and Han 2.0, which is Rebel faction only, will help bring these Scum to heel, but I think as long as they have triple focus per turn and all their ridiculous command cards they will remain dominant.

Don't ban anything. Han can take out 3 Weequay by himself, the article just showed us that. The maps selected could go a long way in helping as well. Ahsoka and Vader can also do a number on most mercs outside of IG and Onar

Don't expect legion to end IA. It's a hobby miniatures game not a board game and a much tighter focus in terms of miniatures range.

5 hours ago, TylerTT said:

Don't expect legion to end IA. It's a hobby miniatures game not a board game and a much tighter focus in terms of miniatures range.

I think and hope you're right. I'm someone who only plays campaign mode.

It would calm everyone down if they announced new stuff for IA on FF2. I doubt they will though.

13 hours ago, ryanjamal said:

I feel pretty confident that we'll get all of those (sans Tarkin) in the next expansion. Each faction is getting its iconic support unit, one wave at a time. It's Rebels' turn next!

-ryanjamal

So who are you thinking it'll be for them? Yoda? Wedge? ... Mothma?

11 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

So who are you thinking it'll be for them? Yoda? Wedge? ... Mothma?

Skippy the force-sensitive droid! :-)

-ryanjamal

34 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

So who are you thinking it'll be for them? Yoda? Wedge? ... Mothma?

I think you were joking with this post, but honestly - I would be kind of excited for a Tarkin/Mothma combo Ally/Villian leader/planner pack. Having two 100% support figures on each side would be kind of cool and different.

1 minute ago, totalnoob said:

I think you were joking with this post, but honestly - I would be kind of excited for a Tarkin/Mothma combo Ally/Villian leader/planner pack. Having two 100% support figures on each side would be kind of cool and different.

They'd be neat figures to have for painting/collecting's sake, but I think they don't quite work for this game. Jabba and Palpatine are already a stretch, and they at least have some combat aptitude- Mothma or Tarkin, might feel a little odd- even if they had no significant attack and were purely there for support, ordering around 5 or 6 stormtroopers and a Nexu (or the Rebel equivalent) just seems beneath them.

But hey, I won't complain about more iconic allies and villains.

2 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

They'd be neat figures to have for painting/collecting's sake, but I think they don't quite work for this game. Jabba and Palpatine are already a stretch, and they at least have some combat aptitude- Mothma or Tarkin, might feel a little odd- even if they had no significant attack and were purely there for support, ordering around 5 or 6 stormtroopers and a Nexu (or the Rebel equivalent) just seems beneath them.

But hey, I won't complain about more iconic allies and villains.

I hear your overall point, we did have that funny thread somewhere talking about Royal Guards dumpster diving in the trash compactor

I could still see some interesting mission themes with them that wouldn't be too horrible. Like the Rebel base has been infiltrated and now the rebel heroes must escort (escape) with Mon Mothma. She could do things like ordering troops around, extra attacks, calling in for re-inforcements,etc. Tarkin seems a bit tougher, but maybe the Rebel spy team infiltrates the Death Star (its an older code sir, but it checks out...) and they are there to spy and attempt to capture Tarkin.

I'm stretching a bit, but the main point is I like unique abilities that don't always center around combat. They add some nice flavor to the game, even if thematically it isn't a 100% perfect fit