There has been enough discussion over the years that I really can’t see FFG not going with the Neutral cards in the wave reproduced. It’s been used as a slight against them for too long.

Did anyone find out what the proposed standard point game is going to be for Legion, and how long that is supposed to last?

On Battletech… A great game. And it has a surprising number of players. All the cons I’ve been too has a few Battletech players over in the corner replaying something from the Clan invasion. But I’m biased. I own all the books, and 1K plus mechs, hundreds of tanks, a cluster of battle armor.

3 minutes ago, Hawktel said:

Did anyone find out what the proposed standard point game is going to be for Legion, and how long that is supposed to last?

I'd expect a platoon sized wargame to last between 1-2 hours.

Battletech will forever be great. Needs new models badly though....i ended up buing resin ones based on the MWO models

Standard game is 800 for Legion btw.

11 minutes ago, tuco74 said:

But having cards that you need to 'collect' in order to play...I'm less keen on that, especially if they're used as a means to force you to buy miniatures as seems to be the case with X-Wing. It's not a deal breaker, just something I'm less keen on.

For those who don't play other FFG games...

There's two methods that FFG has used so far. There's the X-Wing system and the Runewars system.

In X-Wing most upgrades are neutral so you can use them on any ship that has that upgrade slot. That means you quite often will find an upgrade you want for Ship X in expansion pack Y. Which can include having to buy stuff in all 3 factions to get access to all the cards you may want.

They did things differently in Runewars, so all the upgrades you may want for a given unit either comes with that unit or in the core pack. So while you need the cards for official events, you don't need to buy models you don't want for the sake of the upgrade cards.

Some people think that FFG has said they will go the Runewars route... I haven't heard that myself from a FFG person but it seems more likely that they will.

Ok, I TOTALLY understand that the majority of the biggest, most popular, and longest running mini games are unpainted (if you exclude pre-painted ones like X-wing and armada, and previous short term hits like MechWarrior). Ok, so not all mini games...just the squad based tactical ones.

That niche of gamers don't expect pre-painted, and some don't even want it. I get it.

Here's something to consider though...what about expanding your market?

Neither X-wing or Armada would have been as popular unpainted. They expanded table top mini gaming to entirely new crowds. X-Wing has claimed the top of the charts for 2 years in a row now and for the vast majority of it's playerbase, it's the first table top mini game they ever experienced. It brought a lot of new blood into the genre. Why not attempt to do the same thing with the squad based tactical gaming?

Lets be honest....if FFG thought pre-paints would make more money, they'd do pre-paints.

Ultimately, they think it'll be more successful this way. Whether thats because the price of pre-paints would be too high (thats a LOT of models to paint....), the quality too low, or that the market would be smaller than unpainted....we don't know. We'll probably never know.

But at the end of the day they clearly think THIS is the way to expand their market into the wargaming sector, and IMO they are correct.

5 minutes ago, kmanweiss said:

Neither X-wing or Armada would have been as popular unpainted. They expanded table top mini gaming to entirely new crowds. X-Wing has claimed the top of the charts for 2 years in a row now and for the vast majority of it's playerbase, it's the first table top mini game they ever experienced. It brought a lot of new blood into the genre. Why not attempt to do the same thing with the squad based tactical gaming?

Because it's financially unrealistic? If you sold painted and unpainted minis for a game, you'd have to have two lots of manufacturing process, additional warehousing, more complex distribution, two types of packaging, additional design costs...all to sell prepainted minis to a relatively small group of people. I've said it elsewhere...collecting, building and painting minis is an integral part of tabletop wargaming. If it puts you off...don't do it, but don't expect a games company to cater for you. I suspect FFG know that there are a lot more people who will buy this game with unpainted minis than won't buy it without prepainted - the benefits of that ratio outweigh the negatives.

1 minute ago, kmanweiss said:

Ok, so not all mini games...just the squad based tactical ones.

This isn't true. Flames of War for example or Black Powder and most other historical games do not come prepainted, and those are not squad based games. There are also a number or spaceship games that did not come prepainted. Then there's the naval and tank based games, which again are not pre-painted. There are in fact very, very few miniature games that have included prepainted models and none of them have done well so far.

1 minute ago, kmanweiss said:

That niche of gamers don't expect pre-painted, and some don't even want it. I get it.

It's not a niche when it's the whole community...

1 minute ago, kmanweiss said:

Neither X-wing or Armada would have been as popular unpainted.

You can't actually know that, so you can't state it as a fact. Since it was never offered in some other form we can't actually know how popular it would've been otherwise. While there are a number of people who have said this attracted them to it, we still can't know if it would of done better, worse or about the same. You also don't actually know if the vast majority of players are new to wargaming. Claiming things you can't possibly know let alone prove doesn't help make your point in fact it hurts it.

1 minute ago, kmanweiss said:

Why not attempt to do the same thing with the squad based tactical gaming?

Because it has failed every other time. There's a host of reasons why X-Wing and Armada can work prepainted and a game like Legion can't.

X-Wing and Armada ships are very easy to paint, but something some people seem to either forget or just don't mention is the fact that the fighters in Armada are not painted. Both Armada and X-Wing have a relatively small number of models per side, and only 3-4 new ones a released every couple months.

Legion will have human models which are much harder to paint, and will have a lot more of them. That means the price of the game if it were prepainted would go up by a significant amount, enough that it would hurt sales, because fewer people would buy it. Especially when they're getting really poor painted mini's that many will then have to strip and repaint themselves.

But the wargamer market, which is what FFG is trying to tap into with with Legion will not pay to subsidize your unwillingness to paint your own mini's... Which is what you're really asking for. For us to pay more so you can avoid painting your models. FFG doesn't need to tap into the a new market here, they already have done that with X-Wing and Armada and a lot of those people will give Legion a try. What they really want to do is take an even bigger bite out of GW's market share by making something that can compete with 40k.

22 minutes ago, kmanweiss said:

Ok, I TOTALLY understand that the majority of the biggest, most popular, and longest running mini games are unpainted (if you exclude pre-painted ones like X-wing and armada, and previous short term hits like MechWarrior). Ok, so not all mini games...just the squad based tactical ones.

That niche of gamers don't expect pre-painted, and some don't even want it. I get it.

Here's something to consider though...what about expanding your market?

Neither X-wing or Armada would have been as popular unpainted. They expanded table top mini gaming to entirely new crowds. X-Wing has claimed the top of the charts for 2 years in a row now and for the vast majority of it's playerbase, it's the first table top mini game they ever experienced. It brought a lot of new blood into the genre. Why not attempt to do the same thing with the squad based tactical gaming?

How much do you think this games core set would cost pre-painted? Let's ignore the quality of the paint job and just focus in the cost.

There are 2 dozen trooper models, 3 vehicles, and 2 leaders in the core set. Unpainted that's $90, How much would hand painting those 30 models raise the price? How much time would it add in production?

And that's only half the normal game size.

You compare it to X-wing and Armada that put less models on the table then a single squad in this game. You ignore that fighter packs and flotillas in Armada are unpainted and you also ignore that IA is also unpainted. Anytime the model count rises FFG opts not to paint. Why do you think that is? Could it have to with the cost of painting all those models?

I see people mentioning scales for releases of X-wings and TIEs. Don't want to be the party breaker but this is gonna be a ground combat game so the only flight resemblant stuff we will see are probably repursorlift engine based vehicles like speeders or hovertanks.

I'm fine with the T-47 airspeeder but further than that makes very little sense in ground combat.

1 minute ago, Andreu said:

Don't want to be the party breaker but this is gonna be a ground combat game so the only flight resemblant stuff we will see are probably repursorlift engine based vehicles like speeders or hovertanks.

Bolt Action and pretty much any other WWII game has rules for airplanes in it, because they were a major part of the war. You don't always have or even need models for them, but they're accounted for.

1 minute ago, Andreu said:

I'm fine with the T-47 airspeeder but further than that makes very little sense in ground combat.

That is simply untrue and we see lots of examples of starfighters being used in ground combat in the movies and other canon sources. We may or may not see models for them, but I'd be surprised if we don't see rules for bombing/strafing runs at some point.

6 minutes ago, VanorDM said:

That is simply untrue and we see lots of examples of starfighters being used in ground combat in the movies and other canon sources. We may or may not see models for them, but I'd be surprised if we don't see rules for bombing/strafing runs at some point.

I actually agree with this point, a bombing run and strikes are for sure something. Is to have models for that doesn't make sense (for me).

2 minutes ago, Andreu said:

Is to have models for that doesn't make sense (for me).

To have models for them? No you won't need them. BA and FoW don't require models for those things. But having a 1/48 or 1/56 X-Wing model would be nice. Of course you can already buy those...

Also if there's any sort of strafing/bombing rules in the game, I totally want a 1/56 model to fly over the table and make pew-pew noises... Although I'd use the soundboard on my phone for that. I'd also have a house rule that if someone didn't do that, none of the dice rolls would actually count.

4 hours ago, BergerFett said:

yea this is the best and worst for one reason... painting white. White really is the hardest color to paint to get right. The upside is, once you've mastered painting white, everything else is easy peasy lemon squeezy. Pro-tip for painting white from a guy whos painted 3 armies white. Thin you paint down and do 3-4 coats minimum.

How do you even highlight white?

4 hours ago, Hannes Solo said:

So had AT-43. What do all these games have in common? They are out of production!

I didn't say it was recepy for success. Altough Mage knight did well (before that people said colectable prepainted figs couldn't be done.) Heroclix is still around (altough more a squad based game rather than a proper tabletop wargame)

Also all 3 have no mayor licence. Ok Mechwarrior is a bit more known, but it's nowhere near as big as SW. (and Dark ages wasn't as cool with it's repurposed lumberjack mechs.)

A SW themed collectable prepainted minis game could work well: (named) charcters are rare, specialist are uncommon, and oh another stormtrooper? We'll you need a lot of them anyway.

33 minutes ago, Robin Graves said:

A SW themed collectable prepainted minis game could work well: (named) charcters are rare, specialist are uncommon, and oh another stormtrooper? We'll you need a lot of them anyway.

I hate this idea so much it's hard to convey in text. Suffice to say I wouldn't buy it.

Ill let Luke give my answer.

3 hours ago, Robin Graves said:

A SW themed collectable prepainted minis game could work well: (named) charcters are rare, specialist are uncommon, and oh another stormtrooper? We'll you need a lot of them anyway.

As a slightly different game to anything else FFG has we could call it something like erm - Star Wars Miniatures Battles, Wizards of the Coast could make it for us, it'll sell forever right?

3 hours ago, Robin Graves said:

How do you even highlight white?

"White" is actually suppose to be treated as a super light gray, not solid white.

The only true white should be the edges, rest should be a tone or two down into Grey.

46 minutes ago, Guest AdmiralAndy said:

As a slightly different game to anything else FFG has we could call it something like erm - Star Wars Miniatures Battles, Wizards of the Coast could make it for us, it'll sell forever right?

Oh yeeeeeaaaahh that's right. That thing existed. Aparantly. Bah, it should have worked. Well no game sells forever. (except D&D, MTG and 40K)

sigh, WOTC just seems to be bad at selling minis. Arena of the planeswalkers (basically heroscape meets MTG) could have been big if they had only supported it.

5 hours ago, Robin Graves said:

How do you even highlight white?

Easy way: white coat, black wash, white highlight.

9 hours ago, Robin Graves said:

How do you even highlight white?

my guide for white is this.

Spray gray, Zenithil (45degree angel) white. then if you want a cool white, wash the model in a watered down P3 Underbelly blue. then paint all the not recesses. I did this for my Warmachine Retribution army and it looks good.

For Stormtroopers I would either wash with a very watered down Black ink like armor wash from p3 or nuln oil from GW, or find a light grey, like a Wolf grey from vallejo and wash the model with that watered down. then go in with 3 - 4 thin coats of white on the raised areas (not recesses). to high light, go in with white for edge high lighting and not thinned so its brighter. GW has was off white colors as a solid base to highlight with pure white but I am not a fan. THis is what i will try to recreate and its really just painting the underside grey top part white. your zenithil priming should do most of the work.

6 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

"White" is actually suppose to be treated as a super light gray, not solid white.

The only true white should be the edges, rest should be a tone or two down into Grey.

^so much this. If you don't have something suitable add a tiny touch of black to the base coat white, it'll help fix a lot of the coverage issues you'll see with pure white as well

My suggestion for painting Stormtroopers would actually be a black undercoat, paint the armour with a couple of layers thinned down white, shade with black ink and then more layers of (possibly brighter) white where needed...but I suspect a fair bit of experimentation would be needed.

Stormtroopers can be as simple or complex as you like.

Simple: Base coat white. Black wash, targeted mostly at the recesses. Touch up armour with white.

Complex: so many methods. Paint body glove black, then done armour grey, layering up to a very pale grey (I like GW Ulthuan Grey). Very fine edge highlights with white if desired.

Theres no reason it has to be back breaking, especially for newer painters that just want to get them on the table looking ok.