basic list building options like this need to be listed on the unit card or on a single standard upgrade list card. of course not all upgrade cards will be this simple but some will be. the goal is not to get rid of upgrade cards entirely just reduce the number of them.

I dearly wish x-wing had cards like this for ships like the A-Wing where I routinely need a bunch of upgrade cards that were effectively balance patches.

This option card would have check boxes ( ) and track what upgrades Are in play with dry erase markers.

In tournament play you can probably get by just having your full list printed out and not needing to add that actual upgrade card to your pile.

4 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

In tournament play you can probably get by just having your full list printed out and not needing to add that actual upgrade card to your pile.

You will need the upgrade card, judging by every other FFG game and their tournament rules.

These are a big help.

I really liked this idea of upgrades cards having a wysiwyg effect on a unit. When I look across the table I see a rocket launcher I'll know to be wary for my vehicles instead of trying to remember which unit of generic troopers has a rocket launcher card next to it on my opponents side of the table.

And I can't explain why, but I like this method over the books of points or even the back of the card example you give.

From what I can tell, at least going by the rebel card, you can add one extra troop card - or upgrade, maybe a heavier trooper, it doesn't seem so bad.

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From what I can tell, at least going by the rebel card, you can add one extra troop card - or upgrade, maybe a heavier trooper, it doesn't seem so bad.

Until you build a 'proper' 800pts army with, say, four Rebel Trooper squads, each with a heavy weapon, extra trooper and an equipment upgrade. That's sixteen cards already for less than half your force.

I agree having a card for every single thing is a tad clunky. But you know what? Just don't use the cards. Sans exhaustible cards (which AFAIK are limited to a couple Force powers in the core set and maybe some sort of a grenade card), we've yet to see anything in the game that would absolutely require you to physically have every single card to track any sort of information. This isn't like X-Wing or Armada where you have to track various information on your ship cards with tokens, damage cards, order dials and whatnot, it's not even like Imperial Assault where you track activations on the deployment cards because your miniatures are all over the place. Everything is tracked with presumably low quantities of presumably small sized tokens placed by the actual miniatures. You could just as easily write yourself an army list or fill out a roster sheet table like all we wargamers have been doing for decades. I wouldn't bat an eye at a casual game. I bet no one at a local tournament would bat an eye. I bet no one at an OP tournament would bat an eye, unless FFG staff is somehow involved. If anyone does bat an eye, you pull out the stack of cards from your bag and put it on the side so they're happy.

I can already tell you myself that there is no way I am cluttering the play area by laying out dozens of redundant cards. If I play several trooper squads with the same loadout, I'm bringing just one set of cards. If you want to be 'that guy' and give me grief about it, I'll happily concede the game to you because it obviously won't be any fun for either of us.

1 hour ago, Amanal said:

These are a big help.

The problem being that if any of your units has less than six upgrade cards attached (and so far we've seen four upgrade slots at most), you'll most likely end up taking up even more table real estate with these.

31 minutes ago, player1750031 said:

The problem being that if any of your units has less than six upgrade cards attached (and so far we've seen four upgrade slots at most), you'll most likely end up taking up even more table real estate with these.

Coaster space?

I would love to have more of a wysiwyg approach instead of cards, where appropriate, but it's FFG. And then might start getting into army book territory (which I'd love)

Put them in a binder or just lay them out and overlap them.

I would then copy the pages and put them into a binder and hand that to my opponent as a copy of my list.

The cards make a big improvement over a book, I can hand a card to my opponent and he can check the rules.

I am sure we have all stories of that guy that gets corrected that he is doing it wrong, and then in the next game you catch him doing it again.

this option would preserve the function of upgrade cards but reduce the number of cards players have to deal with.

2 minutes ago, TylerTT said:

this option would preserve the function of upgrade cards but reduce the number of cards players have to deal with.

It would also increase the long term cost of peripherals (I.E. markers, sleeves, etc.)

One sleeve vs many many smaller sleeves.

2 hours ago, qwertyuiop said:

Coaster space?

I would love to have more of a wysiwyg approach instead of cards, where appropriate, but it's FFG. And then might start getting into army book territory (which I'd love)

Keep the cards coming with the figures and no books. Everyone has a different opinion. If I'm going to give up a game to start this one, for God's sake don't turn it into the one I'm giving up.

Interesting that Battlefront with the Flames of War update started down the card path. Last Thursday they announced some older product would get card packs as to update the books released without cards.

Books are pretty garbage as a game component. They are a great way to imurse someone in a setting however.

My hope is that they quickly follow up legion with an RPG book that covers the units featured in legion.

Cards are fantastic, you can easily look over at the other side of the board and know exactly what the opponent has and what that stuff does at any point in the game.

Everything you and your opponent needs to understand the makeup of your army gets clearly laid out. I don't want to look at an options card that you marked up with a dry erase marker every time I need to verify something in your army, then ask what each of those things does. Even if it adds just 1 trooper to a core unit it clearly shows as adding one trooper I can quickly see and understand that.

Cards > Any other system I have seen so far.

Well I would rather have a marker than yet another massive binder of cards to manage.

also if these options were all represented by figures in the unit you would not even need a storm trooper upgrade card to let you know there was an extra trooper. Cuz there is an extra model there!

7 minutes ago, TylerTT said:

Well I would rather have a marker than yet another massive binder of cards to manage.

also if these options were all represented by figures in the unit you would not even need a storm trooper upgrade card to let you know there was an extra trooper. Cuz there is an extra model there!

Except the fact as your opponent I might not know or remember what that added figure adds to the squad, with cards you can just show me the card or I can go look at any time.

1 hour ago, TylerTT said:

Books are pretty garbage as a game component. They are a great way to imurse someone in a setting however.

So 7 movies, 3 cartoon series and hundreds of books and comics don't help?

A massive advantage of wargames over other tabletop games is the visual aspect - everything is represented by a model. Having a heavy weapon, sergeant or other upgrade in a squad is easily identified by the models, so you shouldn't need a card for it.

Using a reference sheet for the weapons/units is then used to keep everything in 1 neat and tidy place. Of course this only really works when you release an army as a complete rules set rather than the FFG model.

There are plenty of upgrades that will likely not be represented on the table by models. Grenades, different versions of the same vheical.

1 hour ago, RED NED said:

A massive advantage of wargames over other tabletop games is the visual aspect - everything is represented by a model. Having a heavy weapon, sergeant or other upgrade in a squad is easily identified by the models, so you shouldn't need a card for it.

Using a reference sheet for the weapons/units is then used to keep everything in 1 neat and tidy place. Of course this only really works when you release an army as a complete rules set rather than the FFG model.

This is the case for WYSIWYG... FFG has its own way to represent loadout through cards so we don't know yet what will be the official ruling

1 hour ago, RED NED said:

...so you shouldn't need a card for it....

Using a reference sheet for the weapons/units is then used to keep everything in 1 neat and tidy place.....

In every other game you would be required to take you rules, army list and army book to a tournament. As the cards make both your army list and army book reference there is far less to cart around. The advantage of having both a card and a model for the Derp-101 is, if your opponent doesn't know what a Derp Gun does you can hand him the card. Thus avoiding errors in transposing rules into a reference sheet, and everything still remains nice and neat.

As far as WYSIWYG goes I expect that where a model is supplied with a card you will need to have both to have it all work. So your Derp Gun will have a card and if you play the Derp gun you will be expected to add that corresponding model into the squad. Some vehicles will have mounting points for various weapons, and if you take the vehicle equivalent of a Derp Gun you will have to have the gun on a mounting point and the card for it.

Just because the scale of X-Wing and Armada doesn't provide clear WYSIWYG doesn't mean that it won't be a thing in a game where the scale of the game does.