21 minutes ago, Smutpedler said:

Even "Hey, that's my fish!"?

I said living games.

Thanks for the pedantry though, even if it was misguided.

2 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I said living games.

Thanks for the pedantry though, even if it was misguided.

It's a joke, not excessive concern over minor details. I know it's early but... lighten up?

14 minutes ago, Smutpedler said:

I know it's early but... lighten up?

...you do know who you're talking to there, don't you? Asking Mr Two Accounts to lighten up is like throwing meringues into a black hole.

1 minute ago, FTS Gecko said:

...you do know who you're talking to there, don't you? Asking Mr Two Accounts to lighten up is like throwing meringues into a black hole.

I know. I just can't resist Don't suppose you have any meringues, do you?

Also; sorry for derailing the thread @Velvetelvis

5 hours ago, Princezilla said:

Your point is kinda undermined by the fact that X-Wing sales and playerbase are at an all time high and that the game recently unseated WH40k as the number one competitive tabletop in the country after it held that slot for over a decade.

Playerbase and sales have nothing to do with each other.

The last model I bought was the TIE striker. I intend to buy the scurrg bomber, TIE Aggressor and Star wing. I don't play either rebels or scum, yet I love the appearance of the scurrg bomber.

I haven't played a game of X-Wing since wave 8 because the games become so stale and, except the physical appearance of the ships, all the Star Wars like appeal is gone from the game.

So, am I part of the playerbase, or just a fan of little Star wars ships? If FFG wants to just sell models, then they should outsource the game rules to someone who's going to do them just. If FFG wants to sell a game, they need to make the game enjoyable and thematic considering the setting.

This game will sell because the models are high quality and Star Wars, it has NOTHING to do with game rules or it would have already fallen.

2 minutes ago, Gadgetron said:

Playerbase and sales have nothing to do with each other.

The last model I bought was the TIE striker. I intend to buy the scurrg bomber, TIE Aggressor and Star wing. I don't play either rebels or scum, yet I love the appearance of the scurrg bomber.

I haven't played a game of X-Wing since wave 8 because the games become so stale and, except the physical appearance of the ships, all the Star Wars like appeal is gone from the game.

So, am I part of the playerbase, or just a fan of little Star wars ships? If FFG wants to just sell models, then they should outsource the game rules to someone who's going to do them just. If FFG wants to sell a game, they need to make the game enjoyable and thematic considering the setting.

This game will sell because the models are high quality and Star Wars, it has NOTHING to do with game rules or it would have already fallen.

Yeah, I'm calling BS on this one.

While the number of people that purchase and collect models but do not play is a non-zero number, the vast majority of sales is coming from players.

The game/game rules does have problems, but it is not failing by any measure.

Just now, kris40k said:

Yeah, I'm calling BS on this one.

While the number of people that purchase and collect models but do not play is a non-zero number, the vast majority of sales is coming from players.

The game/game rules does have problems, but it is not failing by any measure.

Meanwhile sales are up but tournament numbers are down, as is store attendence (self reported, no hard numbers like for tournaments, so admittedly not as accurate.)

So, no, it's accurate, FFG gets a decent amount of it's sales from people who just want the ships. I never played a game of attack wing, but I have my favorite star trek ships on my shelf. Never played Imperial Assault, but I have a few models kicking around.

9 minutes ago, Gadgetron said:

Meanwhile sales are up but tournament numbers are down, as is store attendence (self reported, no hard numbers like for tournaments, so admittedly not as accurate.)

So, no, it's accurate, FFG gets a decent amount of it's sales from people who just want the ships. I never played a game of attack wing, but I have my favorite star trek ships on my shelf. Never played Imperial Assault, but I have a few models kicking around.

Tournaments do not account for all players, there are plenty of players that never go to tournaments and have no plans too. As far as your example of yourself buying a few models and not playing, I retort with @Joe Boss Red Seven who spends thousands on models from the few pics he's posted and is certainly not a tourny player.

5 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Tournaments do not account for all players, there are plenty of players that never go to tournaments and have no plans too. As far as your example of yourself buying a few models and not playing, I retort with @Joe Boss Red Seven who spends thousands on models from the few pics he's posted and is certainly not a tourny player.

Tournaments were only one example, I for one can't recall the last tournament for any system I attended. I'm by no means saying the majority of sales are like mine, but a far more significant number than you're crediting are only because "Star Wars."

Store attendence is down as well. We're also not far from a new movie, and Rogue One did amazingly well (though the movie should have featured a bunch of toilet bowls saving the day and being super maneuverable because according to FFG they're what Star Wars is all about, X-Wings and TIE fighters are soooo out of style.) So sales of Star Wars products shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, in fact I'd be shocked if a company selling Star Wars things showed lower sales anywhere.

X-Wing is not Chess. MtG isn't Go. These games have a life span, and like anything else, when they pass they can be mourned. Necromancy, though, is often seen as crass unless it is particularly successful.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

47 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Tournaments do not account for all players, there are plenty of players that never go to tournaments and have no plans too. As far as your example of yourself buying a few models and not playing, I retort with @Joe Boss Red Seven who spends thousands on models from the few pics he's posted and is certainly not a tourny player.

I agree with your point, but @Joe Boss Red Seven isn't a particularly good example of someone who buys to play as opposed to buying because he loves Star Wars. What he plays on his home tables sounds to be far enough removed from the game as to be functionally the same as buying them to display on a shelf as a collectable divorced from the game it is a product of.

6 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Patience is indeed the virtue here. The chaingun is being loaded with magic bullets, but it takes a while. This isn't a computer game that just gets a monthly balance patch.

1 hour ago, kris40k said:

Yeah, I'm calling BS on this one.

While the number of people that purchase and collect models but do not play is a non-zero number, the vast majority of sales is coming from players.

The game/game rules does have problems, but it is not failing by any measure.

Agreed, the game rules have problems at the upper level of play but seriously X-wing is still a very solid platform for miniatures. It needs fixes, quite a few that have built up over the years but nobody should think FFG is abandoning one of the most popular miniatures games in existence. They aren't making micro machines here. Epic play is still amazing which is what I focus on. Tourney play always had issues and while I expect it to seriously improve I never expect perfection. This will never be chess, but that doesn't mean it can't be great.

12 hours ago, kris40k said:

Now, I can't always agree with this. For instance, the U-Wing. There are many people that claim the U-Wing is crap, and while its not the best option for 100/6, I don't think anyone claiming the U-Wing is crap has ever set Bodhi Rook (pilot) down into an Epic match with a bunch of ordinance carriers and seen how effective it is.

I'm not quite sure what we disagree on, but we both agree that the U-Wing is excellent in Epic!

8 hours ago, FlyingAnchors said:

well I mean the point of the game is to win, so of course ships are going to be equipped to achieve their win condition. Ffg isn't going to start shipping jokes with the miniatures, that's up to you to provide your own entertainment, whether through competitive play, or casual. you can't say the game isn't designed at least mostly around fluff when you look at Biggs ability. It's very cinematic. It also just so happens to be very good right now. Or tycho, fels wrath, Porkins, Sabine, boba fett crew, pre nerf palp (post nerf to but not quite the same) those are all fluff oriented effects. Some of them good, some mediocre. And there's allot more, but it's late.

Also how many characters are we missing from the scope of either pilot or relevant crew? I count about 7. Also nothing is stopping people from creating their own.

Currently, the only point of the game is to win. That is because Narrative X-Wing ("re-live the Battle of Scarif") does not exist in FFG's eyes.

Darth Maul, Seventh Sister, Fourth Brother, Yoda, Obi-Wan, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Commader Sato, Admiral Constantine, Commander Krennic, Admiral Ackbar, Admiral Raddus, K-2SO, Blue Squadron Pilot, Phoenix Squadron Pilot.

I have already doubled your count, without even trying and without even getting into the EU, minor characters, and the Prequels.

And the DIY notion means that either the game is dead or FFG is not meeting the desires of the player base.

7 hours ago, FlyingAnchors said:

So you want to remove what makes named pilots fun, and focus the game around epts, which it already does for the most part anyway.

Also how do you expect every pilot to be viable all the time. There's a reason people fly Corran and not knave squadron. And since people fly Corran, the e wing gets table time. I've never heard anyone complain "oh I wish I could take a ps 1 e wing!". Also the jump master on initial release fit this utopian idea, every pilot was meta playable. And look at what it did. Now imagine every faction has that. The game would be approaching 40k new codex levels of broken if every ship were this way. So I disagree that is the direction x wing should head. i don't think new developers would be a smart idea either.

I'm sure there's somebody. . .

5 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I'm sure there's somebody. . .

If it was appropriately costed, then yeah, I'd use it. Look at x7 deltas. They saw some good use during the height of the Defenders.

8 hours ago, Gadgetron said:

The game is pretty far from fluff. Flying toilets are more maneuverable than A-Wings and TIE Interceptors let alone standard fighters. The fact that advanced military craft are missing the newer maneuvering template moves, yet cargo haulers are s-looping or tallon rolling around the table is a blatant sign that the developers hold the Star Wars universe in contempt.

IMO, freighters in Star Wars have 0 correlation to what the world means in real-life. Small freighters like the YT-1300 are a plot device. In fantasy, the heroes travel together on foot, horse, boat etc. Since none of that is really practical in space, the small freighter appeared as a 'space horse' of sorts, a space that carries the heroes from place to place while allowing them to interact with each other.

If they must have an in universe reason to exist, that wouldn't be carrying stuff. Nobody runs a successful transport building with a station-wagon. The way I see it, small freighters are aimed at people who travel long distances and need to carry small amounts of stuff: smugglers, explorers and bounty hunters. In Star Wars all these categories are likely to run into trouble sooner rather than later. As such, their ships of choice are probably built to tangle with a few fighters and come out on top.

9 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Currently, the only point of the game is to win. That is because Narrative X-Wing ("re-live the Battle of Scarif") does not exist in FFG's eyes.

Exactly. Narrative play is so much fun even if you lose. This weekend I'm carrying on play testing my Scarif scenario. Always more fun than 100/6.

I'm with you. I thought this would be a game I play on into my dotage. And now I'm just praying for a second edition.

I've always known this game would have a limited life span. I've seen a lot of games before it die off (three Star Wars CCGs, Mage Knight, a Star Trek CCG, and so on). With games like this, you have fun while it lasts. Afterward, there will still be some players still around playing on kitchen tables and the like. I'll probably move on by then, but maybe not.

You know, I recently had an awesome time flying a list of nothing but TIEs; mostly /ln, with a couple of /in to support and bring a little extra attack power. It was fun to just put some ships on the mat and play a game about maneuvers and combat; something THEMATIC. I tend to think of the game in light of simulation, probably because a lot of my earliest gaming contact was through games published by SPI and Victory Games. In that light, it makes perfect sense to build thematic, logically consistent lists (with the limitations implied thereby) and play a game in which you hope that a little luck and a lot of planning can shore up your short comings against whatever your opponent has brought out.

I'd never expect to see such a philosophy dominate at tournaments, of course, but it opens the field up to a lot of fun for playing games on the kitchen table. Of course, I've always had a love for playing from a position of disadvantage and seeing how well I could do in spite of it. (Playing SPI's War of the Ring, I loved the three player variant simply because I liked seeing if I could get Isengard to somehow wrest the Ring from the Fellowship and keep it for myself rather than losing it to Sauron...)

This game has a potentially very long life span among those of us who play for FUN. At a competitive level, it may be moving near the point where entropy will kick in and the competitive scene will deteriorate. The difference is in our approaches- the competitive players will eventually become exhausted, mentally and financially, and get less return for their investment than do casual players. There isn't a single ship in any of my plano boxes that doesn't see play. By contrast, how many competitive players bought Starvipers for the autothrusters alone, and left the ship just lying around in storage? How many bought Imperial Veterans for the Defender titles, and similarly leave the bombers to languish in a Feldherr case?

Playing to the meta limits your list building by a large degree, bringing players down to flying a very small number of ships, and probably just as few pilots, despite having bought many, many more ships that see no use. By contrast, when winning becomes secondary to simply enjoying a good Star Wars game, any ship is usable, and so is any pilot. X-wing is a game, and it should be enjoyable, regardless of wins or losses. At the competitive level, these forums leave me with the impression that such is simply not the case; rather, most players have acquiesced to the necessity of bringing lists which all agree create NPEs, and so the only real joy is the joy of the victory itself. Many seem to be bored flying the same old lists, as well as bored flying against them.

19 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I'm not quite sure what we disagree on, but we both agree that the U-Wing is excellent in Epic!

Currently, the only point of the game is to win. That is because Narrative X-Wing ("re-live the Battle of Scarif") does not exist in FFG's eyes.

Darth Maul, Seventh Sister, Fourth Brother, Yoda, Obi-Wan, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Commader Sato, Admiral Constantine, Commander Krennic, Admiral Ackbar, Admiral Raddus, K-2SO, Blue Squadron Pilot, Phoenix Squadron Pilot.

I have already doubled your count, without even trying and without even getting into the EU, minor characters, and the Prequels.

And the DIY notion means that either the game is dead or FFG is not meeting the desires of the player base.

I'm sure there's somebody. . .

Obi-wan, Yoda, Thrawn, Sato, constantine, Ackbar and Raddus don't really fit within the scope of X-wing. They are better suited to Armada. Doesn't mean i wouldn't like to have them in game as well, but they aren't exactly piloting ships. And how does DIY mean the game is dead? Are we supposed to mindlessly just accept whatever we are given all the time and not get creative? After Dagobah dave's trench run i'm not sure we need FFG to give us handouts for every single space battle ever, because the player base is fine doing it on their own.

11 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

IMO, freighters in Star Wars have 0 correlation to what the world means in real-life. Small freighters like the YT-1300 are a plot device. In fantasy, the heroes travel together on foot, horse, boat etc. Since none of that is really practical in space, the small freighter appeared as a 'space horse' of sorts, a space that carries the heroes from place to place while allowing them to interact with each other.

If they must have an in universe reason to exist, that wouldn't be carrying stuff. Nobody runs a successful transport building with a station-wagon. The way I see it, small freighters are aimed at people who travel long distances and need to carry small amounts of stuff: smugglers, explorers and bounty hunters. In Star Wars all these categories are likely to run into trouble sooner rather than later. As such, their ships of choice are probably built to tangle with a few fighters and come out on top.

If we look at the Falcon, while it was a very maneuverable ship, it was still nothing like a TIE fighter or an X-Wing. However, the primary strength or the Falcon, the Ghost, or the Outrider was that they were built like tanks and had turrets, they were less cargo hauler (I know, I term them as suck, however...) and more WWII bomber. They are built to take a beating, return fire, and return home, they were NOT meant to out dogfight a fighter. WWII air combat is the BASIS of Star Wars space combat, by all rights, this game should be able to swap an X-Wing with a p-38, a TIE with a FW-190, the Falcon with a B-26, and the game should run pretty smoothly.

53 minutes ago, Jetfire said:

Agreed, the game rules have problems at the upper level of play but seriously X-wing is still a very solid platform for miniatures. It needs fixes, quite a few that have built up over the years but nobody should think FFG is abandoning one of the most popular miniatures games in existence. They aren't making micro machines here. Epic play is still amazing which is what I focus on. Tourney play always had issues and while I expect it to seriously improve I never expect perfection. This will never be chess, but that doesn't mean it can't be great.

No ones saying FFG is abandoning the game, they're going to milk this cash cow as long as the Mouse lets them or suckers keep playing. The point is that they're losing their playerbase, slowly, but the playerbase is getting smaller. This loss could be to other game options, its could be lack of interest, but personally, I thinks its how stale the gameplay has become compounded by the disconnect from the Star Wars fluff the game is based off.

8 hours ago, Gadgetron said:

The game is pretty far from fluff. Flying toilets are more maneuverable than A-Wings and TIE Interceptors let alone standard fighters. The fact that advanced military craft are missing the newer maneuvering template moves, yet cargo haulers are s-looping or tallon rolling around the table is a blatant sign that the developers hold the Star Wars universe in contempt.

that's your contempted opinion talking.

1 minute ago, FlyingAnchors said:

that's your contempted opinion talking.

No, that's the rules of the game talking.

39 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I'm not quite sure what we disagree on, but we both agree that the U-Wing is excellent in Epic!

My apologies for not being clear. What I was attempting to illustrate is that on one hand you have people that state something like, "The U-Wing is DOA", or a unusable, or a failed expansion. On the other hand, you have some people, like yourself, stating, "There is no support for Epic from FFG." My point is that people are missing the connection, you have to bring those hands together. The U-Wing, more specifically Bohdi Rook, was built for Epic it just is not specifically marked for Epic Only. There is support there in what is being released.

Maybe not as much as we would like, that's debatable and where we likely disagree, but I think that there is some support.