Y'know, when I saw the Scyck pilots and upgrades in the C-ROC, I loved them precisely because they are "casual." They have cool abilities, and fun weapons like the Arc Caster, that aren't going to be hitting top tables, but have some great theme. Light Scyck title is another one that really feels so right, but most people won't touch it with a ten-foot pole. It's almost like you could tell the designers weren't trying hard to shape the meta with that pack - just providing cool Star Wars spaceships.

1 hour ago, mdl0114 said:

competitively DOA

The point of a casual wave is that this is irrelevant.

And why do casual cards have to be weak??

One option is to make some crazy broken cards (like the bladewing supercannon) that might be mission-specific, non-tournament, use-later@your-own-risk cards.

Which, if they include in a campaign box, would be fine by me. But if we're talking an entire wave based around ships that are unusable in competitive play I think that would be a terrible idea. If they want to release a "Galactic Civil War" Campaign box and have an X-Wing title that is only usable in the campaign or some pilots with campaign only abilities, I think that'd be great. If they're going to release a traditional 3 ship plus 1-2 boxes wave and they're all useless for competitive play I think that'd be a terrible idea.

Including title cards and ordnance and other stuff that's useful for casual/scenario play in a ship that's also competitively balanced would be the best of both worlds for me, rather than making a ship itself that won't see use competitively on purpose. Cards are fine by me, no problem including "scenario only" cards in a boxed set, it's the ships themselves that I would like to be useable in both casual and competitive play.

1 minute ago, mdl0114 said:

If they're going to release a traditional 3 ship plus 1-2 boxes wave and they're all useless for competitive play I think that'd be a terrible idea.

How far back does "tradition" go? Because in the beginning, waves were 4 ships each: 2 rebel, 2 imperial. Then it was 1, 1, and 2 scum til s&v caught up.

What if waves became reb/imp/scum/casual?

Aren't the epic expansions exactly what you're looking for? Not particularly balanced some crazy powerful but fluffy stuff, should really only be played as a scenario?

I was thinking Wave VII+, but Wave VIII doesn't fit the 3 ships+boxes one. Whatever metric for wave, a full wave of 3-7 (or however many the max was) ships that aren't competitively useful would be a terrible idea in my opinion. I honestly feel 1 ship that is "casual only" would be a bad business decision and FFG would be better off making ships that can be used competitively and casual content that can be used with the existing and future ships. If they want to release cards and cardboard that isn't competitive but has a reason for being in casual, no problem for me. They already release a lot of cards that aren't used competitively. If they planned on making entire ships that weren't useful competitively I think it'd be a bad idea. They already for Epic release ships useless (well, not allowed anyways) competitively with competitive fix cards, I'd rather see them do the opposite and release ships they feel are competitively balanced alongside casual scenarios, campaigns. and cards/cardboard. Maybe they could push epic tournament support a little while we're dreaming here.

Alternately, they can release entirely casual packs with full campaign rules and campaign only cards, and if they have to bundle with ships they can do repaints of existing ships. Basically an epic release only instead of the huge epic ship a bunch of scenarios and rules and special features for a campaign, useable with all their already released ships. I don't want them to release entirely new ships that are only useful in a campaign or casual play environment and either not allowed or woefully inadequate for tournament play.

Anything with upgrades and skills shakes meta. There's plenty of stuff already like Quadjumper or Falcon..Sabine TIE..

I think its called epic.

There is no real need for specifically casual products they happen by acedent enough.

please no "campaign only" cards, it would be really annoying to have a card that has a cool ability that can only be used in one specific mission.

16 hours ago, RebelRogue said:

I grew up in a house full of model trains.

Since I was 10, I'm building and painting model airplanes. Don't have toomuch time for that these days, but most of them are still here, on my shelves. Right next to my imperial X-Wing hangar!

14 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

I guess it depends on what you mean by "hot garbage."

Do I want to see another TIE Punisher climb out of utter uselessness? No.

Does the U-Wing and X-Wing "as is" qualify? Because these ships are just fine for casual play.

Amen. Also, don't forget alternative uses like Epic and HotAC!

Actually, I got to say- If you have any kind of token support planned out for your ships, a cheap punisher can be really cool, especially in Epic. Because either no one shoots at the clunky thing or wonders why he did it.

10 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

The point of a casual wave is that this is irrelevant.

And why do casual cards have to be weak??

One option is to make some crazy broken cards (like the bladewing supercannon) that might be mission-specific, non-tournament, use-later@your-own-risk cards.

Indeed. Try the 'Cutting The Cord' mission and let the prototype snag a couple of upgrades and then tell me it's weak (this happened fairly recently against a tournament-focused player who - rightly from his perspective - went for Colonel Vessery "who's actually a threat" rather than the Delta with the prototype token and was most put out the following turn when it rolled in double-tapping 5 attack dice and turned an ARC into chunky salsa in one strafing run)

10 hours ago, The Inquisitor said:

Aren't the epic expansions exactly what you're looking for? Not particularly balanced some crazy powerful but fluffy stuff, should really only be played as a scenario?

Not exactly.

Fine, call the Huge ship casual only, but the starfighter included is basically a fix for an underperforming tournament ship. So, it is at least 1/2 a tournament release.

And the once every 18 months release schedule pretty much sucks for those who want Huge ships. We just got the C-ROC; so another year for the 2nd Huge scum to make things even, and 2 years to see a Hammerhead corvette??

Plus, I'm really talking about Small and Large ships here. Chances to release things like the Bladewing prototype, Uglies, Mining Guild TIEs, more Y-Wing Pilots, a new Imperial shuttle, et. al., where the goal is not to change the meta but add some flavor and options. They might wind up in tournaments, but the design team is not trying to invent the next great thing, they are simply generating Star Wars toys for us to play with.

On 9/5/2017 at 2:31 AM, Jagos said:

The Imperials have been experiencing casual waves for quite some time now.

When I read the threat title, this very sentence came to mind in exacting grammatical context.

Well done @Jagos, well done.

On 9/4/2017 at 11:15 PM, GrimmyV said:

Sabine in an Imp TIE.

Don't forget Wedge!

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

Plus, I'm really talking about Small and Large ships here. Chances to release things like the Bladewing prototype, Uglies, Mining Guild TIEs, more Y-Wing Pilots, a new Imperial shuttle, et. al., where the goal is not to change the meta but add some flavor and options. They might wind up in tournaments, but the design team is not trying to invent the next great thing, they are simply generating Star Wars toys for us to play with.

This is a can of worms. One, release distinctly underpowered ships and they'll get a lot of fan complaints and, you know, won't sell well. Plus there's always the chance certain ships or abilities will turn out to be much stronger than anticipated, then you have a niche ship that's not really star wars for most people being a must-buy for certain combos or upgrades. And it cuts into your design/production time when you could be making stuff that really clicks with the players like the new ships from the new movies.

3 hours ago, The Inquisitor said:

This is a can of worms. One, release distinctly underpowered ships and they'll get a lot of fan complaints and, you know, won't sell well. Plus there's always the chance certain ships or abilities will turn out to be much stronger than anticipated, then you have a niche ship that's not really star wars for most people being a must-buy for certain combos or upgrades. And it cuts into your design/production time when you could be making stuff that really clicks with the players like the new ships from the new movies.

First, why the **** does everyone assume "casual" = "underpowered." It could mean overpowered. Or it could mean "similar to what exists but expands narrative play."

Second, it seems this idea does click with a lot of people. More than I expected when I started the thread, in fact. It just doesn't click with people who exclusively want more tourney ships, and those people exist, too.

You serve both markets by trying to release tournament worthy ships.

All the ships they have released so far have histories in the fiction that some player has wanted to see. I mean I'm sure there is at least one guy hoping for a tie punisher.

Should waves now release like this?:

one reb

one imp

one scum

one multi faction

Every wave can and should be competitive.

Casual does not have to mean DOA

Competetive does not have to mean powercreep

41 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

First, why the **** does everyone assume "casual" = "underpowered." It could mean overpowered. Or it could mean "similar to what exists but expands narrative play."

Second, it seems this idea does click with a lot of people. More than I expected when I started the thread, in fact. It just doesn't click with people who exclusively want more tourney ships, and those people exist, too.

If "casual" expansion/cards are overpowered and allowed in tournament play, they're going to be everywhere. You could argue the jumpmaster 5000 is a "casual" ship since it's expanded universe - but it being good means it sees a lot of play in practice. Overall that's pretty detrimental to the feel of the game as we don't see many ships on the table that make the game recognisably star wars anymore. Now you can get stuff that isn't suitable for normal/tournament play but expands narrative play (e.g. scenarios, epic ships) ... but again, they don't tend to see a lot of play as the tournament style tends to be default, even for "casual". If you just mean "I want more ships" I don't understand what you mean by "casual". In my experience even casual players tend to play a lot of 100 point matches and I don't really see what really obscure EU ships add to narrative play. Indeed I tend to find most narrative play focusing on more familiar film canon ships, events and settings. For me, enacting (say) conflict between Ghost crew and Agent Kallus or trench run or whatever is where narrative gets really fun. Obscure EU ship 14 doesn't engender any real emotion for a narrative at all, IMO.

And I'd argue obscure stuff like uglies really doesn't click with most people. Indeed pretty much just star wars fanatics that argue the point on message boards - but I don't think we make up the majority of x-wing players at all. Unless you're a die-hard expanded universe fan, indeed even if you are, a U-wing is probably more recognisable than the Hound's Tooth or Punishing One let alone the more obscure stuff you're talking about - because it had significant on-screen film. There are a few like the gunboat or defender that are recognisable from old computer games and rebels is a good source for new ships that will have some recognition by gamers. FFG seems to be following the quite sensible approach that film-canon ships are a priority, then anything from the cartoons, then only plumb EU as a last resort. And the EU is really dredging the bottom of the barrel already, we've done most of the recognisable ships from EU already.

53 minutes ago, TylerTT said:

You serve both markets by trying to release tournament worthy ships.

Do you want Blue Squadron Pilot as an X-Wing generic just because?

Do you want the Partisan X-Wing if it does not include a "fix"?

Do you want shuttle Tydirium as another Rebel spy ship if it were just a Lambda with a title like the stolen TIE?

Do you want a TIE ugly that is functionally equivalent to an X-Wing?

Do you want the Mining Guild TIE to give the Scum a copy of the TIE/ln?

Would you want Krennic's shuttle if all it introduced was Krennic?

Would you want any ship that doesn't do something awesome in the tournament scene?

Because all of those ships could be released instantly without worries about the meta, because they would not affect the meta. And narrative players wouldn't have to wait for 2 years of playtesting to decide if they were OK for the game, or coming up with a gimmick so they are "worth releasing."

Seemingly, there is a segment of the market that would be happy with all of the above.

So, sure, both markets are served by all tournament worthy ships. But one market is served better.

40 minutes ago, The Inquisitor said:

If "casual" expansion/cards are overpowered and allowed in tournament play, they're going to be everywhere.

You could argue the jumpmaster 5000 is a "casual" ship since it's expanded universe

Overall that's pretty detrimental to the feel of the game as we don't see many ships on the table that make the game recognisably star wars anymore.

Now you can get stuff that isn't suitable for normal/tournament play but expands narrative play (e.g. scenarios, epic ships)

... but again, they don't tend to see a lot of play as the tournament style tends to be default, even for "casual". In my experience even casual players tend to play a lot of 100 point matches

Indeed I tend to find most narrative play focusing on more familiar film canon ships, events and settings.

Obscure EU ship 14 doesn't engender any real emotion for a narrative at all, IMO.

And I'd argue obscure stuff like uglies really doesn't click with most people.

Not if they are marked with the Epic icon.

No, casual does not mean EU. . .

. . .it does mean trying to get Star Warsiness back on the table again.

Exactly!!

Fine, they can still play 100/6 with the ships, but we are not talking about making sure the release is top tier. And I think a lot of people are moving away from 100/6. . .will it be a growing trend?

Right, we need more narrative play, but we are missing the ships and pilots that allow for it. Hence, the idea of a casual wave. A non-meta wave. A filler wave. A fluff wave. A Star Wars wave.

More than likely not a wave with obscure ships, because STAR WARS!

And yeah, Uglies are probably a stretch. But, for example, I would take a Battle of Scarif expac even if it did not fix the T-65.

Okay I think I totally don't even know what you mean by a "casual" wave at all. Can you define what you mean?

Do you mean things that actually can't be used in normal play (like Epic ships) or things that are legal for "normal" (100/6) play including tournaments but just wouldn't be of much interest to them?

2 minutes ago, The Inquisitor said:

Okay I think I totally don't even know what you mean by a "casual" wave at all. Can you define what you mean?

Do you mean things that actually can't be used in normal play (like Epic ships) or things that are legal for "normal" (100/6) play including tournaments but just wouldn't be of much interest to them?

The latter.

Personally, I think there are a lot of things that seem to be getting "skipped" because they haven't come up with a fix, are waiting for a design gimmick, or would simply duplicate existing design space.

In starting this thread, I wondered if people would want these things now, just because, or if they would feel like "if it doesn't change the meta, I don't want it yet."

I does, in fact, seem like the answer for many is "now would be great!" Of course, the counter-argument is always "well, DIY", but official is going to be preferred.

Not that Gunboat proves anything, but I have a wan hope that FFG looks at what we all talk about, and maybe threads like these with lots of Likes at the top stirs the powers that be. . .

So you want all your toys faster? With less testing?

go play Star Trek attack wing then. They pumped out expansions faster than the market could bare and the game imploded.