Hi good folks

While I'm not sure if I'm a 100% in or out on Legion... It stayed in my head since the first time I saw the Gencon demo video. This could be my first real miniatures game.

So, after a few click on the web I eventually came across Maelstrom's Edge. Another sci-fi miniature game that is more skirmish level. While I don't know much about this game I can see there seems to be some ressemblance... like it's objective based, it uses stats cards... the movement seems to have a similar cohesion system. It seems to have a suppression system.

I don't know much about maelstrom's edge story but I kinda like the theme I'm seing.

My questions now... One of the thing I really liked about legion is... I understood the game very quickly during the short demo! Sure the rules are not out and the demo didn,t cover everything... but I have the feeling I kinda can treat this wargame as a big boardgame where I can convince a friend to play with my models even if he didn't buy into it and we could have a good time pretty quickly.

If someone here have any kind of experience with Maelstrom Edge... does the ME rules seem more complicated than legion?

I'm hoping legion is well ''supported'' by the community with videos, list discussion, List builder, painting guide and maybe even a local store around here could have a legion night I can attend once in a while...with maelstrom edge... that seems pretty much out of the question.

Anyway... just random toughts in my head... for now I'm not getting in 2 expensives mini games... I'll probably wait and see for legion. Any thoughts?

This one is Star Wars. The other one isn't... Problem solved.

Now call me a fanboy... ?

34 minutes ago, JohnnyTrash said:

This one is Star Wars. The other one isn't... Problem solved.

Now call me a fanboy... ?

The force is strong with this one!

This is anecdotal, so take it for what its worth.

In my town are 3 very popular gaming stores, with large playerbases at each. Between them i have seen:

Infinity, Warmahordes, 40K, Age of Sigmar, Bolt Action, Flames of War, Team Yankee, Saga, Swordpoint, Black Powder, Malifaux, X-Wing, Armada, Imperial Assault, Gates of Antares, Full Thrust, Battletech, Blood Bowl, Dreadball, Guidball, Wings of Glory, a ton more historical systems, Freebooters Fate, Ronin, Test of Honour, Lost Stars, Frostgrave, Blood Eagle, a bunch more i can't recall offhand.

A lot of systems is what i'm saying. I mean...a LOT. And thats just tabletop games, not including the cards, boardgames etc.

I have never, ever seen anybody play or show the slightest interest in playing Maelstroms Edge. It may or may not be good, but if my experience is even slightly close to typical, the odds of building or finding much support or players for ME seems extremely faint. Legion will be EVERYWHERE.

My 2p, as i said....purely anecdotal!

Malstroms Edge is being made by the people who run DakaDaka. Whether that's a good or bad thing, I'll leave up to people to decide on their own.

But it does use D6 so that IMO automatically makes it an inferior game, because D6's are simply the second worse die to use. Other then that it looks a lot like most other recent streamlined skirmish games out there. It has alternating activations, cover, suppression, ect...

In short it looks a bit like Bolt Action in space only with fewer models per side. Legion on the other hand is not really a skirmish level game. I'm not sure there's a hard and fast classification for skirmish level.. But to me, skirmish level means 10-15 models per side or less. Legion will have 30+ per side in a full size game, so I don't think of it as a skirmish level game.

As a tangent... If you do consider Legion, Bolt Action or 40k skirmish sized games, then what do we call games like Infinity, Malifaux or Ronin which have 10-15 models per side?

1 hour ago, VanorDM said:

As a tangent... If you do consider Legion, Bolt Action or 40k skirmish sized games, then what do we call games like Infinity, Malifaux or Ronin which have 10-15 models per side?

Brawlers.

Do some YouTube searches and watch the Maelstrom's Edge videos and see if it really is for you.

Personally, it looks too fiddly for my tastes. You're probably more likely to have to build your own community (probably just a friend or two) if you plan on playing it at all.

SW: Legion on the other hand has a built in audience pretty much. The basics of the game that we've been exposed to via the game demos look easy to learn, similar to how X-wing is easy to grasp, but likely have more depth than we know about currently. Having said that, you'll likely find another player for Legion without much effort once it comes out, and that's for a game that isn't even on shelves yet!

I like FFG and I love Star Wars, so the choice for me was never in question.

It's going to be hard not to buy shiny things until SW:L comes out. Can I recommend buying the Alliance ranger pack and maybe some IA stormtroopers and paint them up for practice?
(I am planning on using my rangers in my Rebel units...)

11 hours ago, Hidatom said:

It's going to be hard not to buy shiny things until SW:L comes out. Can I recommend buying the Alliance ranger pack and maybe some IA stormtroopers and paint them up for practice?
(I am planning on using my rangers in my Rebel units...)

That's funny that you said that, its exactly what I've been doing since the announcement. I've been trying a few different techniques that I've found on you tube to paint Storm Troopers from the imperial assault core box. Its been good practice, as storm troopers are not as easy as you would think, actually pretty far from it.

21 hours ago, VanorDM said:

As a tangent... If you do consider Legion, Bolt Action or 40k skirmish sized games, then what do we call games like Infinity, Malifaux or Ronin which have 10-15 models per side?

You don't categorize a game as 'skirmish' by model count, because like you just noticed, there's no way to have a consensus on where to draw the line. Is it 5 models? 10? 15? 20?

The actual definition of a skirmish game is a game in which you resolve the actions of each individual miniature. Infinity or Malifaux are that kind of game. Legion is not, because you only check line of sight and movement from the leader are seldom worried about the placement of individual rank-and-file troopers and pool all their dice for attacks.

40k is kind of a weird hybrid thing. It started off as a 'proper' skirmish game, but over the decades and different editions it go bloated in regards to figure count, but retained primarily skirmish gameplay mechanics - you had several 10-20 man units, but you still had to move and attack with each one individually. That's the major contributing factor as to why 40k is so slow, clunky and unintuitive - it has the model count of a platoon or company sized game, but skirmish game mechanics. They cleaned it up a bit in the new edition, but the crux of the problem still remains unaltered.

The larger problem being that 40k is the most succesful tabletop wargame in history, which makes it a prime target for imitation. Games like Bolt Action, Maelstrom, Warmachine etc. keep copying 40k's fundamental activation and scale mechanics, without realizing how flawed the concept is at its core. This further muddies the waters on what is and isn't a 'skirmish' game and what you call a game that isn't 'skirmish', and even what you call a game that's 'kinda skirmish but not really'.

On 9/13/2017 at 2:49 PM, JohnnyTrash said:

This one is Star Wars. The other one isn't... Problem solved.

Now call me a fanboy... ?

you are a fan boy