Skirmish is awsome! But the products required to play are annoying to buy if that's all you want to do. None of my friends who play the campaign with me have a viable way to attend skirmish events.

What new theoretical product could allow a player to skirmish without buying core sets or the current boxed sets.

Here are some goals.

new product should not replicate old product in exactly the same format.

Players who own everything should WANT this thing but not NEED this new product.

this thing should be cheap as players will need to also buy figures and dice.

Can you think of other important things to consider?

i will write my idea in the next post.

I propose an annual imperial assault magazine that also functions as a skirmish starter.

inside would be three fold out paper maps of that years skirmish maps (with additional campaign missions for those maps)

There would be a page or two of punch out card stock tokens and a pack of cards.

Cards would be skirmish scenario cards, campaign mission cards and a set of low cost command cards.

The magazine it's self would have some strategy articles a hobby paint guide and that year's errata. It would also have a skirmish scenario spread that has teams of deployment cards that when combined with the maps, tokens and cards from the magazine would let players play a whole game using just the magazine and a set of dice.

10-20 dollars an issue would mean players can get a taste cheaply and Upgrade their components by buying the standard products.

The magazine's hoby and strategy articals function as an advertisement for new products.

The first suggestion is already stellar. I'd absolutely pay for an official Star Wars FFG competitively focused magazine, but I'd want it to rotate coverage of Imperial Assault, X-Wing, and Armada. There's literally no way I would pass up on it if it included reprinted errata cards. Filling the IA issue with a few fold-out skirmish maps, cards, etc is a great vessel is such a great idea.

My suggestion was just going to be faction-specific starter boxes for ~$25 that contain an incomplete squad with a few of the respective faction's miniatures in an alternative pose, tokens, some relevant cards from the core and box sets with alternative art, and a double-sided and folded poster with a skirmish map on both sides.

If you don't have the core, this would get you the required cards and tokens, and starts you off with a couple units (probably characters from the core in new poses). If you already have everything, this would be enticing for the alternative sculpts and card art. Everyone can enjoy the maps. Of course, I'd want it to include copies of errata

Faction starters are cool! Lots of games have them.

For the magazine My thought is there would be a different magazine for each Star Wars miniatures game. each magazine would have one issue a year (annually) but as a whole there would be one each quarter. So x-Wing in spring, imperial assault in summer, armada in fall, and legion in winter.

Starter Pack that has 6 stormtrooper figs, 3 rebel trooper figs, Darth Vader, Farmboy Luke, Jyn, Mak, and Gideon. That's 24 points even on both sides. Throw in printed skirmish maps, although obviously it won't be possible to have current tournament maps, so throw in an ad for FFG's neoprene monsrosities. Throw in 2x premade command decks that include staples from the core. 1 of each color die. $50. Boom.

56 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Starter Pack that has 6 stormtrooper figs, 3 rebel trooper figs, Darth Vader, Farmboy Luke, Jyn, Mak, and Gideon. That's 24 points even on both sides. Throw in printed skirmish maps, although obviously it won't be possible to have current tournament maps, so throw in an ad for FFG's neoprene monsrosities. Throw in 2x premade command decks that include staples from the core. 1 of each color die. $50. Boom.

So then they decide they like skirmish and want to buy in, they think it would be fun to run a list that includes an imperial officer or probe droid and... they buy the core set and get useless second copies of everything?

1 hour ago, ManateeX said:

So then they decide they like skirmish and want to buy in, they think it would be fun to run a list that includes an imperial officer or probe droid and... they buy the core set and get useless second copies of everything?

Ironically, people are already forced to do that if they want to run multiple units of the core set exclusive cards like T Hunters and elite probe droids. I forgot to mention in my original post, release all core set figures as stand alone expacs. The core set is a huge $100 paywall of corporate bundling that stops so many players from getting into the game and makes it way too expensive for people who want to run things like 2 elite probe droids or 3+ officers or 2 trandoshans or 2 Royal Guards, etc. People shouldn't have to buy an expensive campaign core set to play skirmish and shouldn't have to buy multiple core sets to have enough deployment cards.

the goal of this is not to obsolete the core set. It's to get people invested before they make the jump to buying the core set . I doubt FFG wants to make something so closely parioding the core.

Imperial officers are core to building An imperial army though.

It makes me wonder if imperial officers would benifit from a seperate blister pack. New pose, new art, updated cards and unit attachments to make all the other imperial generals more playable.

I think the big box expansions are already more or less designed to function as "faction starters"

heart of the empire is great for starting an imperial army, jaba's realm is chock a block full of scum, even the heros are scum in skirmish.

I think a map, token, and command card pack is the best way to go. New players and old players would want it for new command cards and easy set up maps.

Competitive 40 Points Starter Packs for all 3 factions including a Command Deck.

I think the problem with the stand-alone blister packs is that they would either be very niche, very annoying, or both.

The niche statement is pretty self-explanatory - I just don't see that many people wanting to buy them. When they tried it with the stormtroopers they had two things going for them: 1)they picked a unit that was (at the time) at the top of the competitive meta, and also 2)there just weren't that many other options back then. After the 4x4 nerf basically every competitive imperial list started with 2 eStormies, so this blister pack was about as useful as you could get for a repeat. And even with all that (although I obviously don't have any sales figures) they still don't seem to have sold well enough to warrant releasing any more of them. How many people do you think would really want to buy an extra pack of trandoshan hunters?

So I guess the other option would be to selectively do packs that should be more popular (e.g. weequays, officers) but what goes in the packs? Usually they provide value with a campaign mission, skirmish mission, new command cards, etc., but that's where it gets annoying. I may never want to run a 4-officer list, but what if they put a really great command card in that pack that I need for my other list? What happens when they (inevitably) choose that pack's skirmish map as the next in the rotation? People already find this annoying when they have to buy Jabba or Blaise or whatever just for the cards they want, but at least in these cases they're getting a new character to play with. Needing to re-buy something I already own just for a single card or map seems way worse to me.

I guess what I'm saying is that while I can certainly see the appeal of the standalone packs (my toddler stole one of my half-painted weequays and it's been missing for a month ) I just don't see it as very likely that there's a good business case for it.

I think @TylerTT was more on the right track with his initial post. I'm not sure that the magazine specifically is something I'd buy as someone who's already all-in, but it's an attempt to release a product that would appeal to both the new players and the existing ones.

Can I ask what the 4x4 Nerf was? (From a new player who's played Skirmish only once)

25 minutes ago, Suhawk75 said:

Can I ask what the 4x4 Nerf was? (From a new player who's played Skirmish only once)

When the game first started there was a '4x4' list which was 4 sets of regular royal guards and 4 officers. This ended up being a problem for two reasons. For one, it was just way too strong with all the guards clumped together and giving each other +1 block on every attack. For another, you couldn't even play it unless you wanted to dump a bunch of money on it since you had to buy 4 copies of the core set in order to get enough royal guard cards.

They nerfed the Royal Guards pretty hard, bringing their +2 damage surge down to a +1 damage surge and also making it so their protector ability didn't work on other Guardian figures. They also nerfed the officers at the same time, making it so their ability granted 2 movement points and not an entire move.

Edit: I should mention (since it sounds like you're mainly a campaign player like me) that the officer errata only applies to skirmish.