As I'm sure that this has been a topic on these forums, I am sort of curious to hear the general sense of everyone's perception of what the contrast is between Imperial Assault's Skirmish Mode side by side with the upcoming Star Wars: Legion. From everything that I have gathered thus far, it seems like IA Skirmish is akin to X-Wing as Legion is to Armada: building off of similar concepts and making them more grandiose in scope and scale.

I'm not sure how the two play out, but it would seem to me that Legion is a much longer, strategic affair than say IA Skirmish, where it seems to be about more faster-paced, tactical decision making. Legion looks incredibly cool, and I want it to do well, but I think I'm far too invested in IA to switch over (plus the campaign mode is honestly my biggest draw for IA. Unless if I'm mistaken, I don't think that is something that Legion offers in a compelling way, but I'm just not sure).

Is there anything that I stated that I am unclear on? Anyone planning on going in on Legion?

I suppose Armada is a decent comparison, but I look at Legion as a simpler Warhammer: 40K.

It certainly is that as well! Although I have never played a miniatures game in that traditional 40K mold, so I'm really not sure how to judge it. The models always looked impressive and intricately detailed, but it just seemed so daunting! I suppose that's what I like about IA: the grid-based style and layout of the maps are easy for me to wrap my head around, and allow for greater experimentation in a more confined arena.

I'm sure there will be objectives or missions that vary in Legion as well, but I don't think you'll get to feel to same difference as two IA maps are to eachother. It can radically change the experience (not on the good/bad axis) to play on a different map - and that is one thing I enjoy about IA. You need a balanced force. Even with only three maps in the tournament map-pool, you really need to nudge your squad in terms of these maps.

Also. My life is too short to play with range rulers anymore. The amount of random nudging (and I don't mean cheating, but actual accidents) is not something I ever want to go back to. Grid is the future!

I also like that Skirmish squads are relatively smallish. I mainly play Scum, always did, but I'm planning to paint my other figures in thematic squads. Like a Hoth squad with Probe Droids, Snowtroopers etc. with Ice bases. A Tatooine trooper squad with Dewbacks and regular troopers. You can give the miniatures a little more love!

7 hours ago, aermet69 said:

I'm sure there will be objectives or missions that vary in Legion as well, but I don't think you'll get to feel to same difference as two IA maps are to eachother. It can radically change the experience (not on the good/bad axis) to play on a different map - and that is one thing I enjoy about IA. You need a balanced force. Even with only three maps in the tournament map-pool, you really need to nudge your squad in terms of these maps.

Also. My life is too short to play with range rulers anymore. The amount of random nudging (and I don't mean cheating, but actual accidents) is not something I ever want to go back to. Grid is the future!

I also like that Skirmish squads are relatively smallish. I mainly play Scum, always did, but I'm planning to paint my other figures in thematic squads. Like a Hoth squad with Probe Droids, Snowtroopers etc. with Ice bases. A Tatooine trooper squad with Dewbacks and regular troopers. You can give the miniatures a little more love!

I'm by no means a Skirmish expert, definitely in the category of novice, but I absolutely love the balance that it brings to the table to make matches engaging and exciting! With the limited deployment cost, and variety of skirmish upgrades, it requires you to make creative decisions with set resources (and the objectives on each map play a huge part into that!) Limitations yield intensity, as they say.

Building off what you said, there is certainly is an amount of fiddliness when it comes to games that require range-rulers, that can needlessly draw out the experience, as well as accident proneness! Although I think Armada handles it well, just in terms of it's theme and environment that it's set in. In that game, I certainly have the sensation of being a naval commander commanding large, heavy vessels to war! It's like a galactic "Master and Commander"!

That's an awesome idea with painting your figures! Post some pictures when you're done, I would love to see them! I'm actually a bit jealous; I don't have the talent, time, or patience to paint my figures! Good on you, mate!

I'll be getting a Legion demo on Saturday, I'll post my thoughts after.

11 minutes ago, ThatJakeGuy said:

I'll be getting a Legion demo on Saturday, I'll post my thoughts after.

Looking forward to it!

13 hours ago, aermet69 said:

My life is too short to play with range rulers anymore. The amount of random nudging (and I don't mean cheating, but actual accidents) is not something I ever want to go back to. Grid is the future!

Yes, it is!

I could very plausibly see me doing the following: Waiting until Legion has been out for 6 months or so. Seeing what the reviews of its rules are like. Buying Legion and re-selling all the figures as single units to break even with the sticker price and keep the rules. Then play it with my hundreds of WEG metal Star Wars minis.

I just can't see myself collecting a 4th set of roughly 1" Star Wars figures.

However, compared to IA, I suspect it will be different enough to draw two different groups of gamers. Not including the hard-bitten Star Wars fans who will build at least one army of every single SW game.

Personally, I like the margin of error that comes from rulers, unique homemade terrain, and so on. It keeps people from taking the game too seriously, and from coming up with objectively best unit combinations. Once that happens, you end up feeling obligated to take them, sapping creativity from the hobby and replacing it with dependence on publishers for balance and "fixes".

1 hour ago, TauntaunScout said:

Personally, I like the margin of error that comes from rulers, unique homemade terrain, and so on. It keeps people from taking the game too seriously, and from coming up with objectively best unit combinations. Once that happens, you end up feeling obligated to take them, sapping creativity from the hobby and replacing it with dependence on publishers for balance and "fixes".

Funny, because I find the exact opposite to be true. Guess people are different after all

I understand not liking rulers, they are a hassle. But IA has really boxed itself in with imbalance. Certain units are so good/bad that if you don't/do take them, people think you must have had a head injury on the way to the game. Being able to precisely count out all available movement options is a big part of that. On that note, I do not understand why people don't make up their own maps. Unique encounters on maps you made up just now with your friend would also throw off some of that. There seems to be a phobia about doing anything that wasn't handed down from FFG. You don't tend to see that sort of attitude in games with rulers and homemade scenery.

if anything gets me into Legion, it will be the desire to scratch build 3D Star Wars scenery again and get to use at the local store. Or some really cool tauntaun models. But if Legion doesn't catch on in my store, then, I probably won't bother with it. I've got my hands full with painting projects as it is. I am an amateur historian of Star Wars miniature wargames though so I might have to get it just to see where it falls into the arc. Especially if I see a good deal on a dented box or something.

There are very real pros and cons, no game is going to be perfect. Only a diehard partisan fanboy would be able to deny the existence of the flaws in every game. You just have to find the one that matches your idea of fun. These two games are liable to be completely and intentionally incompatible so comparing them might be an exercise in futility.

I am one of the only gamers I know who refuses to field an unpainted model. The norm at my local store for some reason is to use eyesore proxies. For example, Space Marine drop pods are both overpowered in 40k, and expensive at the cash register: the local power gamers use spray painted Solo cups as drop pods, and everyone (inexplicably) is ok with this. So I doubt the number of models that you "have" to paint will deter/encourage the community as a whole to play Legion over IA or vice versa.

9 hours ago, DerBaer said:

Yes, it is!

Holy carp! My thoughts exactly! I dumped X-wing because of that garbage. I fell in love with my mistress Imperial Assault, because she leaves less margin for cheating (and lets me sit). She's much more civilized.

A more civilized game for a more civilized age

I feel like Legion would have been a game I'd have loved and gone crazy for... ten years ago, when I bought every game I even slightly liked the look of.

As it is, now... I have Imperial Assault. I've always had 40K. Legion is a mishmash of Imperial Assault and 40K. Maybe I'd still find room for it... were it not for the fact I also play Warmahordes, BtGoA, X-Wing, Black Powder, Lion Rampant, Frostgrave, Blood Bowl, and a million other games I don't have time for already. Only the other day I found myself looking at the Legion preview articles and going "oh, COOL, I could buy an AT-ST... just to paint!" then glancing at the two unpainted Imperial Assault AT-STs sitting on my shelf and realising that no, that would be stupid.

So for me Legion is a no. If they'd brought it out ten years ago and/or without Imperial Assault already existing I'd be a yes. I can totally see plenty of people who've looked at 40K and not fancied it deciding that Legion will be their thing instead... I suspect it could be reasonably successful, and would guess that GW are probably not very happy about 40K having a genuine Star Wars contender to deal with (though 40K has its own advantages, not least of which includes the fact there are more than two factions). But for me personally, I'm looking at it now and thinking: what does it offer me that other games - especially IA/40K - don't? And the answer I'm coming up with is: nothing.

(I'd have been more OK with it if I could take my vast IA collection, which includes at least one of everything they've released so far, and just used it in Legion. I'd at least have played it, then. But of course you can't; not just because they've done new sculpts for everything, or even that unit sizes are probably different, but because of the cards. You need to buy basically the same models again - albeit slightly better sculpts in a better material - just to get the cards that let you play the game. Screw that. I've got IA. I love it in both campaign and skirmish. Legion wants me to effectively re-buy all the same stuff just so I can play a bigger, gridless skirmish. No... no, Legion, sorry, but no.)

I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When it comes out we'll see. I personally dislike stat cards and wish it had squad record sheets that you filled out with a pencil like the original SWMB. If they release the stats only as cards that come with boxed model kits it'll be annoying but far from insurmountable. Like I said, I could see myself buying the core game, selling off all the models, and playing it with either WEG armies, or, with just armies built from Hoth add-ons that are released later. I could see doing Tatooine themed armies as well.

20 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

I understand not liking rulers, they are a hassle. But IA has really boxed itself in with imbalance. Certain units are so good/bad that if you don't/do take them, people think you must have had a head injury on the way to the game. Being able to precisely count out all available movement options is a big part of that.

To be fair, I feel 1) all strategy games have times where "the meta" will be imbalanced and limiting (hi, X-Wing and your HUMONGOUS FAQ!) and 2) IA is starting to work its way out of the imbalance corner. After HotE came out, you don't hear as much grumbling about the Mercenary Hunter meta being OP because now there are more equally-powerful options.

We had, what, at most 2 months of OMG JUNK DROID SWARM! Surely we should have been terrorized by that build for 6 more months.

IA Skirmish is currently sharing a box with IA Campaign. For a competitive game, that is IA Skirmish's only real detriment, and it is an advantage that Legion will have over it for new gamers. I don't know if FFG will want to provide IA Skirmish as a stand-alone product. I hope they do! I do wish we had a way to get more IA Skirmish players in playing for about the same price you can get somebody a competitive list in X-Wing, Armada and Legion.

2 hours ago, cnemmick said:

IA Skirmish is currently sharing a box with IA Campaign. For a competitive game, that is IA Skirmish's only real detriment, and it is an advantage that Legion will have over it for new gamers. I don't know if FFG will want to provide IA Skirmish as a stand-alone product. I hope they do! I do wish we had a way to get more IA Skirmish players in playing for about the same price you can get somebody a competitive list in X-Wing, Armada and Legion.

I'm not so sure that that's true (although I'm not sure that it's false, either ). If by "new gamers" you mean people who would be new to IA/Legion but that already play X-Wing, Warhammer, etc. then I think you're right - the extra cost of having the campaign stuff in the box is going to be detrimental for sure.

But there's also another class of new gamers that don't currently play in any sort of competitive/organized setting. These are people who bought IA exclusively for the campaign mode and then discovered that the skirmish was really fun too (in my case after playing only campaign for over a year). IA's hybrid certainly has the potential to bring people out to tournaments that otherwise would probably have never given it a second look if it had been pure skirmish from the start. For me personally, even though X-Wing is maybe cheaper, the competitive scene (or at least my interpretation of it) has always put me off a bit. At the same time, for whatever reason, I now find myself counting down the days to the next IA tournament. I still have no interest in Legion, though, since I don't think I'd like the time commitment and measurement aspects.

So I don't know how much IA's campaign mode hurts vs. helps the skirmish. I can certainly see cases where either one could be true, but it's hard to know which way the balance swings.

28 minutes ago, ManateeX said:

I'm not so sure that that's true (although I'm not sure that it's false, either ). If by "new gamers" you mean people who would be new to IA/Legion but that already play X-Wing, Warhammer, etc. then I think you're right - the extra cost of having the campaign stuff in the box is going to be detrimental for sure.

But there's also another class of new gamers that don't currently play in any sort of competitive/organized setting. These are people who bought IA exclusively for the campaign mode and then discovered that the skirmish was really fun too (in my case after playing only campaign for over a year). IA's hybrid certainly has the potential to bring people out to tournaments that otherwise would probably have never given it a second look if it had been pure skirmish from the start. For me personally, even though X-Wing is maybe cheaper, the competitive scene (or at least my interpretation of it) has always put me off a bit. At the same time, for whatever reason, I now find myself counting down the days to the next IA tournament. I still have no interest in Legion, though, since I don't think I'd like the time commitment and measurement aspects.

So I don't know how much IA's campaign mode hurts vs. helps the skirmish. I can certainly see cases where either one could be true, but it's hard to know which way the balance swings.

That's funny. I was the opposite. I bought it purely for skirmish, as I was already into X-wing at the time. I never minded paying for the campaign portion as I felt like it could be a cool game to get into some day. In saying that, I've never completed a full campaign (except for recently playing the Edge of Oblivion custom campaign which was super cool) , but would still support the game that would include both. Can you imagine you buy into a game that you enjoy, yet comes with another version that you haven't even tapped into? I'm cool with that. To me this is the most valued, best Star Wars themed game out there.

38 minutes ago, ManateeX said:

So I don't know how much IA's campaign mode hurts vs. helps the skirmish. I can certainly see cases where either one could be true, but it's hard to know which way the balance swings.

We started as a campaign group and are now heavily into skirmish, with all of us now owning everything.

3 minutes ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

That's funny. I was the opposite. I bought it purely for skirmish, as I was already into X-wing at the time. I never minded paying for the campaign portion as I felt like it could be a cool game to get into some day. In saying that, I've never completed a full campaign (except for recently playing the Edge of Oblivion custom campaign which was super cool) , but would still support the game that would include both. Can you imagine you buy into a game that you enjoy, yet comes with another version that you haven't even tapped into? I'm cool with that. To me this is the most valued, best Star Wars themed game out there.

Initially I bought the core set for my son and I with the idea we'd run through the campaign together and occasionally play skirmish. But we played skirmish first... and I really liked it! So every other purchase I've made of IA stuff has been solely for skirmish.

This past month, I've finally played a few missions of the campaign. And now I'm like, "wow, this great competitive game also has a fun multiplayer campaign mode!"

6 minutes ago, cnemmick said:

Initially I bought the core set for my son and I with the idea we'd run through the campaign together and occasionally play skirmish. But we played skirmish first... and I really liked it! So every other purchase I've made of IA stuff has been solely for skirmish.

This past month, I've finally played a few missions of the campaign. And now I'm like, "wow, this great competitive game also has a fun multiplayer campaign mode!"

Exactly! I played the fan made campaign (because the group I met recently and now play skirmish with had already done all of the campaigns) and thought, wait, I already own ALL of this game. I can't wait to get a good group to play it with me. I'm sure it will happen some day. For now, I'm happy with skirmish. So I can guarantee that if skirmish ever does die, I will be getting right into campaign if not sooner than that.

I may even try it when the ap comes, which I believe will happen before the end of next year.

8 hours ago, cnemmick said:

To be fair, I feel 1) all strategy games have times where "the meta" will be imbalanced and limiting

That's what I said about all games having flaws.

Quote

We had, what, at most 2 months of OMG JUNK DROID SWARM! Surely we should have been terrorized by that build for 6 more months.

I mean broader issues than that. I am more concerned that so much stuff is considered useless.

Quote

IA Skirmish is currently sharing a box with IA Campaign. For a competitive game, that is IA Skirmish's only real detriment, and it is an advantage that Legion will have over it for new gamers. I don't know if FFG will want to provide IA Skirmish as a stand-alone product. I hope they do! I do wish we had a way to get more IA Skirmish players in playing for about the same price you can get somebody a competitive list in X-Wing, Armada and Legion.

I used to think that, till I reflected on it awhile. IA Skirmish is still cheaper than 40k, tons of people play that. X-Wing is still exponentially more expensive than Frostgrave, there's no big local Frostgrave presence like there is X-Wing. Time, and prioritizing different games within that available time, not money, is what keeps people in or out. Back in the mid 2000's Hasbro got the D20 starter pack all the way down to $10, didn't help recruitment at my store. Only so many people want to do this. Maybe one person or another is kept out by money. But when you start talking about the big picture, if the cost of Skirmish went up or down, it wouldn't change how many people show up to big events to play. Most copies of gaming-games get purchased by people who only get to play them a fraction as often as they'd like.

On ‎14‎.‎11‎.‎2017 at 7:59 PM, NeverBetTheFett said:

Holy carp! My thoughts exactly! I dumped X-wing because of that garbage. I fell in love with my mistress Imperial Assault, because she leaves less margin for cheating (and lets me sit). She's much more civilized.

And, in my experience, the most unnerving Imperial Assault boardamers are far more relaxed than the most laid-back classic tabletop gamers.

IA is a gentleman sport! (And I love it.)

3 hours ago, DerBaer said:

And, in my experience, the most unnerving Imperial Assault boardamers are far more relaxed than the most laid-back classic tabletop gamers.

IA is a gentleman sport! (And I love it.)

Depends on your definitions of "classic tabletop" and "laid-back".

Putting much thought into lists in general I find a very uptight approach to gaming-games. Take your favorite models, see how many points you have left. Then see what tactical role is obviously lacking, and try to take something to balance that out with the points you've got left over. That's it for list building for me, in every game I play. Model painting drives the list, not the other way around. I learned that the hard way, I've had too many game systems or factions yank the rug out from under me over the years.

I also don't consider, for example, Warmachine, to be a classic tabletop game. What with its pre-printed stat cards and what have you.

Actually, at the moment, I'd rate Warmachine as my number one example for a classic tabletop game.