Just now, subtrendy2 said:

What, Thweek, Wullffwarro, and Syndicate Thug aren't your favorite Star Wars characters?

LMFAO!!! Exactly! Wow. Can't wait to re-create the movies by flying unknown wookies and no name scum pilots from the outer rim. The best was when 3 contracted scouts from the outer rim dominated the X-wing scene!

15 minutes ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

I see lots of well known fighter pilots in these lists...NOT. LMAO. I honestly can't stop laughing.

Just need to look at this page about the most popular ship. First iconic ship comes in at the 8th position with a Tie/SF Fighter...

http://meta-wing.com/ships?

Just now, Red Castle said:

Just need to look at this page about the most popular ship. First iconic ship comes in at the 8th position with a Tie/SF Fighter...

http://meta-wing.com/ships?

OMG. That's embarrasing. I would even argue the most iconic ship is more like the Tie Advanced which comes in at number 11. Hence a major reason why I got out of X-wing. I want to play a game with star wars toys, not "star wars" toys.

To be fair, we have Ugnaughts and Weequays at the top of our lists. Sure, most fans will recognize them, but I'm not sure they're exactly iconic either.

On the other hand, no X-Wing is listed in the meta list until spot 22. Maybe we should call it Auzituck Gunship miniatures game instead from now on.

Why doesn't IA have something akin to List Juggler for tournament reporting? A resource like that would be invaluable.

Also, and I don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but X-wing doesn’t require you to have a big box expansion to enter a tournament. I haven’t done one in a while but I know initially over half of the people (which is already a limited number due to the high buy in of the game) didn’t have Hoth so they couldn’t play in the tournament. That limits player base and interest for the game quite a bit unless you’re a die hard fan like most of us.

Here are some random thoughts on this topic;

X-Wing will continue to be more successful than IA if we define its success in terms of units sold, number of people at the tournaments, and other objective metrics along those lines. I would argue that X-Wing outgrew its design space some time ago and is now in the downward spiral of convoluted rules additions, flip-flopping errata and an irresponsibly long FAQ. IA by comparison has more flexibility in the design space and has required relatively few clarifications and errata. I'm aware it is about 2 years younger than X-Wing, but beyond the basic framework clarifications, there's not a lot of meat to that FAQ for IA, which is no small mercy.

Also, since game design and its impact on enjoyment is a subjective measure, I would simply compare the financial success of otherwise embarrassing movies like Batman v Superman and Rogue One as examples of something that is both "popular" and "not very good or memorable" from this user's point of view.

There is an Emperor's New Clothes thing going on with X-Wing and people need to get over their sunk-cost logic and get a game that is interested in keeping the central theme (Star Wars things we recognize and love) in the forefront and come play some IA, Rebellion, or Armada. I don't have a lot of experience with Armada currently but superficially to my outsider eyes, it seems to still look like a game about things I saw in some movies 30 years ago, which X-Wing does not. More on that later.

No wait, more on that now.

So out of the gate, X-Wing gave us everything we needed to re-enact the final scenes of Star Wars. TIE's, X-Wings, Y-Wings, Darth Vader. All is well. This carried on until Wave 3 hit, and the downward spiral began. The X-Wing was largely outclassed by the B-Wing in terms of running a uniform squadron and jousting, and the TIE Interceptors where pretty great, but vulnerable to the Falcon's turret. The X-Wing drifting out of use had begun, and already people were upset that the Falcon's turret took something away from the game by not making good moves as crucial (for the Falcon player). This wouldn't be corrected in an interesting way until the Shadow Hunter some many waves away.

Eventually we got into some cool things I also happened to enjoy from 90's video games; the Moldy Crow, the Outrider, TIE Phantoms and Defenders, but the Defender was basically a DOA unit and the Phantom let too many players hit above their weight, so to speak.

I won't continue recapping the whole history of misfires with X-Wing, as this is a comparison topic, but hopefully the developing trend is apparent.

So with IA, let's just forget about campaign for this discussion, as it's a quite robust game in itself for that application, to which X-Wing has no official support, making IA a clearly better gaming experience from a value perspective, as X-Wing only offers one lame deathmatch scenario for "official" play, and a bunch of unlinked scenarios for casual play that I'd imagine most players immediately bin or keep for OCD reasons but never use.

IA as a competitive Skirmish game fell flat out of the gate and took some time to crank out some viable options that lead to interesting matches. We had all the iconic faces we could want from the movies but a lot of it was costed out of whack with other units, leading to some nutty squads being fielded for pure efficiency. Early Skirmish looks basically like X-Wing now in terms of what to take to win; Royal Guards/Sabs in IA, some combination of Fenn Rau/Biggs in X-Wing.

The design intention of Skirmish going forward from Bespin onward, to me, has clearly been about going back to the fundamentals and rolling out packages of cards that fill in all these deficiencies. Command cards make a great way to bring traits up in value, and can be added in virtually any SKU released, and the same for "character fix" skirmish upgrades. We've now got most of the early unique character fixes live, and if this trend continues, we should hopefully see something for the remainder of the early uniques; Boba Fett/Champ/Weiss/Dengar put out in a similar fashion.

Fixing older units isn't too invasive and can easily be done without having to wait for "repaint" opportunities.

On the other side of the coin, it looks like the X-Wing in general as a ship has been more or less on the bench for about 10 waves now, and it doesn't look like they'll be altering that anytime soon. That's right, the namesake ship of the sodding game is something only a naive Rookie Pilot would purchase. If Biggs wasn't in the Core Set there'd be literally nothing worthwhile to get in there.

Also, X-Wing decided it would be neat to make Emperor Palptine, hide him in a $100 ship nobody would use, and then wait a couple of years after all the sales were in and summarily nerf him into uselessness. Thanks, X-Wing!

A short note on player experience as well; I have yet to encounter personally or anecdotally, any instances of cheating in IA, but it's just so easy to come up against in X-Wing. The gamestate in IA is very difficult to disturb. Make sure your opponent is exhausting units and you can't really go wrong. The grid makes it very easy to call whether something can or can't shoot, whether it can or cannot be in range for an attack, etc.

Also the tournaments themselves are a joy to play in, as it's not just the same stale 1v1 deathmatch scenario all day. 6 different scenarios on 3 different maps is a ton of variety. Yes, the tiles are annoying. Yes it's an added cost to buy "official" mats for convenience at high-level tournaments. Having said that, the gain is worth the cost for me. I've had a much easier tournament experience playing IA than I ever did with X-Wing.

The only real barrier with Skirmish is that it's a complicated start-up, by comparison to X-Wing. You need a Core Set and a Jabba box, for instance, just to have the foundation for a relatively easy to figure out Skirmish list, and the appropriate tiles. Technically the appropriate figure packs for map sheets as well.

While it's a "problem" to start up this way, it's a non-issue if you're collecting as you go. For an early adopter like myself I don't give it much thought.

I'm going to cut this wall of text off right here. I could probably go on about this for a few thousand words more, but real life must intrude for the time being.

Official Mats 4 Life!!!!

The Struggle (of finding them for purchase) is Real!!!

My first buy was actually Armada because of the big space battle at the end of RotJ. To me, THIS is the epic recognizable fight from Star Wars (Although Battle of Hoth is not far behind). When I was a kid, I used to recreate that battle with anything I could find at home : pennies/screws for fighters, TV remotes for cruisers. So when I decided to pick up a Star Wars game, to me Armada was a no brainer. I could have almost if not everything to recreate that epic space battle!

I bought the core, plus several expansions but the game being a 1 vs 1 competitive game without much narrative (the correlian conflict expansion was not out at that time) I slowly lost interest in it. Playing a fixed 5 or 6 rounds of space fights, counts the number of victory points to declare a winner, setup new fleets, repeat, pulled me away from the game up to the point that I sold it (first time I ever sold Star Wars related stuff!) X-Wing being too similar to Armada ("tournament" type of game) I jumped into Imperial Assault with its campaign mode and I do not regret the move!

5 hours ago, Red Castle said:

I second you!

Even though actionwise the space combats are probably my favorite part of Star Wars, there is nothing more iconic than Vader leading a bunch of Stormtroopers.

Just a side note. From what I recall, there is actually only one "Vader leading Stormtroopers" scene where we actually do see him fighting next to his troops (Only counting movies) : The Jedi temple attack from Revenge of the Sith. Otherwise, we do see Vader leading Stormtroopers in the Tantive IV or Snowtroopers on Hoth but we never see him fight alongside with his (presumably) 501st legion. And in Rogue One, it's the reverse, Vader most certainly is leading Stormtroopers (the same one from the start of ANH) but we don't see them (and that'a a good thing for that precise scene in my opinion!)

Ok back on topic

As a miniature player, I first got into X-wing with it's release, and it was a ton of fun. Then when IA dropped, I got the core set for that. Like many have stated though, it was a tough game to get people to play here in my local area, because it lacks the pre-painted mini's. I cut my teeth on such games as Fire and Fury, Flames of War and of course Warhammer 40,000. So painting models was no big deal for me, plus I find the campaign for IA to be super fun and never turn out the same each time it's played. However, I have fallen out of love with X-wing due to it's ever growing out of control power-creep meta that dominates the game it seems. X-wing fits in with those that like to play several games, where IA is for those that can only squeeze one campaign mission per group session. I was never a huge fan of the skirmish part of IA, and it would seem that Legion is going to take that from IA all together IMO. In the end I feel they are all Star Wars, so it doesn't really matter which FFG Star Wars game we play, we all win!

1 hour ago, cleardave said:

On the other side of the coin, it looks like the X-Wing in general as a ship has been more or less on the bench for about 10 waves now, and it doesn't look like they'll be altering that anytime soon. That's right, the namesake ship of the sodding game is something only a naive Rookie Pilot would purchase. If Biggs wasn't in the Core Set there'd be literally nothing worthwhile to get in there.

The last errata killed Biggs. Now you can only use his ability once per game! LOL. So you will never see a T-65 on the table.

17 minutes ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

The last errata killed Biggs. Now you can only use his ability once per game! LOL. So you will never see a T-65 on the table.

So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that the X-Wing Core Set is an overpriced version of the Runewars "starter kits" that provide you with the templates/damage deck/dice needed to technically play the game, and from there you'll have to go find the actual ships (not pictured on the box) that are of any real use in a tournament?

30 minutes ago, cleardave said:

So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that the X-Wing Core Set is an overpriced version of the Runewars "starter kits" that provide you with the templates/damage deck/dice needed to technically play the game, and from there you'll have to go find the actual ships (not pictured on the box) that are of any real use in a tournament?

Bahahahaha! Yes. So, you're 100% correct. There is not one pilot or upgrade card that is practically usable in that "core set".

There is some utility for R2D2 which comes in the core set but, with Biggs actually dead, that's about it

9 minutes ago, Suhawk75 said:

There is some utility for R2D2 which comes in the core set but, with Biggs actually dead, that's about it

And Poe is still heavy in the meta and he needs R2 so he constantly regen shields and never dies.

A few other things that may explain the difference in popularity:

1. The potential audience for this mode is a lot smaller.
IA campaign mode basically is a 5 player game. It's much harder to get 5 people together for prolonged periods than 2.

2. Replayability of the campains is a problem.
You can only play the same campaign again once all the players have forgotten the mission mechanics. So interest quickly dwindles after playing the campaigns. Most campaign players won't stick around on forums. This isn't D&D with an infinite amount of campaigns.

3. Competition.
Skirmish suffers from competition of 40k, Infinity, warmachine and such. Big space flight skirmish games .. there aren't (weren't) a lot of those around.

4. Skirmish really looks to have been an afterthought.
Because the franchise isn't catered very well for it. Example; you want to have 5 nexu beasts in your list. So ... you need to buy 3 core boxes?
Play mats for $30 a piece? And there's like .. 40 of them?

10 minutes ago, Findariel said:

2. Replayability of the campains is a problem.
You can only play the same campaign again once all the players have forgotten the mission mechanics. So interest quickly dwindles after playing the campaigns. Most campaign players won't stick around on forums. This isn't D&D with an infinite amount of campaigns.

I don't think this matters too much when you have an ever-expanding hero pool to work with, and an ever-expanding deck of side missions. The basic campaign structure could remain the same, but half the missions will be different based on those choices.

As well, the Imperial player has their own options for classes, and going back to the Core campaign with Jet Troopers and some of the newer agendas/classes would certainly be a different experience, no?

With that in mind, let's be generous and say each long campaign takes about 60-90 minutes to play each mission. That's a good 10-15 hours of gaming right there, and there are currently 4 of those, as well as two short ones. When it comes to replayability, I'd say that if you've been playing each campaign all the way through as they've been released, take a victory lap at this point and see what new combinations you can produce.

If you've done THAT, than I'd say you've gotten your money's worth out of it in terms of dollars to time spent playing. But if that was everyone's experience, that wouldn't explain the popularity not being as high as everyone would like, if in fact it isn't. The truth is that there is a very crowded market for dungeon crawlers out there. I have 4 of them on my shelf currently for instance; Imperial Assault, Shadows of Brimstone, Gloomhaven, and Sword & Sorcery. 5 if you count Zombicide Black Plague.

Kickstarter has new ones being posted there all the time. There are many more out there to be had. So in the 2017 going on 2018 landscape of dungeon crawl games, it's very hard to stand out in the crowd, hence the Star Wars license.

Quote

4. Skirmish really looks to have been an afterthought.
Because the franchise isn't catered very well for it. Example; you want to have 5 nexu beasts in your list. So ... you need to buy 3 core boxes?
Play mats for $30 a piece? And there's like .. 40 of them?

It was certainly tacked on as a way to support a proper Organized Play program, which itself is used to promote sales of the game, beyond just giving us fancy tokens for coming out and playing.

Because of the dual nature of the product, it will always have that issue when it comes to doubling down on certain units for skirmish lists. At this point though, you can always venture out in to eBay and pick up the odd duplicate unit you want. Just do some mental math on the subject first though. If you want those extra Nexu, figure on the list price plus shipping, then take a look at the Core Set overall and ask yourself if there's anything else in there you might want extras of. If there is, it's probably better to just buy a second one, in terms of overall dollars being spent. Sure, you're binning most of what's in the box, but it comes down to efficient spending. It's like the Jabba box; if you want the extra Weeqs/Jets, you're probably better off just buying two boxes, because now you'll also have the extra pigs and a rancor.

None of this is ideal, but the way its being sold now means that individual packs on top of boxes and what's already out there will drown your local stockist in SKU's and make things even more confusing for new players.

1 hour ago, cleardave said:

I don't think this matters too much when you have an ever-expanding hero pool to work with, and an ever-expanding deck of side missions. The basic campaign structure could remain the same, but half the missions will be different based on those choices. As well, the Imperial player has their own options for classes, and going back to the Core campaign with Jet Troopers and some of the newer agendas/classes would certainly be a different experience, no?

With that in mind, let's be generous and say each long campaign takes about 60-90 minutes to play each mission. That's a good 10-15 hours of gaming right there, and there are currently 4 of those, as well as two short ones. When it comes to replayability, I'd say that if you've been playing each campaign all the way through as they've been released, take a victory lap at this point and see what new combinations you can produce. If you've done THAT, than I'd say you've gotten your money's worth out of it in terms of dollars to time spent playing. But if that was everyone's experience, that wouldn't explain the popularity not being as high as everyone would like, if in fact it isn't.

I definitely agree the game is offering enough value. It's for a reason it's currently on #22 on the list of best games of all time on BGG (X-wing being on #54). And of course I agree there is replay value to be gotten from different side missions, Class Decks, heroes and Open groups. Yet many players will be less interested if they are on the same map again and already know what's hiding behind a door or when villain X will spawn and where or what happens when they activate the green terminal. The game loses part of its freshness once you have done those campaign maps more than once.

To counter this, FFG could as well design a few more campaigns using existing tiles and stuff, so just books.
Book 1: you need Core box, Gambit and Jabba units and tiles.
Book 2: you need Core box and Hoth.
Book 3: you need Core box and Twin Shadows and Empire.
New books would be a great and cheap way to increase the replay value of existing content without the need to design and playtest a lot of new stuff.
Although a new deck or single unit and a few cards to come with it would be nice, like Ewok troops with book 4: Endor.

What competition with the Campaign mode of IA is concerned, I think the Star Wars theme will distinguish it from many dungeon crawlers around.
Not every Star Wars fan will like fantasy as well. Or standees like Gloomhaven has.

Also maybe the active forum members of IA are mostly the ones who own the game components. For campaign mode, out of 5 players, only one player (most likely the imperial player) needs to buy the game and expansions to run a full 5-player campaign. So out of those 4 rebel players who gather on game night to play IA but otherwise don't have the game component to study it, I suspect few of them are actually posting on these forums.

*facepalm* You guys being foolishly contrary doesn't change the fact that people far more easily identify X-Wing as Star Wars than Imperial Assault and sales show it. The fact that you can name X-Wing pilots other than the movie protagonists shows the space battles played a bigger role than random IA hero you play that wasn't even in the movies did.

44 minutes ago, Union said:

*facepalm* You guys being foolishly contrary doesn't change the fact that people far more easily identify X-Wing as Star Wars than Imperial Assault and sales show it. The fact that you can name X-Wing pilots other than the movie protagonists shows the space battles played a bigger role than random IA hero you play that wasn't even in the movies did.

Man.... what's the name of the guy with the red light stick on the Imperial Assault box?... and where did I saw those soldiers in white armor again?... I wonder if the words 'Star Wars' over the Imperial Assault name is a clue....

....

But of course, the X-Wing is far more recognizable than Darth Vader himself. I know a lot of people that know what a X-Wing is but not Vader or a just a lightsaber... *sarcasm off*

47 minutes ago, Union said:

*facepalm* You guys being foolishly contrary doesn't change the fact that people far more easily identify X-Wing as Star Wars than Imperial Assault and sales show it. The fact that you can name X-Wing pilots other than the movie protagonists shows the space battles played a bigger role than random IA hero you play that wasn't even in the movies did.

Stormtroopers are more epic/recognizable to a casual fan than the x-wing.

6 minutes ago, Fightwookies said:

Stormtroopers are more epic/recognizable to a casual fan than the x-wing.

Exactly. Ever heard of or seen the 501st in action, Union?

4 minutes ago, Fourtytwo said:

Exactly. Ever heard of or seen the 501st in action, Union?

Wasn't it an Airborne division during WW2?

Should it now be called "anything but X-Wing"?

Since we're talking nonsense in this thread, I'll continue. X-wing has the luxury of being ripped off the external Wings of War system while Imperial Assault is typical FFG rules vivisection from other games. Gamers are naturally bad at the jigsaw puzzle skills required to assemble IA maps and also tend to shun the rigid squares of movement in favor of the Calvinball-esque free form movement X-wing provides. The templates are merely guidelines for movement. You can place your ships pretty much wherever you want so long as it's your ship's activation. IA is far too restricting with its lack of unit upgrade options, but it does have a certain appeal to players who can't stand the almost puritanical use of binary dice found in X-wing.

However, and I do not ask forgiveness for the capital letters, YOU CAN'T EVEN BUY IMPERIAL ASSAULT ON THE FFG WEBSITE!!!!!

1 hour ago, Union said:

*facepalm* You guys being foolishly contrary doesn't change the fact that people far more easily identify X-Wing as Star Wars than Imperial Assault and sales show it. The fact that you can name X-Wing pilots other than the movie protagonists shows the space battles played a bigger role than random IA hero you play that wasn't even in the movies did.

Wait. Are you saying because we know X-wing pilot names other than Luke or Wedge, this must be a better game? I played this game for years. I still own most of it. Those ships on the box are dead. The only uses they have are the following:

T-65 X-wing. Players can complain about how it's not playable while waiting for a fix from FFG at the same time they're demanding a 2.0 version of the game to....make them playable!

Tie Fighter. The designers will admit that this ship is the benchmark for ships in the game. Every other ship the design is supposed to be costed around the fact that a Academy Tie Fighter is 12 points.

So to your point about knowing pilot's names, it's because we've played the game. Further to that point, from what I recall they all died in the first movie (except for Wedge). I'm not sure what "battles" you're re-creating, but lesser known T-65's never fought against 3 contracted scouts EVER.

Finally. X-wing is still making FFG some sweet profit. The ships have almost doubled in price in less than 3 years! So, until the sheep, who don't realize that they're not playing Star Wars anymore, are brave enough to tell the Emperor that he's not wearing any clothes, the game will keep pumping out garbage.