Thinking about getting into one of these games. At the moment, there is no IA community where I'm at so that's not a factor. I currently pretty much only play and love X-wing. Curious to see what the people who play other mini games are thinking about the pros and cons of each one.

thanks!

Do you like a self contained adventure game with heroes that grow over time in a story campaign or a fast paced battle with squads of troopers and vehicles fighting over objectives?

31 minutes ago, devin.pike.1989 said:

Do you like a self contained adventure game with heroes that grow over time in a story campaign or a fast paced battle with squads of troopers and vehicles fighting over objectives?

I would probably lean more toward the second but like both types.

if you got into legion would you get both factions or just 1?

Even with both, if budget is a factor legion is also shaping up to be the cheaper entry (depending on how complete you want your ia experience ofc)

After all the IA vs Legion arguments this is probably a bad time

As long as it's being approached in a way that doesn't disparage either game and isn't just a complaint that one game doesn't use the pieces from another game...

IA can be a self contained campaign style board game. With the app, it's easy to play solitaire. I've been doing the app campaign for a couple of weeks. Just a mission or two a week. For live play, its better to have a couple of other players since one person has to play the Empire side.

You also have the skirmish version of the game that is fun. It's still effectively a board game though.

Legion is going to be more in line with Warmachine or Warhammer 40K. A true table top miniature game. It can be pretty good if you are wanting to get into something that is just starting up. Also, if there isn't an IA community, you may wind up spending money on a game that just sits around.

There are aspects of both games that I like a lot. I think I'll go with IA for now and maybe jump into legion when the game hits shelves in a couple months.

If there is no community for either I say go with the one that has a single player option.

If you want an adventure game to play with friends, I'd say go IA. There's already a lot of content out there that you can grab right away and dig into. Moreover it doesn't require extra hobby work on your part to look good.

Assuming Legion here is like 40K, before you play you'll need to take the effort to assemble and/or paint your miniatures, then gather terrain pieces. Between the two of them Legion is more like X-Wing as the point is just to clash units in a straight-up fight than accomplish objectives or soft role-play.

It's a far easier decision to make when you're not already invested in one of them. I'd have liked Legion a lot better if it came first.

2 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

Between the two of them Legion is more like X-Wing as the point is just to clash units in a straight-up fight than accomplish objectives or soft role-play.

The Legion part is entirely inaccurate. The demos have been death-match style, but the actual game play will be objective based.

So it's more like Armada then?

I mean, even Armada objectives are entirely different from the pamphlet-and-task assembly you get in Imperial Assault. It's not quite night and day, but what you're trying to do is different (Destroy stuff vs complete specific tasks).

Well the models in Legion will be better quality, if you are a painter. Other than that, you are talking about completely different games/hobbies. If you really don't have anyone to play IA with, you do have the app, but you are better off finding a game you can play with people. With that said, Legion isn't out yet so you have no idea if there will be a community for this game in your area. Let the game be out for a good 3 months before you figure out if anyone is actually playing it. When this game hits the shelves a lot of people will buy into it although they may never actually play it. So give it a few months and see where things stand. Even then, you need to decide if you are interested in painting and terrain building. Miniature games are more hobby than game.

You might just want to take up Armada or Destiny if you are looking for another game and aren't into painting. A lot of people here will try to tell you all that hobby stuff doesn't matter and Legion will stand on its own as a game. The reality is most IA players will tell you the reason X-wing players turn their noses up at AI is because the models aren't painted. IA is otherwise a very fine game. Legion goes down the path one step further with unpainted play areas. AI at least has pretty maps. Something to really think about. With that said, painting isn't as hard as it looks (it does look impossibly hard but it is not) and may be something you enjoy. What you do need to do is be realistic about what it is you are buying. FFG has prettied up Legion a lot, with all the painted minis and built terrain. The game can look like if you make it look like that but what you buy is a box with a pile of gray plastic. FFG is far more honest when advertising IA showing the models in their unpainted state.

3 hours ago, Norsehound said:

So it's more like Armada then?

I mean, even Armada objectives are entirely different from the pamphlet-and-task assembly you get in Imperial Assault. It's not quite night and day, but what you're trying to do is different (Destroy stuff vs complete specific tasks).

More like Armada, but it looks like even more objective based.

But still quite different from IA, you are right.

The skirmish mode in IA is better all around than Legion, you also get the campaign play and can now use an app for single player play with IA. Legion expansions are also a bit gross, the AT-ST is twice the price of the IA General Weiss which is already pretty pricey.

If you like X-Wing and you want to skip the board tiles of IA then pick up Runewars. It's fantasy X-Wing with some rules streamlining and additions that make it a better game.

8 minutes ago, Union said:

The skirmish mode in IA is better all around than Legion, you also get the campaign play and can now use an app for single player play with IA. Legion expansions are also a bit gross, the AT-ST is twice the price of the IA General Weiss which is already pretty pricey.

In what ways is it bigger? How well does IA skirmish play with 30-40 models per side? Clearly you have extensive experience of the unreleased Legion, so i'm excited to hear your insights, especially on how much better Snowspeeders and other, almost certain to come out, vehicles play in IA.

And the Legion AT-ST is also a lot bigger than Weiss.

28 minutes ago, Extropia said:

In what ways is it bigger? How well does IA skirmish play with 30-40 models per side? Clearly you have extensive experience of the unreleased Legion, so i'm excited to hear your insights, especially on how much better Snowspeeders and other, almost certain to come out, vehicles play in IA.

And the Legion AT-ST is also a lot bigger than Weiss.

I assume you meant better. It is faster and decisions matter more both of which are qualities that make a game better, more so than prettier models, paying twice as much and having a third the features, although selling inferior product as a veblen good works well for Apple. IA skirmish plays very well with 30-40 models both on and off board. I do have experience with Legion, clearly you aren't familiar with things like Gencon or Youtube. Vehicle rules are better in IA.

The Legion AT-ST is a bit bigger than Weiss, not a lot. You're looking at $0.001 more plastic and $0.10 more packaging.

If you say so man. I don't think we're going to reach an agreement here, so you keep playing IA and enjoy

These scamps! I don't know how they keep getting out! Shoo! Off with you back to the imperial assault forum!

I think some people are worried about Legion reducing future supplies TT for IA. Which it might to be honest.

9 hours ago, Union said:

I assume you meant better. It is faster and decisions matter more both of which are qualities that make a game better, more so than prettier models, paying twice as much and having a third the features, although selling inferior product as a veblen good works well for Apple. IA skirmish plays very well with 30-40 models both on and off board. I do have experience with Legion, clearly you aren't familiar with things like Gencon or Youtube. Vehicle rules are better in IA.

The Legion AT-ST is a bit bigger than Weiss, not a lot. You're looking at $0.001 more plastic and $0.10 more packaging.

Careful now, this is the Legion board. No one here wants you speaking truth. Legion is the better hobby though and for those that like the hobby aspect, Legion will scratch that itch.

2 hours ago, Mep said:

Careful now, this is the Legion board. No one here wants you speaking truth. Legion is the better hobby though and for those that like the hobby aspect, Legion will scratch that itch.

Well I think the main thing is people here have invested a lot of time and money in terrain building and preorders and the pointless negativity is getting really old. We have had so much beef between ia and swl communities (mainly from the ia people wanting to complain about compatibility or say their game is better) and honestly nobody is saying anything new or important.

I'm sort of in the same boat at the moment. I love playing Armada with my daughter and recently picked up Descent, which we are enjoying as well. When I started buying into Armada, I seriously considered getting IA, but all the extra hero/villain packs seemed like a greedy marketing strategy.* When Legion was announced, it rekindled my interest in miniatures, as I used to play the original WH40K (and BattleTech) back in the late 80s. My concern with Legion is that it might not provide enough of a story or narrative, which I enjoy when sitting down to play a game; couple that with the fact that IA now has an app to allow solo/co-op and I'm having a tough time deciding which way to go.

If I get Legion, I'm definitely going to have to paint the miniatures, which would probably be a really fun thing to do with my daughter. The terrain aspect is, admittedly, a bit limiting as I like variety and I'm not sure I have the storage room for a set of desert, arctic, and forest boards + buildings and terrain pieces (trees, etc). Also with Legion, the way squads work seems a bit strange too: everything from LOS to cover seems to be based on the squad leader's position and the rest of the squad figures just appear to be damage counters (ala Massive Darkness mobs). On the other hand, it can be argued that IA is really just a SW-themed version of Descent with slightly enhanced rules - so will it be different enough from Descent to not feel like I'm buying the same game again?

Decisions, decisions. Honestly, I'm very tempted to just buy both. Ugh...lol

*Ironically, now that I've got Descent, I just had to buy the lieutenant packs as I can't handle mixing models and tokens. So if I get IA, I guess my wallet is screwed haha.

1 hour ago, Digitalfiends said:

Also with Legion, the way squads work seems a bit strange too: everything from LOS to cover seems to be based on the squad leader's position and the rest of the squad figures just appear to be damage counters (ala Massive Darkness mobs).

Not true. LOS and range is measured from each trooper to see if they can shoot the target. And for taking casualties if you cant trace LOS to the trooper he can’t die

6 hours ago, Jabby said:

Not true. LOS and range is measured from each trooper to see if they can shoot the target. And for taking casualties if you cant trace LOS to the trooper he can’t die

Really? That's good news then because I watched two demo videos and both said LOS was determined by the target squad leader's position. The person demoing the game was very clear about this. It seemed weird to me too and it sounds like the person running the demo was probably wrong.