I am seeing a lot of discussion about factions but it seems the ideas or more valid as expansions.

I think the main factions could be (should be):

A) Empire: Storm Troopers and support led by various generals and/or, notably Vader.

B) Rebel Alliance: Combination of various species from rebel systems with the core being the troopers currently being released

C) Trade Federation: Droids of all Clone Wars flavors led by the likes of Dooku, Grievous, "Tarantula Guy", or robot. Genoshans?

D) Republic: Clone Troopers and support led by Jedi Knights.

The way I see it, generally, Droids would be the worst and cheapest primary choice, then Storm Troopers, then Clone Troopers. Rebels would be an interesting mix. Their stats across the races need to be quite good to usher the "small rag-tag band of freedom fighters" feel. Of course, Ewoks should be chaff.

Expansions of bounty hunters, assassins, Grey Jedi, Sith Assassins, Mandalorians (Death Watch / different houses etc.), double agents, & general Scum, would be a great way to get more iconic SW characters into a variety of faction lists.

1 hour ago, Deuce11 said:

I am seeing a lot of discussion about factions but it seems the ideas or more valid as expansions.

I think the main factions could be (should be):

A) Empire: Storm Troopers and support led by various generals and/or, notably Vader.

B) Rebel Alliance: Combination of various species from rebel systems with the core being the troopers currently being released

C) Trade Federation: Droids of all Clone Wars flavors led by the likes of Dooku, Grievous, "Tarantula Guy", or robot. Genoshans?

D) Republic: Clone Troopers and support led by Jedi Knights.

The way I see it, generally, Droids would be the worst and cheapest primary choice, then Storm Troopers, then Clone Troopers. Rebels would be an interesting mix. Their stats across the races need to be quite good to usher the "small rag-tag band of freedom fighters" feel. Of course, Ewoks should be chaff.

Expansions of bounty hunters, assassins, Grey Jedi, Sith Assassins, Mandalorians (Death Watch / different houses etc.), double agents, & general Scum, would be a great way to get more iconic SW characters into a variety of faction lists.

I agree with you. Add two more Primary Factions - First Order, and Resistance. And being the huge Star Wars fan that I am, I have to push for "Trade Federation" to be called "Separatists", haha.

But yeah, have those six factions as primary factions, then have a neutral faction that we can call Mercenaries, Scum and Villiany, Bounty Hunters... whatever you want. But have the units work in any of the 6 primary factions, or be able to be bunched together and form their own army.

You mention flavour of each army. My thoughts are, at a very high-level:

Rebels - Jack-of-All Trades, Masters of None

Empire - Heavy Vehicles, Large Tech, Expensive but Powerful Units

Separatists - Like you say, low power but lots of units. Very "swarmy"

Republic - Jedi, Force Powers... kind of "ranged casters". A nimble and quick army.

Resistance - Maybe focused on some really neat "Spec Ops" troops? Struggle with these guys.

First Order - Heavy Infantry. Similar to Empire, but more focused on expensive and powerful infantry than vehicles.

That's my dream, anyway. We shall see as the game grows over time.

If they can keep it balanced, great!

@Copes The rebels and resistance could all be one faction They pretty much are in the movies.

I agree with adding in other eras of star wars, this would be awesome! But on the other hand; if this does not happen, I think that they could have three main factions, Rebels, Imperials, and you guessed it; Scum and villainy. There is just so many cool things that they could do with this faction, you could have bounty hunters, criminals, monsters such as the rancor, jabba's gamorrean guards, and maybe even jabba himself. Imagine having your rancor go up against an AT-ST, or your heavy gamorrean guards get in to hand-to-hand combat with some stormtroopers.

As much as I’d like them, I remain almost entirely certain that we won’t see Clone Wars factions unfortunately. Again though, I do hope I’m wrong!

Republic: Synergistic with the clones working with each other clone squad better than any other core unit might. Probably the best trained infantry units, with Jedi there to keep high moral and able to help protect them, though likely vulnerable to heavy weapons and concentrated fire but otherwise can cut through an army like a hot knife through butter.

Separatist: Swarms, that is what it should be, larger base squads like 5 or 6 as a base B1 squad. They are good when near at full strength for bringing large amounts of white dice to the table but die quick and suck once they have been whittled down.

Rebel: A band of heroes, leaders and larger than life characters leading a commando unit in for a fight. Likely the faction with overall best unique heroes or at least the best overall options. As someone mentioned above, a jack of all trades, with commanders, jedi, smugglers, and anything else you feel you might need.

Empire: Heavy fire power, a reliance on vehicles and and position control.

Resistance: High risk, high reward, they are smaller than the Rebel Alliance so have to make use of what little units they bring, though they in turn have good courage values able to fight to the last man often without retreating.

First Order: 'Blitzkreig' with them racing to get right into your opponent's face like how they charged off of the landing craft in TFA, and their use of Riot Troopers, Flame Troopers, and the executioners.

Scum and Villainy: In it for the profit, and can be used by different factions but come as either single unit bounty hunters, or a thugs who are prone to retreating quickly under fire. A whole in for themselves feel.

The sad thing is if they had all six factions I'd buy into them all, especially clones for the fun paint jobs that could be done on them. Some people might not like the idea of mixing timelines but well, I rather them give me all the tools to tell any kind of story I might want to do, or game I want to play.

I just want Tusken Raiders. Lots and lots of them.

2 hours ago, Dash Two said:

I just want Tusken Raiders. Lots and lots of them.

So long as they are single file, it helps hide their numbers.

6 hours ago, Dash Two said:

I just want Tusken Raiders. Lots and lots of them.

Star wars episode 3.5

The Tuskens Strike Back.

14 hours ago, Orcdruid said:

If they can keep it balanced, great!

@Copes The rebels and resistance could all be one faction They pretty much are in the movies.

I hear ya, but I kind of disagree. We've got 30 years separating, which means different tech, as well as completely new characters. Also opens the door for new versions of Leia, Han, etc. Plus, as someone stated above, Resistance is a significantly smaller force. I'd like to see them focus on Specialized troops which hurt when you lose even one.

I would also like to see factions that are not a part of the main ones. For example the Hutts and black sun from the OT and from the sequel, kanjiklub and Guavian Death Gang.

10 hours ago, Animewarsdude said:

So long as they are single file, it helps hide their numbers.

Well played, sir

6 hours ago, Orcdruid said:

Star wars episode 3.5

The Tuskens Strike Back.

Each person sort of has a random ... or a few ... character(s) from Star Wars they really like. For whatever reason Tusken Raiders and that little Pao fella from Rogue One top my list.

12 minutes ago, Dash Two said:

Each person sort of has a random ... or a few ... character(s) from Star Wars they really like. For whatever reason Tusken Raiders and that little Pao fella from Rogue One top my list.

Pao is was my one of fav characters.

It will be interesting to see how the differences in factions materialize. As of right now I'm not convinced that the subtle differences in troopers will make much of a play style difference at all and the two factions look fairly symmetrical.

46 minutes ago, Jabby said:

Pao is was my one of fav characters.

I need a Pao mini for the game ASAP.

1 hour ago, Dash Two said:

I need a Pao mini for the game ASAP.

It would be interesting if down the line we saw an expansion for minor characters as trooper upgrades or specialist upgrades that would add characters like him or Bistan or the like to a trooper squad.

If this becomes multiple "Empire" and "Rebel" factions, I'm out. Still way too two-dimensional for this scale of a hobby-based game. They need to add more aesthetics to the game if they really want to survive, and in the SW universe that's easy. I'm sure they'll be locked to points in canon (sadly), but the game would look a lot more interesting if it had: a Droid army, a purely alien army and bounty Hunter army over fast empire, slower empire and older empire.

The problem with having more than three factions (Rebel, Imperial, Scum) is that the lore doesn't really support it. In 40K, you can have a ton of distinct factions due to the way the lore is handled. In Star Wars, though, there's really only the Empire and the Rebels. And maybe the Zann Consortium or something. There aren't multiple factions vying for control of territory like there are in some other IPs.

The best they'll really be able to do is to grab factions from various time periods, but they're really all connected. The Republic becomes the Empire becomes the First Order. The Separatists help form the Rebels, which become the Resistance/Sequel Rebels.

Honestly, I'd love to see them bring in Old Republic stuff. But since the buyout, all that stuff has pretty much become non-canon. We've seen them throw out some references to the Mandalorian Wars, Jedi Crusaders, and so on. But, for the most part, the galaxy before the Fall of the Republic is a tabula rasa. Great for RPG campaigns, but not so great for licensed miniatures games if the licensor is as draconian as Disney/LFL is known to be.

And then, you'd have to wonder how they'd deal with the disparity in technology between eras. Would an Old Republic trooper's rifle do as much damage or be as accurate as a more modern E-11? And would the F-11D be even more powerful than the E-11? Point values can help with some of this, but at some point, such a vast gap isn't able to be accounted for.

There's also the disconnect between time periods. But, when you can field Empire vs. Empire, with both teams being commanded by a Darth Vader, there's already a disconnect in there somewhere.

the scum faction could be broken into the Hutts, Black Sun, Droid Gotra, and possibly several other non scummy in affiliated factions out there

So what's wrong with expanding the lore? I'm sure it'd require Disney's blessing, but I pray we aren't forever tired to the old trilogy and only things released around then... I might be unique in that want though. I find it hard to believe that the fluff couldn't be expanded to encompass like a 40K style universe. I mean it's an entire Galaxy of planets, and surely both the Empire and Rebels are forced to deal with other entities besides just each other. Maybe not Luke and Vader, but I'm really hoping everything doesn't HAVE to be tied to an existing named character and event. Otherwise it kills the creation of narratives that are popular in all other miniature games.

Pick any race/faction from Star Wars and it can work.

Jawas, Tusken Raiders, Hutts, Clones, Ewoks, Bespin.....you can pick anything and you can fashion a story of why they are fighting.

I do hope we get more factions. Prequels in particular, the CIS could be a Soviet Swarm-equivalent with cheap, more numerous units, the Republic focusing more on highly professional and effective, but very spendy, troops and Jedi leaders. There could be more minor factions as well, Mandos, Fringers, Tuskens, Naboo, Gungans, Scum & Villany, etc that might also be made available to one or more larger factions on a limited basis (i.e. no more than one unit in an Imperial Army may be Mandolorian).

10 hours ago, Dash Two said:

Each person sort of has a random ... or a few ... character(s) from Star Wars they really like. For whatever reason Tusken Raiders and that little Pao fella from Rogue One top my list.

Pao is an awesome character. I think he; and the other rogue one foot soldiers would work perfectly as commanders.

I can't see there being enough types of Jawas (for example) to make a whole army. I can see a group being Specialists with some type of Ion abilities or perhaps repair. While the OT lore is pretty diverse, it is not deep in too many places. While Star Wars Rebels, the comics, and books all round things out a bit more I can't see FFG releasing too many units that only hardcore fans know. It's just poor marketing, at least for now. I bet is that we will see the Scum faction with enough options that people can making wildly different armies.

I think we will see Clones and Droids long before one of us is fielding a Tusken army...though I would love to do just that.