As you could probably guess by the title, there will be a lot of words. You were warned.

So what is accretion? To simplify it down, it's just something getting bigger by adding small pieces over time. Accretion is actually a non-trivial problem for any game that's been around for a while. As more and more stuff gets added you start to run into a number of issues from unexpected combinations of game elements, to power creep and eventually even adding anything new becomes a problem. A simple example of accretion in relation to X-Wing miniatures is the card Deadeye. Deadeye was released in wave 2 and immediately forgot about. It made missiles and torpedoes slightly easier to use, but those were pretty useless at that point and nobody wanted to spend a Elite Pilot Talent to make them less bad. Fast Forward all the way to wave 8 and the release of the JumpMaster5000 and the addition of Guidance Chips and all of a sudden, not only was this throwaway card seeing play, it was seeing play in very common meta build. In fact, this build became so common that Deadeye, the card that was largely unplayable for it's entire lifespan to that point, got nerfed so that JumpMaster5000's couldn't use it. Even right now, with the advent of really good missiles in the form of first Cruise Missiles and then Harpoon Missiles, this card is seeing pretty regular play. This also presents an ongoing problem, that is, FFG have to assume that any Torpedo or Missile capable ship with an Elite Pilot Talent will be carrying Deadeye which dramatically changes how useful the ordnance being carried by that ship is. This one decision, a card in wave 2, is currently impacting how FFG has to design all ordnance and ordnance carriers.

What's amusing is that this isn't uncommon. Elements from the very early life of the game are frequently, over time and releases, either amazingly good or mostly unplayable. For examples, let's look at the very beginning, the original core set. Biggs was a very common meta pilot to build a squadron around right up until he was nerfed and R2D2 still sees regular tournament play...but when was the last time you saw anything else from the original core set? This is typically because, even if designers know what they want the core experience of the game to be, they don't always have the best grasp on what they want it to look like 1, 2, 4 or 5 years down the line, so elements that make perfect sense in the early days are either overshadowed or amplified by newer elements that they were never intended to interact with.

So how does a game solve accretion? Well, there have been a few different approaches.

Set Rotation

Set rotation is the process by which older elements are rotated out in favor of newer ones. This is mostly only viable with card games, so we won't discuss it that much, but set rotation does accomplish basically all of the goals to keep accretion in check. It gives you a chance to regularly revisit the cost/power ratio and pull it back or crank it up as needed. It gives you design space to work with as cards only have to compete with their contemporaries and not every card ever released. It keeps the meta constantly changing as the rotation of cards make new decks viable and continuously force players to rethink common archetypes and their place in the newer sets. It also allows you to let problem cards die by simply waiting until they rotate out and not reprinting them. This is fine for a card game, but for various reasons, I don't think it will ever be viable for a miniatures game. Miniatures tend to be larger and harder to store than cards on the off chance they'll rotate back in and players get more attached to miniatures (and for games like Warhamemr 40,000 or Warmachine there's a lot of time investment in terms of building and painting).

Landfill

The landfill approach is not as bad or desperate as it appears, but, broadly speaking, it's very unhealthy for the game. The landfill approach basically just boils down to constantly adding new elements, but with a strict caveat: it doesn't work without power creep. Power Creep is the change over time of the ratio of cost to power. In a landfill strategy, each release has a slightly better cost/power ratio (or in extreme cases massively better). The goal is to bury the old stuff under the new stuff. If you release anything game breaking, no worries, it will eventually be buried under other elements that are just costed better. You're probably asking why the **** you'd want to do this as it seems bad on every level. Simply put, the landfill approach doesn't require the same resources because you don't have to worry about the finer points of balance or fine tuning all of the elements. As long as you keep the steady climb upwards, the game continues even if the peaks and troughs will get rough at times. The landfill philosophy is also the poor-man's way to creating a vibrant meta even if that meta almost exclusively contains the last few iterations of game elements, it will be in constant motion.

The biggest reason for the landfill approach has been that a game system is failing. Even though this approach is unhealthy for long term viability, that doesn't matter if the game is already dying. The worst result is the game dies a little faster and that's pretty irrelevant. The best result is that the shake up reinvigorates the game and keeps it going. This will create an issue later if you do actually get the resources to do all the balance fine tuning because most of the landfill elements will have to be scrapped, but if you actually get to that point, then you're pretty happy as a game designer. Usually the landfill approach won't be initiated by a design team, it will be the company or, in the case of video games, the publisher and they'll just be trying to get what profit they can out of the property before it goes. As a general rule, if a game starts doing this, it's in pretty dire straights.

The Codex System

It's fair to say that Games Workshop and the Warhammer IP have been around for a while and have had some major problems with accretion. The closest the game really has to a solution is the Codex system. In Warhammer 40,000 all of the armies have a codex. In that codex are all of the rules for that faction (barring supplements, etc.). The codexes are on a constant rotating release schedule and with each new codex, all of the models in the range get new rules and new models usually get added to the range to boot. In theory, this actually solves some of the problems with accretion reasonably well. You get to regularly re-examine and adjust power levels to bring older models back to curve. If there's a problem ability or model you'll get the chance to adjust it as needed. It also keeps you releasing new models on a semi-regular basis to keep the cashflow going even from players who already own most of the faction. To top it off, it also regularly adjusts what's good in the game resulting in near constant meta movement even if that movement isn't particularly fast.

The problems I've seen with the codex system are mostly in how Games Workshop has handled it i.e. Space Marines getting 4 new codexes before Necrons get their second, outright deleting game elements that people have spent time and money modelling or simply making the new hotness better than the old stuff. These aside though, I can't think of a reason as to why a codex system, broadly speaking, couldn't work. What's interesting is not the system, but how gamers react to it. You'll get the pretty common response that they have to buy whole new models, but that's how it should work. You probably owned the above curve game elements because they were above curve and didn't bother investing in the below curve element because they were below curve. If both of these get adjusted properly, yeah, you'll probably have to buy new models.

The Book System

This system is used by Malifaux and, up until Mark 3, was used by Warmachine/Hordes (and that's an interesting story that we'll talk about a little later). The Book system involves releasing expansion books that have some story elements to the game and that also introduce new models. When Privateer Press started using the book system for Warmachine, it was largely a response to the codex system and players being unhappy with having to wait a long time before getting anything new. The book system offered regular releases for all factions and the releases were generally symmetrical in nature...this is actually pretty similar to the X-Wing release model. But this system has a small problem. If all you're doing is releasing books with new content, how do you address old content? The only real way the games have come up with is either by Errata or FAQ or adding new elements that specifically interact with older ones. Quite a few models in Malifaux have been hotfixed by the game adding 0 cost upgrade cards only specific models can take...stop me if this is also ringing any bells.

The only real way the book system can adjust older models is with a new edition as trying to handle it exclusively with FAQs, Erratas or new releases is just a band aid for a wound that will continue to bleed. These transitions through editions are something games want to avoid if possible mostly because the cost both in terms of money and man-hours is pretty substantial and the net benefit, at least financially, is not very high. In fact, the book system, to a large extent, makes accretion worse. There are only so many ways to make a ranged unit or melee unit before you start to get substantial overlap that renders one or more mostly useless and without the ability to easily make major changes to older models over the course of the normal release cycle, those models will continue to be useless or a problem. As an example, the epic incarnation of the Warcaster Asphyxious had to nerfed 3 separate times in Mark 2 Warmachine...and was still a good caster...sound familiar? The book system also has a major problem in that, once an archetype is cemented in the meta, it usually stays there and new elements only serve to augment this. Without a large scale reworking of some of the moving parts, you're going to see the same archetypes no matter what gets released unless something that creates an entirely new archetype drops.

Community Integrated Developement

The Community Integrated Development system, or CID, was started by Privateer Press not too long ago and appears to have replaced the book system altogether. The concept is that the CID runs in cycles where a faction goes into a pseudo open beta where older models get re-examined and new models added for the community to test...if this sounds familiar then you get a cookie. This is basically the codex system by a new name, but using the games electronic app called Warroom to update cards instead of having to release and physical media such as cards or books. The aspect of this system that I feel is hands down the weakest, is the community part. To put it bluntly, my experience with open betas and the average player in general has me in a state of skepticism about how useful the input of most of the players is and some of the results that have come out of CID have only cemented this thought. That reservation aside and much like the codex system, there's no reason why this couldn't work as a countermeasure to accretion. It keeps the game moving, has the potential to change the power level of list archetypes, can adjust or remove problem abilities and still keeps you on a semi-regular release cycle. Since this system is basically just an electronic codex system, it's hard to really talk too much more about it, but Privateer Press has also looked into another route to combat accretion and this has me...less encouraged.

Theme Lists and Formations

So Warhammer 40,000 used what were called Formations in 7th edition (and dropped them entirely in 8th edition). Formations had a specific requirement of things to take (1 of unit Y, 2 of unit Z, etc.) and offered benefits that ranged from "When would I ever use this?" to fairly obscene. There are some obvious applications to this, that is to say, offering you a benefit for using a narratively interesting combination or underutilized element that could overcome some of it's issues...but that's not really what happened. The Optimized Stealth Cadre is a pretty prime example. If you took a Ghostkeel unit and 2 Stealth Suit units you got a benefit that was absolutely obscene. While the Ghostkeels were decent enough in their own right, the Stealth Suits were pretty terrible in every iteration of the Tau Codex including the 7th edition one. While on paper, this encouraged the use of this unit, all it really did was force a tax on taking Ghostkeels of having to drag around 180pts of wet blanket Stealth Suits, so naturally you would only ever field the largest possible Ghostkeel unit and the smallest possible Stealth Suit units. It didn't so much solve problems as create new ones where the underpowered formations were ignored and the overpowered ones showed up everywhere making for a lot of copy-paste lists even if you weren't trying to net list. I'm not surprised the mess of formations were dropped for 8th edition.

Privateer Press took a slightly different approach for what they call theme lists. In Mark 3 of Warmachine and Hordes, Privateer Press has basically gone all-in on the theme list concept to the point where the goal appears to be for every list to be a theme list. Theme lists only allow you to take specific models, but give you some fairly solid benefits (most of them directly equate 15-20% extra effectiveness either through bonus abilities or just getting free models). I can see the theory behind this. Accretion makes it increasingly hard to add new elements because those new elements have to compete with everything ever released for that faction and there's only so many ways to make a ranged unit, melee unit, warjack etc, before you start to see serious overlap. So instead of having them all compete with everything else, they only compete with other models in their chosen theme. If they were to release a new melee Dawnguard unit, that unit wouldn't have to compete with every other melee unit, just the other Dawnguard ones. The problem is that the theme lists have come with unintended consequences. The big consequence that I've seen is meta full of inflexible lists that can't naturally adjust to a shock. Having everything be a theme list means that if something starts dominating the meta, even if an answer exists, it might not work. The answer might be in one of the weaker themes or split across multiple themes resulting in most factions not having a meaningful answer which is what happened with the Ghost Fleet theme list at the last World Team Championships.

Closing thoughts

To put it simply, the book system where you just do roughly symmetrical releases for everyone and only address problems with FAQs, Erratas or adding new elements, seems to have a service life. Privateer Press definitely appeared to hit it with Warmachine/Hordes. Malifaux still runs it, but that's a much smaller game and company and is less about finely tuned balance (but that would be another lengthy discussion). It feels like eventually X-Wing is going to have to change it's model or do a full-on new edition, but a new edition just resets the clock on the service life and it gets shorter each time you do it. The CID model could only really work if X-Wing moved much more heavily to virtual rules (Privateer Press doesn't even include physical cards with their models anymore). It would be easy to think that a formation or theme system could solve some problems, but I doubt it. If, for example, a formation came out called Trench Run that gave you really good benefits for including 3 rebel X-Wings and the benefits were great, I would bet money you'd only ever see the same 3 pilots in that formation (and probably with the same upgrades every time) as people figured out the best way to fly it.

For all the downsides of accretion, there is one upside. Once a game gets big enough, nothing can ever be dominant because there will always be an answer floating around somewhere in all the obscure and underutilized elements. I'm not sure if X-Wing is there yet, but it does make for a meta constantly rotating between measure and countermeasure.

Anyway, that was rant-tastic. If you read this far, thank you for humoring me

That confused emoji is meant to show awe, this is amazing! Thanks so much! This is a super helpful post.

I personally think that Rotation is completely unfeasible right now, it's gonna bug people a lot of they have to go buy new versions of Y-Wings, X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and other classic ships, and you have to worry about what all the little 0-cost "fix" titles do to new stuff. One way to do that would be to reprint "better" versions of some of the old cards in model-free packs, but FFG has already refused to print card packs for X-Wing, so with their business model, I think that we'd be stuck repurchasing all the models for $15 each, at which point you might as well redo the whole game.

The dumpster method is actually exactly what X-Wing is right now. I think dumpster fire is a fitting description for this most of the time...

I like the other methods, but I think they'd need the whole game to be 2.0'ed to really work well. Which will probably be happening some time in the next decade or so.

I for one find it interesting to talk about such things, but I'm not really anxious for 2.0, because the current X-Wing is a last bastion of the Legends universe, and an X-Wing 2.0 would likely never see the GUNBOAT or any of the other Legends ships in it... I don't think that's a terrible thing, but I kind of like having some of the Legends stuff in here too just to add to game diversity.

1 hour ago, MasterShake2 said:

For all the downsides of accretion, there is one upside. Once a game gets big enough, nothing can ever be dominant because there will always be an answer floating around somewhere in all the obscure and underutilized elements. I'm not sure if X-Wing is there yet, but it does make for a meta constantly rotating between measure and countermeasure.

Accretion became inevitable as soon as games became "collectible." If you don't want accretion, play Monopoly.

I think the answer to your final statement is in the Deadeye example above. The game is sufficiently large that unexplored elements will come to the fore, and new elements can easily be added just by moving things around (a TIE variant with Bullseye, anyone?).

Personally, I think the game is in a good spot, mechanics-wise. What I feel is missing is more homage to the Star Wars universe. I think the game really needs to go back and fill in the narrative elements present in Rebels, Rogue One, the Prequels, et. al., even if this overlaps "existing design space."

21 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

it's gonna bug people a lot of they have to go buy new versions of Y-Wings, X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and other classic ships,

I doubt it. No one is really complaining about the aces packs. In fact, they are often asked for.

Part of me says an X-Wing CID would probably be awesome, but many great potential things probably couldn't be accomplished. You can't, for example, easily add a Talon Roll to a T-65 X-Wing, or more greens to a Y-Wing, or a bullseye arc to a basic TIE Fighter, since the physical cardboard doesn't have those things.

38 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Part of me says an X-Wing CID would probably be awesome, but many great potential things probably couldn't be accomplished. You can't, for example, easily add a Talon Roll to a T-65 X-Wing, or more greens to a Y-Wing, or a bullseye arc to a basic TIE Fighter, since the physical cardboard doesn't have those things.

Dial changes aren't that difficult, you just do it with a title (like tfa falcon title).

Another good example of accretion is R2-D2 (astromech).

When it came out it was meh on y-wings, and decent on x-wings, only one it was borderline too good at the time was Luke.

But then the E-Wing came out. Now you have a ship with 3 shields, 3 agility, 5 green maneuvers, and access to the evade action compared to the x-wing. Put that all together with a high PS pilot, especially one with the ability corran has, and it's a recipe for disaster.

By now I think just about everyone has been on one end or the other of a game where corran (likely PTL verison) regened more shields than you can imagine.

There's also some good landfill examples in the game, two of which are very recent, harpoon missiles and reinforce. But you could argue this has been around since the beginning. Wave 2 gave us PWT's and aux arcs. Wave 3 gave us the first 3 attack AND 3 agility ship. Wave 4 gave us the first 4 attack ship (and 4 agility in a way too), as well as a white k-turn. Wave 5 gave us a 16 hit point ship and a ship that can shoot 4 dice 360 degrees. And so on and so on.

Funny. I was getting ready to write a PM covering a subset of this.

Accretion hurts the long-long term viability of collectible games by making it increasingly expensive for new player to get into the game. "Oh, you want to fly this great new ship! Excellent. But it really needs this card to make it work, which comes with this other ship, which isn't the faction that you want to concentrate on and no one flies because it's terrible ..."

Set rotation fixes this, but it's impractical for a game like X-Wing: "What do you mean, my TIE Defender was retired?!?! It was in all those other games and books and ..." Set rotation can balance the game for tournaments, but it defeats the purpose of a game based on a much-loved universe.

EC has a great video explaining it.

But yeah the current business model is extremely vulnerable to it. Thing is a system that could fix it such as a card rotation practically requires X-wing 2.0.

Me personally I think maybe something that rotates upgrade cards, replaces pilot cards, but keeps the models would be the best solution. Replace the cards, keep the models. That should be a good foundation for a new business model for 2nd edition.

Go for virtual cards. This is a miniature game, anyway, not a card game.

• Dials can be fixed with titles as @hawk32 said.
• Costs can finally change to rebalance pilots and upgrades.
• Abilities can be rewritten to fix unintended interactions and incorporate errata.
• If FFG fears that people will buy fewer ships because they no longer need to buy them just for the cards, keep the rule that all physical cards need to be present during a match, but their printed text and cost is overridden by the virtual card. The physical cards act basically as proof of purchase, while the TOs could hand each player their squad list printed (reflecting the virtual cards' text and cost) for quick reference during matches.

It would make it closer to how it works in videogames, making rebalancing faster and cheaper for FFG (no need to sent them to print in China).

Also, you wouldn't need an electronic device to play the miniature game if you don't want to. You still have the printed cards and the errata to play as you do today.

X-wing has been in "mild landfill mode" with every single successive release. Power creep is a thing. I think this is 80% the designers accidentally introducing power creep (game balance is very hard), and 20% trying to make sure the new stuff is really good. It has simultaneously demotivated me from wanting to play the stock game, and motivated me to fix it on my own.

9 minutes ago, Azrapse said:

Go for virtual cards. This is a miniature game, anyway, not a card game.

• Dials can be fixed with titles as @hawk32 said.
• Costs can finally change to rebalance pilots and upgrades.
• Abilities can be rewritten to fix unintended interactions and incorporate errata.
• If FFG fears that people will buy fewer ships because they no longer need to buy them just for the cards, keep the rule that all physical cards need to be present during a match, but their printed text and cost is overridden by the virtual card. The physical cards act basically as proof of purchase, while the TOs could hand each player their squad list printed (reflecting the virtual cards' text and cost) for quick reference during matches.

It would make it closer to how it works in videogames, making rebalancing faster and cheaper for FFG (no need to sent them to print in China).

Also, you wouldn't need an electronic device to play the miniature game if you don't want to. You still have the printed cards and the errata to play as you do today.

This is definitely what we will be doing for X-wing Community Mod. Squad builder support is on its way soon(tm).

Hey look. I really don't wanna play this game like a wargaming style like 40k and whatnot. I don't want tons of books and other bs.

Nor do I want Magic style game play or Magic style rotation. (The only thing I want form that game is the beautifully written rules set.)

I for one am in favor of rather then having Aces-packs that (try to) patch up problems with a ship, simply release fix packs. A pack with updated pilot cards, dials if needed, cardboard bottom-thingies whos name escapes me etc. for ALL released pilots for one ship type. No ships, just update packs. For a small amount of $$$

TL DR:

X-Wing is fine and there is nothing that could not be fixed by simple errata.

The one thing that truly does not work in favour of this game (or all collectible games in general) is the fact that it must sells constantly, it is creation of capitalism and all it has to do is bringing money.
Imagine if there were no imperative of selling more s**t. All ships would be perfectly balanced, cards would be balanced and there would be no power creep, if there were no more ships to release that would be no tragedy because no one would wanted to force you to buy more s**t. In a way game would be supported as complete product, even if there would be no potential for new releases.

Imagine for a moment that chess would be invented in times of capitalism. It would not evolve into perfect game that it is now, it would be drowned in sea of expansions, patches, erratas and finally publisher would introduce version 2.0 to start a cycle from scratch and milk customers more by selling more s**t. Fortunately chess game was in public domain, and it was invented way before IP nonsense, so all changes were made by enthusiasts to make this game better, not to make money.

With X-Wing it will never be possible, unless Star Wars franchise will one day come into Public Domain (in normal world it should happen after death of creator but of course money speaks - look who holds rights for Mickey Mouse despite the fact that Walt Disney died over 50 years ago).

It is sad constatation but these days all creative works of people are meant to be used as milking tool, usable and with expiring date - it does not matter, flock will always want to spend more money on a new shiny toys. As it stands we live in era of brainless consummerism - people buy s**t they don't need to feel happy and to feel fullfilment.

Meanwhile new cards and plastic toys are produced using wood (coming from trees) or oil (needed to produce plastic) and earth resources are not infinite.

10 hours ago, hawk32 said:

Dial changes aren't that difficult, you just do it with a title (like tfa falcon title).

Almost, but not entirely. Part of the strength of the TFA Falcon title is that you don't have to declare your flip until after you've landed and seen your position. Likewise, even someone like Countess Ryad or Dalan Oberos gets a good deal of knowledge before they can do their maneuver changes. Part of the magic of X-Wing is the flip-a-dial experience.

Likewise, while it would work to just add Green moves like how TIE Mk. II or R2 Astromech does, that's not entirely the same. It slows down the game and can lead to mistakes when folks miss differences between the physical dial and the "real" one. With something like Hordes/Warmachine, there is nothing physical other than base size holding back changes to model stats.

And "doing it with a title" misses a lot of the point of what something akin to a CID can do in other games. Every stat can be manipulated, pretty much, and without tack-ons and fix cards. Just fix the base stats of things directly.

7 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Almost, but not entirely. Part of the strength of the TFA Falcon title is that you don't have to declare your flip until after you've landed and seen your position. Likewise, even someone like Countess Ryad or Dalan Oberos gets a good deal of knowledge before they can do their maneuver changes. Part of the magic of X-Wing is the flip-a-dial experience.

Likewise, while it would work to just add Green moves like how TIE Mk. II or R2 Astromech does, that's not entirely the same. It slows down the game and can lead to mistakes when folks miss differences between the physical dial and the "real" one. With something like Hordes/Warmachine, there is nothing physical other than base size holding back changes to model stats.

And "doing it with a title" misses a lot of the point of what something akin to a CID can do in other games. Every stat can be manipulated, pretty much, and without tack-ons and fix cards. Just fix the base stats of things directly.

I for one would like them to re-issue dials for the more maneuverable ships from the early waves (A-wing, TIE Interceptor, TIE Advanced) with more movements like S-Loops and Talon Rolls, maybe even give the Regular TIE a Talon roll too; get on it FFG I'd buy 2 of each!

8 hours ago, elbmc1969 said:

Accretion hurts the long-long term viability of collectible games by making it increasingly expensive for new player to get into the game. "Oh, you want to fly this great new ship! Excellent. But it really needs this card to make it work, which comes with this other ship, which isn't the faction that you want to concentrate on and no one flies because it's terrible ..."

I don't think this is the case at all. In fact, it could actually be the reverse. Case in point: I'm playing with 4 new guys. Since they are stepping into the game now, they can avoid all of the foibles of game design that have happened over the last 5 years, and instead just buy the ships that work well. TIE/sf, not TIE/ln. T-70, not T-65. One JM5K, not three. If they want to buy some older ships because of flavor, they enter into the deal knowing exactly what they are getting for their $.

39 minutes ago, Embir82 said:

The one thing that truly does not work in favour of this game (or all collectible games in general) is the fact that it must sells constantly, it is creation of capitalism and all it has to do is bringing money. Imagine if there were no imperative of selling more s**t. All ships would be perfectly balanced, cards would be balanced and there would be no power creep, if there were no more ships to release that would be no tragedy because no one would wanted to force you to buy more s**t. In a way game would be supported as complete product, even if there would be no potential for new releases.

But this does not imply accretion. The "problem" is that XWM is being treated as a mechanics-based game and not a narrative-based game. A lot of elements could be added to the game to backfill story elements of the saga. These ships could be given minor tweaks for flavor, without constantly upping the ante power-wise. XWM is the perfect game to sell more ships without needing to add more power.

8 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Go for virtual cards. This is a miniature game, anyway, not a card game.

• @hawk32
• If FFG fears that people will buy fewer ships because they no longer need to buy them just for the cards, keep the rule that all physical cards need to be present during a match, but their printed text and cost is overridden by the virtual card. The physical cards act basically as proof of purchase, while the TOs could hand each player their squad list printed (reflecting the virtual cards' text and cost) for quick reference during matches.

I wonder if you couldn't print a unique QR-style code on each card and build a scanner into the app. Then the app only gives you access to the cards you physically have, both type and number. If you really need to prevent people from scanning the cards of everyone they meet, have the app connect to a database that only allows each unique scanner code to be added to a single installation of the app. Of course, that means that you can't lend a card to a friend for a particular game. That could be handled by a lending function similar to the Kindle system, but with a much shorter loan period.

How in the **** can someone suggest setting rotations as a good fix?

Really, its just the ban all that came before, buy all new. Superby solution, guys.

18 minutes ago, elbmc1969 said:

I wonder if you couldn't print a unique QR-style code on each card and build a scanner into the app. Then the app only gives you access to the cards you physically have, both type and number. If you really need to prevent people from scanning the cards of everyone they meet, have the app connect to a database that only allows each unique scanner code to be added to a single installation of the app. Of course, that means that you can't lend a card to a friend for a particular game. That could be handled by a lending function similar to the Kindle system, but with a much shorter loan period.

That has several problems:

1. Too complex for the people that don't want an analog board game depend on an electronic device. Tournament people do have to keep up with online FAQs, rulings, and that kind of stuff, so it wouldn't affect them so much. But you wound't want a bunch of casuals depending on an internet connection and owning a smartphone to play your physical miniature game.
2. Also, I assume printing unique codes on cards is significantly more expensive that printing the exact same image on all cards.
3. The day FFG loses the license or closes down the servers, would we lose all our cards? Or you are having the QR code in addition to the usual card text?

I think that system would work best for X-Wing: The Miniature Online VideoGame, however, now that FFG is starting to make videogames based on their board games.

Just now, Azrapse said:

That has several problems:

1. Too complex for the people that don't want an analog board game depend on an electronic device. Tournament people do have to keep up with online FAQs, rulings, and that kind of stuff, so it wouldn't affect them so much. But you wound't want a bunch of casuals depending on an internet connection and owning a smartphone to play your physical miniature game.
2. Also, I assume printing unique codes on cards is significantly more expensive that printing the exact same image on all cards.
3. The day FFG loses the license or closes down the servers, would we lose all our cards? Or you are having the QR code in addition to the usual card text?

I think that system would work best for X-Wing: The Miniature Online VideoGame, however, now that FFG is starting to make videogames based on their board games.

1. Imperfect, yes, but as the OP mentioned, Privateer Press has managed this. Phones/tablets are so prevalent, and the amount of data that has to go back and forth so tiny, that only a sliver of the market would be affected.

2. With modern printing technology, probably not. For example, SpaceX distributes embroidered patches to every employee and contractor for every launch. Each patch has a unique number showing the employee's current seniority (the number goes down every time someone senior to you leaves). The added cost per patch is 0! The patches are embroidered by computer-controlled machines, and you just program in a countdown function that changes what number gets embroidered on each patch. Mass printing on cardstock isn't quite the same, but you can easily generate unique sheets automatically in the design and layout phase. Depending on the press type, you could have extraordinary long documents being printed. At the end of each argument, the press loads a new file for printing. Computerization changes lots of things in very unexpected ways!

3. The QR code is definitely in addition to the standard text. When you load a new card, the full card information downloads to the device. That way, you don't need the server to just keep things running at a basic level. Obviously, there are long-term issues that need to be resolved, especially with apps no longer working on newer versions of operating systems (cough, Apple, cough). Hopefully, at shut down, FFG would release a complete PDF of final state card information.

I'm not saying that this is completely free of any complexity or problems, but it certainly offers some easy ways to fix older cards and rebalance generally.

We should mention, and give credit to, the current Games Workshop method for addressing similar problems. They are simply issuing FAQs, errata, and so forth at a rapid rate. The Thunderhawk spam list was nerfed innwhat, 2 months? And they have been completely unafraid of repointing models when they were obviously overpowered or over-costed. You can never be perfect with these things, which can lead to worse mistakes, but they are fixing the grossest errors and unbalances, keeping multiple archetypes viable, and keeping the tournament scene relatively balanced.

Rapid FAQ release has cleared up rules confusion so fast that every FFG player should be Green With Envy.

Also, GW deserves big props for releasing stats for essentially every possible figure, many of them going back a long time. It's the opposite of retirement, and it makes sure that no one feels ripped off by having purchase figures that are no longer playable, which was one of the big problems with the Codex system. Those disappearing units drove many people crazy.

Ofbcourse, the plethora of editions of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K have been a problem of their own. They caused a lot of confusion and relearning that wasn't strictly necessary. It has also fragmented some of the player base, with groups sticking with older editions of the game, because they liked the earlier you can expect better, thought that the flavor of the earlier Edition was more appropriate to the setting (more melee combat, more shooting, fewer vehicles, etc., etc., etc.). Fortunately, neither X-Wing nor Armada needs Fortunately revisions to the game mechanics, nor would they necessarily benefit from them. I can think of some changes that I would make to Armada, but those tend towards personal preference in game design more than towards fixing central problems.

Well, this turned out longer than it should have.

9 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Go for virtual cards. This is a miniature game, anyway, not a card game.

• Dials can be fixed with titles as @hawk32 said.
• Costs can finally change to rebalance pilots and upgrades.
• Abilities can be rewritten to fix unintended interactions and incorporate errata.
• If FFG fears that people will buy fewer ships because they no longer need to buy them just for the cards, keep the rule that all physical cards need to be present during a match, but their printed text and cost is overridden by the virtual card. The physical cards act basically as proof of purchase, while the TOs could hand each player their squad list printed (reflecting the virtual cards' text and cost) for quick reference during matches.

It would make it closer to how it works in videogames, making rebalancing faster and cheaper for FFG (no need to sent them to print in China).

Also, you wouldn't need an electronic device to play the miniature game if you don't want to. You still have the printed cards and the errata to play as you do today.

Well as more errata comes out printed cards become less and less relevant. Thing aobut cards is that they are nice quick rules reference to have instead of pouring through a book to find all the special rules.

But yeah as more and more stuff are introduced more and more broken combinations are found resulting in devs having to take drastic actions to correct them. Which I am thinking maybe take a que from what CCG does but in a way that doesn't invalidate the models. You ca do a lot of things with rotations. Example instead of trying to give biggs a nerfed verson of his universal ability you could have replaced it to work only with Luke or Wedge (and FAQ to include Luke <crew> upgrade). There no more fair ships and biggs gets to keep his ability and it is simple. Jek could get a new pilot ability, Red Squadron could get an EPT, and Rookie Pilot could go down to 20 points. As for the infamous Jumpmaster ,remove the EPT from contracted scout and the torpedo slots. All other pilots go up 3 points. Upgrades can be rotated out instead of reprinted, but if there is an essential upgrade like autothrusters, it can be recycled.

I'd just have the system from Warmachine where all cards are available online to print. So if I'm going to an event, you'd print your list out with all the cards and go play. Have there be some date attached to it so if you don't have the most recent update version, then there's a problem. Adjust ships as needed.

I'd say pass on player feedback. It never goes well. As an imperial player, I am invested in having good imperial ships. It's hard for people to give objective feedback in these playtests.

If I were FFG, I'd 2.0 the current system, clean up the rules in the rulebook, reissue tiles with the firing arcs they want to use (add bullseyes for ships that they think need them and so on). I'd keep all the damage dice and stuff off the ship tiles to allow for more flexibility in design (maybe using face tokens that represent character ships that insert into the base over a ship, but that's me thinking crazy).

Then at each event, require them to print the list they want to play off the FFG site with the time stamp on it saying it's a current list. All the ships on the board need to be FFG official.

But Paul said bombs were fine.

11 hours ago, Boba Rick said:

But Paul said bombs were fine.

That noob only won worlds 3 times only because turrets were OP and needed a nerf. Get on it FFG!!!!