As a background, I’m writing this as an xwing player of over a year. When I got into that game, wave 9 was just about to drop. I was amazed with how (almost) everything I could ever dream of was a ship in the game. Super cool.

I bought it all. Yup, there is precious few things in X-Wing I am missing. However... a lot of the middle era stuff never gets used anymore, as I learned something by taking it all out to play. The new stuff has creeped out the old. I still play with the earliest waves in the form of alternative game modes that emphasize the thematic movie ships, but the middle wave stuff only comes out when I force it to (which I’ve resolved to do at least once this year).

now I am not complaining as I live the game and all the stuff I am playing with. However, I don’t want to be in an arms race times two in the future. If I am buying into a second expandable game, I want to do it knowing my investment will be more viable for longer term.

that said, what comes in Legion after the initial waves? More commanders and a handful of troops from the films? A rush to having more unique units? Or a pretty stable core game with the main hange being terrain or minor differences to adapt to?

I have friends buying into Legion for sure. If I do as well, will my army be viable 6 months from now? 18 months from now? How fast will the game power creep?

Honestly, we have no way of knowing besides waiting.

On the other hand, there is already a Star Wars miniature game at roughly this scale, and more than a few other rulesets that can be easily adapted (such as many historical ones).

I don't think anyone knows that answer yet (even the rules haven't dropped in English).

That said, being a wargame, it will probably accommodate more "scenerio"play that will allow for more fun, lopsided battles (heroic last stand anyone?). I get that the rules are in place for balanced objectives/battlefield games typical of x-wing 100:6 but not every game needs to be balanced tournament style for it to be great; tbh I much prefer non standard games as they're the most memorable.

For what it’s worth, X-Wing’s power creep only exploded recently ish. I think the JumpMaster was when the game jumped the shark in terms of power creep; up until then, everything had at least been relevant, just some stuff more so than others. On the other hand, I already feel like my Runewars core set is halfway to useless, so you never know.

Ultimately, I expect that they’ll have learned enough to keep the creep pretty low, but not perfect. Depending on the release schedule, I’d assume we should be able to get at least a few good years out of the stormies and Rebel troopers.

Well nobdy knows but there will definitely be power creep. The biggest thing is that more options per force org slot will happen soonest. but we also don't even have anything in the special forces slot yet. I think any armies created right away will need some adaptation once we have a couple option per slot. tht said I don't think power creep will be as bad as xwing for a couple reasons:

1. The force org chart limits what you can take
2. Wider range of points values should hopefully make it easier to keep things in balance.

Also hoping that they will take the lesson from Destiny and adjust points in errata if needed.

At the end of the day all I really want is to look at the table and see "Star Wars!" i.e. stormtroopers and rebels.

A problem I see with xwing is I look at a game and can barely recognize the ships. Armada still has a Star Wars look for me.

7 minutes ago, JBar said:

At the end of the day all I really want is to look at the table and see "Star Wars!" i.e. stormtroopers and rebels.

A problem I see with xwing is I look at a game and can barely recognize the ships. Armada still has a Star Wars look for me.

Yeah, I only own ships I can recognize from the games/movies.

As I mentioned earlier, the really nice thing is there are LOTS of infantry wargames in roughly this scale that would allow people to continue to use their Star Wars minis should support end for Legion, or Legion gets too powercreepy.

Armada has done an amazing job of keeping everything relevant. I'm using that as my guide as it is the last thing Davies worked on

10 minutes ago, Tirion said:

Armada has done an amazing job of keeping everything relevant. I'm using that as my guide as it is the last thing Davies worked on

This gives me optimism.

They have learnt many lessons since X-Wing for sure.

Being much more objective based should help in this regard as well. In competitive play, X-wing is all about killing more stuff, so generally speaking the ships (and upgrades) that can kill stuff most efficiently reign supreme. The win conditions in Legion should *hopefully* allow for a much broader range of units to be relevant.

X-wing is a great game, but the basic stats of each ship are pretty simple. Attack, Agility, Shields, Hull, and Pilot Skill are the only stats and Pilot skill is pretty much only used to differentiate pilots within so it doesn't really differentiate between ships. As for the dice stats, defense pretty much vary from 1-3 and attack dice vary (mostly) from 2-3. So the ability to differentiate between ships was pretty small to begin with. As we got more and more ships they needed to try out more and more "additions" to the basic rules of the game. Things like Boost, Cloak, 360 firing arcs, and Bombs. Basically X-wing had a pretty small design space, so it was that much harder to keep coming up with new things without making things either worthlessly bad or overpowers.

I can't speak for Legion yet, but FFg seemed to have learned their lesson in Armada where there is just so much more design space already built into the game that they can keep giving us new cool things without being so power creep-y

I think they will apply what they have learned to Legion, but we will have to wait and see.

45 minutes ago, Tirion said:

Armada has done an amazing job of keeping everything relevant. I'm using that as my guide as it is the last thing Davies worked on

Yeah hopefully once legion runs out out of the classic units they will rerelease stuff like with new poses or elite troopers instead of diving deep into obscure EU troops and vehicles. Kind of like xwing aces or the Armada Chimera star destroyer, I like those.

Speaking as someone that has been in x-wing for several years, you don’t notice the creep whenn you’re buying each new thing as it comes out.

Buying into a 5 year old game, it becomes apparent.

I would like to assume the core units will always be useful. Most of my experience is with 40k, but in that game most factions have it's basic infantry unit. Ex: Tau have firewarriors. Space Marines have tactical marines. Astra Militarum have your basic guardsmen. Etc. Presumably, the basic rebel trooper and imperial storm troopers will always be your go to low point unit to fill in your list with. At least that's my hope.

Time will tell. All I can say is don't over buy units. Max trooper units is 6. You get 2 in a core. The expansion has different cards, so thats another potential buy. And "wave 2" has another option. Thats 4 out of 6 right near launch. If someone reallllly wants that 6 max, i say wait it out for a bit, or split another core box. Because in a year, we could have 2 more trooper unit options, and you'll have loads laying around not because they are bad, but because your army requires something different.

Test the different units. See how they play. And only buy the extras you really need.

26 minutes ago, AldousSnow said:

Time will tell. All I can say is don't over buy units. Max trooper units is 6. You get 2 in a core. The expansion has different cards, so thats another potential buy. And "wave 2" has another option. Thats 4 out of 6 right near launch. If someone reallllly wants that 6 max, i say wait it out for a bit, or split another core box. Because in a year, we could have 2 more trooper unit options, and you'll have loads laying around not because they are bad, but because your army requires something different.

Test the different units. See how they play. And only buy the extras you really need.

I think my absolute max would be “one of each”expansion for a single faction. I don’t have the drive to do more.

I do think the activation mechanic will favor forces with lots of core troops.

Say you have 2 or 3 non core troop units and 5 or 6 core troop units. When you pick you activation card, if you pick a card with a few as 2 activations, you can then just pick 2 of the 3 non-core units and then you can activate your entire force exactly when you want with the single exception of the one non-core troop choice that you didn't put aside for your chosen activations. When randomly draw a troop choice, you can then activate any troop you want.

If it's popular and organized play really takes off we're in X-wing territory, otherwise it should be mostly fine.

Competitive play in X-wing is like Nurgle's Blessing: It sustains X-wing while at the same time afflicting it with weeping sores and decay.

Hopefully we will see a somewhat conservative release schedule. At least thats what I hope for.

If we are dreaming, I would have loved to see all points costs available through a free app, updated on a fixed schedule (quartely? Semi-annually?) That way, everyone knows that costs might change and they will know when, FFG gets a very useful tool for adjusting balance "at the fly" without the need to errata cards and abilities, and hopefully fix issues that might arise without phasing anything out of usefulness.

Whatever the case, Im sure they have learned a lot from x-wing especially but also armada and runewars. Im feeling very positive about Legion and am happy to be a part of it now at the beginning! To fool myself into believing its kind of cheap

7 hours ago, Extropia said:

They have learnt many lessons since X-Wing for sure.

Completely disagree Armada lettered a lot from x wing

5 hours ago, Soulless said:

If we are dreaming, I would have loved to see all points costs available through a free app, updated on a fixed schedule (quartely? Semi-annually?) That way, everyone knows that costs might change and they will know when, FFG gets a very useful tool for adjusting balance "at the fly" without the need to errata cards and abilities, and hopefully fix issues that might arise without phasing anything out of usefulness.

Worst case they could release update decks like warmahordes.

3 hours ago, Tirion said:

Completely disagree Armada lettered a lot from x wing

Right, so by definition this game has too. I’m not saying it’s the ONLY game that learnt from X-Wing....this one has also learnt from Armada, and even DUST.

Wait....unless you’re saying that Armada didn’t learn anything? In which case I entirely disagree.

4 hours ago, Tirion said:

Completely disagree Armada lettered a lot from x wing

It did and didn't. The powercreep and card sharing issues were still there, but it refined a lot (activations, command dials, movement templates)

Then runewars refined it more.

Now we have legion, and while i'm not really sure about how well the dice/surge asymmetry and point efficiency is going to work out in the factions balance just yet, the rest looks pretty on point and a leap forwards from previous ffg titles.