Do I understand this right? One Stormtrooper team consists of 4 troopers with E11. I can upgrade to bring in one - but only one - additional trooper equipped with either an E11, a DLT-19, or a HH-12. I am not allowed to play with all 7 miniatures. Right?

That would mean from the core box I can only use 10 out of 14 Stormtroopers in a single game. 4 miniatures will always remain in the box.

The same is true for the rebells, I assume.

And from each Stormtrooper expansion, I can ever use only 5 out of 7 miniatures in a single battle.

If all this is true, I think it is a very bad solution. It is a waste of money to pay for minis, that are not allowed to join the fight. The could make it better, i.e. that there were only 5 minis and you have to decide how the additional 5th mini is equipped.

So, I hope that I understand it wrong.

+1 extra +1 heavy

all units so far revealed are max 6 on both sides as yet, with a choice between the two alternate weapons. As for a waste of money, 1 full mini is no worse than several other companies that make you buy all the alternate arm, weapon and head spare parts and leave you with umpteen sprues of extra's you'll only ever use if you are handy with magnet mods or for conversion in future purchases.

5 minutes ago, Bjbu said:

Do I understand this right? One Stormtrooper team consists of 4 troopers with E11. I can upgrade to bring in one - but only one - additional trooper equipped with either an E11, a DLT-19, or a HH-12. I am not allowed to play with all 7 miniatures. Right?

That would mean from the core box I can only use 10 out of 14 Stormtroopers in a single game. 4 miniatures will always remain in the box.

The same is true for the rebells, I assume.

And from each Stormtrooper expansion, I can ever use only 5 out of 7 miniatures in a single battle.

If all this is true, I think it is a very bad solution. It is a waste of money to pay for minis, that are not allowed to join the fight. The could make it better, i.e. that there were only 5 minis and you have to decide how the additional 5th mini is equipped.

So, I hope that I understand it wrong.

No. Thankfully your off the mark!

The icons down the left indicate what upgrades can be taken. An extra trooper, and one special weapon, ect.

So you can take 6 per squad. 4 + 1 extra + 1 special weapon

If your oppenent agrees and it fits a scenerio, use what you want.

A few heavy weapon squads (with 2x DLT, 2x HH and squad leader each) ambushing a convoy of stolen AT-STs in a hit and fade attack perhaps? Maybe the HH only have one or two shots before being "swapped" with a regular E-11 trooper? Maybe the objective is to delay the armour not outright destroy it all and the troopers can use an aim token to target the legs, disabling it?

Is this against the 'rules' and 'unbalanced' - probably, but could be lots of fun.

36. 6 stormtroopers per unit. Max 6 trooper units. Kit em all the way out for about 500 pts. Leaves 300 for your commander(s) or other units. 36 stormtroopers is the answer.

Min 12 max 36

Ah ... okay. The text for the Stormtrooper expansion can be understood wrong then, I think.

By taking the Stormtrooper upgrade, you add another standard Stormtrooper miniature to the squad—giving your squad more firepower and making it harder for your opponent to completely destroy it. […] Alternatively, you may decide to bring in some specialists with armaments that make them much more dangerous than a standard Stormtrooper. […] If you bring a Stormtrooper wielding the DLT-19 heavy blaster rifle into your unit, you gain a much greater ability to fire accurately from long distance. […] Alternatively, you can tweak your Stormtrooper squad to concentrate fire on vehicles if you use the HH-12 Stormtrooper.

I understood this text as that you can add only 1 additional trooper, because of the wording ("Alternatively").

That leaves us with 2 unused Stormtroopers from the core box and with 1 unused Stormtrooper from the expansions.

Nah, they're giving hypothetical choices, not rules.

21 minutes ago, Bjbu said:

That leaves us with 2 unused Stormtroopers from the core box and with 1 unused Stormtrooper from the expansions.

Only if you never change list composition, but yes, at least 2 from the core box will sit out each game. Besides, one spare complete mini is useful for testing colour schemes, something you can't do with the spare bits and bobs you pay for in other miniature boxes, even if it does mean less customization.

9 hours ago, Bjbu said:

If all this is true, I think it is a very bad solution. It is a waste of money to pay for minis, that are not allowed to join the fight. The could make it better, i.e. that there were only 5 minis and you have to decide how the additional 5th mini is equipped.

Of course it’s a waste of money. It’s a board game. A minis game. Each of those dudes is probably about 3 cents worth of raw material. Adding in the extra two minis isn’t increasing the price; it would be the same regardless. That’s just where supply meets demand. Think of it instead as: they could’ve given you only five minis, and then you’re stuck with only one special unit (unless you start magnetizing ****), but instead they threw in a couple extra minis to make your life easier. You don’t pay for the material; you pay for the game.

1 hour ago, Ailowynn said:

You don’t pay for the material; you pay for the game.

And the licenses, which are not cheap in this case.

But yeah, if they didn't include the extra complete mini, then in a few weeks/months/years when the game changes and all of a sudden you need more of the OTHER special weapon you have to either tear apart your minis and hope not to break them irrevocably, buy extra bodies off of the secondary market, or buy entire boxes for one dude.

I’ll be mixing them in with Imperial assault minis for complete squads. Yes I will have some short stomtroopers and Rebels, I also don’t care.

....STORMIES>.......nice....

Also, dont forget how GW plastic squads is supplied,

You get A LOT!!!! of extra bits, weapon options, arms, heads, etc to allow you to customise your squad, but they ensure that you never get enough bits to make extra full models (I am talking at the per box level, once you get critical mass (like an armies worth you can kitbash together a small squad)

Thats a lot more extra material that you cant use.

So FFG giving you an extra full model to represent different choices for your squad is actually a good thing. Makes for easy swap outs and army list changes

8 hours ago, DelGriffen said:

I’ll be mixing them in with Imperial assault minis for complete squads. Yes I will have some short stomtroopers and Rebels, I also don’t care.

Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?

12 hours ago, Ailowynn said:

Of course it’s a waste of money. It’s a board game. A minis game. Each of those dudes is probably about 3 cents worth of raw material. Adding in the extra two minis isn’t increasing the price; it would be the same regardless.

And amortizing the cost of the design team, and prototyping, and watertight modeling, and injection molds (no longer $20,000 each, but still $5,000 for quality, and you're going to need way more than one mold if you want to produce sets at a reasonable pace), and designing the packaging, making proofs, and having new dies made (for die cutting).

Then cheap overseas labor (operating the molds, assembling boxes, packing, shipping), power for the injection molding process (takes a lot of electricity), and water (plastics are shockingly water intensive). Oh, and there are the basic costs of the factory--including amortizing the costs of construction and investment for the factory.

Want more figures per set? You either need a bigger mold (which costs more to have cut) or you need to run the mold more times (molds are only good for so many uses, so you have to pay to replace them sooner).

Then the cost of shipping to the U.S., and the cost of distribution. This is where things get interesting. Every time you add something to the box, you need a slightly larger box and you can't fit quite as many into a shipping container.

Various taxes, etc.

100% markup by the distributor.

100% markup by the retail store.

Even if we're only thinking about the cost of raw material, 3¢ x 2 figures = 6¢. Double it for the distributor is 12¢. Double again for retail, call it a quarter. Trivial? Yeah, but the boxes would cost a whole 25¢ more.

The point, if course, is that there are a lot more factors than raw material.

And don't forget that unlike GW, or any of the FFG owned properties, Disney is going to be taking a portion of the profits as well for the privilege of using the minis, plus if any of the actors retained likeness rights they'll be getting a portion as well which may or may not be coming out of Disney's portion.

Games are luxury items, which by definition are a "waste" of money economically speaking.