https://youtu.be/hbbhrETs-5k

In conjunction with their review I feel disheartened. This looks like a more randomized version of Infinity, with a great deal of X-Wing in it. I had hoped that with Armada they figured to reduce pure chance, but it appears the relative success of X-Wing and the worse sales on Armada taught FFG to think "random factor = casual appeal".

I sincerely hope we get more interesting videos, I had hoped for something much more interesting and unique, in return for killing off RuneWars.

Worse Sales I think is the wrong term for Armada, that implies that it is not turning a profit.

Yes it sells less than X-Wing, X-Wing is the Flagship game. But Armada has been a very strong seller and draws in those who are after a more complex game than X-Wing.

At the end of the day, its a game involving dice. there is always going to be a random factor.

40 minutes ago, Kaiju said:

I had hoped that with Armada they figured to reduce pure chance, but it appears the relative success of X-Wing and the worse sales on Armada taught FFG to think "random factor = casual appeal".

I have to agree that I don't understand why you think a game involving dice is not going to be random? This is less random in some ways than other wargames that aren't I-go-you-go, such as Bolt Action.

Yes but there is a MASSIVE difference as to the extent of the randomness. Or basically, how big the range of randomness is.

Lets take Armada vs. X-Wing. In Armada, you roll Dice vs. fixed defense, and thus the range of possible outcomes is between the best and the worst result of that set of dice, against the static defense. This means that even in worst-case scenarios, before taking the shot, before offering the shot, before ANYTHING, both players know that, for example, its simply impossible for Attack X to kill ship Y.

In X-Wing, defense is rolled, too. This means we not only have the variance of the attack roll (as in Armada), but also of the Defense roll, which means that you have to take into account rare freak occurrences of perfect attack vs. pathetic defense roll, which leads to a MUCH MUCH larger range of possible outcomes. Its simply less predictable, and able to create spikes. These probability spikes are what concerns me.

I am fine with a shot being good or bad, causing a bit more or a bit less damage. But in X-Wing, especially when it comes to swarm lists (which is one of the big reasons why such lists have become unpopular long ago), the decision whether I made a good tactical choice is not doing a bit more or a bit less damage. After all is said and done, the question whether it does NOTHING or a one-shot-kill is just a matter of spiking dice.

Legion goes for that concept. It allows for a huge range of possible outcomes with massively different results on the extremes of the scale. I believe the Armada idea is a better game. Its range of outcomes and its numbers mean its more about estimating and managing risk and probabilities, not just gamble of flukes and extremes.

So do most war games. All GW games have saving throws, does Armada lack a way to mitigate damage?

That seems to be FFGs whole Schtic when it comes to its miniature game (and roleplaying) mechanics though.

Base level units through random dice attacks at target. Base level targets throw random dice defence to mitigate. repeat.

The key mechanic is the player having skill in army selection and tactics in dice manipulation. upgrades that involve adding/removing dice, rerolling dice, setting dice to specific faces. automatic hits/cancellations. that is the basis of the whole upgrade card system

Rolling defenses is a standard of infantry based miniature games though. Let's take Bolt Action for example: I roll a die for each shot, needing anywhere from a 2+ to a 6 followed by another 6 for each shot to hit. Then if I do hit, I have to roll to see if I actually wound, against the unit's veterancy rating. (Edit: And shooting vehicles is even worse. Most of the time, I'm just trying to place pin markers, not actually counting on causing wounds.)

Or let's take 40k as an example: you roll to hit, then to wound, then your opponent takes an armor save. Much more random than Legion, and with a ton more modifiers in play.

With X-Wing, it makes sense that there is a chance your opponent's fighters can dodge out of the way of an attack, otherwise, what chance does a TIE fighter have against an X-Wing? Armada is dealing primarily with capital ships, so it makes less sense to give them a chance to dodge incoming fire, and instead use the token system to mitigate damage.

From what I have seen thus far, most Legion games will be objective based, which means killing enemy units is in some ways secondary to keeping your own alive. Hitting an enemy unit still causes a suppression token to be placed, even if you don't manage to kill any models. This costs that unit an action, and can cause the unit to be removed if enough suppression tokens are assigned.

Was it just me or we're the video comments kind of negative? I think constructive criticism is good but people have to remember there is usually a difference between a board game and a wargame. Generally a wargame is more about the hobby where a board game is more ready, play, go.

The comments on a lot of these new videos are absurd. It's like people who don't have clue are chiming in. Not a full game in a box? well neither is AoS, 40k, or 90% of most miniature tabletop wargames. It's like all of the people without a clue came out of the woodworks to bash the game.

@JBar I don't know for sure what the target audience is for Dice Tower, but after a quick glance at their "About" page, I'm guessing it mostly consists of Board and Card game players, which have very different expectations as to what constitutes a game.

I believe that randomness mitigation in Legion comes from other situational factors. If you want, you can run on good armor dice and hope, but it's better to use cover, and tokens you gain through actions and the like to firmly block hits. If you're behind heavy cover, you know you'll definitely cancel 2 hits, unless they have Blast (and then eventually there will surely be a Command Card or Commander Ability or even a generic equipment which will allow your cover not to be beaten by Blast at some point). Legion is a ground-based game with terrain rules, so this makes sense that properly utilizing the terrain and your actions is part of the strategic element (and does one better than Range and Obstruction modifiers in X-Wing, which just give you extra green dice, and everybody should know Green Dice suck. This is why defensive dice mods are so critical). Armada is a slower game more about proper placement of enemy ships inside angles and proper timing, it makes sense to have more static damage mitigation choices.

3 hours ago, Rammstein117 said:

The comments on a lot of these new videos are absurd. It's like people who don't have clue are chiming in. Not a full game in a box? well neither is AoS, 40k, or 90% of most miniature tabletop wargames. It's like all of the people without a clue came out of the woodworks to bash the game.

I was thinking the same thing... It doesn't cost you anything to be positive people... I am really getting sick of the negativity surrounding anything star wars related lately. It is seriously affecting my enjoyment of the movies, games etc. because I feel like I constantly have to justify my enjoyment to people. It might just be a bunch of rabid 40k fans chiming in. Who knows.

Not having enough dice is valid, everything else was just hating for the sake of it

2 hours ago, jrmypdgr said:

Not having enough dice is valid, everything else was just hating for the sake of it

I thought they really try to emphasize its more for the wargamer than the board gamers market, alleviate concerns about Imperial Assault which has been huge over there, and compare the concept of incomplete base box to X-Wing, which is favorable too.

SW:Legion is really shaping up to be mostly something we have seen before, just with the Star Wars IP for ground troops this time. Very little about it is new, its a close cousin to already-released games that worked well, which makes sense.

But lets be honest, comparing it to full-size tabletop games is not appropriate. This is more like Malifaux or Infinity in scale (and pretty expensive in comparison to those) than WH40k or Warmachine.

I guess I just hoped for something more innovative and tactical.

6 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

@JBar I don't know for sure what the target audience is for Dice Tower, but after a quick glance at their "About" page, I'm guessing it mostly consists of Board and Card game players, which have very different expectations as to what constitutes a game.

Correct and boardgamers expect that they can buy a box and play a game. Building terrain, models and even the fact that you don't get it all in a single box isn't going to draw them in. Perhaps one should look at miniatures web sites for the unboxing and commentary?

No one would buy the game at $150us as a single box, yet if you and a friend buy a box each you have enough for 800 points.

The game as displayed right now is based on the learn to play rules and will be vastly different once the full range of rules are understood. Suppression was overlooked and some more of the advanced rules seemed to be missing. In some regards though that is on FFG who didn't release the rules proper to the groups doing these videos. However, with Armada the L2P game was terrible, but once you could expand the game and play with all the rules it was very much a far richer experience.

I did think they were being negative in their review. As already mentioned, the dice issue is valid but I guess that's to keep the price down.

@Kaiju As already noted, the review was for the l2p game, once you add battle cards, advanced rules, extra units, upgrades, a full sized board and terrain its going to open up a load of strategy and tactics.

I've now tried to watch 2 play throughs. This one and the Beasts of Wars ones. The mistakes just kill any enjoyment of it. I get that with a new game you aren't going to get them perfect, but some of the mistakes wouldn't happen if you at least read the rules and cards.

Dice Tower mainly cover board and card games.

The comment about the number of dice is valid, but is similar to issues with XW and Armada core sets. Also the limits on army building (they are just core sets after all).

Armada's ruleset is more elegant in terms of dice mitigation in defence but it looks like Legion is sticking with traditional dice for attack and defence which is fine and looks less complex than the convoluted and now old 40k system.

I'm sure Legion will be a success but to what degree is unknown. Whilst there will be some crossover, the audience for IA and Legion are quite different. Legion will never replicate the cinematic experience that an IA campaign brings (small group of heroes versus large number of Imps) but likewise, IA cannot replicate the occasional large ground combats in the SW universe. There was only 2 large scale ground combats in the original trilogy (including Endor). The rest are the traditional small band of heroes vs ridiculous odds.

In summary - there is plenty of room for both games and with the amount FFG have invested into Legion, they NEED it to succeed.

I too was surprised by the initial negativity of the review comments section. Then i remembered how negative these forums were when Legion was first announced with all the people whining about the scale. Its much more likely for a person to leave a negative comment than a positive one. Also its important to note that Dice Towers Audience is far and away more leaning to board games and card games. It is such foreign concept to them not to be able to play a full game in a box for $90 whereas for tabletop wargamers thats the norm. Don’t be discouraged. This forum itself shows theres a large audience begging for Legion. If Legion looks like fun to you, then get it. Also remember to be inclusive. Teach people the game. Be courteous. Thats how communities grow.

Bell of Lost Souls is actually really positive about the game, which frankly shocked me given how much they usually favor 40k.

1 hour ago, Makelumpycanon said:

. Also remember to be inclusive. Teach people the game. Be courteous. Thats how communities grow.

Agreed, and I think that watching a game like Legion on a youtube channel where one normally goes to watch board game reviews will lead to a misalignment of expectations. I'm sure there are some people whose interest is peaked, but they may be less likely to comment due to the early negativity. As well, some of the negative reviewers might change their tune if they actually had the opportunity to play the game rather than just watch. Having the models in hand, rolling the dice, and seeing your plans either crushed or come to fruition can result in a very different reaction that passively watching a video online.

15 hours ago, Kaiju said:

Yes but there is a MASSIVE difference as to the extent of the randomness. Or basically, how big the range of randomness is.

Lets take Armada vs. X-Wing. In Armada, you roll Dice vs. fixed defense, and thus the range of possible outcomes is between the best and the worst result of that set of dice, against the static defense. This means that even in worst-case scenarios, before taking the shot, before offering the shot, before ANYTHING, both players know that, for example, its simply impossible for Attack X to kill ship Y.

In X-Wing, defense is rolled, too. This means we not only have the variance of the attack roll (as in Armada), but also of the Defense roll, which means that you have to take into account rare freak occurrences of perfect attack vs. pathetic defense roll, which leads to a MUCH MUCH larger range of possible outcomes. Its simply less predictable, and able to create spikes. These probability spikes are what concerns me.

I am fine with a shot being good or bad, causing a bit more or a bit less damage. But in X-Wing, especially when it comes to swarm lists (which is one of the big reasons why such lists have become unpopular long ago), the decision whether I made a good tactical choice is not doing a bit more or a bit less damage. After all is said and done, the question whether it does NOTHING or a one-shot-kill is just a matter of spiking dice.

Legion goes for that concept. It allows for a huge range of possible outcomes with massively different results on the extremes of the scale. I believe the Armada idea is a better game. Its range of outcomes and its numbers mean its more about estimating and managing risk and probabilities, not just gamble of flukes and extremes.

Two things

it's called replayability

And

If you remove defensive dice then one of two things are likely to happen. People rage because you can get easy damage against someone like Vader unless he has some magic I can't be hurt token

Or

You have even more stat checking (something they are attempting to decrease) because now to avoid that scenario of Vader being helpless you need him to have a defensive value that protects him against things.

I'll take the dice. It leads to more interesting situations. Also it's a pretty clear line of you're either good at defending or not so I'm not expecting it to be that dicey when it comes to defense.

Just my ten cents my two cents are free.

I enjoy BeastOfWar but their "lets plays" tend to be a bit longwinded and full of mistakes. I can live with that when its something entirely new but since weve seen a fair bit of Legion already, I want to see more of the actual gameplay and less of the players opinions and thoughts.

The Dice Tower playthrough I found to be pretty good, they made a few mistakes it seems (i assume from what weve been told in the acticles and demo games) but overall showed the game pretty decently. But having to reroll dice all the time and keep track of hits made it really confusing to follow.

Dice Tower is mainly boardgames and their reviews of these are great, every now and then they stretch out to other kind of games and I for one think they did a good job on Legion.

Im really looking forward to playing Legion, even more so now!

37 minutes ago, Soulless said:

The Dice Tower playthrough I found to be pretty good, they made a few mistakes it seems (i assume from what weve been told in the acticles and demo games) but overall showed the game pretty decently. But having to reroll dice all the time and keep track of hits made it really confusing to follow.

Dice Tower is mainly boardgames and their reviews of these are great, every now and then they stretch out to other kind of games and I for one think they did a good job on Legion.

They didn't make more mistakes than I expect most first time players to make when first playing Legion, particularly in regards to suppression. I know that I am very used to the very similar design of Bolt Action's pinning mechanic, so am more acutely aware of having an automatic effect from a hit, even before checking for wounding. It can be a bit frustrating watching people try to learn a game that many of us on this forum have mildly obsessed about, so are perhaps more aware of the rules than the average beginner.

The number of dice included does seem to be more an issue with this beginner box than others, particularly as it does not include enough dice to even roll an attack from a single corps unit lacking any upgrades. It would have been nice if FFG had at least included some cardboard "Hit" and "Crit" counters to keep track of dice results.