8 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

It would have been nice if FFG had at least included some cardboard "Hit" and "Crit" counters to keep track of dice results.

For an FFG game, Legion is surprisingly sparse on dials. You might be onto something...

2 minutes ago, KalEl814 said:

For an FFG game, Legion is surprisingly sparse on dials. You might be onto something...

And now I have a new suggestion for the guy at my FLGS that has his own laser cutting business...

Watching the Beast of War demo game, mistakes aside i am pretty happy with the game that appears to be appearing.

Dice Tower I skipped because wrong audience there. Heard too much negativity here and elsewhere about it so may as well focus on the ones that show the game.

2 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

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.

So far of all their miniatures games you seem to get about half the dice you need for all of them. X-Wing, Armada, Runewars and Legion, you could even add the starter sets of the Star Wars RPG games.

If you and your opponent each pool the dice from the core it seems based on the videos I have seen so far you'll have about the right number of dice to play. So the only people that may have trouble are the share a core folks that split the box. Perhaps if they split the box and a pack of dice they'll be OK?

I may also try the dice app, it allows you to flip dice and provides the summary of results that can be helpful and dice don't roll off the table, end up cocked or get lost.

@Amanal I don't recall X-Wing and Armada being quite this bad though. For Legion it seems every single dice roll needs at least a few re-rolls while I seem to recall being able to much more easily "get by" with just a single set of dice for the other games, maybe re-rolling one or two, not the entire set. But that could just be time clouding my memory.

The RPG starters for the most part in my experience have enough dice to get you through the starting scenario without a problem, but more makes the rare occasion of simultaneous rolling much quicker. Personally, I love the feel of dice in my hands, and I know too much about computers to fully trust the randomness of an electronic device. Not that the dice are necessarily much better . Regardless, not having access to the digital dice roller or a second set of dice did seem to negatively impact some of these review videos.

23 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.

That is exactly their gamer demographic. They have one of the largest and loyal followings for this demographic as well.

2 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

@AmanalRegardless, not having access to the digital dice roller or a second set of dice did seem to negatively impact some of these review videos.

Well let's hope in future the review copies of the game includes a dice pack extra.

I have had a quick look at a few units, for the most part the units get 1 dice per model, and then some upgrades. A full Rebel Troop will need 6 Black, 6 White or 2 Red Dice to create it's ranged attack pool. A fully decked out AT-ST will need 3 Red, 6 White and 5 Red dice to create it's ranged attack pool. As long as I understand the way it all works. So like normal, a core is half what you need, so as long as you and your opponent are happy to share and mix dice you don't need more.

At the other end of things, lets assume that AT-ST hits with everything you may then need a pool of 14 Defense dice but here the rolls and re-rolls can be tracked by splitting the dice in the attack pool into hits (failed saves) and misses (successful saves) and your re-rolls would be based on the size of the dice left in the hits part of the pool.

@Amanal Did you remember to subtract the black die from the Specialist firing their special weapon and not their A-280, or did I misunderstand and you were listing the dice necessary to create any possible dice pool a full unit could build?

I understand that should you be playing with 2 core boxes there is less of an issue, but those who only ordered one are practically forced to buy at least one dice pack or use the dice app (which admittedly is free, and it is probably advertised/mentioned in the Learn to Play booklet). Heck, the dice included can't even supply the 4 dice a basic Corps unit needs to attack.

X-wing at least had enough dice of each color to cover shooting/defense without any modifiers if I recall correctly, and covered some of the modified situations as well. To be fair though, there are significantly more kinds of dice in Legion than X-wing, so that is a big part of the difficulty in providing/obtaining "enough dice." A cardboard dial could have helped, or at least cardboard tokens.

Meh, honestly infantry focused games need to have a decent element of chance involved. Otherwise its just overly complicated rock, paper, scissors.

51 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

@Amanal Did you remember to subtract the black die from the Specialist firing their special weapon and not their A-280, or did I misunderstand and you were listing the dice necessary to create any possible dice pool a full unit could build?

I just took every upgrade and listed out the maximum dice, was the specialist a swap out or add, I took it as an add which will lower the dice count by one if I wasn't right.

52 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

I understand that should you be playing with 2 core boxes there is less of an issue, but those who only ordered one are practically forced to buy at least one dice pack or use the dice app (which admittedly is free, and it is probably advertised/mentioned in the Learn to Play booklet). Heck, the dice included can't even supply the 4 dice a basic Corps unit needs to attack.

If you and your opponent each bought a box, and are prepared to share dice, problem is pretty much solved.

The dice app was $5 when I purchased it, however as new Star Wars games get introduced the dice get added. So it may not be free, but cup of coffee price, isn't terrible.

7 hours ago, Amanal said:

I just took every upgrade and listed out the maximum dice, was the specialist a swap out or add, I took it as an add which will lower the dice count by one if I wasn't right.

If you and your opponent each bought a box, and are prepared to share dice, problem is pretty much solved.

The dice app was $5 when I purchased it, however as new Star Wars games get introduced the dice get added. So it may not be free, but cup of coffee price, isn't terrible.

As far as I understand it, each model can only fire one weapon a turn, so the specialists either fire their A-280, their special weapon, or a grenade if one has been purchased for the unit.

Edit: And if you and your opponent are playing out of just the one box that has both forces in it, the dice remain an issue. This isn't like Warmachine/Hordes where each player bought a starter specifically for their faction, the only starter has both sides so presumably should have enough of everything to cover the standard situations.

I didn't realize the dice app wasn't free, but that does make sense, I don't begrudge FFG from trying to make money on a product they had produced, which may be part of the reason the (presumably) included all the dice they reasonably could, but still released a separate "expansion" to double the number. Even with two sets of dice, there can arise situations wherein more are needed, either from Arsenal or Spray. Right now I believe the maximum potentially necessary with Spray is 12 Black dice?

In any case, people will likely end up using markers of some kind/standard dice to keep track when they do not have enough dice to manage the roll in one go.

Also, remember that some of these are demos. The full games will have the objective system built in. You mention Armada being less random than X-Wing, and a lot of that is due to the objective scoring system (though the dice results are more predictable than X-Wing).

I'm also hoping future releases do a lot to enhance game strategy, similar to Armada where you have support units doing things like increasing speed, defense, and attack if you choose to field them.

I confess I haven't watched the entire playthrough but Vader certainly should not have been attacking twice in each turn like that (even with his "Relentless" ability). It's not exactly an obscure point in the rules either (it's clearly stated in bold letters in the basic rules of the game that apart from movement a unit cannot perform the same action more than once during its activation, whether or not those actions are free). These guys then went on to review the game when they haven't even got the basic rules down? Tsk.

1 hour ago, Sorastro said:

I confess I haven't watched the entire playthrough but Vader certainly should not have been attacking twice in each turn like that (even with his "Relentless" ability). It's not exactly an obscure point in the rules either (it's clearly stated in bold letters in the basic rules of the game that apart from movement a unit cannot perform the same action more than once during its activation, whether or not those actions are free). These guys then went on to review the game when they haven't even got the basic rules down? Tsk.

Man you know when Sorastro is calling you out you've messed up!

On 2/13/2018 at 3:27 AM, Kaiju said:

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.

It's Dust. Y'all remember Dust right?

If you wanted something groundbreaking, you're outta luck. If, like me, you wanted Dust except it'll sell and have people to play with because it's Star Wars, it's great.

2 minutes ago, grandmoffjoe said:

It's Dust. Y'all remember Dust right?

If you wanted something groundbreaking, you're outta luck. If, like me, you wanted Dust except it'll sell and have people to play with because it's Star Wars, it's great.

I thought it was based a bit more on Runewars miniatures to be honest, but I'm not familiar enough with either rules system to determine where the... inspiration comes from for the rules. I know FFG has quite successfully adapted rules/games to other settings in the past, one of the bigger examples I can think of is Genesys, which at it's core is the FFG Star Wars RPG without the license. Not that I am claiming there is anything wrong with this, in fact I think it is quite shrewd and a very good business plan.

1 hour ago, Caimheul1313 said:

I thought it was based a bit more on Runewars miniatures to be honest, but I'm not familiar enough with either rules system to determine where the... inspiration comes from for the rules. I know FFG has quite successfully adapted rules/games to other settings in the past, one of the bigger examples I can think of is Genesys, which at it's core is the FFG Star Wars RPG without the license. Not that I am claiming there is anything wrong with this, in fact I think it is quite shrewd and a very good business plan.

Runewars actually plays a lot more like Armada.

17 hours ago, grandmoffjoe said:

Runewars actually plays a lot more like Armada.

?

19 hours ago, grandmoffjoe said:

Runewars actually plays a lot more like Armada.

Exactly right. Legion is really falling more in the play style of the current crop of skirmish games with their roll to hit -> roll to save mechanics. No modifier math prior to the die roll as compared to prior generations of games.

The deployment and mission objectives as well as command cards per round are kinda interesting, tho save for the command cards, certainly have seen that before even in non-fantasy flight offerings. It's a system that works and goes far to that replayability and tournament aspects which if you're a fan of FFG you're probably into.

I don't think any of this is reason for Legion to be looked down on. It's all game design and solid well understood mechanics that have a history of working.