Heyo, Alino here!

So I assume we'll see more than Rebels and Empire eventually. (I mean, this is supposed to be a miniatures game, afterall, so it'd make sense to eventually bring in more factions)

And so it got me wondering how they'd bring in new factions. I've got my Army in a box idea thread from awhile ago, but those were just ideas for bringing in smaller groups that don't have much variety (Can see the thread here - https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/264286-army-in-a-box-sub-factions/ )

So I was thinking there's 3 ways they'd go with this.

1 - A Scum and Villainy Faction.
This seems like the most obvious choice, if they're wanting to stick strictly to the Galactic Civil War Era, although i'm not sure i like the idea of cramming Hutt Cartels / Black Sun / Mandalorians / ETC all into a single faction

2 - Prequel Era Factions
This seems like another direction they could take it, via introducing a Legion box for Separatists V Republic, and I can see each of these factions being quite different from Rebels and Empire. However, I know quite a few of the people playing this game are from the older generations of star wars fans that despise the prequel trilogy, so i'm not sure how good of an idea it'd be to introduce these guys. (I personally love the Clone Wars, but I have a feeling that in the Legion community, I'm in the minority)

3 - Sequel Trilogy Factions
I think if they go to either of the other trilogies in terms of factions, they'd do this one. That said, I'm not sure how they'd differentiate Rebels and Resistance. In my eyes, First Order would be a more elite Galactic Empire faction, with less models per unit and a stronger focus on special forces units (such as First Order Flametroopers and the like), although with the Resistance.... I guess Resistance could sorta be a faction that uses primarily small squads that are cheap (so cheap / small squads) but are really customizable (Or erm, as customizable as Legion allows), although ya know, it's just tough to differentiate them from rebels.

Anyways, those are just the 3 ways I see them going with this. And I think no matter what we'll probably get some form of Scum faction.

in the past they have produced a "big box" expansion with enough for a small game with the new factions (See RuneWars for the closest thing we have seen)

Mercenary hopefully with subfactions - that way you can build in different ways. If you stick to the Droid Rebellion, you get certain bonuses. If you mix mandalorians with trandoshans, then you lose some benefits, etc.

prequel era stuff I wish they wouldn't mix just so Jango Fett and Darth Vader don't work on the same team, etc for making sense of the time table

I don't want to see list building bonuses. There are plenty of tactical and thematic reasons for building your force a certain way. We don't need an arbitrary bonus because we used only snowtroopers.

How they will bring them out I think Runewars is a good template, they'll probably do a Faction Starter expansion which is like, half a core set (priced accordingly) and maybe some of the extra gubs you need but maybe not. Commander, couple corps and supports. So a "Separatist Faction Expansion" would probably be Grievous, x2 B-1s and STAPs as an example.

I hope for PT before ST because the ST era really needs time to diversify itself and not just be "slightly different molds and poses than the OT units" because that is literally all they are right now. Clone Wars units would allow for way more diversity in corps while also possibly some similarities to other units. Scum/Mercs may be a safer bet, you could do rules to include them in either other faction as non-faction specific or make them stand alone very easily. If you want to encourage cohesion (Mandos, Hutt Cartel, Black Sun, Corporate Sector, Zann Consortium) probably just better to give the units synergy instead of actual list-building bonuses.

If we get Separatists, then i personally really hope we get the Hailfire Droid

I don’t think there will be multiple factions in this game, if there are it will be a year or two down the road.

I think the "half a core set" idea is the most likely, depending on if they are introducing one new faction or two. If they are introducing two, I could see a second core set being the means of initially releasing both. One thing I wouldn't want to see is the "mercenary" idea as then it dilutes the differences between Rebels and Imperials.

I do agree that future factions are likely to be delayed at least until both the Rebels and Imperials have a couple of units for each part of the Force Org chart, but think that as an infantry based wargame additional factions are highly likely.

I don't expect there to be any more factions.

Im hoping for prequel, has great scope, content and the models would look great.

When you think about, 2 different generations of people had childhood built around a sequence of movies. With that you get groups that love all the movies. Then, folks that love their childhood trilogy and have something from meh ... dislike ... disdain for the other movies.

I appreciate folks wanting "their stuff" from the movies they have bonds with. Hopefully, that comes to fruition.

My observation is Disney not the biggest fan of the prequel material. Throw in some of the dialogue from TLJ and, well, it was made clear some distance was to be put between the heady days of Luke & Han and, now, Rey and Poe. Yet we have the one off movies that, as of now, tie into the story/time line associated with the Luke & Han years. So ... mixed messages ... but I get it.

With that I don't see anything not tied to the R1-Original Trilogy being released until it has been EXHAUSTED of content. Movies ... books .. cartoons ... games ... everything approved tied to the story arch just S-Q-U-E-E-Z-E-D of anything and everything possible. Then, all the forward looking content from Force Awakens and TLJ. Low probability on Clone Era material. Just an opinion.

I don't agree and it is not awesome, as an entire age group of gamers are shorted "their stuff." I view the OT through a sentimental lens , as it was my entire childhood, yet I could get down with Kit Fisto/Clone troops.

There is a chance here to appease a whole lot of people and make a significant amount of $. Holding out hope just not seeing it happening near-term (2-3 yrs)

Besides the Clone Wars era, FFG could easily do one or more criminal factions from the OT era.

I think the perception of Disney trying to delete the prequels is a bit overblown, more I'd say they are focusing on their own new stuff in general. Destiny has recently added characters from the prequels (including JarJar), and the Disney cartoon "Rebels" has a ton of characters and elements carried over from the Clone Wars cartoon. I believe there have even been a couple of comics released in the past couple years dealing set in the Clone Wars era.

As for Legion, the AT-RT was pulled straight from the prequels/Clone Wars cartoon. They could have created some other vehicle fulfilling a similar role, or been really cheesy and just released Rebels on speederbikes (which I wouldn't be surprised to see eventually).

Maybe we can play the game as if for a while first?

I would love to just focus on this core set for a while, but, if in fact they do bring in a third faction like Mercenaries or Scum and Villainy then it should at least come in a mini starter set and contain new scenario cards that justify their insertion in the game as I would not want to just replace the Empire or Rebels with different set figures.

Dont get me wrong, it would be cool to have a set containing the 6 bounty hunters from the scene in Empire Strikes Back with Jabba or Boba Fett as commander with Dengar, Bossk, IG-88, Zuckuss and 4-LOM. If no Jabba then add Greedo or a Weequay or any of the other aliens from Jabba's palace.

3 hours ago, flightmaster101 said:

Maybe we can play the game as if for a while first?

We'll see if it ever happens, they've only been hyping this for 8months.

Honestly, having played several other wargames before, they have to have more factions than 2 or the whole thing becomes a giant waste of time. One of the reasons "we" ask these questions, is because at this point, some of us have already built ever possible combination of army with what has been previewed before we ever had a model released. There has to be more variations on the content or it gets pretty stale pretty fast. I think ffg realizes this as well. we'll see if they can keep up with the thirst.

I like the idea of a faction starter box. I hope they don't just go with a single "Scum" faction. The Hutts, Black Sun, and Droid Gotra all have the "manpower" to be their own faction and their own feel.

The Black Sun could be expensive and High Tech.

The Hutts would be a mix of low tech and High Health units.

The Droid Gotra would be your typical swarm army with lots of low cost corps.

I'm sure there are other Pirate groups/ planetary defense forces that I'm missing that could get their own places as well.

It'd be really neat to get the faction

BOUNTY HUNTERS
With their whole theme being that they only have 1 Force Organization choice (Bounty Hunter), and Rebels and Empire could take 1 Bounty Hunter in their armies, but a Bounty Hunters list could run however many they want per list. And it'd be an army of primarily special named characters, that could capture objectives.

I have NO IDEA how balanced it'd be, but it'd just be cool

I still think this game will be like Armada and that the various leaders will bring different advantages to their lists and thus create a wide variety of lists archetypes.

Additional factions are almost guaranteed. The RRG, under Army Building - Upgrades, describes the Empire as "aligned with the Dark Side", and the Rebels as aligned with the Light. That implies at least one more faction for each side of the Force. I'm hoping for Prequel factions, but I think Sequel stuff is more likely even though distinguishing the Resistance from the Rebels is going to be fairly difficult.

As to how, I think army boxes. A half-core, with one or two new sets of scenario cards like we are getting in the terrain packs, a leader, two Corps units and a Support. Maybe throw in a themed objective marker, call it $55-60. Then follow that rapidly with another Corps, a Heavy, a SpecOps, and maybe a second leader. Get that all released within two or three months.

Besides distinguishing the Resistance, there is the issue of not having a lot of examples of their infantry equipment/forces, unlike both the GCW or Clone Wars era. But we'll see! I just want Hondo Ohnaka as a Commander unit .

Legion looks like it could be one of the best games ever. I really want to love it. But I'm buying the core set, but after that I'm gonna basically boycott this game.

After all of Disney's emphasis on the Episode IV-VI timeline, I'm getting just a little burnt out on Rebels vs. Empire and I kinda want something different. So I'm not going to seriously buy in until we get Clone Wars factions.

The other thing is that even if people don't like the prequels as movies, the factions from those movies are more suited to a miniatures game. Gameplay is more important than anything else, and I think FFG will only be able to build a really good miniatures game once it has four or more distinct factions, and the best way to do that is to add Republic and Seperatist.

Sorry to be a party pooper, but I just can't get myself hyped for yet another expensive FFG Star Wars game that only covers two factions and a 5-year timeframe in a universe that actually has hundreds of distinct governments/factions and tens of thousands of years of history.

21 hours ago, dboeren1 said:

I don't expect there to be any more factions.

Any particular reason why?

@Kieransi out of curiosity then why even buy the core set? It's not technically a complete game, and should Clone Wars be released you can just start buying stuff then. I'm not trying to be rude, just genuinely curious as to your reasoning.

Rebels vs Empire (and then New Republic VS Imperial Remnant with the same units) is the only currently canon conflict that was fleshed out for 25 years, of course that is what pretty much every Star Wars game is going to at least start with. That's the era that has the most stuff written about it, it's the era the "Star Wars stories" movies are set around (or at least characters from the OT), and the setting of the most recent cartoon. On the other hand, "Attack of the Clones" came out 16 years ago, and the Clone Wars cartoon ended 10 years ago. The GCW is the time period people are seeing, so that's the time period that is most likely to draw attention and make someone seeing the units on a shelf go "OH! I remember these guys from ______." If this game were developed in the early 2000's we might have seen the Clone and Droid armies as the starting factions, but that's a big "what if".

I hope we see Clone Wars era factions eventually, but I understand this is a new game, and FFG is primarily a board game company. I'm not surprised they are starting slow, and hope to see more factions/eras brought in once they get a "comfortable" amount of units for the Empire and Rebellion.

31 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

@Kieransi out of curiosity then why even buy the core set? It's not technically a complete game, and should Clone Wars be released you can just start buying stuff then. I'm not trying to be rude, just genuinely curious as to your reasoning.

Rebels vs Empire (and then New Republic VS Imperial Remnant with the same units) is the only currently canon conflict that was fleshed out for 25 years, of course that is what pretty much every Star Wars game is going to at least start with. That's the era that has the most stuff written about it, it's the era the "Star Wars stories" movies are set around (or at least characters from the OT), and the setting of the most recent cartoon. On the other hand, "Attack of the Clones" came out 16 years ago, and the Clone Wars cartoon ended 10 years ago. The GCW is the time period people are seeing, so that's the time period that is most likely to draw attention and make someone seeing the units on a shelf go "OH! I remember these guys from ______." If this game were developed in the early 2000's we might have seen the Clone and Droid armies as the starting factions, but that's a big "what if".

I hope we see Clone Wars era factions eventually, but I understand this is a new game, and FFG is primarily a board game company. I'm not surprised they are starting slow, and hope to see more factions/eras brought in once they get a "comfortable" amount of units for the Empire and Rebellion.

I am still going to buy in just because it looks fun and I want to at least see how the core mechanics work. And I love painting minis.

Plus there's exactly one other person in my entire city who's going to play it. I don't want him to be sad and alone. Every single other person at all of the game stores in town has said that they think the game is going to die because there aren't enough factions.

I dunno. I just think once we've got all the stuff from the first few months of this game, and they've done five or six variants of stormtroopers vs. rebels, they're already going to be dipping into stuff that's just as obscure as all the Clone Wars stuff. Clone Wars has a wealth of clone trooper types, droid types, generals for both sides, various small walkers and tanks, and other things that would be perfect for this game. I just can't get that jazzed for this game until we get a glimmer of hope that that stuff might show up.

That said, I'm still really excited to go pick up my minis tomorrow and paint them.

@Kieransi I think those people who feel it is going to die quickly will be eating crow. After all, X-wing and Armada both started (and in one case still have) 2 factions. Heck, Warhammer 40k started more as a RPG than a true wargame, and a fair few wargames that are still going started very small.. Could FFG have spent a long time in R&D building multiple release factions? Yes, but then that would a portion of their budget devoted to making money at some future date when the game was "ready." By launching with just two, they can start making money while they work on other things.

But thanks for answering! Good reasons.