30 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I don't claim that the conversion kits are the bare minimum, nor that they were intended to be. However, to claim that they're not a favor to us is a bit disingenuous. They could have simply said, "Your old stuff is null and void! You must buy the new ships to play the new version!" and still have made a profit. The conversion kits are a way to allow older players to retain much of their collection instead of having to pay full price rebuying it all. Sure, they picked a price to maximize their profits, but the favor is in offering these kits at all at a price far below the price of all the individual ships.

If it's still too much for some people, that's understandable. I'm not saying everyone has to like the kits. However, the people who claim that FFG needs to cut long-term players some slack are completely missing the fact that the kits themselves are the slack FFG is cutting us!

The conversion kits are a way to mollify existing players and keep them buying more spaceships. If they hadn't done some kind of conversion set, they would have lost too many players and hurt their profits too much. They didn't do conversion sets to be nice, they did it because they need us to keep playing and NOT doing conversion sets would have cost them more.

21 minutes ago, Chucknuckle said:

The conversion kits are a way to mollify existing players and keep them buying more spaceships.

...which is precisely the point I'm making. You don't mollify someone by making their situation worse; you mollify someone by improving it, and sometimes by making concessions. Yes, FFG wants to make a profit, but at least here they seem to be trying to make it win-win (i.e. FFG gets more money, and existing players get to play 2.0 at a fraction of what it would cost otherwise).

Honestly, I'm not even really sure what we're arguing anymore, because the goalposts seem to keep moving. I guess to summarize my stance, what I'm saying is that if a player has an existing X-Wing 1.0 collection and is interested in playing 2.0, the conversion kits are a good deal. Whining that a good deal isn't an even better deal is just a bit silly, in my opinion. If it's not a good enough deal to entice you to 2.0, then stay playing 1.0. Some of us clearly think the deal is good enough, and others don't, and each can decide how they'll spend their money accordingly.

Just now, JJ48 said:

I guess to summarize my stance, what I'm saying is that if a player has an existing X-Wing 1.0 collection and is interested in playing 2.0, the conversion kits are a good deal.

To summarise my stance, the conversion kits are not a good deal.

I have a fairly modest collection, nothing close to what some on here have. However, out of the $50 Imperial Conversion kit, I'll have 20 or so useable ships worth of material immediately. Considering that one of those ships is the Decimator, I think this is totally fine. In fact, looking at it as a purely mathematical exercise, and not bothering to weight the math based on the cost of individual expansions, on average, that puts me at paying roughly $2.50 per ship to upgrade my Imperial collection. My Rebels would be a tiny bit higher, as I'd be repurposing my scum Z-95s to serve the Rebellion in 2.0. (I have never played Scum enough to justify buying the Scum Conversion kit....) And, when I say a tiny bit, I mean a TINY bit; as in, 19 usable ships in the Rebel box vs. 21 in the Imperial. So, both come out to being close enough to $2.50 per ship to convert.

That's not bad!!!

If FFG sold individual ship packs for the upgrades, basically card and cardboard only versions of the expansions, I would bet money that they would not be able to sell those packs at $2.50 per pack, and therefore a more a la carte approach would be far more expensive. I'm guessing (with no rationale to it, just a random guess) that the card and cardboard only packs per ship would be closer to $7.99 or more.

I get that some people have HUGE collections, and that the Conversion kits can't cover everything in those collections. But, the Kits will get you started and let you play around with some list ideas, and figure out where you need to shore up your collection, possibly by trade, the after market of EvilBay, or just buying individual ship expansions. Remember, FFG has indicated that there will be card and cardboard only packs to cover future releases, so chances are that more cards for A-wings, B-wings, TIE interceptors, bombers and so forth will still be available to veteran players for less than the $20 price tag of a full expansion.

If 2.0 interests you enough, the Kits offer a good entry point with a lot of room to experiment and figure out what you like to fly. And, the bigger your collection, the more you get out of a conversion kit. I think the Kits are good as a SINGLE purchase, unless you're both overflowing with disposable income and have a truly INSANE X-wing addiction. (How could anyone justify 4 Decimators???)

There is no need to dive in instantly and try to convert an entire collection to 2.0; just use the Kits to get started with a good selection of ships from your collection and start playing with new squads and seeing what works.

2 minutes ago, MarekMandalore said:

(How could anyone justify 4 Decimators???)

How could anyone justify not 4 Decimators?

3 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

How could anyone justify not 4 Decimators?

Unless you're playing HUUUGGGE games, that doesn't leave much room for TIE fighters, TIE interceptors, and other staples of the Imperial Fleet....

I feel dirty without a decent wing of TIEs.

Just now, MarekMandalore said:

Unless you're playing HUUUGGGE games, that doesn't leave much room for TIE fighters, TIE interceptors, and other staples of the Imperial Fleet....

I feel dirty without a decent wing of TIEs.

Yeah, sorry about that. I've been focused on L5R recently, and have probably been hanging out with the Dragon too much.

18 minutes ago, MarekMandalore said:

I have a fairly modest collection, nothing close to what some on here have. However, out of the $50 Imperial Conversion kit, I'll have 20 or so useable ships worth of material immediately. Considering that one of those ships is the Decimator, I think this is totally fine. In fact, looking at it as a purely mathematical exercise, and not bothering to weight the math based on the cost of individual expansions, on average, that puts me at paying roughly $2.50 per ship to upgrade my Imperial collection. My Rebels would be a tiny bit higher, as I'd be repurposing my scum Z-95s to serve the Rebellion in 2.0. (I have never played Scum enough to justify buying the Scum Conversion kit....) And, when I say a tiny bit, I mean a TINY bit; as in, 19 usable ships in the Rebel box vs. 21 in the Imperial. So, both come out to being close enough to $2.50 per ship to convert.

That's not bad!!!

If FFG sold individual ship packs for the upgrades, basically card and cardboard only versions of the expansions, I would bet money that they would not be able to sell those packs at $2.50 per pack, and therefore a more a la carte approach would be far more expensive. I'm guessing (with no rationale to it, just a random guess) that the card and cardboard only packs per ship would be closer to $7.99 or more.

I get that some people have HUGE collections, and that the Conversion kits can't cover everything in those collections. But, the Kits will get you started and let you play around with some list ideas, and figure out where you need to shore up your collection, possibly by trade, the after market of EvilBay, or just buying individual ship expansions. Remember, FFG has indicated that there will be card and cardboard only packs to cover future releases, so chances are that more cards for A-wings, B-wings, TIE interceptors, bombers and so forth will still be available to veteran players for less than the $20 price tag of a full expansion.

If 2.0 interests you enough, the Kits offer a good entry point with a lot of room to experiment and figure out what you like to fly. And, the bigger your collection, the more you get out of a conversion kit. I think the Kits are good as a SINGLE purchase, unless you're both overflowing with disposable income and have a truly INSANE X-wing addiction. (How could anyone justify 4 Decimators???)

There is no need to dive in instantly and try to convert an entire collection to 2.0; just use the Kits to get started with a good selection of ships from your collection and start playing with new squads and seeing what works.

5

I have a very large collection and its a good deal for me as well (2x kits of each faction) leaves me at around $2.20CAN per my ship (that's how many ships I am personally converting divided by the cost) However the math goes way down as apparently my LGS is going to charge $50 a kit (Canadian... so a fairly large discount) add in my 10% discount for being a loyal customer and its quite a bit cheaper (punched it up as about $1.5CAN a ship)

I have no idea how they could possibly make it cheaper.

17 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Bunk. Pure bunk, as a cursory glance at GW's list of publication history over the last couple of years will be enough to tell you. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Codices_(List)

Wrong. 40k 8th edition rules are actually free to download. You need the core rulebook and your army codex. That's 90% bucks tops unless you get some kind of limited edition. Listing a bunch of army books over the years just proves my point. When 40k changes editions you just need the core rulebook and your army book to keep playing.

I've been playing Warhammer fantasy battles since the mid 80's and the early Rogue Trader era when it first showed up in either Realms of Chaos or Slaves to Darkness. It's been like 30 years or so since that came out. You never had to buy conversion kits for your models.

8 minutes ago, Bulwyf said:

Wrong. 40k 8th edition rules are actually free to download. You need the core rulebook and your army codex. That's 90% bucks tops unless you get some kind of limited edition. Listing a bunch of army books over the years just proves my point. When 40k changes editions you just need the core rulebook and your army book to keep playing.

I've been playing Warhammer fantasy battles since the mid 80's and the early Rogue Trader era when it first showed up in either Realms of Chaos or Slaves to Darkness. It's been like 30 years or so since that came out. You never had to buy conversion kits for your models.

So you could take an army from first edition and buy 2x books and be playing an 8th edition game with no other costs? fully legal and good to go? (mostly curious as that seems off from what i have heard)

3 hours ago, Chucknuckle said:

Whatevs. They could give it away for free and still stay in business. X Wing is a juggernaut and they're relying on loyalty from the players both to the game and to the IP to keep it going. And it will. Star Wars is hugely popular and isn't going away anytime soon, and X Wing is a great game set to become even better. But they didn't work out the minimum price they could charge and then put that on the sticker, they worked out the maximum price the customers would bear, and put THAT on the sticker. The conversion kits are not a favour to us.

You really have no concept of how this industry works, or how hard it is to remain viable within it.

Just now, elfholme said:

You really have no concept of how this industry works, or how hard it is to remain viable within it.

I've forgotten more about the tabletop games industry than you'll ever know.

But seriously, the conversion kits are not a favour to us. They're a necessary item from FFGs point of view, and one they could make money from, so that's what they've done. Other games do not charge like this, but FFG hit on a goldmine when they decided to use rules, as game components. They can then change or add to the rules, and sell it to you as a 'new product'. When other companies do this, they usually do it at a much lower cost. Often they do it for free. The only company that charges as much as FFG is charging for this edition change is GW, the dreaded tabletop bogeyman who charges you a dollar every time you mention his name. The fact that FFG and GW can be mentioned in the same breath (with GW often coming out cheaper) is staggering, and yet people seem not to notice. It's ok to get ripped off when it comes to price if it's FFG doing it, apparently.

So yeah, keeping the lights on in the tabletop games industry is hard, but everyone else does it without charging FFG/GW prices so it must be possible.

Yeah, that doesn't exactly sound like a solid business plan. You go on about how the Conversion Kits should be the loss leader, but that makes no business sense at all, since the Conversion Kits are all about keeping an older player from buying more models. The Core Sets, as they have always said, are their ideal loss leaders. ****, they even sold the Falcon at slimmer margins than any other ship, and for good reason, as it is their best selling product.

Just now, Sithborg said:

the Conversion Kits are all about keeping an older player from buying more models.

They're not, they're about making the older players buy more models.

If there was no conversion kit, then I'm out. Easy peasy, thanks for all the memories, so long, and thanks for all the fish. I've got plenty of dials and ships and I'll just keep playing 1.0 with my friends.

Lots of people are ALREADY considering staying with 1.0 despite having access to conversion kits.

If there was no affordable and easy way to bring collections into 2.0, their player base would die overnight. The tournament scene would disappear, players who bought in wouldn't be able to find other groups to join because everyone would be playing something else, and the game would be dead on arrival. Obviously FFG couldn't risk that. They need to keep as many of the current players interested in the game as possible, as well as recruiting new players. So their solution to THEIR problem was the conversion kits. These aren't a fix for our problem, they're for FFG's benefit. As a collective we have much more power over them than they have over us, and not offering an upgrade path to 2.0 is the best way they could have collectively pissed all of us off at once.

So they give us the conversion kits, on which they decided to still make a tidy profit because **** the consumers, to keep us in the game. Because by wave II, there will be new content we want to buy DESPITE already having the conversion kits, and because having a healthy playing community encourages more new players to join. Even if us older players never bought another thing, we remain valuable to FFG because without us the new players have no one to play against. Without us the new players have much less incentive to buy the models in the first place because who would they use them with? But we will buy more product, because 2.0 will be awesome, and there will be awesome new pilots and upgrades to get, and lots of new ships to be released in all the different factions.

But without the conversion kits we won't be buying that new product because it doesn't mesh with our 1.0 X Wing. So from FFGs perspective, the conversion kits were vital. They needed them. But they're not a product being sold at a great price, they know the Star Wars IP is very attractive and attracts die-hard fans who spend hundreds of dollars on lego kits, scale models, props, and other assorted merchandise, and they know they've built a good game in 2.0 which addresses a lot of the concerns many of us have had with X Wing for a long time, so they put the highest price on the box they thought they could, without driving people away.

1 hour ago, Icelom said:

So you could take an army from first edition and buy 2x books and be playing an 8th edition game with no other costs? fully legal and good to go? (mostly curious as that seems off from what i have heard)

You can, the same way you can take your X-WING collection and play 2.0 with just the core set.

Everyone who say you just need 2 books for 40k (100$) compares this to upgrading X-WING with 1 conversion kit and a core set (90$)

For a full (tournament playable) conversion for a collection, 40k will take more. The same as for X-Wing if you want to get all your ships converted.

8 hours ago, JediSamurai said:

shipping has a cost too

True-
Last time I ordered something directly from China I paid about a dollar.
Last time I got something out of the US I did cost me about 20 dollar in shipping. Glad FFG ships from china to their local distributors.

17 hours ago, Gallanteer said:

But if you play in tournaments, GW block use of fielding models if they have been replaced with newer sculpts (which they always do).

Did you get a whole 15 new troop models for that $150? Their prices are ridiculous.

I have never encountered this. Non-GW models, yes, but I've seen people at events at warhammer world nottingham with armies including old metal terminators, crewed-turret razorbacks, you name it.

2 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

True-
Last time I ordered something directly from China I paid about a dollar.
Last time I got something out of the US I did cost me about 20 dollar in shipping. Glad FFG ships from china to their local distributors.

You overpaid... When I ordered an $1.50 USB cable the shipping was free.

How the Chinese manage that is beyond me...

If you play War hammer 40k and have 3 armies when they do a new rule book (£40 and then new Codexes £20 each) that's £100 before you realise you army isn't viable with the new rules and you need to buy eye wateringly expensive new model kits to be competitive again.

For x-wing I ordered 2 rebel Conversion Kits, 2 Imperial ones an the Core, (£180) and I will be listing all the extra conversions on e-bay for about £3 each and hopefully re-coup some of that.

Not too bad really.

6 hours ago, Bulwyf said:

You need the core rulebook and your army codex. That's 90 bucks tops unless you get some kind of limited edition. Listing a bunch of army books over the years just proves my point. When 40k changes editions you just need the core rulebook and your army book to keep playing.

I think you've just proven my point, actually. 90 bucks for rules - no models, just paper - every couple of years, into infinity and beyond.

And it's not merely "listing a bunch of army books over the years", as you'd happily handwave it as - Warhammer 40K 6th Edition was released in June 2012. X-Wing: The Miniatures Game was released in September 2012. That means almost every single book in that list from 6th edition onwards was released in the time it took X-Wing to recieve a 2nd Edition.

For reference, in the time span of 2012-2018, GW has released:

• the 6th edition rulebook
• 13 6th edition codexes
• 6 6th edition codex supplements
• 5 6th edition expansions
• the 7th edition rulebook
• 21 7th edition codexes
• 8 7th edition codex supplements
• 15 7th edition campaign/expansion books
• the 8th edition rulebook
• 5 8th edition indexes
• 17 8th edition codexes

So, in the time that it's taken FFG to release a 2nd edtion for X-Wing, a 40K player fielding just one army (say Space Marines, for the sake of argument), may well have bought

• 3 rulebooks (6th, 7th, 8th)
• 3 codexes (Codex: Space Marines 6th, 7th, 8th Edition)
• 1 index (Index: Imperium 8th edition)

Plus any number of supplements (chapter specific supplements, Death from the Skies, Gathering Storm etc). God help them if they field multiple armies, or allies etc.

Oh, and the X-Wing rules have always been available to download for free as well, btw.

I keep seeing this thing about how the 40K rules are free on line, so I went and had a look and it’s sort of true. You can get a rules document on line. It’s a long way from being a complete rules set though, trying to play 40K purely from that document would be something akin to trying to play D&D using only the free content from D&D Beyond.

55 minutes ago, costi said:

You overpaid... When I ordered an $1.50 USB cable the shipping was free.

How the Chinese manage that is beyond me...

There are old deals in place from when China where actually a 3rd world country where their postage is subsidized by the 1st world mail institutions. There work being done to remove these deals but it looks like it will take at least 2-3 years.

58 minutes ago, costi said:

You overpaid... When I ordered an $1.50 USB cable the shipping was free.

How the Chinese manage that is beyond me...

It was a rather large handbag. So I give them that it would be a little bit harder to make that free shipping, while stuff like an extra USB-Cable they most likely just throw into ... something like that Handbag and let guys like me pay for your shipping. ?

6 hours ago, Chucknuckle said:

I've forgotten more about the tabletop games industry than you'll ever know.

But seriously, the conversion kits are not a favour to us. They're a necessary item from FFGs point of view, and one they could make money from, so that's what they've done. Other games do not charge like this, but FFG hit on a goldmine when they decided to use rules, as game components. They can then change or add to the rules, and sell it to you as a 'new product'. When other companies do this, they usually do it at a much lower cost. Often they do it for free. The only company that charges as much as FFG is charging for this edition change is GW, the dreaded tabletop bogeyman who charges you a dollar every time you mention his name. The fact that FFG and GW can be mentioned in the same breath (with GW often coming out cheaper) is staggering, and yet people seem not to notice. It's ok to get ripped off when it comes to price if it's FFG doing it, apparently.

So yeah, keeping the lights on in the tabletop games industry is hard, but everyone else does it without charging FFG/GW prices so it must be possible.

This ^.

There are too many people who fail to see that FFG/Asmodee are doing the exact same thing to them that GW does to people who play their games; i.e. milk them for every penny that they're willing* to pay to stay in a game.

Given that FFG drip feed their rules in beside their models, how much would it have cost to get a complete set if you bought all of the expansions they came in?
Yep, you would have got some ok models along with them, but I'm pretty certain that it's quite a bit of money.

Cheers
Baaa

* Italicised as no-one forces anyone to buy either FFG/Asmodee games OR GW ones.

7 hours ago, Icelom said:

So you could take an army from first edition and buy 2x books and be playing an 8th edition game with no other costs? fully legal and good to go? (mostly curious as that seems off from what i have heard)

2 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

I think you've just proven my point, actually. 90 bucks for rules - no models, just paper - every couple of years, into infinity and beyond.

And it's not merely "listing a bunch of army books over the years", as you'd happily handwave it as - Warhammer 40K 6th Edition was released in June 2012. X-Wing: The Miniatures Game was released in September 2012. That means almost every single book in that list from 6th edition onwards was released in the time it took X-Wing to recieve a 2nd Edition.

For reference, in the time span of 2012-2018, GW has released:

• the 6th edition rulebook
• 13 6th edition codexes
• 6 6th edition codex supplements
• 5 6th edition expansions
• the 7th edition rulebook
• 21 7th edition codexes
• 8 7th edition codex supplements
• 15 7th edition campaign/expansion books
• the 8th edition rulebook
• 5 8th edition indexes
• 17 8th edition codexes

So, in the time that it's taken FFG to release a 2nd edtion for X-Wing, a 40K player fielding just one army (say Space Marines, for the sake of argument), may well have bought

• 3 rulebooks (6th, 7th, 8th)
• 3 codexes (Codex: Space Marines 6th, 7th, 8th Edition)
• 1 index (Index: Imperium 8th edition)

Plus any number of supplements (chapter specific supplements, Death from the Skies, Gathering Storm etc). God help them if they field multiple armies, or allies etc.

Oh, and the X-Wing rules have always been available to download for free as well, btw.

You are just proving my point...again. 40k having more editions than X-wing is the only reason someone in that time frame would have spent more on moving from one edition to another. "Converting" from one edition to another in 40k is still cheaper than moving from X-wing 1.0 to 2.0.

We can keep going around in circles if you want but your hyperbole and straw man arguments are never going to change that.