So I am brand new to competitive IA, played my first regional in March (Raleigh regional) and finished 6th in Swiss, losing in the round of 8. Loved it. Love the fancy dice. Great experience and very welcoming community, even for a newbie. Signed up for nationals at NOVA and am looking forward to the challenge.

Rather than start another “state of the meta” thread, I want to hear others’ thoughts on the state of the game for bringing new players in to the competitive arena. I think the long term health of the game depends on retaining current players and bringing in new ones, and this is such a good game I want to ensure that happens.

I started playing campaign a year and a half ago with several buddies. Then we fiddled with skirmish a year ago and we all got hooked, leading us to build the best lists with the pieces we had. Most of those lists stunk even against one another, which led us as a group to buy every expansion and every A&V pack, sometimes in multiples. Then one of our group of four said “hey, there is a regional in town, let’s sign up, train some and play in it.” So we did, all 4 of us. We trained against each other on the tourney maps refining our lists, played some on Vassal, and all that. Then we realized that sharing a single master set of game pieces wasn’t sustainable and we each had to collect our own smattering of map tiles, official FFG maps, tokens, command cards, figures, terminals, doors, etc. to fill out our lists (which ended up fairly complementary but still required two or three of every big box expansion).

The four of us showed up at the tournament expecting to find others like us, who were just starting out, lived in the area, probably wouldn’t all have painted figures (two of us are painters so all of ours were painted), etc. We had low expectations for how well we would do, but hoped one of us would win some dice for the group. Then the other 12 players rolled in, and everybody seemed to know each other. Not from living in the area, but from playing each other at Nationals and Worlds. And multiple other regionals. Everyone else had previously played regionals and most had played nationals. Everyone seemingly had fancy prize dice, painted figures, prize tokens, alt-art cards, prize score counters. I even had someone use a laser device to prove the stair-side long sniper shot on Jabba’s Palace (shout out to Joey). The 4 of us were the ONLY people from Raleigh, there were two others from NC, and the other 10 were from out of state. Like Georgia, New Jersey, Philly, Maryland, and elsewhere up and down the east coast.

Talk about intimidation. And that was before I discovered in the past week how good of a national /world reputation some of those players have, and how many regionals some of them had already won. The state of competition was way higher than I expected, but thankfully everyone was cool. As a lawyer, I am our group’s resident rules and FAQ nerd, but I got helpfully corrected on a command card interpretation or two (urgency does not help palp pop out and then pop back to hide; hard to win when you burn the card, learn you can’t move him back and strand him to get fried by IG to start round 2).

Thankfully I got lucky enough to lead off the tourney in a less intimidating fashion against one of my 4 friends, Josh, who I had taught the game to, and the “manatee” could not beat the “mento.” I then got some nice breaks against another of my friends, averagejo3gamer, won 3 of 4 games total and pulled out top 8 before being squashed by Ryan J’s unshakeable Vader list.

So after that long intro, my “state of the game for new competitors” questions are:

1. Are regionals normally so stacked with experienced players, and are newbies really as rare as it seemed to me? Is 16 people really the right size for a regional, or shouldn’t this game be gathering twice that many? Last time I checked, a few people like Star Wars. How can things be improved to get more people “hooked” on the game? Do store championships reach a broader crowd? A few ideas:

- special prize pack for newbies, and top newbie gets the cool dice, even if they aren’t top 8 (shout out to the local guy who couldn’t play the tournament but dropped by at the beginning and gave us newbies a bunch of free alt art cards he had gotten from prior tourneys—that was awesome)

- “bring a newbie” reward/incentive of some sort to existing regional experienced players

2. How do we get people into a game where the price of entry (acquiring nearly every set and expansion) is so high?

-Have FFG games ever done starter sets or something like that to make a skirmish game like this more price accessible for newbies? If I could shell out $125 to outfit myself with a tournament ready set of rebel/Merc/imp figures, cards and maps, that would be way easier than what we ended up having to do. Then once hooked I shell out to buy everything. I pity the player who doesn’t have 4 buddies to split/share costs, components and painting efforts.

- Should those of us with experience collaborate to offer components on loan to newer people ahead of tournaments?

3. Rules. Are. Complicated. And. In. Seventeen. Million. Different. Places. Can a new fulsome set of rules be released or compiled by someone in a useful way for players to process and absorb? My day job pays me to write and understand 50 page legal agreements, so I don’t mind the challenge, but these rules are hard to parse and absorb. I am sure I am not the only one, and that can be a huge turnoff for some.

4. Any ideas on how to lessen the intimidation factor?

Thanks for reading and look forward to some responses.

Welcome to the game! I'm really glad to have more players with us. I couldn't make it to any regionals this year but I have played in other organized IA events and I enjoy acting like a know-it-all everywhere on Internet.

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1. Are regionals normally so stacked with experienced players, and are newbies really as rare as it seemed to me? Is 16 people really the right size for a regional, or shouldn’t this game be gathering twice that many? Last time I checked, a few people like Star Wars. How can things be improved to get more people “hooked” on the game? Do store championships reach a broader crowd  ?

Regionals are the gateway competition for Worlds, so there's going to be more experienced players attending them. They can be any size, depending on the region. (I'll let those who actually attended regionals this year tell you the numbers at their contests.) Store championships typically bring out roughly the same number of players, maybe a few more casual players.

What gets people "hooked" is the gameplay, IMO. Either they play a game or two and they love it or they don't. Then after they decide that they love it, they've gotta decide if their wallet loves it just as much.

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2. How do we get people into a game where the price of entry (acquiring nearly every set and expansion) is so high?

Since the Jabba's Realm expansion, the skirmish game has changed considerably. Many of the older box expansions are not necessarily required to put together a competitive list. I have been experimenting with list building using a Core Set, one of the newest expansions (Heart of the Empire or Jabba's Realm), and 4 of the Ally/Villain blister packs. Purchasing those 6 items will cost a player around $200-250 -- about the same buy-in as a Legion army and slightly cheaper than 40K.

Having a community of local players can also help offset the cost. The person who buys Jabba's Realm is going to be playing either Weequays OR Jet Troopers at a tournament, not both. If new players are not playing at an official FFG event, then they can proxy units and cards they want to play.

Once they get into high-level play, they'll run into the Negation issue: buying the Return to Hoth box set for that command card only. There may be other types of lists that they want to play where a card or figure in a previous box expansion will be necessary. At that point, they're completely sucked in and hopeless like the rest of us.

Additionally, Regionals & Store Championships aren't the only events that FFG allows. Once every 3 months, FFG allows game stores to purchase tournament kits that have cool alternate art deployment cards, acrylic tokens, special damage/victory point dials, etc. Then newer players in your area get the chance for some cool IA swag without the serious competitive atmosphere of a Regional.

Working with one of your friendly local game stores to host tournaments for those kits and to host to regular IA meetup nights will help a lot with increasing your local area's player base. In Lexington, we have one store hosting a Star Wars game night on Tuesdays and another store hosting on Thursday nights. This month, both stores will be running tourneys using the kits I mentioned above; one of the stores and I run a monthly casual tournament where there may be no prizes but fun is had anyways.

The goal is to create a local community of gamers. The only way I was able to find other people playing IA is through the local X-Wing players Facebook page. Now several local IA players and I are on a FB chat and we use it to schedule meetups. We also have a Meetup group and FB group to announce tournaments and be searchable for newer players.

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3. Rules. Are. Complicated. And. In. Seventeen. Million. Different. Places. Can a new fulsome set of rules be released or compiled by someone in a useful way for players to process and absorb? My day job pays me to write and understand 50 page legal agreements, so I don’t mind the challenge, but these rules are hard to parse and absorb. I am sure I am not the only one, and that can be a huge turnoff for some.

The RRG and FAQ cover about 90% of what you'll encounter in a skirmish game. The rest is learning by experience. I had to learn about Urgency and movement points granted using a special action the hard way, too. A few months ago, a friend from Louisville came into town to play and I corrected him on a rule that he and his IA group there had been playing wrong for who knows how long. I think that's just happens in games like this, but I'm sure some games are much better with documenting specific rulings than FFG.

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4. Any ideas on how to lessen the intimidation factor?

We talked about building a list for a lower price point than "buy everything". I've found that tutorials for interested players works pretty good too.

When I'm introducing skirmish to a new player, I have them use a pretty simple IG-88 & double eWeequays list. We play a straight-up deathmatch; no objectives, no locked doors. I give them the general idea of how to play each figure (Prowl with eWeequays! Give out power tokens with Clawdite!) and we play with command cards face up. Before we start, I'll walk them through one or two simple attacks, showing them the attack & defense symbols and working audibly through the math. In the full deathmatch, I let them win, but I will punish them once for leaving a figure out of cover.

If they want to play again, they can go online and make a list which I'll fill out (proxying anything that I don't have). Then we can play a proper skirmish game with the objectives.

TL;DR: If you want more people to play your game, you have to have somebody in charge of building that community. Eventually it will yield a few more people that'll beat you and make you wish you didn't invite them to play.

BTW: If you guys ever want to drive 6+ hours for a game, come on up to Lexington! We'll drink bourbon and cuss about dodges.

The whole thing about having all the map tiles are bonkers stupid IMO. Reminds me of the way Games Workshop has done business for those who remember/knows. Other then that I really love how the “meta” is atm for new players. You can really win with almost anything. You don’t need to heavily invest to be competitive. I started less then a year ago and managed to win a regionals already without owning half of what’s out there. But it makes me want more! Hehe. I’m glad we have a newbie friendly TO in Denmark, who makes it easy to get into the game and skirmish scene.

What that cnemmick guys said. 100%.

In these competitive games, there are people who want to win the fancy swag and those that are happy just playing a bunch of games on one day without their wives giving them a hard time. The ratio of the former to the latter tends to increase the higher the level of the tournament.

I'm a bit of a rules lawyer (which pays less than a real lawyer), so as long as people play by the rules, I'm ok with that. It took some getting used to, but now what I do is to show up with something fun and be happy to leave with an alternate art card. In fact, other than the recent regionals dice (which are super sexy), I don't get hung up on swag...except for the cards!

So it all depends on what you want to get out of it. I've rarely seen an internet list in our local community.

On ‎5‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 8:40 PM, Doordonot said:

So I am brand new to competitive IA, played my first regional in March (Raleigh regional) and finished 6th in Swiss, losing in the round of 8. Loved it. Love the fancy dice. Great experience and very welcoming community, even for a newbie. Signed up for nationals at NOVA and am looking forward to the challenge.

...

So after that long intro, my “state of the game for new competitors” questions are:

1. Is 16 people really the right size for a regional, or shouldn’t this game be gathering twice that many?

2. How do we get people into a game where the price of entry (acquiring nearly every set and expansion) is so high?

3. Rules. Are. Complicated. And. In. Seventeen. Million. Different. Places.

4. Any ideas on how to lessen the intimidation factor?

First things first: Dude, I love your screenname! Doordonot, meet thereisnotry! ?

Second, w elcome to the game! I've played a lot of competitive games over the years, and this is (at least IMHO) the single best competitive game I've ever played! I hope that you and your entire group have a blast!

Now for your questions:

Your Questions #1 (Numbers) and #2 (Price) are intimately related...as in, joined at the hip, from birth. That is, it seems like one of the major reasons why attendance is so low (Question #1) is precisely because the cost of entry is so high (Question #2). The stupid rule about having to own all the map tiles, the headache of not having enough Elite Deployment cards in a box in order to cover the groups in the box (ie, just 1 Elite Jet Trooper card when there are 2 full groups of those figures in the Jabba's Realm box), etc. Ugh! It is needlessly over-expensive for new players to get into the game, and the onus for that problem rests entirely on FFG's shoulders. A few simple tweaks in their business model, or else releasing a simple Skirmish Core Set would do wonders for the game: it would lower the barrier of entry and thereby help grow the local IA Skirmish communities. We as a community have been lamenting these things for a long time.

Question 3 (Rules): Yes, I agree that the rules can be a bit overwhelming. Because of the distribution model and the addition of specific tournament-only rules/regulations, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. I think the answer is just to keep playing, and especially against players who've been in the game for a while. There's a really helpful thread pinned to the top of this forum: Skirmish Resources ...it has several links (some re: rules) which are superbly helpful for new Skirmish players.

Question 4 (Intimidation): Play lots of games with your local group, so that all of you together can get a better feel for the game. The best way to improve at IA Skirmish is simply to play IA Skirmish...the nice thing is that it's also the most fun way to improve! Seriously, just keep playing. Critically important things like timing and thinking ahead can only happen once you've gotten a good "feel" for the game. Starting at Regionals (which this year offered the SWEETEST prizes ever!) is the most intimidating local scenario that you can get...try finding some Store Championships next, as well as some local "just for fun" tournaments locally. Also, there's Vassal...I've found that just about everybody on Vassal is more than happy to help someone new learn the ropes. If you want a great place to learn about the game, and get ideas for squads/lists, watch the Twitch feeds from this year's World Championship and follow the Worlds discussion threads that are active in these forums right now. Then watch the matches step by step, move by move, trying to figure out why the player made this move instead of that one, or why the timing of that move was important, etc.

I think it's great that you and your group have joined the game! I hope you'll continue to enjoy it.

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1. Are regionals normally so stacked with experienced players, and are newbies really as rare as it seemed to me? Is 16 people really the right size for a regional, or shouldn’t this game be gathering twice that many? Last time I checked, a few people like Star Wars. How can things be improved to get more people “hooked” on the game? Do store championships reach a broader crowd? A few ideas:

- special prize pack for newbies, and top newbie gets the cool dice, even if they aren’t top 8 (shout out to the local guy who couldn’t play the tournament but dropped by at the beginning and gave us newbies a bunch of free alt art cards he had gotten from prior tourneys—that was awesome)

- “bring a newbie” reward/incentive of some sort to existing regional experienced players

2. How do we get people into a game where the price of entry (acquiring nearly every set and expansion) is so high?

-Have FFG games ever done starter sets or something like that to make a skirmish game like this more price accessible for newbies? If I could shell out $125 to outfit myself with a tournament ready set of rebel/Merc/imp figures, cards and maps, that would be way easier than what we ended up having to do. Then once hooked I shell out to buy everything. I pity the player who doesn’t have 4 buddies to split/share costs, components and painting efforts.

- Should those of us with experience collaborate to offer components on loan to newer people ahead of tournaments?

3. Rules. Are. Complicated. And. In. Seventeen. Million. Different. Places. Can a new fulsome set of rules be released or compiled by someone in a useful way for players to process and absorb? My day job pays me to write and understand 50 page legal agreements, so I don’t mind the challenge, but these rules are hard to parse and absorb. I am sure I am not the only one, and that can be a huge turnoff for some.

4. Any ideas on how to lessen the intimidation factor?

You're a victim of the east coast beast coast. All the east coast regionals are gonna be tough because there's a big concentration of serious players over here. My first regional I played against several top 8 worlds players and missed the dice by two places. Honestly not getting the dice is what made me come back to another regional. The dice shouldn't be given away too easily. There are only like 4 regionals within 5 hours of DC/Philly, so most of the guys around here are willing to drive to make it to a couple.

I know most of the east coast guys and they're very welcoming if you talk to them. They're all very good players, but that's kind of the point of going to a regional. I think it's awesome that I can roll up to a regional tournament and meet some of the best guys in the world at this game. It will only make you a better player.

As to the price and the rules, those are both FFG problems. Members of the community have asked for solutions, but FFG probably won't change anything. It's frustrating for everyone that you need to buy two boxes to get two elite deployment cards. My best suggestion for material is to ask on the forums if you can borrow stuff beforehand, lots of people are willing to share with new players. For rules there are a couple of resources as suggested above to help new players. I'm a decent IA player and I still misinterpret a rule from time to time, so don't let it discourage you.

Perhaps avoid that people have to buy Hoth (most of the times not available in shops) just for Negation command card?

My solution for introducing newbies to the game is something like:

1. Buy the core

2. Buy the "skirmish special pack"

3. Buy HotE

4. Buy in-meta ally/villain packs you need for your list

Now you're good to go for competitive game. No need to buy useless boxes for getting those few cards you need. The skirmish special pack should be something like "all you need from out of meta boxes and packs to deploy any of the top 16 list in last world championship", provided that you have core, latest expansion and in-meta ally/villain packs. Also the skirmish special pack would be great to get a second eWeequay, eJet, rSmuggler, etc.

Once they fixed the game this way, it'll be possible to release skirmish expansions and campaign expansions separately. So that skirmish will get rid of the burden of campaign.

Buy the skirmish pack #1 ??

Skirmish Pack 1 can someone explain please, as like poster I am still very new to AI

1 minute ago, welsh1954 said:

Buy the skirmish pack #1 ??

Skirmish Pack 1 can someone explain please, as like poster I am still very new to AI

I modified original post, but my idea is to get all you need for skirmish in one box. Because it's shameful that sometimes you need a big box like Hoth just for 1 command card.

Thanks for clearing it up.

Having trouble getting Jabbas Realm anywhere at the moment and HotE

One solution to the map problem is to print off the maps in advance. There’s a high res file somewhere (help me out here people ? ) that you can print off for about $8 a map. This aren’t tournament legal, but if you talk with the TO it might be allowed in anything up to the Regional level (the TO okayed it for the two Regionals I went to).

Also, if you get involved in organizing local store tourneys, you can run those how you want. I run my store’s tourneys, and I end up supplying about 3 lists and my friend @Brigadierblu supplies another 2-3, or at least supplementing those lists. We allow proxies and generally tone down our level of lists to help my local friends enjoy the game more.

But your experience was the same as mine a couple years back. I played campaign, started dabbling with skirmish, and then said hey, there’s a Regional in Tulsa. Why don’t I check that out.

Well, that was back in the Vader’s Finest days, and Grant and Jesse were there, and @Masterchiefspiff came in from KS, and and a few drove up for Dallas. I got smoked ? . However, I met some cool people and then buddied around with them the next time I saw them at a tournament, and now we’re friends. Fast forward to this Regional season, I stayed in a house with a bunch of KS and ND guys for the Omaha Regional (shout out to @ThatJakeGuy for organizing that!), stayed with @Masterchiefspiff for the KS Regional, and then stayed in a house with 10 guys for Worlds, with the already mentioned players and more, including new friends I met in Omaha and others I hadn’t met yet. My point is that it can be intimidating but the competitive IA community is fairly small, and man it’s just the best. The more you go out to tourneys, the more you’ll see familiar faces and become friends with some truly awesome people.

So, hopefully that was encouraging and not just a long winded backstory. ?

Also, consider joining the Zion’s Finest slack channel. That’s another great way to meet people in the community.

-ryanjamal

5 hours ago, Golan Trevize said:

Once they fixed the game this way, it'll be possible to release skirmish expansions and campaign expansions separately. So that skirmish will get rid of the burden of campaign.

I hate to break it to you, but it might very well be "the burden of campaign" that's keeping the product line going . I love IA skirmish - it's my favourite game bar none - but based on the numbers that we see in tournaments I think it's probably safe to say that it's not organized play skirmish that's driving sales of the game. I don't think we're going to start seeing regular skirmish releases without any campaign content any time soon.

With that said, I agree with everything else you've said and everything else in this thread, particularly about how helpful it would be to release a sort of skirmish starter set that includes everything you need to start playing (except I guess the map tiles for the tourney-legal maps, but I haven't really figured out how they can get around that one yet). I think a one-off release like that could work wonders in getting people interested, and once they're hooked...

And yeah, I know I've kind of contradicted myself after saying that it's mostly campaign players that drive sales, but I'd bet that there's a pretty decent-sized group of skirmish players who start by playing a campaign. I'd imagine that in most campaign groups there's only one person who buys the box and expansions, the rest just show up and play. Maybe one day a few of them try a skirmish and enjoy it, but now what are their options? Is buddy really going to buy a whole new core set to join in a tournament when fully 80% of the content in the box is either campaign-specific or unplayable competitively? Some might, but many probably won't. But if he could get a cheaper skirmish started that only includes the relevant content, well maybe that's a worthwhile investment. From FFG's point of view it might initially be a bit of a loss in some cases (someone who would have bought the core now gets just the skirmish starter) but as we all know that once that guy gets invested even a little in the game he's going to be buying expansions until the end of time.

Your group sounds a lot like my group when we started out. We kept a list of what we all owned to be sure we owned a copy of everything haha. As was mentioned, players are generally welcome to let you borrow extras as need.

Also, as the saying goes, practice makes perfect, so get on Vassal! Its easy, and a great way to get in games when you can't play in person. The vassal community is also amazing and allows regular interaction with some of the greats like DT (3 time world champ, Brett Kelly (top 4 worlds regular), just to mention a couple.

I've learned a lot from Brett Kelly's Twitch streams and Zion's Finest's podcasts. There are several other great podcasts running around these days too. Check out the Pinned threads for links to all of them!

9 hours ago, ManateeX said:

I hate to break it to you, but it might very well be "the burden of campaign" that's keeping the product line going . I love IA skirmish - it's my favourite game bar none - but based on the numbers that we see in tournaments I think it's probably safe to say that it's not organized play skirmish that's driving sales of the game. I don't think we're going to start seeing regular skirmish releases without any campaign content any time soon.

With that said, I agree with everything else you've said and everything else in this thread, particularly about how helpful it would be to release a sort of skirmish starter set that includes everything you need to start playing (except I guess the map tiles for the tourney-legal maps, but I haven't really figured out how they can get around that one yet). I think a one-off release like that could work wonders in getting people interested, and once they're hooked...

And yeah, I know I've kind of contradicted myself after saying that it's mostly campaign players that drive sales, but I'd bet that there's a pretty decent-sized group of skirmish players who start by playing a campaign. I'd imagine that in most campaign groups there's only one person who buys the box and expansions, the rest just show up and play. Maybe one day a few of them try a skirmish and enjoy it, but now what are their options? Is buddy really going to buy a whole new core set to join in a tournament when fully 80% of the content in the box is either campaign-specific or unplayable competitively? Some might, but many probably won't. But if he could get a cheaper skirmish started that only includes the relevant content, well maybe that's a worthwhile investment. From FFG's point of view it might initially be a bit of a loss in some cases (someone who would have bought the core now gets just the skirmish starter) but as we all know that once that guy gets invested even a little in the game he's going to be buying expansions until the end of time.

Problem with skirmish is the investment asked to the buyer. If you don't play campaign half of the content in the box is rubbish, as well as if you just play campaign you don't want spend money for the skirmish content. This brings side effects:

1) Many skirmish players give up after a while because they can't afford further expenses or they don't want to follow up with new expansions. Considering the huge investment, they try to recover part of it selling their stuff. I saw people selling a collection with 2 or 3 copies of the same box/pack. This has an effect that is two fold. It prevents these players from rejoining the game in future (just buying the latest and greatest expansions). In example one of the World of Warcraft new expansions time ago was able to bring subscriptions from 7M back to 11M players. That was possible because people still had the game in their account (you can't sell it) and because we all tend to cede to temptations and addiction from time to time. Also because these players sell their stuff there are some buyers that are not going to buy new stuff. So this impacts twice on sells.

2) Newbies find huge resistance joining the game because when they buy the core they find a game that isn't funny at all. It lacks of units and you can barely manage to create a synergy between command and deployment deck. The accepted opinion is that campaign is a better game than skirmish. That's so true if you try to build a list with just whatever comes out of the core box. Skirmish in core box has been (and it currently is) a bad advertisement for the skirmish game mode. It would be much better to take skirmish out of the core box and re-brand it because when I say word "skirmish" people reply with a disgusted face saying "no thanks".

3) campaign and skirmish content have different design constraints that must be both accommodated for creating new content. This influences each other because one game mode may break the other mode (in future App may have a word and that will be 3rd mode). This is just bad design. Most basic design principle in engineering is separation of concerns.

What emerges playing the current skirmish meta is that skirmish is a very well done game with no actual rivals on the market (chess, what else?). Campaign actually looks like a broken game (snowball, no plot, open to alpha gaming, etc.). These issues have been mitigated a bit in HotE but anyway there are much better alternatives on the market. I must admit (I've been a campaign guy for long time) that current skirmish is the actual game and campaign is a very average addition to the value of Imperial Assault.

I agree with you that campaign sells more, but if I were FFG I would rather extract skirmish and make it a standalone easy-to-access game. This would unlock huge potential. I believe that this will unexpectedly invert the selling trend you mentioned and become a phenomenon like MOBA for Warcraft 3.

I'm fairly new as well. I started with Jabbas Palace just to collect miniatures for the Edge of Empire rpg (highly recommend). I eventually bought the core and really liked it to the point I've almost collected everything.

My gaming group was really into the miniatures and I ran a few games of IA with them, but I can't get them into it enough to start their own collections. For casual board gamers no one wants to drop $X00's on one game. To play, I usually have to make 2 balanced lists and bring them. It does mean I'm not restricted by meta and can play the cool models that aren't great on the board. But I also can't challenge myself in list crafting against others. I did attend a regionlas which was awesome and exciting, but with a 5 hour drive I think it might have been a one time thing.

Morale of the story I'd love for them to come out with something like "duel box" starter or "faction box" where I can get my friends a competitive list and models for maybe $50 +/-. Just rules, 8-10 models, and 15 command cards.

I’ve recently got into IA, primarily because of my local club which I joined to play Star Wars themed games. There was an existing group of established players and they were keen to show me how to play the skirmish game..there was also some other new players interested and because the members were very welcoming and happy to teach, last week there was at least 4 different games going on at once.

Also the news of Xwing 2.0 has meant a lot of the Star Wars gamers in the group are playing IA and other games instead and while I’ve been playing a few xwing games, they’ve been suggesting to waiting till 2.0,which has swung interest in IA.

Simple fix: every year, release a commemorative "world champion" box that has figures and CCs from the top 2 of worlds that year, each with a signed insert featuring the lists pilot and some pointers on how to play the list. Along with a playmat for the map that was played in the finals. This will guarantee two competitive lists in a single box that are ready to play.

15 hours ago, Averagejo3gam3r said:

Simple fix: every year, release a commemorative "world champion" box that has figures and CCs from the top 2 of worlds that year, each with a signed insert featuring the lists pilot and some pointers on how to play the list. Along with a playmat for the map that was played in the finals. This will guarantee two competitive lists in a single box that are ready to play.

I like that idea. Nice to meet you on the forum! ?

On the topic of maps, did FFG sell official map/playmat for Uscru at Worlds, or did everyone have to use tiles? I haven’t yet seen the official maps on sale or pre sale anywhere.

20 hours ago, Averagejo3gam3r said:

Simple fix: every year, release a commemorative "world champion" box that has figures and CCs from the top 2 of worlds that year, each with a signed insert featuring the lists pilot and some pointers on how to play the list. Along with a playmat for the map that was played in the finals. This will guarantee two competitive lists in a single box that are ready to play.

Elegant solution. You could imagine it would not be difficult to do a couple of those. Maybe even the "best" list from each faction. Easy way to settle that is the list that made it the farthest @ worlds. This is assuming that we have a healthy meta going forward with competitive lists in each.

Only problem with all of that is that the production lag would maybe be as long as a year until it was finally on shelves.

they had a buttload of the maps at worlds. I brought tiles though, since i'm a cheap bastard!

Core box, Jabba's Realm and Heart of the Empire are the boxes you need, the rest is just OK. Add a handful of figure packs (3PO, IG, Han, Hera, Rangers, Jawa) and you have all you need for ALL FACTIONS. This is a bargain compared to other miniatures games.

As long as new players know ahead of time to just focus on Jabba's Realm and Heart of the Empire boxes, along with Wave 9, they should be okay.

But I've noticed a lot of new players like to buy expansions in order of release date though, so it's a hard pill to swallow to find out that the majority of the figures in Twin Shadows, Return to Hoth and Bespin Gambit are not competitively viable.

Would be nice to get hold of Jabba`s Realm rare as **** at mo !!!

the only downside are the packs you need for a single card

(poking at my Zillo technique)