Ok. This is getting ridiculous.

I am seeing the same arguments being posted over and over and almost all of them are irrelevant or misinformed.

I don't like the idea of a criminal faction.

Irrelevant. If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you REALLY don't like it, decline playing against anyone who plays the criminal faction. Don't let your opinion ruin other people's fun.

A criminal faction does not have power on the scale of the empire or the rebellion and therefore should not be able to fight against them.

Criminal organizations in Star Wars control entire planets, have their own private militaries and fleets and have been shown to own and use hardware on par with anything else in Legion scale. This is irrelevant, however, because Legion battles are not even platoon sized. If you think that a criminal group that can dominate an entire planet can't put together 30-ish dudes with a crew-served weapon or two and maybe a vehicle then you need to watch return of the jedi, clone wars or rebels or even just look at what cartels in south america do and that is with a single-species, single planet scenario!

A scum faction would just be a bunch of mismatched jawas, ewoks and mandalorions.

There are many different units that could be used for legion that would offer interesting mechanical choices and not be a complete mish mash of civilian or tribal units. Weequay pirates with long rifles, mixed group of criminal thugs with knives and pistols, gammorean guards that could be an analog for wookie warriors or imperial guards, IG-RM thug droids, hover tanks, swoop bikes, gun emplacements, etc.

There should be a bunch of scum factions, each themed to a specific group.

The other two factions don't do this. We have wookie warriors that can fight alongside rogue one pathfinders, Jyn Erso can fight alongside Jedi Luke who had never even swung a lightsaber till after she died. There is nothing stopping people who want a strictly themed force from making one.

Scum units should have restrictions from working with thematically different units.

Why would you cripple one faction with a restriction that other factions don't have? Let's say they had three subfactions. They would have to release three times as many units for scum as they have for rebels or imperials to make the faction competitive. Instead they could just make a commander who synergizes well with his thematically matching unit like Jyn and pathfinders or Han and Chewie or Palpatine and Royal guards. If you can't get around the idea that a group of criminals might hire some mandalorian mercs for a job then you don't have to use them.

Not everyone wants the same thing. Don't exclude people just because they want something different.

4 minutes ago, devin.pike.1989 said:

Ok. This is getting ridiculous.

I am seeing the same arguments being posted over and over and almost all of them are irrelevant or misinformed.

I don't like the idea of a criminal faction.

Irrelevant. If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you REALLY don't like it, decline playing against anyone who plays the criminal faction. Don't let your opinion ruin other people's fun.

A criminal faction does not have power on the scale of the empire or the rebellion and therefore should not be able to fight against them.

Criminal organizations in Star Wars control entire planets, have their own private militaries and fleets and have been shown to own and use hardware on par with anything else in Legion scale. This is irrelevant, however, because Legion battles are not even platoon sized. If you think that a criminal group that can dominate an entire planet can't put together 30-ish dudes with a crew-served weapon or two and maybe a vehicle then you need to watch return of the jedi, clone wars or rebels or even just look at what cartels in south america do and that is with a single-species, single planet scenario!

A scum faction would just be a bunch of mismatched jawas, ewoks and mandalorions.

There are many different units that could be used for legion that would offer interesting mechanical choices and not be a complete mish mash of civilian or tribal units. Weequay pirates with long rifles, mixed group of criminal thugs with knives and pistols, gammorean guards that could be an analog for wookie warriors or imperial guards, IG-RM thug droids, hover tanks, swoop bikes, gun emplacements, etc.

There should be a bunch of scum factions, each themed to a specific group.

The other two factions don't do this. We have wookie warriors that can fight alongside rogue one pathfinders, Jyn Erso can fight alongside Jedi Luke who had never even swung a lightsaber till after she died. There is nothing stopping people who want a strictly themed force from making one.

Scum units should have restrictions from working with thematically different units.

Why would you cripple one faction with a restriction that other factions don't have? Let's say they had three subfactions. They would have to release three times as many units for scum as they have for rebels or imperials to make the faction competitive. Instead they could just make a commander who synergizes well with his thematically matching unit like Jyn and pathfinders or Han and Chewie or Palpatine and Royal guards. If you can't get around the idea that a group of criminals might hire some mandalorian mercs for a job then you don't have to use them.

Not everyone wants the same thing. Don't exclude people just because they want something different.

The point is that for most iconic Star Wars characters who aren’t Rebel or Imperial it’s not a faction at all.

They have no rational basis for not killing each other outright, let alone working together. Tuskan Raiders and Jawas? They’re mortal enemies. That would be like having a Rebel army led by the Emperor. Yes, go ahead and play casually that way, but it’s no way to run a commercial enterprise or build a licensed game.

9 minutes ago, Derrault said:

The point is that for most iconic Star Wars characters who aren’t Rebel or Imperial it’s not a faction at all.

They have no rational basis for not killing each other outright, let alone working together. Tuskan Raiders and Jawas? They’re mortal enemies. That would be like having a Rebel army led by the Emperor. Yes, go ahead and play casually that way, but it’s no way to run a commercial enterprise or build a licensed game.

Did you read my post? I specifically said that a scum faction should NOT be about tusken raiders and Jawas. There are so many other units out there, I don't know why people keep focusing on these two. I play Frostgrave with my kids. It has a lot of wandering monsters that show up when players score objectives. I think that things like ewoks, jawas, sand-people, rancors and such would fit perfectly as neutral forces that would pester both sides.

17 minutes ago, devin.pike.1989 said:

Did you read my post? I specifically said that a scum faction should NOT be about tusken raiders and Jawas. There are so many other units out there, I don't know why people keep focusing on these two. I play Frostgrave with my kids. It has a lot of wandering monsters that show up when players score objectives. I think that things like ewoks, jawas, sand-people, rancors and such would fit perfectly as neutral forces that would pester both sides.

That’s the thing, the Jawas and the Raiders are iconic.

The Mandalorians? Nope. They show up in EU stuff, not the GCW. And right now that’s what moves product. And, besides Jabba, there are basically zero scum characters with the name recognition to commit an entirely new faction into the game ahead of the CIS and Old Republic.

edit:

Just as a thought experiment, come up with something to mirror just the current options: 4 thematically distinct Commanders, 1 Operative, 2 types of Corps, 3 types of Special Forces, 2 Types of Support, 1 Heavy.

Here is my idea of what could easily be a generic scum faction:

Corps:

Thugs: They would have pistols and vibroknives. They would be a cheap short ranged unit represented by a mix of humans, rodians and weequay in light clothes. Heavy weapon upgrade could be a weequay sharpshooter who would give the unit some ranged ability or a trandoshan hunter with a scatter gun.

Pirates: Armed with rifles. Represented by Weequay and Nikto with body armor. Heavy weapon options could be a machine gunner or a grenade launcher.

Special Forces:

Mandalorian mercenaries: Grungy looking mandalorians. More like boba than jango. Like imperial scouts or rebel spec ops. Could be used in a large group or a two man team with either a demolition expert or sniper. They would have the same jetpack ability as Boba available as a unit upgrade.

Gammorean warriors: unit of 3 with axes and pistols with the option to add a fourth in the form of a vibro halberd.

Support:

Swoop bike gang: Like speeder bikes but a unit of 3. Armed with rifles and no fixed weapon on their bikes. Slower than regular speeder bikes. NOT enfys nest style.

Gun emplacement: Mounted quad cannon?

Heavy:

Hondo style tank.

5 minutes ago, Derrault said:

That’s the thing, the Jawas and the Raiders are iconic.

The Mandalorians? Nope. They show up in EU stuff, not the GCW. And right now that’s what moves product. And, besides Jabba, there are basically zero scum characters with the name recognition to commit an entirely new faction into the game ahead of the CIS and Old Republic.

Well we know it won't be ahead of those two since clone wars content has been announced already. Also, even people who don't know star wars know boba. He is far more iconic, among modern folk at least, than jawas or sand people. Chewbacca is iconic and people will buy wookie warriors because "look! a bunch of chewies!" People will buy mandalorians because "look! A bunch of bobas!" As for Jabba... Well... The game does have immobile units now...

1 minute ago, devin.pike.1989 said:

Well we know it won't be ahead of those two since clone wars content has been announced already. Also, even people who don't know star wars know boba. He is far more iconic, among modern folk at least, than jawas or sand people. As for Jabba... Well... The game does have immobile units now...

Yeah, they know Boba as a bounty hunter who worked for the Empire. That’s the problem, most every scum options work better as some kind of merc, maybe one that both sides could hire, than as a distinguishable faction.

Except that you can so easily create a third faction which is better for the health of the game. Besides, balancing merc units against 4 factions sounds incredibly difficult. We have enough balance problems WITHIN a faction. Why would you waste the potential of a 5th faction when they have a huge variety of units? Keep boba imperial. That makes sense. Notice I did not list any bounty hunters in my list? I would really like to see bossk, dengar and the rest of the gang some day and most likely as an imperial unit.

Just my own opinion, I don't like it. That's all.

FFG will do what is better for FFG, so I don't care about a scum faction or not right now. We are getting 3rd and 4th factions now and I don't like the prequels.

What I would like to see are creatures! vehicles! missing iconic characters.... but as I said FFG will do the things according with its own roadmap (Agreed with Disney of course).

Let's complete the experiment with commanders and leaders. I'm going to pull them all from different trilogies, star wars stories or series:

Commanders: Hondo Ohnaka (pirate, tcw), Drydan Vos, Cilatro Vizargo and of course Jabba the Hut. Feel free to replace Vizargo with Bo-Katan Cryze.

Operative: Cat Bane. Aura Sing, Becket or (not Darth) Maul could be options too.

@devin.pike.1989 good point about the mismatched themes within the Imperial and Rebel armies, I had originally missed that.

@Derrault As to the Mandalorian discussion, the Mandalorians are involved in the GCW in canon per the Rebels cartoon show, mostly involved in fighting to free Mandalore. They also feature heavily in the Clone Wars cartoon as part of Maul's alliance of criminal gangs, which a "Criminal and outcast" faction could freely draw from all eras of film and TV. Plus, Disney's streaming service is going to have a new live action to series focusing on a Mandalorian.

23 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

I'd like it if the internet stopped calling them "scum" does that count for anything?

Maybe to the hardcore imperialists and republicans the adherence to the concept of neutrality makes them 'scum'? The net is full of extremists these days.

As for the topic, I have my army now. What FFG and others do with their time and money is their business, so why not? Nonchalance is the way forward.

18 hours ago, Xiervak said:

We're talking about a faction-based game and the addition of an inherently faction-less force.

Yeah but you can hire them for your army. Mercenaries and bounty Hunters were always squads you could build up, and you could create heroes of bounty hunters, make assassin droids, etc. and pair them with your force as part of a mission backstory.

15 hours ago, Talisker55 said:

However, I would love to see, themed based boxes that represent planetary forces. I would love to play a game were the rebels have to destroy some widget as the objective, but it is not just stormtroopers guarding it. Same with the Empire, trying to subjugate a planet, with maybe minor rebel presence, but large planet force.

That's exactly what was in some of the D6 published scenarios... They used to recommend assorted repaints to do just that, or use Jabba's guards and cantina aliens. Paint extra rebels in gang colors, paint Imperial Army troops in planetary militia colors, etc. Back when creativity ran free in gaming.

21 hours ago, Praetorate of the Empire said:

I'm not a fan of the idea, especially since Boba Fett has already landed in the Imperial faction and he's really the paragon of Scum and Villainy.

The wretched hive of scum and villainy had little or nothing to do with Boba Fett. No one widely called them "scum" until X-Wing came out. It's weird to me that the wretched hive of scum and villainy is an ANH phenomena which is abbreviated and then almost exclusively applied to ESB and ROTJ characters.

15 hours ago, thepopemobile100 said:

The problem I have with that is that only the Hutts, Mandalorians, and maybe the Gungans have enough stuff to them to even justify their own faction

Well, ewoks, tusken raiders, Santhe Security, and more can all provide at least a corps, a commander, and 1 support unit. That's all a faction needs to be fun to paint up and legal to play. To really justify itself, such a faction only needs to hit certain sales numbers and not imbalance/stagnate/sillify the game.

I don't care if they are affiliated with "Hutts" or not, I'd like a squad of mostly-aliens with blasters and no real uniform, to hire for either side.

13 hours ago, Xiervak said:

What I don't want is a hodge-podge army of some Hutts, some ewoks, some Mando's, etc.

I don't want that either, even if it means I have to forgo the stuff I do want. That's very much what D20 did. I'd hate to see that here.

8 hours ago, Derrault said:

but it’s no way to run a commercial enterprise or build a licensed game.

D20 lasted many years doing just that. Though I think the memory is what has people upset at the prospect. Though D20 eventually at least gave us enough assorted stuff to play a game of all sand people, all ewoks, etc. if you felt like collecting such a force. Which I did.

More recently of course A's skirmish faction that gave you just enough jawas and tusken raiders to mix them into nonsensical armies but not enough to actually play them as a themed army. Banthas and ugnaughts for the win 🙄

If they make navy or navy troops I'll buy umpteen squads and paint them as all kinds of private security forces and mercenary regiments. I can already create such things for the rebels using Fleet Troops.

I am glad the NOs have it. Moving on!

I made a speculative list of possible units a while ago before clone wars era was announced. I thought a Scum faction was more likely to happen at that time.

Commander: Maul (access to dark sides powers, light saber, more agile than Vader, maybe 6 black dice); jabba the hutt (a more supportive role. maybe something static, with range 4 powers that influence other units). CAD BANE (as leader of his bunch of mercenaries). Generic mercenary officer.

Operative - all bounty hunters from the movies ; maybe Bib Fortuna if some flavour rules can be concocted for that.

Corps - Generic humans troopers (= pirates) plus something strange like JET troopers

Special - Gmorreans for hand to handonly; Weequay specialists, Cad bane's bunch with hitmans or demolition upgrade.

supports - Jet bikes, some wild beast (tamed like vookri), Cannon emplacement

heavy- THE RANCOR!!! (close combat beast with a range 1-2 thrown weapon like "boulder hurling" or something like this) ; desert skiff with fixed arc cannon.

Of course units can be switched for ranks. And you still have room for MAndalorians, Black sun etc like in the criminal cartel led by Maul in the comic book son of Dathomir.

Actually I think that a scum and villainy (or maybe an "unaligned people" ) faction would be way more interesting than the republic or the separists one .

Anyway just the possibility to have the rancor in Legion scae is enought for me to want this faction

1 minute ago, toffolone said:

I made a speculative list of possible units a while ago before clone wars era was announced. I thought a Scum faction was more likely to happen at that time.

Commander: Maul (access to dark sides powers, light saber, more agile than Vader, maybe 6 black dice); jabba the hutt (a more supportive role. maybe something static, with range 4 powers that influence other units). CAD BANE (as leader of his bunch of mercenaries). Generic mercenary officer.

Operative - all bounty hunters from the movies ; maybe Bib Fortuna if some flavour rules can be concocted for that.

Corps - Generic humans troopers (= pirates) plus something strange like JET troopers

Special - Gmorreans for hand to handonly; Weequay specialists, Cad bane's bunch with hitmans or demolition upgrade.

supports - Jet bikes, some wild beast (tamed like vookri), Cannon emplacement

heavy- THE RANCOR!!! (close combat beast with a range 1-2 thrown weapon like "boulder hurling" or something like this) ; desert skiff with fixed arc cannon.

Of course units can be switched for ranks. And you still have room for MAndalorians, Black sun etc like in the criminal cartel led by Maul in the comic book son of Dathomir.

Actually I think that a scum and villainy (or maybe an "unaligned people" ) faction would be way more interesting than the republic or the separists one .

Anyway just the possibility to have the rancor in Legion scae is enought for me to want this faction

If this were the list, then sign me up for scum.

this is what I would like for a possible future SCUM FACTION. It's all thing taken from the movies or the cartoons. If we dig into the books or the EU, then thare are much more.

I see also one Java as a model in a scum specialist pack. like repair droid for Empire or rebels. (the other three models being Bib fortuna (as leader), Sy noodles (as comm specialist) and someone else like medic. Of course, the models will be those, but the for the rules they will not be the named characters. they would just have exactly the same look by chance.

Also Doctor Aphra can be quite an good operative. or make a 3 man special unit with 000 and BT1.

Give some units a way to be used by Rebels and/or Empire with some minor malus (like being more expensive or losing some special rule) and you ahve the perfect solution.

For me breaking the "Scum" faction into smaller factions is because they could make unique factions representing different criminal groups. For example the Hutts would be a low tech slow moving high health faction that favors Melee attacks. Crimson dawn however would favor ranged attacks with a higher level of technology, they could have fewer troops per squad but have a higher attack and defense than the Hutts. In X-wing it makes sense to lump them all together because each of the crime families would have only one or two types of fighter craft and that would make a boring faction to play as. Both of these factions would be different than the current two and the clone wars factions because they would rely more heavily on operatives than commanders, though they would each have at least 2 commanders to be able to fill out the force organization chart.

They could be released as one big "Scum" faction but I think that it would be a waste of an opportunity to create an interesting design that captures the feel of each of the Crime organizations.

But the main reason is because they are actually different factions in the Lore. The argument that Devin.pike brings up doesn't actually apply to this argument because both Jyn and Luke were part of the Rebellion during their respective time periods. Haha and Maul were never part of the same organization. Putting them in the same faction would be more synonymous with Vader and Luke being in the same faction because Luke brings Vader back from the dark side and Vader saves Luke from the Emperor.

3 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

D20 lasted many years doing just that. Though I think the memory is what has people upset at the prospect. Though D20 eventually at least gave us enough assorted stuff to play a game of all sand people, all ewoks, etc. if you felt like collecting such a force. Which I did.

More recently of course A's skirmish faction that gave you just enough jawas and tusken raiders to mix them into nonsensical armies but not enough to actually play them as a themed army. Banthas and ugnaughts for the win 🙄

If they make navy or navy troops I'll buy umpteen squads and paint them as all kinds of private security forces and mercenary regiments. I can already create such things for the rebels using Fleet Troops.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to have a battle involving Tuskan Raiders, or Jawas, or Ewoks.

But none of those three things are remotely affiliated with Scum, or any pirates, or the Empire, and the Ewoks at least are in terms of the movies, Rebel friendly.

Tuskan Raiders are Xenophobes, Ewoks are prone to eating people, and Jawas are enemies with the Tuskans.

Just because these various characters aren’t affiliated with the Empire or the Rebels doesn’t mean they are then affiliated with each other. Tuskans should be a side unto themselves. I could see a future expansion of 4-6 Tuskan Raider units, 2-3 Banthas, and a leader, but after that, there’s really not a lot of there, there.

35 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Just because these various characters aren’t affiliated with the Empire or the Rebels doesn’t mean they are then affiliated with each other. Tuskans should be a side unto themselves. I could see a future expansion of 4-6 Tuskan Raider units, 2-3 Banthas, and a leader, but after that, there’s really not a lot of there, there.

No they are not, and were not in D6. But in D20 and IA, they were affiliated with each other for list-building purposes.

I still think (like a broken record) D6 came closest to doing it right: Ewoks, wookies and even squads of mon calamari were included in the original Rebel Forces list. Imperial Forces consisted of stormtroopers and various other uniformed troops. Neutral Forces was a 3rd thing that included, at the outset, nothing but squads of "Mercenaries" and "Bounty Hunters" who any player could use. Though later on some variations on those two were introduced with names like "Enforcers". All heroes were pretty much homebrewed which would't much apply to IA equivalents. But that meant you had a "commander" type for any force you painted up. If you wanted a wookie army, you made a wookie army using the stats printed under Rebel Forces, etc. etc.

Technically they made Tusken Raiders and jawas but that's a whole other ball of wax.

No, give us Clone Wars first

7 hours ago, Katarn said:

Maybe to the hardcore imperialists and republicans the adherence to the concept of neutrality makes them 'scum'? The net is full of extremists these days.

As for the topic, I have my army now. What FFG and others do with their time and money is their business, so why not? Nonchalance is the way forward.

I come from Star Wars Miniatures scene (I think another poster calls that came D20?) and in those days, they were called Fringe. I think "Fringe" is appropriate. #MakeFringeGreatAgain

thank you for all of your thaughts.

Been thinking more about the idea of neutral packs....

Each pack would come with generic unit infantry and vehicle types. Included would be uniques that would be, imperial, rebel, and planetary aligned.

Thinking of the mandos, gar saxon and the wrens would be included. Then some type of mando captain. This would capture the true civil war aspect.

There is enough in cannon to do this with just about any group.

Still not sure about tuskens and jawas. They just seem too weak and would end up as fodder.

Whatever it ends up being, please do not call then scum.