Since I’m unwilling to pay $200 for the SSD, I won’t have a bunch of new, potentially meta-defining commanders and crew for Imps. Because I won’t have these, I’m now a lot less likely to ever buy another imperial expansion.
And if the imperial expansions release with cards necessary to Rebels. I’ll stop buying altogether. Armada - really, FFG - doesn’t have any slack with me anymore.
I am also fine with one wave a year and agree it's the lack of comm traffic that really gets me frustrated. I think someone dealt the a face up damaged comms card and they never repaired it.
9 minutes ago, Church14 said:Yeah. X-Wing was marketed for a while early on as X Wing Miniatures Game (XWMG) before it had enough market presence to be known as just Xwing.
I was mixing expansions a bit in my rant. The CR-90 came out with C-3P0 as a crew card that was almost meta-defining in Fat Han builds. So players were forced to purchase a $100 expansion that couldn’t be used in tournaments or even regular play for a single card. It was upwards of $50 for a copy on eBay.
The Raider was the second ship that did this same thing except with an upgrade to the TIE Advanced and Emperor Palpatine. The Emperor was a meta-defining card, the TIE Advanced upgrade was no joke either. It would be like finding out that pre-nerf Rieekan and Biggs were in a $200 epic Yavin base expansion that can only be played in 800 point games
Basically, I was aware of a lot of players who were furious that they had to fork over $100 again for competitive cards or pay big cost on secondary markets. A decent number walked away from the game because it felt like a short-sighted cash grab. A few others walked away because it created a second huge cost barrier to compete.
I do think they learned from it, as FFG has made the SSD (or an equivalent) playable in a 400 point game. And combined with the fact that it's all Imperial cards or retreads, us Rebels don't have to buy it at all!
5 minutes ago, Church14 said:Basically, I was aware of a lot of players who were furious that they had to fork over $100 again for competitive cards or pay big cost on secondary markets. A decent number walked away from the game because it felt like a short-sighted cash grab. A few others walked away because it created a second huge cost barrier to compete.
As much as we like to think the worst of FFG, it most likely wasn't JUST a straight cash grab. The hope was probably that epic play would catch on as another competitive format that would attract and maintain it's own player base. Without some serious insight in the reasoning behind FFG's decisions, we will never know. Unfortunately, the format seems to suffer from the weaknesses of Armada, IE play time and area, at a minimum, I haven't actually ever played it.
26 minutes ago, Church14 said:Since I’m unwilling to pay $200 for the SSD, I won’t have a bunch of new, potentially meta-defining commanders and crew for Imps. Because I won’t have these, I’m now a lot less likely to ever buy another imperial expansion.
And if the imperial expansions release with cards necessary to Rebels. I’ll stop buying altogether. Armada - really, FFG - doesn’t have any slack with me anymore.
I plan on getting 2, you can have my extras.
As far as the $200 ship and the upgrades in it, go I don't think after my initial evaluation that any of the cards will be part of a list that become meta defining. I think it will open up several other builds, but you can still have a highly competitive imperal list without getting the SSD, but if you want to run a cymoon demo emperor palpatine build, well you will need the SSD, but if you are fine not running that you will still have plenty of competitive options available to you.
21 hours ago, Green Knight said:Play X-wing while you wait.
It's not the same, but still fun.
I never really enjoyed X-wing. Played it, collected it, just never fell in love with it, so I dropped out back when the 3rd faction showed up.
20 hours ago, Forresto said:Keep in mind that Armada ships are proper models, with various components glued together and then painted with several layers from a base coat to detail.
Not only that but FFG maintains a consistent level of high quality. That must stall the process.
Legion pieces, other then the vehicles, are plastic army men essentially.
The requirements and length of production are completely different.
Yes and no. A single CR90 is certainly a bigger deal than a single commander unit in legion, no argument there. But when you start comparing a group of soldier characters vs a larger ship, or one of Legion's larger units compared to one of Armada's, the differences become much smaller.
A group of soldiers requires way more effort to design, mold, produce. A ship is detailed sure, but it's not flowing fabric, facial features, facial hair, different races of heads, weapon details. A trooper pack has 7 figures. Sure there are some copied elements I'm sure, but there are a lot of unique features also. What time they save not assembling/painting certainly helps them on the back end, but the up front production time along with prep is probably greater for some Legion sets than most Armada sets.
The designing/playtesting I'd hope to be basically the same either way. All in all, I'm sure Armada production is a little more intensive due to painting/assembly, but not 477% more intensive.
21 hours ago, Noosh said:The reason why is simple.
Wargames like legion need large unit variety, particularly since they will be in direct competition with WH:40K. The rather undisputed heavyweight in that game market. If they don't have the variety quick the game may die especially if people sit there and say where's my waker/speeder/fighter and why isn't it out yet. It's hard to compete against such an established juggernaut.
Armada on the other hand, IS the undisputed heavyweight in capitol ship combat. And thus can survive longer release intervals.
I can't blame ffg in their choice, mainly because they haven't given up on Armada. Their just making the best of a tough situation.
Expansions, new units, etc isn't even really the overall issue, just one element of the larger problem. I'm not even unhappy with the release schedule. it's just the clearest, easiest example. I'm just upset with the lack of communication really. Give us a designer diary. Give us articles on interesting builds or combinations. Give us insight as to when one upgrade is better than another. Give us a roadmap as to what their plans are. ****, publish an article about the SSD material that was sent out in physical format to some places. They have the material, they prepped it, now provide it! Most of the info we discuss here is leaked info that we the players gather from various sources. Ex:
21 hours ago, Cpt. Caine said:I basically got flamed for mentioning this in another thread. But the hosts of The Outer Rim Job said they know from a source in FFG that wave 8 is being playtested as of (at least) three weeks ago.
Why are we hearing about this on a forum from 3rd party sources that report they know from a source that wave 8 is being playtested???
Tip to FFG: Announce a wave and show us pics of just the ships. Tell us that playtesting has started and give us a brief description of the units (not in game terms). Spend the next couple months giving us little designer diary elements, and in those, leak card content. Not final versions or anything, but like "So one of the big issues we had was trying to balance how Captain Whoever's power against the current fighter/bomber meta. So we have people trying out a couple different ideas, and we're hoping we can figure out the best way to implement this." Now we can spend weeks looking up all the history of Whoever, and speculating as to how he interacts with fighters/bombers. It keeps us interested, it keeps us engaged. Once the playtesting is done, let us know. Leak a few pieces of information. Then when you get production lined up, get us a timeline article with some more leaks. Then do an article on each main unit being released with some of their main cards/upgrades. Then do an article or two on some of the other new stuff and how it can be used on previous ships or in combination with existing stuff.
No one digging around for scraps of info because FFG is feeding us. Continuous interest in the game instead of huge spikes at one time that vanish quickly. It shows to us that FFG is committed and cares about the game and is still involved.
1 hour ago, Church14 said:Since I’m unwilling to pay $200 for the SSD, I won’t have a bunch of new, potentially meta-defining commanders and crew for Imps. Because I won’t have these, I’m now a lot less likely to ever buy another imperial expansion.
And if the imperial expansions release with cards necessary to Rebels. I’ll stop buying altogether. Armada - really, FFG - doesn’t have any slack with me anymore.
Hmm. But the release schedule is pretty light so is $200 really unreasonable? Wave 7 released in Feb 2018, is it really that hard to save up $200 in 12 months? Do you really want 2-3 waves a year with 2-4 ships for each faction?
30 minutes ago, Bakura83 said:Hmm. But the release schedule is pretty light so is $200 really unreasonable? Wave 7 released in Feb 2018, is it really that hard to save up $200 in 12 months? Do you really want 2-3 waves a year with 2-4 ships for each faction?
I can assure you that one of the selling points of Armada to me was the slower release schedule. X-Wing was too much and Legion pushed me away with how fast it was. I’m with people on the issue being communication more so than ships being released.
3 hours ago, Church14 said:The trouble is that every local player is beginning to think that the SSD will be to Armada what the Raider was to XWMG. As of right now the evidence provided is that it will be - A must have to compete as Imps that is a huge cost barrier to entry. Watch for cards in the SSD to cost tons on markets like eBay like 3PO did.
I think the only upgrade in the SSD expansion that can only be found there and that has a potential to shift things a bit is Krennic. He gives red re-rolls which gives some nice dice control. The thing is, there are lots of upgrades that already offer re-rolls. The other cards seems to have their best use on the SSD itself. For example Admiral Piett seems to most useful in 1-2 ship fleets that generate lots of tokens and need more command flexibility; sounds like an SSD fleet to me! And while I think the SSD might be able to be competitive, I don't think it will re-define the meta game. If you don't own one, you may have to account for the possibility of facing one when you build your list, but I think the tools to beat such a list are already in our toolbox without having to hope we find those tools in the SSD expansion itself.
I totally agree with the rest of your assessment, that more communication about upcoming waves would be awesome. But I don't think there's a reason to be too pessimistic about the SSD expansion.
Cheers!
I think FFG has done a great job with the SSD - finding upgrades that are thematic, interesting, different but mostly only great for an SSD list, or are a bit gimmicky.
Piett wants a single-ship list, that will have lots of tokens. Ozzel and Vader are neat but gimmicky; I think Vader might be nice to use if you have a spare point+officer slot, but far from crucial. Officer Palpatine is neat, but takes up a valuable Officer slot, and is best on a ship that will be taking all the fire (i.e. an SSD list). Lira Wessex is good if you have a lot of hull, are going to get a lot of crits, and have tokens to spare (so an SSD), plus again, takes up a valuable officer slot. Commander Gherant - most useful for something that will be heavily out-activated, for one round.
That just leaves Officer Krennic and Commander Palpatine. The latter is weird enough but also close enough to existing things (Intel Officer, Sloane) that I'm not sure how critical he will be to the meta. Officer Krennic may be the X-Wing Raider's Palpatine, though. I'm really hoping he's in the next Q4 or Q1 kit.
Something that should be expected with the SSD is that it will be bought simply as a display piece by folks who don't play Armada. My FLGS has ordered quite a few because he knows he can sell them as such. There isn't really a SSD model at that price point is there? I'd think it will be quite easy to get the upgrades from the SSD expansion after release without the paying the entire price tag.
16 minutes ago, Frimmel said:Something that should be expected with the SSD is that it will be bought simply as a display piece by folks who don't play Armada. My FLGS has ordered quite a few because he knows he can sell them as such. There isn't really a SSD model at that price point is there? I'd think it will be quite easy to get the upgrades from the SSD expansion after release without the paying the entire price tag.
THIS. SO MUCH THIS.
SSD models of this quality are so hard to come by. It's a steal at $200.
40 minutes ago, Frimmel said:Something that should be expected with the SSD is that it will be bought simply as a display piece by folks who don't play Armada. My FLGS has ordered quite a few because he knows he can sell them as such. There isn't really a SSD model at that price point is there? I'd think it will be quite easy to get the upgrades from the SSD expansion after release without the paying the entire price tag.
Makes sense to me! Sell it for slightly less if they aren’t interested in the game and then sell the game components individually to non-Imperial Armada players.
If I was looking to buy a SSD display piece I’d jump at a discount in exchange for forfeiting cards from a weird game I’d never play.
Edited by Bakura8342 minutes ago, Bakura83 said:Sell it for slightly less if they aren’t interested in the game and then sell the game components individually to non-Imperial Armada players.
The only new upgrades in here that you can't get elsewhere are Imperial only upgrades. So this seems like it would be beneficial for Imperial players who don't want to buy an SSD.
2 hours ago, Astrodar said:The only new upgrades in here that you can't get elsewhere are Imperial only upgrades. So this seems like it would be beneficial for Imperial players who don't want to buy an SSD.
Fair point.
On 12/4/2018 at 7:47 PM, Frimmel said:My FLGS has ordered quite a few because he knows he can sell them as such
I am just curious how many he ordered.
Unfortunately I don't have a local store that sells Armada so I am debating whether I should wait till I can order online ( Amazon or Miniaturegames ) or find a local store and pre-order. I don't want to wait that much so I am just curious how many items a store gets ( since I am not a regular customer I am afraid I will be at the end of the list)
4 hours ago, LostFleet said:I am just curious how many he ordered.
Unfortunately I don't have a local store that sells Armada so I am debating whether I should wait till I can order online ( Amazon or Miniaturegames ) or find a local store and pre-order. I don't want to wait that much so I am just curious how many items a store gets ( since I am not a regular customer I am afraid I will be at the end of the list)
If you intend to get one, my recommendation is to pre-order it somewhere. Just because a local store doesn't sell Armada doesn't mean they can't get one for you. If they sell other FFG games like X-wing or IA or Legion, they can probably order one.
There are usually never enough of these sorts of things. Folks balk at the price (including the retailers) and just get as many as get spoken for. My FLG&CS is just anticipating that guys will want them despite their hemming and hawing. He knows his guys. He also knows that with some of these things you need to order more than you need to just get as many as you need. Experience tells him this isn't something he's going to get stuck with.
If you're going to get one pre-order it.
On 12/4/2018 at 11:07 AM, Bakura83 said:Hmm. But the release schedule is pretty light so is $200 really unreasonable? Wave 7 released in Feb 2018, is it really that hard to save up $200 in 12 months? Do you really want 2-3 waves a year with 2-4 ships for each faction?
Well, part of the issue is that it's $200 for something we don't know if it'll be fun to play with or not. Whether it will be viable or not. Will the SSD in 400pts work, or is it just a gimmick? Will it be easy enough to find larger scale games to really unleash the SSD in all of its glory? These sorts of things make the $200 price tag much 'scarier' than just dropping $200 on 8 standard Armada expansions (I mean, $200 would get you a $40 ship, two $30 ships, two $20 ships, and three squadron packs.... you can be more comfortable buying all of that stuff that you can find ways to get the stuff offered within onto the table, and you get so much variety for your fleet, and even if one of the ships is a total dud... well it was just a fraction of that $200 investment).
I mean, there are two problematic scenarios: the SSD is awesome in 400pt games, and then the meta gets super stale of playing against a one-ship-list while people complain they had to buy the $200 powercreep ship. Or, the SSD is meh in 400pt games, and everyone complains they dropped $200 on a ship that is a dud. So the margin for error here is razor-thin. I really do trust FFG's ability to generally well-balance Armada, and they've certainly taken their time with the SSD, so hopefully it is somewhere in the happy middle.
But I can see why lots of folks have more trepidation about buying a $200 super-ship than they do about buying eight expansion packs for that same price. Plus... with the general doom and gloom around FFG's radio silence for Armada... folks have to be worried that they might be buying a $200 ship in a soon to be discontinued gaming line?
27 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:
Well, part of the issue is that it's $200 for something we don't know if it'll be fun to play with or not. Whether it will be viable or not. Will the SSD in 400pts work, or is it just a gimmick? Will it be easy enough to find larger scale games to really unleash the SSD in all of its glory? These sorts of things make the $200 price tag much 'scarier' than just dropping $200 on 8 standard Armada expansions (I mean, $200 would get you a $40 ship, two $30 ships, two $20 ships, and three squadron packs.... you can be more comfortable buying all of that stuff that you can find ways to get the stuff offered within onto the table, and you get so much variety for your fleet, and even if one of the ships is a total dud... well it was just a fraction of that $200 investment).
I mean, there are two problematic scenarios: the SSD is awesome in 400pt games, and then the meta gets super stale of playing against a one-ship-list while people complain they had to buy the $200 powercreep ship. Or, the SSD is meh in 400pt games, and everyone complains they dropped $200 on a ship that is a dud. So the margin for error here is razor-thin. I really do trust FFG's ability to generally well-balance Armada, and they've certainly taken their time with the SSD, so hopefully it is somewhere in the happy middle.
But I can see why lots of folks have more trepidation about buying a $200 super-ship than they do about buying eight expansion packs for that same price. Plus... with the general doom and gloom around FFG's radio silence for Armada... folks have to be worried that they might be buying a $200 ship in a soon to be discontinued gaming line?
Yes. If only people weren't constantly contributing to a Doom and gloom attitude without any basis for it, that would help I think.
1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:I mean, there are two problematic scenarios: the SSD is awesome in 400pt games, and then the meta gets super stale of playing against a one-ship-list while people complain they had to buy the $200 powercreep ship. Or, the SSD is meh in 400pt games, and everyone complains they dropped $200 on a ship that is a dud. So the margin for error here is razor-thin. I really do trust FFG's ability to generally well-balance Armada, and they've certainly taken their time with the SSD, so hopefully it is somewhere in the happy middle.
The part I highlighted is a complete fallacy. The space between overpowered, meta-wrecker and useless clunker isn't razor thin at all. What if the SSD, because of its versatility, has a LOT of builds that are useful and even potentially competitive? What if such fleets are still vulnerable to tabling because the number of ships in such fleets is necessarily low because of the points costs of the SSD?
What if the SSD is potentially strong, but not overpowered? Or what if the SSD has significant limitations, but still can reward good play and skillful list building? What if it is ok, but not great? Great, but not broken? Or even, fun to play but challenging to win with? Perfectly balanced isn't the only acceptable possibility, you know.
Razor thin margin of error? Not really. There are lots of ways for this expansion to be successful, both for the players and for FFG.
Edited by RobertKOn 12/4/2018 at 2:49 PM, Bakura83 said:Fair point.
Flight controllers is the only generic in the fan that isn't available for Rebels. All the others are in Rebel expansions.
I think the SSD could end up being a great recruitment piece for the game. If you get this out on a table at your local store, folks will come up and talk to you about it. That conversation turns in to a Demo when your done with the game your playing, or tell them to come by next week (or month whatever it is), and play an intro game with you. Point them to the forum here and some of the blogs out there. Could be a great way to generate some interest and get a couple of new players.
6 hours ago, TallGiraffe said:Flight controllers is the only generic in the fan that isn't available for Rebels. All the others are in Rebel expansions.
Hey, in my experience the victory may as well be a rebel ship, as the rebel player always gets more out of it than the imerpial player.
35 minutes ago, Do I need a Username said:Hey, in my experience the victory may as well be a rebel ship, as the rebel player always gets more out of it than the imerpial player.
If you haven't bought your Imperial friends two VSDs each to "help" them... don't say you're a Rebel.