4 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

As a matter of fact, FFG just revealved the first "card-only" packs for X-Wing, some of which will be packs that include a slew of the more recent upgrade cards so players of the classic factions can get those cards without buying the newer faction's ships. Not sure exactly how many cards come in each pack, but it looks to be like a lot more than 1 Card per Dollar spent.

That said, 2.0 X-Wing is a new, strange beast and FFG needs to keep finding ways to breathe life into it and keep it going, as it's (anecdotally) taken a big drop in player activity since 1.0.

If you’re only after one or two cards, though, it’s comparable to buying a ship. If that card happens to be a promo, you might be better off searching the secondary market.

This isn’t a complaint, btw. This is normal and fine for miniatures games, and the card packs do bring something new to the table. My point is that pay to win has a meaning, and it requires a path to victory that’s markedly more expensive than the rest of the game. Which requires an underlying assumption that spam (because in Armada that’s how you spend more than normal) is required to perform well. Which hasn’t been true at least since the flotilla cap, and I’d argue never.

10 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Because cards sell ships packs.

Remember, there was a time when a non-negligible group of players were buying, four, five, even six MC30s to be able to run TRC90 spam lists.

Think of how many fewer SSDs would be sold if Imperial Players could instead spend $10 and get all the new commanders and officers available in the SSD pack...

I'm not sure. In my experience the way to generate money is to be able to sell lots of stuff. Firstly it's nigh-on impossible to BUY any Imperial stuff right now which is a losing situation for FFG.

Secondly, I'm not going to buy five VSDs just to get five sets of the cards that are in there. I'm just not and I know I'm not alone.

As it is all I do when I play Armada is that both I and my opponent agree that we've got the cards even though we haven't. We are spending zero extra. FFG are making less money out of me than they could because of their refusal to sell cards separately to ships. I can't believe I'm the only one that thinks like that.

Being a living game, every player has equal access to everything, no blind buys. X-Wing had a Pay-to-aspect with certain time frames in cards like C-3P0 and Palpatine, both of which were only available in $90 ships that were not tournament legal and no one played that format. Armada could have been that way with the SSD if they included an upgrade that was Meta creating, but luckily they did not. These ships are not hard to find and anyone can buy them, but for 1 upgrade for the price it was not much different than a collectable game pay to play.