Whether or not you like silhouettes, they sure are fun to talk about. Plus some hobby talk on Mandos, OSL, and painting black.

Tell us how you feel about silhouettes in the comments.

So after listening for a few minutes, I thought I would try to find an acrylic silhouette to purchase online. Now I understand why Endless was so-so on the whole thing. Every silhouette that I could find was a round base that slots around the actual base of your mini and they have a thin acrylic rectangle attached to it that runs the length of the mini. Because the flat rectangle is moving vertically from the end of the base, it’s going to be very inaccurate when trying to determine where the silhouette is. https://thefifthtrooper.com/product/unit-silhouette-42mm-x-27mm/

I thought the easiest way would be a two step process consisting of two pieces. One piece is a placeholder that can be placed against the mini’s base to... well... hold the place, much like X-Wing or Armada does when moving ships out of the way. Here is an example of an Armada fighter placeholder and the X-wing placeholder

Then simply remove the mini while holding the placeholder in place and swap in the second piece which is just a simple acrylic cylinder. Once you’re done checking, hold on to the place holder, remove the cylinder and replace the mini. I think too many people are overthinking how to make it. It can’t be like TTS irl and trying to do so will force you to play with perspective so that the rectangle lines up.

Just a thought, or I’m missing something. 🤷‍♀️

Edit: yep I was missing something. I kept playing the podcast a little further and then remembered the print out for silhouettes is just a rectangle too. I looked at it when they came out with the rule, then covid, then I forgot. The cylinder is still a better idea as long as the cylinder’s circumference is equal to the circumference of the widest part of the base (the bottom). Problem solved. Cylinders would be easy to check too, just line it up with anyone’s mini. You can even make a cardboard cylinder, but that would require a little more cutting and taping skill. 😆
The point of the silhouette was to continue the base up like a cylinder to just over the mini’s head anyway, so this would fulfill that better than a rectangle.

I think you are overly negative about the silhouettes.

I hated LOS before the silhouettes. It actively discouraged you from building cool modifications on the mini or even using the limited edition Vader/Obi-Wan. On an important game during the last tourney before silhouettes I got my medic sniped because a terrain feature was formed exactly the way that it obscured the second mini next to the medic. Later I got my Luke killed because his sideways saber (I explicitly brought the operative mini to avoid saber sniping ...) through a hole in the terrain. And then Snipers facing backwards all the time. It just looked stupid.

Sure, silhouettes aren't perfect, but still useable as an abstract representation. Many other systems use similar mechanics and it's mostly a matter of getting used to. I've played some games with silhouettes already (with acrylic self-standing ones, papercrafted would really be very flimsy) and in each game we didn't use them more than a couple of times. That will probably increase in more competitive games, but LOS disputes were time consuming before as well. now we have clear los origin points and sharp edges which actually makes spotting them easier. It will take some getting used to intuitively seeing that LOS hiding is more difficult now.

I was fine with silhouettes when I thought they were going to implement them as a backstop that you silhouetted your mini against, and if the portion of the mini was against the silhouette, it was a valid target. This would have helped units like Luke, Han, or the Wookiee leader.

But no.

Instead, every mini in the game gained a ton of weight and frequently got taller, but not always. The top corners being squared off was a terrible idea, and you'd think they would have at the very least clipped them a bit, rather than just put out a **** box. In short, as much as the silhouettes help in LOS, they also hurt. It's just as gamey, possibly more so, to shoot at the corner of a silhouette that's poking around a corner as it is to shoot the muzzle of a blaster, or a Lightsaber blade. I really, really hope they revise the rules on these soon.

2 hours ago, Alpha17 said:

I was fine with silhouettes when I thought they were going to implement them as a backstop that you silhouetted your mini against, and if the portion of the mini was against the silhouette, it was a valid target. This would have helped units like Luke, Han, or the Wookiee leader.

This really should be how it works. And it would be very easy for them to change it to this, as all they would need to do is change some text in the Tournament Regulations document.

10 hours ago, SailorMeni said:

I think you are overly negative about the silhouettes.

I hated LOS before the silhouettes. It actively discouraged you from building cool modifications on the mini or even using the limited edition Vader/Obi-Wan. On an important game during the last tourney before silhouettes I got my medic sniped because a terrain feature was formed exactly the way that it obscured the second mini next to the medic. Later I got my Luke killed because his sideways saber (I explicitly brought the operative mini to avoid saber sniping ...) through a hole in the terrain. And then Snipers facing backwards all the time. It just looked stupid.

Sure, silhouettes aren't perfect, but still useable as an abstract representation. Many other systems use similar mechanics and it's mostly a matter of getting used to. I've played some games with silhouettes already (with acrylic self-standing ones, papercrafted would really be very flimsy) and in each game we didn't use them more than a couple of times. That will probably increase in more competitive games, but LOS disputes were time consuming before as well. now we have clear los origin points and sharp edges which actually makes spotting them easier. It will take some getting used to intuitively seeing that LOS hiding is more difficult now.

I am an avid hobbyist myself and absolutely love the concept of silhouettes. Most of the negative feedback I have about the system could be resolved with some cleaner implementation.