Do any of you use Minis instead of the cardboard tokens that came in the EotE Beginner box?

I would love to see FF do a miniatures line or license it out to someone as the SW minis are getting pricy since they are out of production now.

With the addition os AoR we have 13 species represented with specific stats. I haven't counted up all the possible classes but thats still not an infeasible number of minis to have sculpted and produced. Something pre-painted like what is available for Pathfinder would be great.

I don't use any miniatures, but I doubt FFG will make any, unless they decide to bring out a wargame or the like, since they haven't for their previous RPGs.

I've been getting some pretty good mileage out of the WotC minis I purchased, so my interest in FFG producing their own line of minis is rather small.

That said, there's also the matter that their RPG system generally tries to move away from those sorts of elements as a default; WotC caught a lot of flak over their versions of D&D and Star Wars being glorified minis games; 4e and Saga Edition got hit with this the worst, as ranges for lots of things was listed in "squares" instead of feet/meters.

FFG got flak from some corners for WFRP3e being too reliant on "fiddly bits" instead of just "dice and character sheet," so it's possible they are going to steer clear of that approach with their Star Wars line.

When I ran the Edge of the Empire Beginner Box for my gaming group, we were in the middle of a Saga Edition campaign ( Dawn of Defiance , actually) and we were using Wizards of the Coast's minis pretty heavily. A few of my players preferred using minis to the cardboard tokens that came with the Beginner Box, so we used a combination of minis and tokens.

If you're trying to get your hands on inexpensive Star Wars miniatures, I would recommend first looking at Miniature Market. I shop there locally fairly often and they're usually very difficult to beat when it comes to price. Now, because supply is beginning to dry up when it comes to Star Wars miniatures, they don't have as many as they previously did; their prices aren't all way below MSRP like they used to be. Still, it might be a good place to start. They sell singles as well.

Barring that, you might find a good deal on Ebay or Amazon. I know I've seen people selling "grab bags" from time to time.

I prefer the little tokens that came in the beginner box. I would buy more of those.

Letting Reaper do it would be great.

When I ran the beginner box to try and introduce my players to EotE, it was a nightmare. We all were still in that d20/tactical movement mindset. So during the first fight my players all exploded on me when I didn't do any skill rolls for a "complicated" movement one of my gamorreans had done. I wanted to tell them that combat is intended to be more narrative and movement isn't supposed to be too codified.

So the next session I didn't even bother breaking out the minis. I wanted to show them what I meant. I think they are finally understanding.

With that being said, I am really fond of my small collection of Star Wars miniatures. Whenever I find myself with extra money, I usually go to trollandtoad.com and buy up as my ~$1 miniatures as I can get my hands on.

Letting Reaper do it would be great.

They won't be allowed to subcontract out stuff like that - Reaper would need to get a licence from Disney to do it.

Would I buy just miniatures? Probably not since I have several shoeboxes full of WotC minis that I picked up on closeout when the line shut down. I might cherry pick some here and there, but buy the whole range? Not likely.

I'd much rather Fantasy Flight, if they were to release personal scale minis, to focus on a game centered around that. Much like a ground version of x-wing.

If they were to include a mini line for the RPG, I'd want it to be more functional. In that the base should have pegs or something to show the range increments for several characters. But a skirmish game would be interesting if done with pre-painted minis.

I'd also prefer a land based war game, where squads and vehicles could be represented. That's just me though.

I would love to see FF do a miniatures line or license it out to someone as the SW minis are getting pricy since they are out of production now.

Are they pricey? I've gotten loads of them off ebay for dirt-cheap prices...barring that, hit bricklink for cheap Star Wars lego minis.

I would love to see FF do a miniatures line or license it out to someone as the SW minis are getting pricy since they are out of production now.

Are they pricey? I've gotten loads of them off ebay for dirt-cheap prices...barring that, hit bricklink for cheap Star Wars lego minis.

Depends on which figures you're looking at. I'd imagine some of the Very Rare Uniques (such as certain Vaders and the Boba Fetts) still have a decent price tag on them, particularly if sold individually.

I use minis. Even though the range of it is purely abstract, my players really enjoy the visual OOMPF it gives to it, seeing 6 stormtroopers closing in on you.

E-Bay is a great place. A lot of them can be got fairly cheap, like a lot of 50 for $30.

After my initial fumble with minis in EotE, my biggest problem now is breaking story to draw up a map and set up minis. This is my first experience with mapless combat and I love the fact that I can transition from story to combat easily.

Although I still have to roll initiative so I guess there is some amount of disconnect. So my argument is a bit invalid.

After my initial fumble with minis in EotE, my biggest problem now is breaking story to draw up a map and set up minis. This is my first experience with mapless combat and I love the fact that I can transition from story to combat easily.

Although I still have to roll initiative so I guess there is some amount of disconnect. So my argument is a bit invalid.

Yet another reason to wonder if a Star Wars version of the Warhammer location cards should be created. They were an important part for many of us using the Warhammer version of this narrative system.

After my initial fumble with minis in EotE, my biggest problem now is breaking story to draw up a map and set up minis. This is my first experience with mapless combat and I love the fact that I can transition from story to combat easily.

Well, you could always draw your maps ahead of time. While I don't do it for every combat setting, if I'm writing up a game and find that a fight is very likely at this bullet point, I'll go ahead and draw things out just before the game. That way I'm not slowing things down too badly. And the instances where I need to draw something out on the fly, I just do it in rough form - "the cliff should be about here, we'll throw some turrets here, the guard house would probably go here . .. and we'll put a big ol' building in the middle where I have space leftover!"

I dont think you break up the pace of the game too badly by drawing a map, PROVIDED:

1) You draw said map after each encounter, while the players are still bragging about their accomplishments or getting up to get food, bathroom, etc.

2) You predraw maps where you KNOW combat WILL happen (youre the GM, you know these things)

3) You hastily outline a map. Most the time in our Pathfinder games, our maps define the boundries, buildings, other things worth noting, and that's about it. We don't get super detailed and it works great.

I plan on using a magnetic dry erase white board with magnetic buttons of varying sizes. I want to get my PCs away from thinking in terms of boxes and feet (or meters in the case of Star Wars) and try to focus more on the abstraction of distance. I have never actually played D&D (SW WEG was my first RPG and I have played Shadowrun extensively over the years but never a proper D&D campaign) so I don't have a nostalgic view on minis and hex maps. Personally I think playing with "cruder" visual representations is better.

I've just started using my Star Wars minis, before I used counters but I have a lot of Star Wars minis and just wanted to use them. I like my little toy soldiers

Are they pricey? I've gotten loads of them off ebay for dirt-cheap prices...barring that, hit bricklink for cheap Star Wars lego minis.

...and as pointed out above, you can get them quite economically on the secondary market.

I plan on using a magnetic dry erase white board with magnetic buttons of varying sizes. I want to get my PCs away from thinking in terms of boxes and feet (or meters in the case of Star Wars) and try to focus more on the abstraction of distance. I have never actually played D&D (SW WEG was my first RPG and I have played Shadowrun extensively over the years but never a proper D&D campaign) so I don't have a nostalgic view on minis and hex maps. Personally I think playing with "cruder" visual representations is better.

I have a magnetic dry erase board I used for SAGA. Now if I can just remove the grid I placed upon it.

I agree a large dry erase board (no grid) may be a perfect thing to use. You can quickly draw stuff on it and even plop down minis if you wish. Exact ranges not needed.

For large, important, pre-planned battles I may still have something drawn out before hand IF I have the time. I plan on having the player's ship drawn and kept on paper to mini scale, for example, to be used whenever something happens aboard ship.

Just leave the hex or squares off of it or it may confuse your players.

I have 2 of the smaller and 1 of the giant Chessex maps with hexes and squares. I'll be using this and the squares will roughly equate to engaged (next to eachother) short (1 square between you up to about 3 or 4), medium and so on.

In a word, no. If FFG wants to start making minis for this game, its none of my business, however, I would probably not buy them. Playing this game reminds me of all the AD&D games I used to play back in the 80s and 90s. Neither myself nor the other players used minis. We didn't need to. Instead, we used our imagination and proved our mastery of the English language to explain the details of combat.

It helps my players visually understand what is going on. Since most people are visual learners this is important. I have a chessex battlemat, and a bunch of the WotC mini's. I have money so I was able to get 3 booster boxes and do not have a need for any more mini's beyond that.

I tried to do a combat scene without mini's and my players kept forgetting details I explained to them earlier. It was a disaster, my players almost had a PK, and ended the session quite frustrated. By having the map and mini's my players are able to think more tactically, and try to flank opponents to remove their cover advantage

btw, Reaper min's are EXPENSIVE. easily $5-$10 for an unpainted metal mini. Not to mention almost the entire Reaper line is fantasy based mini's. You are way better off getting the CMG pre-painted plastic stuff. I easily spent almost $100 on Paints and brushes when I painted my Talisman boardgame Miniatures

I much prefer tokens to minis. I would like them duplicated in two sizes, tho - large for on map use, and small matching ones for initiative tracking. (I use my WFRP3 stance tracks for initiative tracking)