Glad to have you here, and please give us an updated post on your experience some time. Hopefully you find it rewarding and/or recruit some lackeys to join you.

I play solo exclusively, in large part due to lack of interest nearby. The other part is that I'm terrible at playing competitively, and I get not much better playing only myself, so there's that vicious circle to contend with. In most cases, I think, as pointed out above, you're going to find some mechanical benefit to it. It will help you learn some protocol and tricks and overall mechanic. In my case [and this is probably the autism talking] I'm in this game almost exclusively for the cinematic and imaginative aspects. I'll follow the game through as close as I can to the rules, and I've played a handful of games with other people. But in my mind I experience a space battle; every time I look over a model—whether on the board, on display, or being detailed—it sets off my imagination. That alone is worth the investment for me. I've managed to eliminate bias enough to make the lists worthwhile, pay attention to their strengths and weaknesses. Of course there's the lack of surprise, but my own thinking is so one-dimensional at times that I actually forget most of one side's dials by the time I've set the other side. Your mileage may vary.

Agreed...."buy where you play" is my motto. I would love to live my life by this noble creed as well, but the nearest game store that I can find is 50 miles away. I know of a couple more that are 90 miles away. It's a great ideal, but don't be quick to villianize those of us who depend on places like MM and Amazon. A sort of update: I just visited my FLGS for the first time (the closest at 50 miles); they had TONS of stock, of both W1 and W2. Multiples of literally every expansion. I was surprised by that. This FLGS also has accessories by GF9, Battlefoam, FFG Supply, Litko. They have a ton of W3 on order and expect it "soon" although I remain skeptical (still thinking October). Anyway, it's nice to think I'll never have to worry about being able to find a particular expansion. It's a little cost-prohibitive to do all my business there, but I will do what I can to support 'em.

I am hugely interested in prequel era ships. I can understand not wanting it to cross-pollinate with the OT games, but there is a market for it. Star Wars Rebels is going to blur those lines even further. And if that is the case, that a separate prequel game is made, there's no need to disparage those (allegedly few) of us that are interested.

Thanks for doing that. Excellent.

If it shot at them? Maybe from range three, with a Mercenary crew

I think it's distinct enough from the YT-1300; smaller and arranged differently. The commonality could be explained by same manufacturer/series. It's also technically in the film canon now—brief cameo in Episode IV special edition, departing from Mos Eisley.

They had great Micro Machines.

Clone Wars era? I love how they retconned that. The Incredible Cross Sections version was cool, too.

Lady Luck looks like a clown car. I understand its story significance but the design is awful. VT-49 Decimator? Okay, but lose the R2-D2 bridge dome... somehow.

Another take on the E-Wing, although I assume FFG is unlikely to use it:

That's only by the Wookipedia's reckoning, I don't believe there are any official size on it. A few people have said they reacon it's around 190m, not the 250 they quote. Yeah. Like I said earlier, the length quote came from the author's Tumblr or something like that, as an afterthought. It was never included in the official literature. If FFG built this and called it ~190m, that'd be fine by me.

Gametooine. They're on Gametooine.

But Alderaan is peaceful, we have no weapons! You can't possibly

I grabbed an X and Y about a month ago. I can't find Wave 1 anywhere now.

LOL....if you follow my advice you should not need another bottle. In fact one bottle could probably cover an entire gaming group and then some if properly stored. Sorry if it sounded like an infomerical. I should have included the disclaimer: I have no ties to the aforementioned product and I believe there are similar products that do the same thing, this is just the one I used. I'm glad you pointed it out. I use self-adhesive clear square rubber bumpers for my stands, one for each corner. It's worked out great for me, but this might have saved me some time, money, and storage space. I'll probably still check it out for the pegs though.

I remember hearing somewhere, possibly the Rogue Squadron game, that the pivot is limited to a narrow forward angle. I also think there have been instances of rear-facing pivot in other places, which makes it seem like an upgrade option (fiction upgrade, not game upgrade) such as mentioned with the Y-Wing BTL-S3 and A4.

Agreed...."buy where you play" is my motto. I would love to live my life by this noble creed as well, but the nearest game store that I can find is 50 miles away. I know of a couple more that are 90 miles away. It's a great ideal, but don't be quick to villianize those of us who depend on places like MM and Amazon.

Versions of the E-Wing with the blaster/ion turret instead of laser cannon aren't too bad.

What about something like this? Technically within the Galactic Civil War era? Of course there's the question of licensing, but that's between FFG and LFL. Those ships are beautifully unique while still maintaining an obvious Imperial aesthetic trend. And they look like the perfect size. Heck, I wouldn't mind owning a mini of the Ghost, either.

TIE Defender, Z-95, E-Wing (Fate Of The Galaxy version would be ideal http://goo.gl/8g6LPv ). I almost don't even care, outside of those 3. Wouldn't mind StarViper/Virago or Hound's Tooth. The argument that the Outrider is a Falcon knockoff is understandable, but I wouldn't turn that down, either. I never played Galaxies but the Kihraxz ships are nice. Some more TIE variants would be okay, like the Phantom, Vanguard, g/t, TIE Droid. Even the TIE Avenger. Please no Oppressor, Aggressor, or Hunter, though—I hope to never see them at all. I never cared for the XG-1 or Missile Boat either; they tend to buck the Imperial aesthetic in my opinion. Although I'm sure we'll see one or both, eventually. Really, though, until I get a flight of TIE Defenders, I don't even care.

I'd be okay with that. I know the A-Wing scale argument is a tired one. I think FFG's approach is defensible and I won't fault them for that. But unless the A-Wing pilots' heads are three feet across, that is not a 30-foot long ship. When you look at photos of all the LF models in the same room, I can see what's going on. There's a practical approach to their construction. They were built in a way that made sense for filming purposes. You know what the craft don't have? A unifying metric. They're all kitbashed, with the intention of the actual film experience to provide scale. In reality, the Tantive IV model is only a few inches longer than the Falcon. The Nebulon-B is not much longer than that. That suggests that LFL approached the scale in a somewhat arbitrary fashion. I think it's likely that someone—probably not the person who built the models—looked at all the starfighter film models and assumed they were constructed to scale, and just made up the numbers from there. It can be argued that FFG did everything they could and are using official data—I won't contest that at all. But I will contest that LF used arbitrary and sometimes-meaningless numbers to provide to their partners. The films themselves are canon, not the measurement of the film models. And there is more than enough evidence in them to suggest the A-Wing is not 9.6 meters long. Same for the TIEs, to a lesser extent. That being said, since we're already dealing with a sort of sliding scale with TIEs and A-Wings, and I think it's been handled to the best of FFG's ability, I wouldn't mind some scale flubs with capital ships as long as it remained convincing enough. The scale on the CR-90 is reasonable—but a 3 or 4 foot star destroyer would be ridiculous. If we can stick with frigates and freighters, and keep the focus on starfighter squadrons, I think that will be good. I think an entirely new game at a capital ship scale would be welcome in the future.

All due respect to WEG, the original source material should be the last word regarding its own intellectual property. I've played the Dark Forces games a number of times and I can confirm that 16m is accurate enough.

In the EU cannon it is established that they are in fact armed, just not well enough to take on capitol ships which is why they need an escort. Personally I'm into it. Being someone who has come from 40k I enjoy the dynamic of having a "regular size" and a "super big special rules for awesome models size". I will pick both of these up when I have the cash and use them in fun games and mega battle style stuff. I hope that they don't become part of the tournament scene though and that dog fighting stays the norm. I think we can hope that that will stay mostly true because of the uninterrupted wave release schedule. Ah cool. Where was that? I'm mostly going off of X-wing Alliance here. Something like a blaster turret and 1-speed movements would make some sense. Umm its just mentioned in different Rebellion Era EU canon. I mean it was mentioned off hand in Choices of One (just finished reading recently). I don't know particulars of what kind of load out it would have but I would imagine something in the order of the cannon upgrade cards, Ion Cannon, Heavy Laser Cannon, things like that. Not many, but enough to stave off a few small fighters at a time. FWIW, Wookieepedia claims a variant GR-75 is equipped with "Twin fire-linked laser cannon turrets" and of the 7 crew, one of them is a gunner. Looked to me like there were 2 or 3 in on the attack on the second death star. That's true, I think they were there as kamikaze ships, though.

Love will find a way.