The return rate on a highly available, continually printed and non-rarity based game is extremely small, ranging from 50-75% off the price you probably paid for it. Same can be said for GW and Warmachine models and most likely any other board game out there. This isn't like MtG where you can hang onto a card for a few months/years and watch the price of it fluctuate as it falls in and out of popularity. There are no rarities to affect a model's abundance and product is readily available as long as FFG is producing and shipping them. To answer your question: You most likely won't get your money back out of it and if you try to get any money back from it, it will probably be much much less than what you paid for. My recommendation: Buy it and play with it and even if you lose interest you'll still have it if you ever decide to come around to play it again. And the models are cool just to have.

IMPERIAL ACES 2!!!!

I agree with the 50/50 rule, but allocating your purchases is all up to you. I've bought maybe 6 expansions from my FLGS, but then again I've bought another $300+ worth of units online because it is usually 30-33% cheaper than MSRP and totally worth it. Coolstuff recently had Imperial Aces for $16, so I bought five of them from there rather than buy two or three of them at my LGS. I play MtG as well and my playgroup creates fierce loyalties to stores who support and sponsor us for bigger events, and who are just extremely friendly to us in general. I do my best to support my FLGS through purchases of MtG, hobby supplies (paint, brushes, knives) snacks, entry fees, etc. but if I can get a ridiculous deal on X-Wing online, I'll definitely take that up before paying full price at my local store. And my experiences with game stores have always had no problems bringing outside gaming products to play with. As the owner once told me people just seeing you play at their tables will motivate people to try and buy it at their store. So purchase wherever, but be kind to your LGS(es) since you are playing on their property with the community that they are bringing together for you to play with.

I only play Imperials so I can learn their tactics so when I play Rebels I am familiar with patterns and abilities to gun down Imperial slugs!

I understand the OP's gripe. Buying Lambdas to put Advanced Sensors on B-Wings is ridiculous, but that was what Heaver's list had and to even try a competitive list like that a tournament you have to have the cards on you somehow. C3PO is amazing on the Falcon, Han is also great and maybe also R2-D2 as a crew, but other than that there is no reason to even touch the Tantive IV if you only plan on playing competitively. Balancing family time and X-Wing is a totally different personal thing that many shouldn't have a say in when it comes to the main point of getting the cards. My recommendation would be to buy it, swipe it for the three crew cards and sell it for a discounted price with an obvious disclaimer that C3PO, Han, and R2 are not included. You may have to discount it $10-$20, but you'll be saving in whatever you could get back, and if there is a big casual scene (which I'm assuming there is if you're local gaming community plays that much X-Wing competitively) you'd have no problem buying a Tantive on eBay/Coolstuff/MM for about 33% off MSRP and flipping the rest for $50.

I actually like that idea, Kyle with Moldy and RecSpec to boost other HWKs. As much as I'd love to, right now I'm vacationing down the road in Palm Desert and won't be home until the escalation tournament. GMI is my first FLGS when I started playing MtG there in 2012, but my play group has moved outward to Rancho when FNMs dried up.

I've done 4 Blues with Ion before and it's just extremely boring winning with it all the time. If I could, I would drop the gunners for an A-Wing Prototype Pilot with the Refit, but that's not out yet. I guess I could drop gunners for an Z-95, but then it wouldn't go with my HWK theme... Labyrinth Games in Rancho Cucamonga, July 5th around 4PM. Ill post the rest of the deets in the Riverside forum and ill see you this weekend at GMI for that Tantive.

Here's a list I plan on running in a few weeks for an upcoming local tournament. I'd appreciate any and all critique/suggestions. Rebel Operative (16) Gunner (5) Ion Cannon Turret (5) (26) Rebel Operative (16) Gunner (5) Ion Cannon Turret (5) (26) Rebel Operative (16) Gunner (5) Ion Cannon Turret (5) (26) Rebel Operative (16) Ion Cannon Turret (5) (21) The main goal is to just ion everything just for the sake of ion'ing everything, I figured it would hurt swarms, large ships and named pilots well. I know I can't K-Turn, but I figured two hard turns in the same direction is basically the same thing. I also put gunners on everything I could fit them in because with 1 primary attack I'm probably gonna miss, so I might as well spend another 15 points on gunners to throw one more dice (unless I'm at range one), which also works out well if they are lucky enough to dodge the Ion Turrets and I happen to have them in my firing arc. Unfortunately I couldn't fit gunners and turrets into everything, but luckily at 99 points I'll have the initiative on fully-optimized lists that fill out the whole 100 points. The two pilot skill already beats out all those pesky Academy TIES and ORSs and having initiative will let me shoot down Rebel swarms first. What do you guys think?

If you would like, I'd be happy to mail you a set of the named pilots cards of the Imperial Aces and B-Wing expansions as I have 4 copies of each of them.

Those ships are ugly. I don't agree on breaking factions by allowing the other side to fly its opposing ships. What Wave 6 needs to do, or FFG in general, is to promote different formats/leagues of play for more diverse tournament play by either reprinting ships with supporting upgrades or making new support ships for different missions. Going epic is a step in the right direction, but when regionals only host 100 point or escalation tournaments, the game becomes bland and creates a definitive cutthroat competition limiting the strategy of squad building.

Coolstuff emailed me with a shipped status and tracking number. I placed my order yesterday.

Why stop at a dozen when you can have two dozen?

Too much, not enough.

I believe it may have come from one of the users on here that uses Shapeways to 3d print their designs.

I agree.

Doing 300 points with a Tantive and Bs/X Wings for support vs. 12 Fighters (Howlrunner + Backstabber included), 2 Bounty Hunters, 2 Bombers and the rest Intercepters is indeed epic. Rebels usually get annihilated because they just can't drop enough ships before getting gunned down by a swarm. Even the Tantive can't fare well against a massive swarm, unless you feel like ramming them, but at that point all of their PS1-3 dudes will be dodging it before it gets to chomp them. Still, very fun and exciting for both players.

REBEL ACES II!

Rebels vs. Rebels and Imperials vs. Imperials = Training exercises/virtual simulators. I'm also working with my FLGS to make a huge poster for a "Galactic Conquest" map that we may organize into a season-long tournament. I've also written a few short narratives featuring Dagger Squadron (I love B-Wings) after a few of my battles. It's awesome even just imagining and narrating battles after those small games and seeing them play out in your head as if it were an epic dogfight scene in a SW movie, even if the special characters involved never met each other. Tactical aspects aside, I find it hard to believe that people lack the creativity of making their own stories out of this game, or even a whole campaign. I mean sure, the elitism and extremely finite boundaries of SW canon can be stifling in creativity at times, but I recommend trying to make up your own story every once in awhile. Creative writing is fun and challenging and always beneficial to the mind (even in a limited universe such as SW), it can even be exciting.

The only fluff games I've really played would be Luke vs. Vader with my little brother. And Luke almost always wins. I'd line up my B-Wings in front of an Ion Cannon Y-Wing like a chariot and call it my "B-Wing Chariot!" if that counts as fluff. And my love for B-Wings and running 4x Dagger Squadron pilots has me screaming "Daggers for life!" every time my quad B's decimate the enemy.

-Howlrunner + Stealth Device + Swarm Tactics -Backstabber -9 Academy TIEs Pew pew?

You could fill the 31 points with a TIE Phantom and fly Vader as a support ship to give it more actions.

I'm also very excited. Dash Rendar finally gets a model to represent the Outrider on the board, Imperial tank looks awesome, even debris clouds are something I'm excited for even if they might just be used as just new terrain shapes.

Rebel: B-Wing YT X-Wing Imperial: TIE Fighter Firespray TIE Interceptor

WOTC's license issues don't negate the problem of having a limited supply of ships available. The first three waves were able to use familiar movie ships, except for one ship from a popular video game series. Wave 4 is all EU ships, but except for the phantom they're familiar EU ships with a lot of history behind them. But that's about it, from here the options get pretty limited. Wave 5 has one popular ship that everyone wanted, but the other one is some obscure video game ship that most people had probably never heard of before. I could see them doing a prequel-based game with the exact same mechanics of X-Wing and make it so that it coincides with X-Wing but acts as 2 additional factions that can be brought to the table. This could also make way for multiple formats within X-Wing: Prequel Trilogy Series, Original Trilogy Series, and Legacy (Prequel+Original) Series for tournament diversification. Of course, that will most likely happen if Fantasy Flight ever runs out of ideas to print and produce new ships/mechanics/flavor for X-Wing.

I guess since logic is non-existent in SW, then trying to apply logic is pointless and automatically makes me wrong? If that is the case, then I'll simply nullify my first comment and admit my stupidity (to please the technicality diehards) and say that the cannon placement just LOOKS stupid. And the F-18 argument would still be as effective if the E-Wing cannon was placed below the cockpit.