Star Wars Miniatures moving to Atomic Mass Games

[Rumar 244]

4 hours ago, lologrelol said:

Honestly, I don't know who was the final authority on this game; but, there is a lot of imbalance in Legion that should never have gotten through in the first place.

Maybe its because I've played minis games for a long time, or am an amateur games designer, but some things I noticed straight off the bat were:

• Heavies were extremely over-costed, mostly because some objectives couldn't be taken by them and they couldn't dish out quite enough to make back their points.
• Heavy weapons were too expensive on squads, making it easier for people to min max their activations by taking minimum squad sizes.
• Strike teams were a silly choice due to their efficiency (but I can see a case for them being there).
• Refresh weapons, and refresh abilities, were too inefficient, because units like to get every action they can get. Most players saw that only refresh things that auto-refreshed some how, were good.
• Action economy was king, so units that were able to benefit from this would do very well.
• Units with high speed were really good only if they were also melee units, or could take objectives.
• Vehicles and creatures were gimped from half the objectives. Why? A tank crew can get out of a vehicle and activate something. It just really makes people wary of going with lots of these units. Players should not feel hindered in list building like this.
• Lots of the characters were way too expensive for what they did.
• Bounty was unreliable, and secret mission was way stronger than it.
• Line of sight and cover felt weird. You should have to measure range and LOS from each model in a unit, not just range from the leader. Cover to the center of the model is often too hard to get. It makes people set up their models in these weird formations to chain cover on simply immersion breaking angles. Also, seeing the unit leaders of units stand way out from cover is also immersion breaking.
• Rules felt too clustered/disorganized/spread out, in the RRG. I would have preferred something more concise.
• All models should have been treated as volumes, rather than looking model to model. It saves so many arguments.
• Forests and other types of area terrain should be unified into a single consistent type, that provides both cover and difficult ground. Having some types of area that do not just automatically do both can be confusing to the tournament player, making it hard to prepare for that type of terrain, and practice for it.

There's probably other things, and I could go into more depth. But most of the above my friends and I figured out after only a few games of each relevant rule upon its release.

I liked Alex as a designer, sad to see him go. I still had the above critiques though.

This. Very concise and well argumented list.

[KommanderKeldoth 3,161]

On 11/20/2020 at 8:45 AM, Lochlan said:

Stock issues have always been bad with this game.  The only way stock issues could be persistently bad despite waning sales would be if the production team could literally see the future.

Things weren't bad for most of the first year.

[Rumar 244]

On 11/20/2020 at 11:26 AM, Ilostmycactus said:

I doubt Asmodee cares if games are considered "balanced" or not.  They want profitability.

Imbalance will sell more plastic via power creep, I am afraid. That is surely what GW is thinking.

[KommanderKeldoth 3,161]

5 hours ago, Rumar said:

Imbalance will sell more plastic via power creep, I am afraid. That is surely what GW is thinking.

Thats partially what kept X-Wing 1.0 growing rapidly early on. From wave 4 onward it was all about making the newer ships the must have items. That, and you had to buy multiple factions to get the upgrade cards you wanted. 

[Uetur 118]

Power creep is inevitable in these types of games.  The trick is doing it in such as way that it doesn't disenfranchise your entire playerbase at the same time which can have the situation of lowering your player count.

Basically I expect to buy new units in the future, I am hoping not to have to rebuy entire armies or do cross factional purchases because I wont.

[Khobai 375]

Power creep is only inevitable because its the easiest and laziest way to sell new models.

There are however alternatives to power creep. Designing armies around themes and synergies is one way of avoiding power creep.

Thats how warmachine attempted to contain power creep by introducing themed armies. Although they went a little too far in that direction by making the themed armies way better than the non-themed armies.

Edited November 22, 2020 by Khobai

[wintermoonwolf 148]

 

[Decarior 121]

I'm always amazed how easily and casually the accusation of intentionally power creep to sell more models is thrown around. Picture the designer, which work and integrity is constantly questioned, when you just want to create a good and thematic game. Nothing in the past work of both FFG and AMC tells me that they wanted to or were forced (by whomever) to create power creep.  Sure there were units that were overpowered at release, just as many as they were underpowered see the Tauntaun, Veteran, Shore, Dewback wave as an excellent example. All this shows you is a lack in sufficient playtesting and the effects of being in a small bubble during development.

People also tend to overestimate the number of players that buy models based on their competitiveness. If I look at my local scene most player just buy whatever they like no matter how competitive the unit is at release.

And lastly in a product line that shows constant supply shortage in nearly all of its new products, I don't think you need to include power creep to sell models. You not even have enough stock for the 'bad ones'.

[Atromix 371]

2 hours ago, Decarior said:

People also tend to overestimate the number of players that buy models based on their competitiveness. If I look at my local scene most player just buy whatever they like no matter how competitive the unit is at release.

I can confirm, my flgs which also runs quite a large online store seems to always have at least 5-10 tauntauns on the shelves, and yet fleet troopers and the landspeeder seem to always struggle to stay in stock.

[KalEl814 1,512]

 

I believe this is good news.

[Geekboy75g 30]

2 hours ago, KalEl814 said:

 

I believe this is good news.

it is

[Lochlan 1,051]

2 hours ago, KalEl814 said:

 

I believe this is good news.

Still sad that Alex didn't get to make the move, but this definitely improves my outlook for the future of Legion. 

[DFocke 262]

This alleviates many of my concerns for the future. I do still wish that Alex had also made the move, but this is still good news.