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General Battuta posted:But you are buying from an FLGS, since most of the product sold online is FLGS surplus? And the consumer base that makes game-making possible is created and expanded by game shops? I do not think the first part is true - online retailers buy directly from the distributor, to my understanding. They're not buying FLGS leftovers. As for the second part, I think it is debatable in the current market. In any event, if FLGSs truly provide such an important service to the game industry, they should charge for whatever that value is. Charge people to play in the space, if the gathering place to play truly provides so much value. I think you would find people just ignoring the FLGS altogether, and finding a space to play.
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Apr 9, 2016 04:42
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e: not worth it
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Apr 9, 2016 04:45
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SlyFrog posted:No, you're saying that, apparently because you cannot credibly respond to what I actually said, so you need to engage in the logical fallacy of strawman statements. Or maybe you're terrible at making a point then because I have no idea what you're pissy about then. SlyFrog posted:P.S. Okay, I'm not sure where that rant came from. But I really hate the whole "FLGSs are precious, we should all pay to protect them" thing, and the price screwage that it is used to justify. What "price screwage" are you pissed about exactly? Asmodee is putting a cap on how low online retailers can discount stuff, you still get a discount, just not as big a one. Nobody here has chided you for not supporting bad game stores or even good game stores if you don't feel like patronizing them. Why do people who support their game stores pay more for it? Because game stores don't run on pixie dreams and wishful thinking, most of even the "successful" ones aren't raking in fat stacks of cash hand over fist. Here's what would happen if my FLGS went out of business; I would probably stop playing games, and consequently I would stop buying games as well. I only own a zillion bucks worth of X-Wing and assorted board games because the game store I patronize provides me and other people with a clean, friendly, spacious meeting place to play at, and it so happens that this also encourages me to buy games as well because someone brings their copy of Mysterium and hey that's fun, now I want a copy, or hey some guys say they'll teach me how to play X-Wing, and now I'm running out of storage space for them. You can believe Asmodee's sincerity or not, but the existence of game stores where people can go, sit down, play, socialize, try before they buy, make friends, and organize regular gaming nights probably does more to contribute to a game's success and growth than any amount of fat online discounts. This is why WotC, for example, puts a lot of time and effort into pushing Friday Night Magic as a big loving deal, and by all accounts it's worked out phenomenally for them since they've been experiencing rising profits since at least 2012. Nobody cares that you don't go to the game store.
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Apr 9, 2016 04:48
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Kai Tave posted:Why do people who support their game stores pay more for it? Because game stores don't run on pixie dreams and wishful thinking, most of even the "successful" ones aren't raking in fat stacks of cash hand over fist. So then you pay for it. I have no problem with that. You get value out of the game store, you pay for it. I'm not sure why the price of games I don't buy from the game store, when I never set foot in a game store, should be fixed because you get something out of a gamestore. I would rather not have prices set higher on Steam because you like hanging out in GameStop either, or feeling the physical boxes at Walmart.
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Apr 9, 2016 05:10
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SlyFrog posted:So then you pay for it. I have no problem with that. You get value out of the game store, you pay for it. Well, there are two reasons for this: 1). Because Asmodee values their relationship with brick-and-mortar game stores more than they value you buying their games online, or 2). Because Asmodee wants more of your money. Probably both are true, but I actually believe that Asmodee is sincere about reason number 1 and that this isn't just some shallow ploy to make online retailers offer less of a discount. Like WotC, FFG relies on a strong game-store presence for a lot of their stuff. What happens to X-Wing if there are no more store tournaments and league nights? Probably what happens is X-Wing sales tank hard, because even as cheap as X-Wing is for a tabletop miniatures game people aren't going to shell out X-Wing money for a game they only play in their homes against one or two people. And this is probably even worse in the case of Armada which is already a harder sell compared to X-Wing due to its higher price, bigger tabletop footprint, and longer set up and play time. Ultimately if you want FFG to make games like X-Wing and Armada, then you need to accept that people who buy them solely to play at home with friends aren't the cornerstone that those games are being built on. Your comparison to hanging out at Wal-Mart or Gamestop is fallacious because neither of those places facilitates the actual play and social networking necessary to nurture a healthy and viable gaming scene. If FLGS' shut down because everyone would rather buy through deep discount online retailers then hey, the market has spoken, but that goes both ways and you should be prepared for games like this to dry up. And even as someone who knows extremely well what it's like to not have a lot of money and the need to stretch every dollar, I'm still hard pressed to sympathize with your plight because, again, you're still getting a discount by ordering online. If you're really put off by this decision of Asmodee's, the solution is to stop buying Asmodee games and patronize their competition instead.
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Apr 9, 2016 05:21
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SlyFrog posted:I do not think the first part is true - online retailers buy directly from the distributor, to my understanding. They're not buying FLGS leftovers. As for the second part, I think it is debatable in the current market. In any event, if FLGSs truly provide such an important service to the game industry, they should charge for whatever that value is. Charge people to play in the space, if the gathering place to play truly provides so much value. I think you would find people just ignoring the FLGS altogether, and finding a space to play. Someone somewhere in this whole discussion linked a post by a distributor who said that most online sales are offloaded FLGS leftovers and most of the growth in the current hobby game market is driven by FLGS customers.
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Apr 9, 2016 05:25
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SlyFrog posted:Saying the game wouldn't exist without FLGS begs the question. It would for me. I don't buy them from the FLGS, and I don't go there. Why should people who do use the FLGS pay more for it? Why should I subsidize them? I'm glad that you are able to have a large enough play space and I would assume enough local players to get games going without a FLGS. Frankly, to answer your first question "why should people pay more at a FLGS" - the question itself isn't really the right one to ask. It's not "they should pay more" - they should be paying the same price for the same product. On the other hand, they almost certainly do HAVE to pay more because the FLGS just isn't going to be able to make money at the rate online retailers are selling the games. For a lot of players, the only place where they have the space to play, and network to find people to play with them is at the FLGS. If that store can't make money, it goes out of business, and they lose their place to play. Could they go somewhere else to play? Maybe, but that takes a good deal of effort, networking, and possibly money to get an appropriate location capable of supporting a game that needs at least a 6'x3' play space for every 2 players (assuming Armada). To those people, the game wouldn't exist without the FLGS to provide the physical location to play and the community to play with. They also provide tournaments (which you are really missing out on), and other organized events to build community. To answer the second question, you shouldn't have to subsidize a FLGS if there isn't one in your area that you play at. But you aren't - the increased cost of online retailers isn't resulting in a sale for a local store, because you don't have one. There is a real problem with the FLGS stores that are losing out on sales / profits to online retailers, and are struggling as a result. It isn't a situation where they could lower their costs, but aren't. They are, for the most part, lowering their prices as much as they reasonably can to still keep the lights on. And people are going to shop wherever is cheaper for them in the short term, not caring about the long term consequences. I would compare this to when a company that I worked for was an authorized distributor for a second company. We'd get a 50% discount, pretty much across the board. And we would, in turn, sell to our customers at usually 35 - 40% off of list, often drop shipping from the second company's storehouses. At least we did until we bagged on of the biggest direct to seller customers the second company had - they were suddenly losing tons of sales that they would have otherwise made at lesser discounts (25% if they sold direct to the customer) so eventually they decided to cut out the middle man and set our new discount rate at 25% as well, until we lost that customer, and they reset us back to around 40% or so. That's more or less what is happening here - FFG sees the online retailers (who they have a very deep discount to) abusing their pricing situation to pick up sales at the lower rates than FFG would get from sales through their other distribution channels - and FFG can see that they should be getting those higher percentage sales.
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Apr 9, 2016 05:31
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General Battuta posted:Someone somewhere in this whole discussion linked a post by a distributor who said that most online sales are offloaded FLGS leftovers and most of the growth in the current hobby game market is driven by FLGS customers. Ah, did not see that, sorry. Nonetheless, I do not think the former is true. I do not know regarding the latter. Kai Tave posted:X-Wing if there are no more store tournaments and league nights? Probably what happens is X-Wing sales tank hard, because even as cheap as X-Wing is for a tabletop miniatures game people aren't going to shell out X-Wing money for a game they only play in their homes against one or two people. And this is probably even worse in the case of Armada which is already a harder sell compared to X-Wing due to its higher price, bigger tabletop footprint, and longer set up and play If FLGSs do so much for the publishers, then it makes sense for the publishers to lower the price that they charge the FLGS, in order to sell more games. Or to pay them for all the activities they do for the publishers. The GameStop analogy is not off. Again, the point is that the purported benefit (gaming space, ability to "see product", whatever) is what should be paid for. Not the product price just because you use those services. Golf club manufacturers don't say, "We're limiting the discount that online sellers can give on clubs, because we want to force sales through golf course pro shops to reward the golf course for keeping the market alive, after all, no one would buy golf clubs at all if there weren't golf courses. They tell the golf courses to charge you for playing at the golf course.
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Apr 9, 2016 05:40
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SlyFrog posted:If FLGSs do so much for the publishers, then it makes sense for the publishers to lower the price that they charge the FLGS, in order to sell more games. Or to pay them for all the activities they do for the publishers. If you don't see the difference between a Gamestop and an FLGS with organized play events then this conversation is pointless and disingenuous to boot.
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Apr 9, 2016 05:49
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Rebellion question to break up store chat. When the turn track gets to a recruitment space, you draw two heroes and pick one. It doesn't really say what happens to the other one, but I'm assuming you discard them and are not able to recruit them at all in the current game. Am I playing this correctly?
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Apr 9, 2016 11:30
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You choose one hero from the two cards, and put that action card in your hand, and the hero in your pool. The other card goes on the bottom of the action deck. There are multiple copies of heros, so you "might" get another chance to recruit someone you passed up. On the other hand, you might not.
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Apr 9, 2016 12:09
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SlyFrog posted:So then you pay for it. I have no problem with that. You get value out of the game store, you pay for it. These analogies are incoherent. How does someone get so mad about getting a 33% discount instead of a 50% discount? You should vote with your wallet and stop buying.
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Apr 9, 2016 12:35
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Whelp, just got done getting my rear end kicked at Regionals. I ran this fleet, and I think the fleet worked with one glaring exception, Advanced Gunnery.quote:Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery This is partially my playstyle, but the way I run is the VSD is there to essentially, give them something else to shoot at. I play it very cavalier, not really trying to have it survive the way I do with my ISD. Unfortunately with gunnery this means I'm just giving away 146 points. It cost me dearly both games I lost, not saying I would have won other games with different objectives but I might've lost by 4-6 without it. I also did not know that the first players ship would shoot the same ship twice, if it hits a different arc. Which...yeah. I need to ditch it, and I'm thinking of just doing Opening Salvo, as I hate Precision Strike and Most Wanted isn't any better. Sure I can stick it on my ISD, but that pretty much means if I lose its a 0-10 then.  The first game I also made some major misplays even with Advanced Gunnery, not being offensive enough, not flying my GSD like it's a GSD, slowing down with the VSD at a crucial moment. On top of that my opponent got a Comm Noise at a crucial moment and made my ISD speed 0 with two AFMk 2s in front of it. Yeah... In general I practice against Rebels so rarely they can put me on tilt because I just don't know what they can do or how to effectively fight them. On top of that he let me go first, which also messes with me because I'm so used to going second. Second round was someone doing an interesting Vader Raider swarm, but he was just having a worse day than me. It was close, but I almost felt bad for beating him. It was a good game at least. Last game was another good one as well, playing against what I feared, the Barn Bus strat. Advanced Gunnery ensured I lost, but I felt I did relatively well, only major misplay I feel was maybe not slowing the VSD to try and force him to engage fast enough. The YV-666s are viscous though, of my squadron compliment only Howl, Soontir, and one Bomber lived. Out of the consolation prizes, I did get an alt art MC-80, which I promptly traded to a friend for the ISD-2 promo, and I got a Leading Shots and Ackbar alt art cards so not bad in that department at least. Eimi fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Apr 10, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 01:36
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What is the "Barn Bus" strat? Never heard of that one.
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Apr 10, 2016 20:26
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Orvin posted:What is the "Barn Bus" strat? Never heard of that one. Nothing but YV-666s for squadrons, and max points. Sure they move slow, but they have rogue and do insane damage thanks to follow 2 blues and 2 blacks. Also 7 hp to chew through.
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Apr 10, 2016 20:33
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Wrong thread
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Apr 10, 2016 20:39
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Eimi posted:Nothing but YV-666s for squadrons, and max points. Sure they move slow, but they have rogue and do insane damage thanks to follow 2 blues and 2 blacks. Also 7 hp to chew through. That's ridiculous. At nationals last year I faced a guy with 8 a-wings, and I thought it was a bit silly that he bought that many rebel fighter packs to run a spam build of dubious efficacy, but you'd need to buy EIGHT squadron packs to max out YV-666s. That's some commitment right thurr. I've heard tell of people running RHymerball and mass firesprays and what have you, but haven't seen anyone doing it around here.
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Apr 11, 2016 08:22
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Reynold posted:That's ridiculous. At nationals last year I faced a guy with 8 a-wings, and I thought it was a bit silly that he bought that many rebel fighter packs to run a spam build of dubious efficacy, but you'd need to buy EIGHT squadron packs to max out YV-666s. That's some commitment right thurr. I've heard tell of people running RHymerball and mass firesprays and what have you, but haven't seen anyone doing it around here. Well, you need to buy four and find someone who runs Rebels and trade your leftover Rebel ships for their leftover Imperial ships.
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Apr 11, 2016 08:26
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SlyFrog posted:So then you pay for it. I have no problem with that. You get value out of the game store, you pay for it. Your comparison breaks down a little bit because brick and mortar stores tend to sell right at MSRP, whereas online retailers discount below it. Technically speaking, you're not paying a higher price by shopping at a FLGS, you're paying a lower price by shopping online. Its a fine distinction, but an important one.
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Apr 11, 2016 11:55
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Reynold posted:That's ridiculous. At nationals last year I faced a guy with 8 a-wings, and I thought it was a bit silly that he bought that many rebel fighter packs to run a spam build of dubious efficacy, but you'd need to buy EIGHT squadron packs to max out YV-666s. That's some commitment right thurr. I've heard tell of people running RHymerball and mass firesprays and what have you, but haven't seen anyone doing it around here. But didn't the 8 A-wing fleet win the whole thing in the end? Doesn't seem too dubious if it leads you to victory. I mean, sure, that was back before Wave 2 popped and probably isn't that hot these days, back back in Wave 1, that was part of the winning fleet.
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Apr 11, 2016 18:39
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jng2058 posted:But didn't the 8 A-wing fleet win the whole thing in the end? Doesn't seem too dubious if it leads you to victory. I mean, sure, that was back before Wave 2 popped and probably isn't that hot these days, back back in Wave 1, that was part of the winning fleet. I mean, this applies to any sort of "list building" games. Right now the current hotness in X-Wing is a list comprised of three Jumpmaster 5000's. Usually large-based ships in X-Wing fall into a pattern of one + a wingman (the Falcon and someone else, an Imperial Decimator plus one, etc) or maybe two (dual IG-2000's in particular, but I've seen other configurations), but low-level JM5K's are cheap and with the right upgrades can have a murderous damage output so people are dropping like $90 MSRP, or even paying eBay scalper prices if they can't find any in their area, in order to buy three of'em. And it's working because some guy running that list just won the Hoth Open tournament in Illinois a couple weeks ago. Also anyone running Palpatine in a shuttle plus two Imperial Aces has to shell out $100 for the Imperial Raider expac where Palpatine himself and the TIE Advanced upgrade cards come from.
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Apr 11, 2016 18:55
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lol at the idea spending 100 dollars is a lot of money in this hobby
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Apr 11, 2016 19:21
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A-Wings still really good, but X's gonna be better soon as a multi-role fighter with Flotillas and their Bomber Command(?) upgrade. Between speed 5, Counter 2, and acceptable anti-ship (.75 damage average) they're good against pretty much everything, and never really wasted points the way TIE Fighters / TIE Interceptors can sometimes seem.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:21
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A 50S RAYGUN posted:lol at the idea spending 100 dollars is a lot of money in this hobby A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks no matter how you slice it. For the price of a few pieces of cardboard to make your existing plastic spaceships better, you could buy two brand new full-fledged board games, decent ones too. The fact that it's cheap compared to Games Workshop, leaders in the field of price-gouging for lovely lumps of skull-embossed plastic, or Magic: the Gathering's ridiculous secondhand market doesn't mean it's still not a fair chunk of change to be dropping to chase the latest meta list.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:30
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jivjov posted:Your comparison breaks down a little bit because brick and mortar stores tend to sell right at MSRP, whereas online retailers discount below it. Technically speaking, you're not paying a higher price by shopping at a FLGS, you're paying a lower price by shopping online. Its a fine distinction, but an important one. I do not think it is. MSRP is what they want to set it at. I know that is traditionally a multiple of COG, with the specific multiple being industry dependent. The price I'm paying is what I'm paying. If it is $70 at an online store, $100 at a retail store, those are the prices. The fact that one or the other relates to MSRP simply relates to an arbitrary standard. The manufacturer could say the MSRP is a 1000% mark-up if they wanted to (and MSRP is often a joke in many industries, where everyone knows that you should never pay MSRP as a consumer). Ultimately, I care about what the price actually is. I don't feel good because I got a product for 50% of MSRP, or 100% of MSRP. If it were otherwise, they should sell games at a MSRP of $1000 per game, then we could all feel great about getting steals when we find them for $500. Ultimately, as a consumer, I want price competition. Not attempts to fix distribution channels to enforce collusion and price uniformity.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:32
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SlyFrog posted:Ultimately, as a consumer, I want price competition. Not attempts to fix distribution channels to enforce collusion and price uniformity. Yeah; there's nothing inherently wrong with chasing the lowest dollar amount. And in an ideal world the two games shops I frequent would have prices within a couple dollars of Amazon...but a reality of the hobby is that Amazon and Cool Stuff and Miniature Market are going to be able to undercut brick and mortar shops and often by a significant margin. Part of that is unavoidable economies of scale. Everyone in the country can shop with Amazon. Only people in the KC metro are going to be shopping at Pulp Fiction Comics and Games. Amazon can afford to buy more stock and then make lower percentages on each sale just due to sheer volume. But, as the owner of PF once told me "Can you go play in Amazon.com's game room?" So there is some "subsidizing" involved. Shopping at an FLGS is probably going to be more expensive..but you're supporting the concept of having local gaming spaces and communities, not just local gaming retailers.
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Apr 11, 2016 20:30
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Put your money where your mouth is. If you believe you're subsidizing FLGS, stop buying FFG products and let the FLGS go out of bidness. Watch the game go out of print like DUST.
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Apr 11, 2016 20:44
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no, you see, he doesn't want the game to go out of business, he just wants to spend less money, unaware of where the bulk and incentivization of sales are actually coming from
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Apr 11, 2016 21:10
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jng2058 posted:But didn't the 8 A-wing fleet win the whole thing in the end? Doesn't seem too dubious if it leads you to victory. I mean, sure, that was back before Wave 2 popped and probably isn't that hot these days, back back in Wave 1, that was part of the winning fleet. I'll take your word for that, but my recollection of facing that fleet was the dude just throwing all his a-wings at the nose of one of my assault frigates hoping to just do some damage to the shields before they died. In that, they were somewhat successful, before being almost completely wiped out by anti-squadron fire and my own escort fighters over the next round of shooting. Gave me 50 something points just so he could knock a few shields off the facing of a ship that I never intended to present to his big guns, but if he did better in his other games, more power to him. There are just so many ways to absolutely destroy low hull point swarms, even back then, it never struck me as worth doing.
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Apr 11, 2016 21:14
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So what did the game stores complain about before online sales were a thing? People trading Magic and Warhammer in the parking lot?
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Apr 11, 2016 21:20
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Reynold posted:I'll take your word for that, but my recollection of facing that fleet was the dude just throwing all his a-wings at the nose of one of my assault frigates hoping to just do some damage to the shields before they died. In that, they were somewhat successful, before being almost completely wiped out by anti-squadron fire and my own escort fighters over the next round of shooting. Gave me 50 something points just so he could knock a few shields off the facing of a ship that I never intended to present to his big guns, but if he did better in his other games, more power to him. Well, I dunno if this was the fleet you faced, but here's the one that won in the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_jSB9AZXLQ
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Apr 11, 2016 23:42
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canyoneer posted:So what did the game stores complain about before online sales were a thing? People trading Magic and Warhammer in the parking lot?
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Apr 11, 2016 23:45
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bunnyofdoom posted:gently caress you that is still a great game. I still play it Better or worse than Empire at War?
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Apr 14, 2016 03:37
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Baron Porkface posted:Better or worse than Empire at War? Different. The space battles are the best part of EaW, while they're the worst part of Rebellion. Indeed, you'll pretty much always just auto-resolve because the tactical space combat is just so miserable. And there is no controllable ground combat at all. However, where Rebellion shines is on the strategy layer. You've got the whole galaxy in play, teams of heroes and spies running around doing missions, the Rebels playing hide and seek with the Empire. Luke getting the poo poo kicked out of him by Vader if they end up on the same planet together, then Luke running off to Dagobah, and coming back a Jedi able to train other force sensitives as Jedi as well....it's a game that has a ton of detail and really feels epic in a way that EaW does not. But it also has a really lovely interface that sucked at the time and hasn't aged well since. So if you seek the game out, know what you're getting yourself into. Maybe catch a YouTube playthrough or two before you invest real currency in the game.
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Apr 14, 2016 05:25
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EaW's ground combat was loving awful. Not just playing it, but auto resolve always felt like some ridiculous poo poo would happen and everything would get wiped out by enemies that should't have stood a chance. Both games suffer from the whole "try to control the entire goddamn galaxy in real time, by the way, here are a thousand saboteurs destroying random poo poo on every planet you control" garbage. When you get right down to it, I didn't like either game very much, but I sank a lot of time into both because Star Wars strategy. I'm trying to justify buying the new Rebellion board game, which I think will be more my pace, though if my girlfriend hates it, there goes 75 bux, as I'll never be able to bust it out again.
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Apr 14, 2016 08:19
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Is there a recommended Armada builder website? The resources for that game aren't as fleshed out as xwing
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Apr 14, 2016 10:01
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I use SWAFT. It has a few bugs (try changing the ship for a unique officer) but works pretty well otherwise, the only issue is that it doesn't really print out tourney-ready lists.
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Apr 14, 2016 10:03
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I use Fabs Fleet Generator. It's a little clunky initially, but it's nice to have it know what cards you own and limit you to them
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Apr 14, 2016 12:22
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I prefer Armada Warlords. It has scanned visuals, lists where all the stuff comes from, and in general is really slick.
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Apr 14, 2016 14:11
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Eimi posted:I prefer Armada Warlords.
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Apr 14, 2016 14:22
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