I don't mind clone war ships. Gives my wallet some recovery time :-)

IG-58 said:

Well, I don't know. I think by calling the game X-Wing, they limit themselves to OT. If they come out with prequel ships it would have to be Star Wars (insert prequel ship name here) Miniatures Game.

Also, they could conceivably release card-only expansions to expand the pool of pilots, astromechs, weapons, etc to keep the game alive.

Ah, cards-only expansions lead to the dreaded Print-On-Demand graveyard!  I think a repaint + new cards is a better deal for all parties.  The Edge of the Empire announcement gives us a minimum window for the license of three years.  I think we can expect this game to be supported for at least two years if it does well.  We're not talking a game that really needs waves upon waves of expansion in that time period.  But it's easy to imagine that points levels will steadily rise during the lifetime of organized play.  That means folks will need to get more ships.  To keep things fresh, you need new rules -- which means you need new cards.  The natural solution to needing more of the same kind of ships and more rules is to package new cards with ship repaints.

herozeromes said:

 Yeah, I really wouldn't be interested in clone wars stuff.

It does seem like the ship selection is going to be limited, though.

IG-58 said:

I get the feeling it'll be a while yet. One thing that FFG has been doing consistently with this license is mentioning its connection specifically to the Classic era, be it X-Wing, Star Wars: The Card Game, or now the beta for the Edge of the Empire RPG. I think that they're doing this as a method of tapping into the portion of the fanbase that is sick of hearing about The Clone Wars. And I don't mean that to sound bashy: I actually like a lot of the Prequel-era and OR material that has come out recently. I just think that departing from that, at least for a sufficient amount of time to build up a stable playerbase for each of these games, is a smart decision.

Very well said.  You don't have to hate the prequels or EU to simply be sick of the monolithic approach to merchandising which just stresses More More More at the expense of the mysterious tone of the OT.  Also, I think it's worth pointing out again that we can't presume this game will be supported for the next five years. So far as we know, FFG can produce SW games until at least 2015.  So we have just slightly more than a 2-year window on the lean side.  If this game got two years of support in terms of new models and new rules, I'd be grateful.  And I think there is enough depth to the game to support it for that long without mining different eras, a la WotC's approach.