Waiting another year or two for new characters would suck. Enough stuff is known to start making First Order and Resistance Subfactions pieces that could be playable within their Factions later if created. We need to know more about some characters, Snoke for instance. But Movie characters are often just moments in time like Han and Luke in Stormtrooper armor... and how much did they really need to know about Salacious Crumb anyways...

Personally, I'd be cool with getting more than one version of Kylo Ren.
One Kylo Ren to play with Empire and then another "First Order" Kylo Ren.
Maybe even a full v-set of new Faction pieces like a year or two from from now.
come on..."First Order, Captain Trash-Compactor" (fingers-crossed!)

A revision of my opinion has become necessary after reading the many comments that followed mine. I believe that new factions could be quite feasible and perhaps even necessary in the future. However until at least Episode VIII, I don't think we should integrate them just yet. We still have very little history of the 30 years between Episode VI and VII and the future of the characters could change the way new factions would function. So for now I think it would be best to integrate the characters of The Force Awakens into our current system but be sure to put in place subfaction dividers similar to that of the Galactic Alliance, Black Sun, and Zann subfactions that could be easily transformed into new factions at a later date. Until we understand the politic situation of the new canon and the past and futures of the new characters residing in it, I think its best to retain the system we have, working in some flexibility for future change.

I don't think they're *needed* yet. And I think it's fine to just use identifiers. But you could start up new factions with just 8 pieces per faction, I think.

A power 11 piece. Two power 10 pieces (1 tech, 1 secondary-attacker). 2 major beatsticks that are power 8-9 each (where you'd take one or the other... too expensive and don't synergize well to take both). 3 other pieces that provide synergy for the two beatsticks and can Affinity in certain pieces from other factions like Stormtroopers, etc. All power 8-9. Then you have a squad core (power 11 commander, secondary attacker, great tech piece) for about 65 points. And can take in the direction of either of the two major beatsticks. Or try to fit both while being short on tech.

You only get 2 squads per faction that way, and those 2 squads would be pretty similar with the same power 11 commander, but it could be done with just a few pieces per side.

You can come up with 8 right now if you wanted.

Finn, Rey, Poe, Leia, Han, Chewie, Maz, Resistance Pilot

Hux, Kylo, Flame Trooper, Phasma, (4 more non-unique troopers or officers)




Not advocating for it. Just saying you could do it.

I should recant some of my statements.... It is impossible to get rid of the NR and Vong in this game. All I'm saying is new factions would be the easiest way to show people pieces from the movie. I.E.

Some new kid we show loves the movie and the First Order, I show him the game, but then have to explain, "Well, The First Order isn't their own faction, its actually a Sub-Faction in the Imperial Faction." Or an even harder discussion, "The Resistance falls into the same category as the EU NR so we just put them there"

If there is still any interest to expand this game to new people, these new factions are a must. Simply because kids will love running all First Order Characters/Resistance ones. They don't want to run through all the IMPERIAL/NR characters to find their favorite First Order/Resistance.

And FLYINGARROW said it perfect, we don't have to create a faction RIGHT THIS SECOND... But releasing a small sub set to get these factions a kick-start would be perfect. Don't make the pieces in factions playable in tournaments, just let people know its in the process....

My ideas for the subset

First Order
General Crux
Kylo Ren
Flametrooper
First Order Trooper
First Order Captain Trooper
Captain Phasma (even though she was worthless)

The Resistance
Finn
Rey
Poe Dameron
Resistance Pilots
Chewbacca
General Leia Organa

+1 this is what I mean, as far as new players go it would be great to have new factions. Don't remove the Vong and NR, just introduce new factions to follow the new movies. I would swap Han for the resistance pilots though haha

+1 to this. I know custom stats aren't the same as actual Vset cards, but I did enough work with my CorSec custom subfaction (which was pretty much an entirely new faction) to see that creating viable squads for a new faction off-the-bat isn't impossible. Creating a DIVERSITY of squads is different, but, as FlyingArrow said, all you need is a few strategic pieces to fill the important niches, and you can build from there. Definitely possible (though not necessarily easy).

I agree with General_Grievous, too, about how making the First Order and Resistance as subfactions first only "pushes the issue to the right." I'm worried it might be a bit awkward in a few years to say, "Yeah, Kylo Ren's card says Imperial, but, really, because he's in the New Order subfaction, he actually counts as being in the New Order faction, and can't played in Imperial squads."



I'm also still worried about a lack of information. I don't think we'll have to wait that long, though. New novels are coming out pretty frequently, and I expect they'll fill in lots of gaps. (One thing I think we need more info about: should the Resistance actually be in a "Resistance" faction? Or should it be called something else?)
Plus, we have the next one or two Vsets already in production, and their set lists are probably finalized by this point, so it isn't like we'd have new Disneyverse characters coming out immediately, anyway...
One big problem I'm running into while discussing this is that I don't really know how fleshed-out the new universe is at this point, since I haven't read any of the new novels. (And, to be honest, I don't really plan to.) Has anyone else read all of the new stories? And can they weigh in on how viable new factions would be?

Finally (sorry this post is so long), I should probably point out that if we add two new factions to the game, we'll have to re-think how we structure the V-sets... I expect we'll either have to produce more cards in each set (so that we'll have enough cards to build the new factions like we would need to), or we'll have to re-structure how we do micro-sets... Though I could be completely wrong about that? Does anyone know if the current # of cards in each Vset could handle an additional 6-10 cards each for two new factions? (6-10 cards would be the bare minimum required to establish a new faction and have at least one viable squad available.)

Or before the V-Sets.
Since these are all going to be V-Sets, make them Imperial and New Republic, just sub-factions. If at a later time there are much more characters, would it be too difficult to change the symbol on the PDF?

I understand that there is enough for one set. But there isn't enough to continually add new people with each VSet until Episode VIII comes out, which is a couple years away. with 2 VSets per year, that's 4 VSets at least that will either be continually reprinting the same characters, not printing at all, or completely fabricating characters to keep the faction alive.

EDIT: And I am actually 100% for adding two new factions. But I think it needs to be noted that by adding a new faction or two now, those factions will either become continual reprints of Kylo Ren and Rey until Ep. 8 comes out, or will be, as a whole, ignored. A few designers have already said they aren't adding two new factions anyway, so this is all just what I would call Wishful Thinking.

Are you just talking about opinions on this thread (I think the only designers who have posted are urbanshmi, dark dracul, and flying arrow), or do you have other sources?

+1