Why do you play SWM? I don't mean "are you casual or competitive" or whatever, I mean what is fun about it for you? What specific feelings does it envoke that engage you?

I imagine most people appreciate the flavor of it being a Star Wars game, which is great and is an ok answer, but I'm more interested in the actual game mechanics that give you that ill-defined feeling of "fun".

I ask partially for my own understanding of how players of games in general think while I work on my own non-SWM game designs but also so that hopefully the active SWM designers can find common threads in replies to bring out and emphasize the core of what people find fun, engaging, and compelling about SWM. I'm also just plain interested in the answers. :)

this is an awesome question,
and i look forward to reading what other folks have to say on it.
I am especially interested in your cryptic allusion to another game of some kind...
maybe it is for another scale of starship?

SWMinis has a lot going for it -
i seldom play 'competitive', though there are still those options available for a game thats been OOP since 10'/11'
there are 4 tournaments in the AUSNZ region, 2 in ACT being standouts, the SupaNova open being fun, as well as OZGenCon/FreeComicDayCup.
there are more in PNG, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan. It would be awesome to see more of a 'global cup' emerge in futures...

there's of course the regular games nights leagues,
and you just can't beat playing SWMinis with a beverage of your choosing
on a friday or saturday, with friends.
There's 200, 300, 'epic format' and 1000pt plus 'big leagues',
there's tile wars, campaigns from the books, campaigns, dynamic duos,
era-specific recreations,
and of course,
using the figures as a token for,
the SWRPG games

you knew this was coming,
but... for me,
its collecting and seeing
the custom figures that people from anywhere around the world come up with.
pepakura, paper tokens, mixed media custom miniatures,
right through to
'custom once off production runs' and 3D printed awesome.
I am primarily about collecting and recreating, of the ways to play.
you can play the game very cheaply, for as little as $3USD (paper tokens etc),
or as much as you want to put into a game like this.

I digress horrendously though;
you ask, what about the game mechanics itself, keeps me coming back.

I have to agree with Surf, Ironlightsaber, Darth O and others;
'simplicity' usually, its a nice game thats quick to learn,
and is for all ages, 4 to 99 easily.
anyone can play, and its not as complicated as say...
Warhammer40K, DUST, WeirdWars,
yet more sophisticated than
GOBS, Superheroes of the Unknown etc.
Melee is for things directly adj,
unless otherwise specified, a non-melee attack is, wherever you can draw a line to!
that is nice and easy, no log tables or ranges to remember.

every turn start, init. checks are like flipping a coin to see who will move in
all the subsequent rounds of that turn,
and this adds nice stochastic chance to the game.
many a game has looked like I might lose, and then BAM! I get init next turn,
and reserves, and opportunist mean I'm right back in the game.
it comes down to a close battle.
by the same token, a purely-chance game might as well be dice poker or yahtzee.

I gripe about fibonacci turn biases, certain hobsons choice autoincludes,
certain abusive combos...
yet, its the ability to be able to recreate at scale,
various engagements from the movies and books,
easily on the table.
I want to run a what-if? done.
I want to play that battle from AotC or ESB? done.
it can handle 2 characters a side, to 2000 a side, relatively easily.

Its about, being able to have pincer moves and strategies,
instead of 'chess+" where, you just march your minis from one end to the other.
even in W40K, it tends to be chess + and chariots where fast movers come on strafing runs,
or overpowered demons rip your squad to shreds.
You actually have to reposition your squad.

as well as using the terrain to your advantage (especially in tile wars),
so, your opponent might spread too thin, and you can flank and route,
or you might have miscounted the distance from one detachment to another,
so you pay the price and have to retreat.
you plan in advance where your fallback areas might be
very few of the maps have 'dead space' or 'nomans land' where no-one ever goes to that part of the map.

Being able to use a jedi, have them come and make 4 or 6 attacks,
and use lightsaber defense, survive a round,
only to be taken down by a whole swarm or a tank,
that is awesome! they're not overpowered though - sustained fire,when they run out of force points,
will defeat them.
Force Pushing something into a pit, and it being instadefeated, that's fun!
locking a door, thus forcing folks to blow it up or move into a trap, that's fun!
Quick Reactions and attacks of opportunity defeating an enemy, triggering rolling cleave and some more attacks,
thats FUN!
lightning a squad of troopers? they're gone.
ultra-stealth to flank a squad, for folks that like stealth tko?

A small squad combination can still be better than the large swarm squads or specialized squads,
it just depends on the synergy between pieces.
Seeing 40+ acts squads duke it out in the large format, that is awesome!
things like squad assault cause bottlenecks, which is balanced by AreaofEffect weaponry.
but, often the Area-of-Effect weaponry has Heavy Weapon,
so it is a tradeoff to be stuck in LoS, to potentially take out 8+ figures.

there's also suppressive fire and psychology/morale checks, well, sort of...
a potential LoS to an area can 'suppress' movement there,
and some CEs lower boardwide the ATK and DEF value on defeat of a unique,
so that sorta encapsulates a morale effect during the battle.
I'd be pretty dismayed if a hero and the leader of the faction was downed in the battle...

while we're at it,
I would make forcepoints work differently -
the SWTCG and Decipher had a 'force pool' added to by all on the board,
4 points per turn renewed, or 1 point per turn...
also, this'd allow folks to essentially combine force points in the force pool,
so they take from the total, much as in SWTCG.

this way, the force becomes a little more used and also, a little unreliable,
as is the case for magic casting in Warhammer.
or W40K.
it might not work on a turn, or you're out of force points, so you can't bank on it.
to offset,
things which alter team wide might function as MotF 2.

some of the synergies from Myths and Legends TCG are also fun -
they're not as min-maxer prone as the "magic the gathering TCG" direction a lot of folks want to shift SWMinis into.

that said,
as has been said of custom our groups' made in the past and my customs,
at what point is it no longer simple SWMinis, and SWRPG lite?
much more than 15 abilities on a card, at size 4 font, you physically can't read any more...
Cost X, Attack X, Shields X etc,
where X is some relationship - SWMinis doesn't use surds or fractals or complex relationships in its abilities

So, SWMinis is a complex-ish game, but a fun game that folks can learn to use relatively quickly.
it lets you recreate events easily, and lends itself well to RPGing.
it's got pieces that recreate what we see in the movies.
you can have a lightsaber and melee orientated squad, or a blaster and bazooka themed fringe squad, or a beast/creature squad, or even an all alien squad, or a vong tko squad.

that's my two shekel from where I sees it anyhow hehe
thanks for a great topic, and I'm looking forward to seeing what folks have to say!

To be honest, i was attracted to the game just because of the awesome miniatures. I love tiny, detailed miniatures and when i bought the Clone Wars Starter in 2008 i was just fascinated by the figures! I had no idea of the rules and didn't even know that the whole game is only in english (i'm german), but i finally learned the rules and now i just like having all the great characters from not only the movies but also the games, comics, books! They are definately some of the best looking star wars figures out there. Of course i love playing the game but it's really all about the figures for me. I don't mind that much that a Clone Trooper is a little worse than other options and such "problems", i just want to play epic battles that resemble the movies :D Nothing's cooler than creating two themed squads and documentating the results of each round with photos to relive them later! Plus there are just SO many cool custom maps out there, most designed in professional quality that often even trumps the official maps.

Also, as had been said, the rules are quite simplistic and i love that. While i prefer more complex rules in starship games like Star Wars Armada i really like the simplistic approach of this game. I think sets like Clone Strike are among my favourites because you get two quite balanced factions that manage to represent the movie characters's personalities and abilities with just a handful of succinct special abilities and stats!


I personally like when i have different versions of a character to choose from, like the 3 official Padmés, each offering a completely different effect and each useful and different from each other. Or having a Obi-Wan Kenobi Padawan, General and Jedi Master Version for example.

This beeing said, i really DON'T like unnecessary versions or reboots of characters just for the sake of making more miniatures. 11 official Vaders is a bit much i find, i just want to have great representations of the characters that are not completely unplayable in casual games. I think a Commander Vader à la Imperial Commander and one à la COTF are enough and for beatsticks Lord Vader, Jedi Hunter and the vanilla Darth Vader are enough for me. Of course i will still buy the others, blasted WOTC haha but yeah i don't have a stronge urge to, since i already have almost all the "cool" ones that i want.


Also, this game has quite a big luck factor to be honest in form of iniative rolls and almost every second offensive special ability having a 50/50 chance of failing. And i do like that. Special Abilities like Bombad Gungan are just plain funny, same with Chancellor Palpatines Force Alters. It just leaves space for interpretations and often funny explainations are needed for weird/unlikely outcomes.

Just imagine, right in the middle of a battle, Battle Droids suddenly seem to fail a ridiculous amount of attacks on the chancellor, because Palps just uses the Force to throw a trash can or something in a Battle Droids face when nobody notices :D
Or COINCIDENTLY a Battle Droid is suddenly pulled towards a magnetic ceiling just right before he shoots. Clone Trooper: "What the heck was that?" - Chancellor: "Oh, i don't know, must have been a malfunction?" *grinses politely*

Just a lot of options to make fun of while still not feeling completely out of place. I honestly haven't had so much laughs in any other game!


Finally, i'm just a huge Star Wars Fan, im not really a gamer at all, i just play games based on the franchises i love like Star Wars, BSG and Firefly, so the high quality miniatures (at least most of them) and the funny and immersive gameplay that really chatches the atmosphere of the universe are both bigh factors why i really love this game. I played some Imperial Assault too, but sold it now, because i realized it just lacks the distinctive features i love so much about this game. IA is well balanced but i just miss the humour, the massive EU-fanservice, the prequel-era, the fast and easy stat-card-only system that does not need a pile of tokens, mission cards, command cards, condition cards, map tiles, etc and it lacks (as i find) a more realistic combat system. In IA most figures have a max range of like...8 squares or something? In SWM you can shoot across the map which equals not even 50 meters or something like that. In Star Wars most blasters can shoot hundreds of meters if you really have to, so yeah, i think SWM has it more realistic, although maybe not as balanced. Plus i prefer having a cover system and no range system (SWM) over having no cover system and a unrealistic range system (IA).

I guess you could say i prefer flavour over substance, but that's just as far as it gets. I find SWM is still quite well balanced if you play casual and thats all i care for.

Cool topic and and i enjoyed reading your post @kobayashimaru, although i skipped some parts haha

@kobayashimaru Yeah all the sets were released here in Germany i think, at least i saw some boosters in stores here and bought some Clone Wars and Alliance and Empire when they still had them. But i think i just bought like 10 boosters in total from local stores, 4 CW and 6 A&E i think. From there on i just bought them online or purchased singles. They made an inoffcial translation of the rulebook but it had to be used in conjunction with the english original to understand it. But anyway, the stat cards are quite simple and my english is also not bad, so i really have no problem with the game as it is now. Just these longe posts here are not always my best grammatical performance...haha.

Funny Til Schweiger playing SWM lol, do you know the name of that SWM Club in Berlin and is it still activated and or already defeated? :D Unfortunately i'm from Munich, but maybe i'll be some time in Berlin in the future, who knows. Do you know anything if they use V-Sets or not? I don't think Germans need translated stat cards or even rules, because for example as i said i also play Star Wars Armada and i have everything in german like most of our local players, but yet we all keep using the english names for upgrade cards and stuff. It's quite funny and weird haha, because we all wait for the german releases and then just keep using english designations. I guess it's because the whole international community is english and of course, it's Star Wars and a english game.
I think just that for most german players or potential players V-Sets are not of interest as there are no real stat cards (i know you can print them) or miniatures and most players here were casual, at least it seemed like this after what i have read on german forums and archives. It was a non-translated and non-officially-supported game here (at least i think so?) so it was quite hard even in the past to find really competitive players. Now that the game is effectively dead, at least in Germany, casual play is the only thing intriguing to new players. "Wow look at those incredibly detailed miniatures that look so much better than the IA ones!" - common reaction

I just checked out lead-adventure.de, thanks, but i don't want to spend even more time on the internet searching for real players haha and don't need to trade as i just purchase singles and i don't really have any miniatures that i would not want to have. Also, sorry i have to disappoint you, but i'm not a real Star Trek Fan, though i just watched Star Trek Beyond in cinema last week! (I liked it! Though i do have a little grudge against J.J. Abrams, just don't like his style of rehashing everything instead of creating new ideas. EP7 was a good movie, but for a Star Wars Movie it was very uninspired/non-inventive i find. Rogue One looks promising though!)

I just also want to add that SWM can very easily be modified, like adding a range system, changing stats, etc while IA is not so mod-friendly. But its a completely different game anyway. As you said, RPG/Skirmish crossover.

Well, I like complicated games, and so often times nothing hits the spot like a good game of SWMinis.

I like building squads. I've built way more than I would play in 2 years, I think. The game has a lot of replay value because there are so many different things you can do.

I enjoy seeing my strategies work (which does not happen nearly as often as I'd like ). One of my favorite games in the last year was when I ran Revan Swap with Kaan, 2 Acolytes, and a Sith Lord or so for Lightning. My opponent had a squad based on Jango and a Diplomat wall. It was a horrible matchup for him, but even so there's no feeling like running Revan 18 squares can blasting a massive hole in your opponent's army and strategy.

I enjoy the Unique tanks. One of my favorite parts in any given action/adventure movie is when a good guy makes an epic last stand against overwhelming hordes of grunts, so I love pieces like Bane, GOWK, or Grand Master Luke where you can drop them somewhere and let them tank it out on their own.

Very closely related to that is being able to ignore timeline. Pitting Qui-Gon Jinn against Darth Revan, or GOWK against Caedus, or having a squad with Darth Bane and Exar Kun, or any of the other plethora of duels and team-ups that never/couldn't have happened in the story.

And on top of all that, I really like seeing how my squads match up against my friends' squads. When I build a squad, it often has answers to the type of thing I usually use. So, of course, I am usually completely blindsided when my opponent brings a Mando strike team when I was ready for a 2-on-2 lightsaber duel. Having to adapt my strategy is stressful, but also very enjoyable.

I play to discover new builds and to utilize stuff I'm proud of creating. I also play to simulate massive battles between characters that I know and love in my favorite ever franchise. Most importantly I play to have fun

Some of it is just that my favorite games generally involve either A. Analysis of Probability; B. Creative Problem Solving; and C. Manipulation of Space. It's a rare game that combines all three in a really deep way, and actually, the other game I can think of that does this very well is Scrabble (another game that I love, even if I lack the raw memorization abilities ever to be any kind of a serious tournament player).

The other thing I love about minis is the modularity of it. 200-point constructed is great, but Tile Wars is fun, and over the years I've played plenty of scenarios with my friends, and way back in the day when we didn't have much stuff my buddy and I would do big elaborate drafts and then construct the best two or three squads we could out of what we drafted.

Thanks for more great responses. It's interesting seeing the different player psychographics come out; some people play SWM as an experience (for which flavor and excitement are very important), some approach it more as a puzzle to solve (where the more important factor is being presented with interesting problems and decisions). I think most players, maybe all, are some combination of these two types and it's important for the game to offer something to both of these players while trying not to minimize either type.

Personally I fall much more strongly into the camp of seeing the game as a puzzle. I enjoy squad building, or more specifically squad iterating. I enjoy analyzing the problem I am trying to solve (at its most basic, how to win games), finding different solutions through squad building, testing those solutions in game, and then revising them and trying again. I'm a Star Wars nerd like most everyone here, but the flavor is secondary to me, and I'll play almost any squad type if I feel it's the best solution to the puzzle (although there are certain squad types that I'm better at piloting than others).

As a designer I think it's important to identify both how I experience the game as well as how others do, so that everyone can have something they enjoy in it.

Again, great answers so far that have really gotten me (and hopefully others) thinking!

Haha, yeah, those are Mark Rosewater's player psychographics. Mark has been the head designer of Magic: The Gathering since 2003 and is one of the biggest writers on game design; he actively updates a blog about design and has a weekly column about it called Making Magic.

I'll give my view of the different types, but if you want to hear Mark's version, here's an article he wrote about it: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2013-12-03

Spike is the super competitive player; the tournament player. He just wants strong things that he can win with. He doesn't really care if they're thematic, and doesn't really care if they're complex or intriguing, he just plays to win. Spike is, I think, the easiest psychographic to come up with ideas for. A large percentage of myself is a Spike player, but I don't really like being a Spike designer. The Gormak Bomb Disposal Expert was a Spike piece at heart. It was made to be a piece in the puzzle of the competitive game.

Timmy is the player who likes big impressive individual things. Winning or losing doesn't matter so much; he wants stuff to blow up. This is a pretty common type of "casual" player. The Corporate Alliance Energy Pummel and Leviathan are total Timmy pieces. They're not really very competitive, but they're huge (literally!) and pack an appropriately huge punch. Timmy pieces can be fun to design, and you can usually get safely through development by just giving them a big point cost. Spikes and Johnnys won't really care about it because you can't build a great squad with it, but Timmy will love it no matter what the point cost is. Timmy wants us to make a 200 point Abeloth.

Johnny is the one who likes finding combos and sees the game as a way to express himself. He's the combo player; the one that likes the complex or non-obvious things that wind up being awesome together. It's not all about winning, it's about doing something clever. I absolutely love designing for Johnny; the Negotiation ability from the Diplomacy subset is Johnny through and through. So far none of the Negotiation pieces have been very competitive, and they weren't designed to be, so Spike doesn't really see the value in them. They're little techy pieces, which isn't Timmy's style. But they can be super strong and more importantly create complex decisions and game states in just the right situation and squad, and Johnny loves finding those situations and squads. It's not so much about winning as it is about making your opponent say "Wait, what are you doing again?" You're definitely a Johnny, TJ.


Most players are combinations of the three types (I'm like 70% Spike and 30% Johnny if I'm playing, but flip those numbers if I'm designing), and I believe one or two more types were added later, but these are the basics.