Thoughts on Ship/Pilot selection in the Starter & Expansions
So, does anyone else think that Apollo's damaged Viper is a blatant effort to discourage the "I'll just buy multiple starters" mentality for large scale collectors? Like, for the Cylons it hardly matters; there's only one Raider that should be distinguishable from the others, and he's niche enough that it would be kinda weird to have him in the starter. But with the Vipers, if you're thinking of getting a bit of a cost savings with the sets, you'll get one perfectly standard Viper, and then this battle scarred one. And one battle scarred Viper is cool, but 2 identically scuffed up birds is kinda silly.
If you're at all into repainting your ships, you know that tweaking the Apollo Viper into something serviceable is an extensive repaint project,which may not even be feasible at the level of detail these ships are decalled to. Maybe it's good for some broadly different paint scheme, but those are few and far between in BSG.
Meanwhile, it seems like they may have already shot themselves in the foot with that decision of pilots. If you're familiar with WoG or SoG, you know that Ares loves releasing their minis in sets of three, so why only 2 Vipers? My guess is that they were planning to release the Blackbird as the third, but realized it required too many modifications too late in the process. If they had kept Apollo out of the starter, he would've been a guaranteed sale as the third Viper, and I don't think anyone would've blamed them for filling out the starter with some of the second tier pilots like Hot Dog & Kat.
Speaking of, what's the deal with only 1 Pilot card in the starter? Would it really have killed them to put a pilot card in for Hardball? Even the generic Cylons got a pair. I mean, sure she wasn't the best pilot, but at the rate they're going, it looks like we're gonna get Apollo and Starbuck, and that's it? I mean, I'd like to assume that we'll get a couple Pilot cards in the "generic" Viper, but if that's the case, why isn't it "Kat's Viper", or whoever they're inevitably going to have to plaster on the side of the model? Maybe they're trying to hold onto some pilots for the Mk.VII models, but did anyone other than Starbuck & Apollo really have a chance to fly those? And they've already dropped hints that they could release cards for Pilots at different experience levels (which seems silly, with the way the Pilot skills work), so we'll probably see them again anyway.
At any rate, I feel like they could've covered way more ground at minimal expense by giving us Starbuck's, Apollo's & Kat's Vipers in the expansion, each with a backup Pilot card (Longshot, Husker & Narcho?), with like Hot Dog, Hardball & Jolly in the starter. Then put 2/3 of the pilot abilities in each expansion, so any 2 will get you the set. I just don't see the point of being stingy with them, since we're not going to have much more opportunity for them, unless Ares plans to release an all cards expansion pack.
Anyway, this is me closing the barn door after the horse has left, but I just felt like muttering about it for a while. If anyone can make better sense of it, let me know.
Edit: O.k. I guess we'll probably get Kat at least for the Mk.VIIs...
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Originally Posted by Rory
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