TrackZ - I'm in the same boat. Sort of had my eye casually on the Hot Toys SW line since the beginning but I was winding down from collecting at that point, just picking up the occasional Sideshow figure every few months or so and didn't want to get into another product line. Plus I've been collecting Sideshow from the beginning and didn't think I wanted more of the characters I already had. Plus at around $330-350 AUD a piece and creeping closer to $400 AUD with some of the latest TFA figures, they're not exactly cheap to collect.
Then just when I decided I'd take the plunge and get the Tatooine Luke Ex, it went to waitlist and is sold out everywhere I've looked. I've never had any success with going on the waitlist for figures in the past. I guess a lucky few might have success with it, but it's never worked for me so I'm not hopeful. And I imagine the waitlists on these figures are a mile long. I'll probably end up trying to get the Luke Ex from eBay or just have to settle for the non-Ex. I'm on the waitlist for the Luke Stormtrooper too but I think I was later getting on that one after it sold out than on the Tatooine Luke. I'm not sure why Sideshow keep the waitlists open for so long when there's clearly little to no chance of success. But maybe I've just been very unlucky in the past.
I've just ordered the sandtrooper today so that's going to be my first HT figure. Not really sure where to go from here though. Might get the spacetrooper as that's still available from a couple of places here. I can still pre-order Leia locally but not much good having her on her own, only makes sense to get her to go with Luke at the least.
I'll make do with my Sideshow Obi-Wan, don't need another version of him. Same with Vader, already have the Sideshow versions so will wait and see if HT do another version at some stage. The price, dodgy electronics and issues with the belt and gloves put me off the ANH version. And I'm happy to wait for an ESB or ROTJ Han with hopefully an improved sculpt. I'm sort of regretting not getting Chewie when Popcultcha had him on sale for ~$300 AUD before Christmas. But hopefully we'll see another version at some stage. HT must know there's still demand out there? And they've done all the hard work in developing the figure so it seems unlikely that they wouldn't capitalise on it.
Since I don't want to get too out of control with it all (limited space and funds apart from anything else) and don't necessarily want multiple versions of each character, my thinking was that I'd aim for say 4 figures from each film which should help to spread it out assuming all these figures eventually get made.
eg:
ANH - Luke, Leia, Sandtrooper, Spacetrooper
ESB - Hoth Leia, Han Bespin, Snowtrooper, Vader
ROTJ - Fett, Chewie, Jedi Luke, Scout Trooper
With the Sideshow droids, Obi-wan, Hoth Han, Hoth Luke and Palpatine filling out the ranks. So that's kind of my thinking at this stage assuming I can get a Tatooine Luke since I'm not wanting 30+ Hot Toys OT figures in addition to my Sideshow collection and would rather have some diversity across all three films. Would be nice to have ANH Han to complete the trio but that one's pretty much out of reach now.
I have no idea what to do about the TFA figures. Just getting those 4 ANH figures is about $1300 AUD plus there's Fett and the Battlefront shock trooper later in the year, both of which I'm hoping to get. With TFA, I'm really only interested in the troopers, but I'm not sure what's the best combination. Maybe Jakku, Snowtrooper and Flametrooper would make for a nicely diverse trio? Those are the three I most like the look of and I don't need the squad leader/officer variations. When I saw this thread, I was just about to post something on one of the other threads asking for advice of these.