I've seen this posted many times, that "the game is very well balanced for 100 points", and after that things get....hectic

Have any of you actually played games in the 200+ range? How bad does the balancing get?

The more ships there are, the more your pilot skill matters.
When massed fire can be expected to kill multiple ships on the first round of shooting....

I played in a 200 point game once and it was very balanced. The issue wasn't with the relative balance of the 2 sided, it was the clogging of the board with so many ships.

Still a huge amount of fun though and I recommend big games to anyone.

i even played 300 point games empire vs rebels and empire won ^^ MASSIVE TIE SWARM MUWHAHAHAHAH MUWHAHAHAHAHAH, but yeah it was a hell lot of a fun with in the tie swarm flew 6 interceptors and 2 tie bomber ^^ man that was crazy alongside i dont know how many standard ties with vader leading the charge against a company of x wings 1 hwk, 2 y wings and some a wings as flankers >;P was awesome we even used 4 times the aestroids on one of our flat warhammer 40k tables xD I TELL YA A HELL LOT OF FUN !! and yes ure pilotin skill matters pretty bed in those epic matches ^^.

we did that once after we got bored of 100 point game list testings for the touarnement ;P.

Edit: both sides had heavy casualties ;P ( i say wedge had his fun with the ties ;P)

It's not so much as gets unbalanced as it jus gets long.

regulary play over 150 pts and most games are well balanced as most people can have fun with upgrades. there are some powerful combos but work well on both sides, you just need to find an opponent at the same skill level as you.

I've played a few epic multi person teams per side 300 point games, it's epic fun it just takes most of a night to play.

I'd say rather balanced. There's an increased potential for a snowball effect though, one good turn early on could make it impossible for one side to win.

I'd say rather balanced. There's an increased potential for a snowball effect though, one good turn early on could make it impossible for one side to win.

Alpha-Strike Fleets, in particular.

Its good fun

I played a 300 pts per team game on a 4x6 table and it was really fun! Only thing I can suggest is going for the number instead of the elite, because it's quite easy to concentrate fire on a good pilot early on, so you're paying more for a skill that won't see a lot of play. And that's why my friend lost, he went with a all unique pilot squad (8 pilots) while I went with a swarm (16 ships). Just don't fall in the trap of thinking that you have a lot of points to spare, think more in the line of three 100 points squad and you should do fine.

Sounds pretty cool, was looking at doing a 200 pt game on a 4'x4' table. We were debating on setting it as 150pts for ships and 50pt for upgrades to try and cut down on too many ships/ship clutter, and extra 50 points will only add about 1-3 ships on each side (depending on what people pick).

Not broken. Expect 45-60 minutes per 100 points per side. We've played 500 vs 500, and I remember it being pretty fun and taking 4ish hours. We expanded table size to ~4 x 4; could have been even bigger. Surprisingly few collisions, especially because we were drinking heavily.

Do you guys confer as a team or do you play silent? I've been trying to get some team games going but people insist you cant talk with in your team about strategy which makes no sense to me since ships have a thing called radios.

Do you guys confer as a team or do you play silent? I've been trying to get some team games going but people insist you cant talk with in your team about strategy which makes no sense to me since ships have a thing called radios.

This is covered in the rulebook I believe. Teammates are allowed to communicate but they must do so in front of their opponents.

I've seen this posted many times, that "the game is very well balanced for 100 points", and after that things get....hectic

Have any of you actually played games in the 200+ range? How bad does the balancing get?

Hunter,

In my experience, the only time balance becomes an issue is with some of the missions, like the protect the shuttle mission, etc.

I've found those get wildly unbalanced at times once the points go past the mission restrictions.

Straight up dogfights seem to scale ok, but the 4 times I've hosted 200+ skirmishes, numbers seem to have felt advantage.

Check the rule book on page 20 under "sharing information". That should answer your question.

I've played in multiple 200 point team games (2v2 100 points per player) and they are fun and well balanced. We used a 4x4 play area with 8 asteroids. We allowed private strategizing amongst team members, but that was mostly because we had mostly relatively new players.

We've played games up to 900 points, today we played 200 points. The game is equally balanced and plays well at any point level.. Of course more points means you need more space and turns will be longer (but not much unless you hit up near 1000 points!).

Teammates are allowed to communicate but they must do so in front of their opponents.

It would be completely unbelievable that fighters flying space would have the technology to have a radio network that was encrypted that only their friendlies could monitor. That is so 20th century.

We have team chat privately or in the open, team choice.

Do you guys confer as a team or do you play silent? I've been trying to get some team games going but people insist you cant talk with in your team about strategy which makes no sense to me since ships have a thing called radios.

Yeah, Roger That. Then again, if you are not playing in an officially sponsored tournament, you can play with any rules or any way you like as long as all players understand and are in agreement. I would encourage each team to have a pre-deployment, private chat on general strategy/tactics, then open conversation once it is game on.

And, yeah, the game plays very well at over 100pts and is even more fun with multi-player games (say, 100 pts per player, for example).

I've thought about some 2 v 2- especially with the new Huge ships coming out soonish. I think I'd ban coordination-- to save time if nothing else!

I think that larger games would solve one of the major complaints about the game. The dice-factor.

At a small scale it is possible to hav rounds of not hitting anything, even with perfect flying. On a larger scale, this will not happen very often.

This combines with the fact that area effect-weapons will bu used more often and cause more damage.

You will also see even more ships as most heroes might die from some focus fire very early in the game.
(how long would Howlrunner survive against 200 pts of x-wings firing at her?)

I think that the game might end up at being played with 200 pts as a standard fore this reason and the fact that with more more ships out on the market, players will want to have more room for all the models and will have larger collections.

Here's a look at choices regarding what to field in 150 point games:

In my experience you only really see imbalance when you increase the points by a small amount. Like going to 105 points which lets you add in another academy pilot with howlrunner, for 8 Ties, and Howl with SD. But you can't really add a ton more to a rebel ship with 5 points.

But if you stay with multiples of 50, such as 100, 150, 200, 250, ect... It seems to work out.