I don't have the time available to me that I'd like to at this late hour in order to convey a fully fleshed out idea, so I'll try to be succinct. There's been quite a bit of discussion recently (and not so recently) about balance in the game, or lack thereof. I'm of the opinion that the game is healthy, well balanced, and not in need of any fixing, but let's face it, some ships just aren't viable in a competitive setting. I make no secret of the fact that I also play Magic, so if you'll bear with me for just a moment I'd like to draw a parallel or two.

In X-Wing we have, so far, only one competitive format, a constructed list format. Magic also has a constructed format (several, in fact), but the nature of collectible games has given rise to a variety of other formats, namely those that fall under the umbrella of limited play. In limited play there are both sealed and draft varieties, where cards are specifically designed to be played outside of the normal context of a constructed format. A lot of these cards would be outright terrible in a constructed format, but many shine when players are denied access to entire sets or blocks. To bring this back around to X-Wing, there are a lot of ships with potential that see little or no play simply because they just aren't competitive enough. Posters here come up with ideas left and right to 'fix' them, but FFG isn't going to be amending ship stats or price points any time soon. How do we get some use out of these ships without changing the ships or the rules? The answer, I think, is to take a page out of WotC's book.

If you haven't read anything else up this point, what I'm advocating is (sort of) simple: a new format, perhaps just a casual one, focused around purely random lists. This would be analogous to Magic's sealed format, where players are given a handful of packs and left to construct the best deck out of the cards that are given to them. I don't think the translation to X-Wing would be particularly difficult, though it would require a healthy sized collection, perhaps even pooled between two players. Ideally one of our friendly forum denizens could write a simple program with an algorithm that generates a random list of, I don't know, say 150-200 points of combined ships and upgrades, and then it would be left up to the player to make the best use of those assets by constructing his own list of 100 points. Suddenly ships that you might not otherwise give a second glance at become your all-stars.

Alternatively, we could borrow the draft format as well, but that would get a bit trickier. Perhaps a larger, randomly generated pool (1000 points?) from which several players (3-5?) take turns choosing ships and upgrades. I realize that both of these ideas aren't particularly well thought out at this point, so I'm inviting the community to add its input. A limited X-Wing format, good idea or bad idea? What would you add, change, or remove from what I've already discussed?

Edit: I think I failed at being succinct.

I'd be down for a randomly drawn list for ****'s and giggles. The few guys I play with right now will always field the 2-3 most powerful options available to them until the new more powerful hotness comes out. This would spice things up a bit.

I'd be down for a randomly drawn list for ****'s and giggles. The few guys I play with right now will always field the 2-3 most powerful options available to them until the new more powerful hotness comes out. This would spice things up a bit.

Limited formats level the playing field, in a way. Deck or list construction becomes paramount when players can't rely upon what the pros are using, and not having access to all of the cards/ships changes the dynamic of the format considerably. It also makes players more reliant upon their own skills and fundamentals, since they can no longer count on having all of the best ships to do most of the work for them. Moreover, you get a better appreciation for pilots like Maarek Stele when your other options are comparatively bleak. That may seem an unpleasant prospect, if you don't consider that your opponent is very likely in a similar boat.

Only issue with that is that this is a miniatures game and not a card game.

I think at least one of the squad builders already has a random squad function (don't know how good)

The practical problem I would see is, that people would need to have quite a few extra ships in the random mode. Some might already have the "100 points from one ship type" fleet others are more specific in their choices.

to get more variety I would prefer something like having a set of lists and some mode to choose the fitting list for the lists the other players brings to the table. something that came up in another thread. If done right, that would allow for some more specific lists, that you wouldn't necessarily against every other list.

been suggesting random lists for awhile, as it would make things interesting, AND if you constantly win with a random list then you must be pretty good. also it would "REQUIRE" one to collect more ships which would be good for FFG!! lol . maybe just random for the ship but you could fit it out however you like... don't know how the points would be managed if it was random though.. 3 random ships or 4, while 4 might put you over the point total? unless it was a tie or Z-95s etc... how about random and you get like 5 minutes to build your list.... ?? as a bonus the more rounds one wins in a tournament the less random the list could become? IDK just thinking out of the box. and what i would like to see at tournaments or at least the ones i have watched on video..lol

Only issue with that is that this is a miniatures game and not a card game.

I like the idea of random lists, what would be nice is a program that the user can enter in what expansion packs they have and how many of each, this way the random generator is making random lists based on what you have in your collection.

the easiest bit of random would be, if you take a simple die an roll for the number of ships you build your list from.

even if you just vary the number of ships that way, you notably influence the chosen lists, even if they are "hand build".

In this scenario people also could prep lists for the possible numbers so that the overhead for setting the game up would be minimal more than in a standard setting.

Not a massive fan.

Personally I prefer going to an event knowing what I'll need - and, as noted, it provides problems for people with limited collections.

What would help mix things up a bit is to actually use some of the scenarios (or some new ones!) in competitive play.

By all means still time-limit them, and/or tweak them to fit, but they would instantly throw a whole new light on "good" or "bad" ships.

The basic rules don't change, but gameplay and victory conditions do.

Take an existing scenario (from the Imperial Aces set) - Cutting the Cord. This involves the Rebels trying to take out a super-charged prototype fighter. This has to be a non-unique small ship chosen by the Imperial player, which needs to survive the game in order to crush the rebel scum.

Well, the fighter gets plenty of buffs, from shield recharges to extra attacks, but ultimately you're going to want the toughest non-unique fighter in the game to start with. Which is a Storm Squadron Pilot in a TIE Advanced. Ever seen one of those before?

Not in a tournament, I'd warrant.

Or some sort of "facility attack" where you're hitting asteroid bases or docked capital ships. Oh look, ordnance-carrying Y-wings and Bombers suddenly become good.

Essentially, make people play missions other than just settling things the Old Navy Way*.

One of the most fun things Games Workshop runs is the Campaign Weekends, where they'll run more unusual scenarios, throw in wierd battlefield environments and special rules, etc, etc.

Imagine facing a massed imperial fleet where non-unique pilots respawn as reserves if you kill them.....but all you have to do is punch through them and take out the Grand Moff's shuttle (senator's shuttle token), not survive.

* The first one to die, loses.

Another potential problem is, the need to create "boosters" of ships/pilots/upgrades. In MTG, power level, in limited, is controlled by rarities and the fact that boosters contain 1 Rare, 3 Uncommons and 11 Commons.

Therefore, whilst sealed pools in MTG can vary wildly in power, they all contain 6 rares, 18 uncommons and 66 commons.

But X-Wing doesn't have rarities. So if you gave 150-200 points worth of ships/pilots/upgrades to each player, to act as a "sealed" pool, what happens when Player 1 gets, a ton of generic pilots and maybe 1 named pilot, and Player 2 gets a ton of powerful named pilots.

I think it's definitely a good idea to brainstorm new format ideas though!

Random Lists aren't too hard. Determine how big a pool of ships you want (150 for example). Roll for hull type, then roll for pilot. Adjust for collection as you go. Ie if you have rolled all the x-wings you own, re-roll for a different ship.

For example:

1: X-Wing

2: Y-Wing

3: YT-1300

4: B-Wing

5: HWK-290

6: A-Wing

X-Wing

1: Luke

2: Wedge

3: Biggs

4: Garvin

5: Red

6: Rookie

Etc..

For upgrades, shuffle the cards together and then deal out 15 cards.

This method will also show a higher number of named pilots showing up, which should be interesting in it's own right

Honestly, just changing the competitive format from straight up dogfights/last player standing to something more scenario based would do more to change the ships' overall effectiveness in a competitive setting and be less frustrating than a random pool of ships/upgrades to pull from.

Keep in mind that the sealed Magic format is a marketing ploy to sell more cards and not a competition balance decision thought out by the game designers .

Well yes but this is a card game as well as a miniatures game.
I like the idea of random lists, what would be nice is a program that the user can enter in what expansion packs they have and how many of each, this way the random generator is making random lists based on what you have in your collection.

Just for fun, after reading this I went over to Fab's golden squadron generator and hit random.... Dutch with 19 points of upgrades... lol.

Could be a lot of fun. I think the balance of the game suggests any list can beat any other list. And it would be a way to get people out of comfort zones, and expand use of ships.

Some flexibility would be needed, so the large but limited pool to choose from makes good sense. After all, in combat you rarely get to bring exactly what you want to a battle.

Again, I am deprived of the kind of time I'd prefer to offer another well constructed post, so I'll be brief. I realize that people have put forward the idea of random lists before, and this was by no means intended to steal their thunder. My aim is to revisit the concept within the context of making better use of ships that see less play, where I think such ships will prove themselves more useful. Some people will be turned off the moment that they see me mention Magic, which is unfortunate. I think there's a lot to be gleaned from other gaming companies, especially one as successful as Wizards of the Coast. The adoption of a limited format would be, perhaps, not wholly intuitive for some people, as there are some elements that won't translate well. That is why I'm presenting this task - the formulation and formalization of a new format - to this community. It might not go anywhere, but I think it's at least worth exploring.

And to clarify, what I'm suggesting is not completely random lists, but a random list of 150-200 points from which a player assembles the best 100 point squad. As much as I love Dutch, 19 points worth of upgrades is a little ridiculous.

I don't see an issue with this idea, myself.

I think it could work if you took the cards and randomly shuffled them, then did something like Black Jack where you deal out cards faceup, one at a time, until you get to 90 points. If one of the ships causes you to go over 90 points, discard it and draw another, and keep going until you fill out the 90 points or get as close as possible.

You can then use the remaining points to upgrade your ships and get a total of 100 or less. The 90 points can be adjusted as needed, but I think this is a good base to build off of.

I could see drafting work, though you may end up fielding X-Wings and Interceptors in one list and that may end up unbalancing the game.

If using only a single faction it may work very well indeed

The issue is that this game uses fixed distribution. Every expansion of the same ship includes the same cards, so a draft format doesn't work. And it's difficult to do a really random format because it either can only involve what a player already owns, or the player has to pay a large amount of money to enter. Neither if these approaches is practical. I know many players that only but dogs they want to play because they have tight budgets, and therefore couldn't use the other firms either because they'd likely haveti but multiple expansions. It works for magic because it only costs $15.

So basically deal a player 200 points of each faction and 50 points of cards at random. Let them build a squad they like? Or possibly chuck 16 random expansions at them and work from there? Create a psuedo sealed.

I like it, but it would require a lot of community cooperation to work because there would likely be a lot of fig loaning... Many players don't or barely own 16 ships, so 200 points of a faction makes the most sense.

I don't see an issue with this idea, myself.

I think it could work if you took the cards and randomly shuffled them, then did something like Black Jack where you deal out cards faceup, one at a time, until you get to 90 points. If one of the ships causes you to go over 90 points, discard it and draw another, and keep going until you fill out the 90 points or get as close as possible.

You can then use the remaining points to upgrade your ships and get a total of 100 or less. The 90 points can be adjusted as needed, but I think this is a good base to build off of.

Done this many times, except we used 85-90 points for Imperial, and 75-80 for Rebel. Any remaining points could be spent on any upgrades of your choice.

Each pilot deck had only one of each unique pilot, and as many of each generic pilot as there are miniatures for that ship (e.g., I have 7 TIE Fighters, so one each of Howlrunner, Backstabber, etc, and 7 each of Academy Pilot, Black Squadron, etc.)

Makes for some interesting and fun games, and some combinations you just don't see a lot of.

I don't see an issue with this idea, myself.

I think it could work if you took the cards and randomly shuffled them, then did something like Black Jack where you deal out cards faceup, one at a time, until you get to 90 points. If one of the ships causes you to go over 90 points, discard it and draw another, and keep going until you fill out the 90 points or get as close as possible.

You can then use the remaining points to upgrade your ships and get a total of 100 or less. The 90 points can be adjusted as needed, but I think this is a good base to build off of.

Done this many times, except we used 85-90 points for Imperial, and 75-80 for Rebel. Any remaining points could be spent on any upgrades of your choice.

Each pilot deck had only one of each unique pilot, and as many of each generic pilot as there are miniatures for that ship (e.g., I have 7 TIE Fighters, so one each of Howlrunner, Backstabber, etc, and 7 each of Academy Pilot, Black Squadron, etc.)

Makes for some interesting and fun games, and some combinations you just don't see a lot of.

If you're going to do this competitivly it needs to accomadate for luck. You do this by creating a larger pool to choose from, giving the player options, but not as many.

I don't see an issue with this idea, myself.

I think it could work if you took the cards and randomly shuffled them, then did something like Black Jack where you deal out cards faceup, one at a time, until you get to 90 points. If one of the ships causes you to go over 90 points, discard it and draw another, and keep going until you fill out the 90 points or get as close as possible.

You can then use the remaining points to upgrade your ships and get a total of 100 or less. The 90 points can be adjusted as needed, but I think this is a good base to build off of.

Done this many times, except we used 85-90 points for Imperial, and 75-80 for Rebel. Any remaining points could be spent on any upgrades of your choice.

Each pilot deck had only one of each unique pilot, and as many of each generic pilot as there are miniatures for that ship (e.g., I have 7 TIE Fighters, so one each of Howlrunner, Backstabber, etc, and 7 each of Academy Pilot, Black Squadron, etc.)

Makes for some interesting and fun games, and some combinations you just don't see a lot of.

If you're going to do this competitivly it needs to accomadate for luck. You do this by creating a larger pool to choose from, giving the player options, but not as many.

Sure, but it works for me and my friends when we play casually, just to mix things up a bit.

As for competitively, you would need to have enough models to have 100 points of each generic pilot (at a minimum) and a shuffled deck for each faction, probably containing cards as I mentioned above. The only problem with that is the tournament runner having enough models for multiple games at the same time.

I don't see an issue with this idea, myself.

I think it could work if you took the cards and randomly shuffled them, then did something like Black Jack where you deal out cards faceup, one at a time, until you get to 90 points. If one of the ships causes you to go over 90 points, discard it and draw another, and keep going until you fill out the 90 points or get as close as possible.

You can then use the remaining points to upgrade your ships and get a total of 100 or less. The 90 points can be adjusted as needed, but I think this is a good base to build off of.

Done this many times, except we used 85-90 points for Imperial, and 75-80 for Rebel. Any remaining points could be spent on any upgrades of your choice.

Each pilot deck had only one of each unique pilot, and as many of each generic pilot as there are miniatures for that ship (e.g., I have 7 TIE Fighters, so one each of Howlrunner, Backstabber, etc, and 7 each of Academy Pilot, Black Squadron, etc.)

Makes for some interesting and fun games, and some combinations you just don't see a lot of.

If you're going to do this competitivly it needs to accomadate for luck. You do this by creating a larger pool to choose from, giving the player options, but not as many.

Sure, but it works for me and my friends when we play casually, just to mix things up a bit.

As for competitively, you would need to have enough models to have 100 points of each generic pilot (at a minimum) and a shuffled deck for each faction, probably containing cards as I mentioned above. The only problem with that is the tournament runner having enough models for multiple games at the same time.

I've tried a variation on this. Using the many squad generating programs out there, my friend and I have the ships that are available to us plugged in. We set the point limit at 100 points, and click random generate. While the list that is generated may not necessarily be the one that we would put together for ourselves, they are almost always competitive in one way or another. And, there is also the fact that once the list is generated, we may find ourselves using pilots and card combos that we never would have thought of before in new and interesting ways.

One thing that we have added to this style of play is a substitution rule. We allow one substitution per generated fleet. Whether that means we sub out a ship or sub out an ept, modification or upgrade, we allow ourselves only one sub per fleet.

This keeps us on our toes and ensures that at some point we will likely fly with a ship, ept, modification that we wouldn't normally use. It gets us used to ALL of the different cards, and makes us use them in new and interesting ways.

I see no reason why this wouldn't be a viable alternative format to tournaments.

I've tried a variation on this. Using the many squad generating programs out there, my friend and I have the ships that are available to us plugged in. We set the point limit at 100 points, and click random generate. While the list that is generated may not necessarily be the one that we would put together for ourselves, they are almost always competitive in one way or another. And, there is also the fact that once the list is generated, we may find ourselves using pilots and card combos that we never would have thought of before in new and interesting ways.

One thing that we have added to this style of play is a substitution rule. We allow one substitution per generated fleet. Whether that means we sub out a ship or sub out an ept, modification or upgrade, we allow ourselves only one sub per fleet.

This keeps us on our toes and ensures that at some point we will likely fly with a ship, ept, modification that we wouldn't normally use. It gets us used to ALL of the different cards, and makes us use them in new and interesting ways.

I see no reason why this wouldn't be a viable alternative format to tournaments.

Try this:

In the starting pool of ships, put 2 of each generic and 1 of each named pilot. Since most Rebel lists have between 3-5 ships, pull 10 random ship cards out. Those are the pool of ship cards for the rebels. Since most Imperial list have between 3-8 ships, pull 15 random cards out. That's the pool of ship cards for the Imperials.

For the upgrades it's a little trickier given that each side can basically use most of the upgrades. Imperials can't use droids and rebels can use bombs, but that's about it with a few other exceptions.

Two options for Upgrades. First is easiest. Just let people upgrade their ships however they want. There has already been a substantial mixup just by doing fairly random ship cards, that maybe doing the same to the upgrades makes it too complicated. The second option is to put each unique upgrade card into the pool, plus 2 of each EPT, 2 of each Modification, 2 of each ordinance, etc etc, 2 of anything not unique. Each player pulls 20 cards, and that's the pool they can use. The big problem with that is, what happens if a rebel player pulls "Rebel Captive"? Does he redraw, or eat it? What if a player pulls 10+ ordinance cards, but has all Tie and Tie Int ships? To fix some of that, you'd need to pull a set amount of each type of card into your pool, etc etc etc. I think it gets too complicated fast, and for marginal gain, in what is trying to be accomplished. Maybe the first option has a limitation that you can't use the same upgrade card more than 2 times. I think the first option is better, personally.

I wouldn't worry that the card pulling has a degree of luck involved. Maybe you draw terrible ships. Deal with it and try your best. I mean this game is a dice game, so no matter how good you are, luck is always a factor.

I also wouldn't worry that some players don't have the ships to participate yet. Get the framework figured out first, then worry about that problem. People can borrow ships, or if they really want to try out the format, they can buy the ships needed. Or, play it on vassal, that's a great way to try new formats like this, and players forced to use a new ship may actually go and buy it.

It sounds like a solid idea, with some potential. I think the biggest barrier is finding enough local players to want to try the format. Vassal anyone?