Hello everyone!
I've got this game and I absolutely love it!

There are a couple of things I don't understand though which I think are really important for the gameplay.

1)When forming squadrons the rulebook says each team has to choose ships and pilots according to a score agreed. Let's say we decide to set the score to 60 or 100.

Each player chooses ships and pilot cards to reach that score and he can add upgrades that add more points to the total for the squadron.

Even though there are upgrades that are specific for certain ships or faction (imperial or rebels), pilot upgrades seems to be available for both factions so my questions are:

1) How to decide who gets upgrades first? Since there is only one copy of each upgrade card, my opponent could reach a higher score for his squadron if he gets all the best upgrades for first and then the gameplay would be affected by unbalanced score of each squadron...say one gets 60 points and the other 38 and so on...

2)When I get expansions, I get also new upgrades. Some are specific for that ship but still there are some pilot upgrades. Question is. When I buy expansions, shall I add the new upgrades to the deck of upgrades found in the core set? Can they be accessible to any faction? Rebels and imperials?

I think knowing this is fundamental for the gameplay and a wrong interpretation might lead to defeat or victory of the faction with the highest squadron score.

Thank you very much in advance for your help!

Best regards!
Claudio

Upgrade cards are usuable by any ship that has that upgrade slot available. Only title upgrade cards are ship specific.

When squad building, it is total points that must add up (including upgrade cards).

So a rookie x-wing with a proton torpedo would be 21 points plus 4 points for a total of 25 points towards your squad.

To determin who has first pick is either done by vote or rules dispute rolling off (it is in a side bar in the main rulebook somewhere) or any other method that the players can agree on for allocating upgrade cards.

Having an actual copy of the card is only required for official FFG tournament play. Just make a copy of the card for casual play and you can each have any appropriate card for your ships.

Fly casual!

1. Squadron points are based on the total cost of ships and upgrades. A Rookie pilot cost 21 points; a Rookie Pilot carrying R2D2 and a Proton Torpedo costs 29 points.

2. Generally, when YOU build a squadron you use YOUR ships and available upgrades that you own to design your squadron. Your opponent does the same thing with the Ships and upgrades that he owns. To put it another way you do NOT mix your game components with your opponents.

The exception to this is when you are supplying ALL of the game components which could result it two players fighting over limited resources. Here one side is generally Imperial while the other is Rebel so the actual ships are not in dispute and some upgrades can only be used be specific ships or sides. When it comes to picking upgrades that can be used by both sides you really should work out your own system but if both sides want to USE the same upgrade (as opposed to preventing the opponent from using it) you could roll them off or allow one side to Proxy the upgrade.

3. When you buy Expansions the upgrades you get can be used by ANY ship that meets the upgrade's requirements. The "Advanced Sensors" you get from the Lambda Shuttle expansion can be used on the B-Wing for example. An Advanced Proton Torpedo you get from a B-Wing or TIE Bomber could be used with an X-Wing is another example. The "Hull Upgrade" modifications that come with the Imperial Aces pack can be used with any ship but the "Royal Guard" Title cards that come with it can only be used on Interceptors including those from the normal Expansion.

Thank you very very much for all the replies! Now it's much clearer!!!

Best regards!
Claudio

If a card is ship-specific, or faction-specific it will clearly say that on the card, otherwise you're free to use any upgrade with any pilot providing he can take that upgrade. Check the upgrade bar icons carefully.

thank you too Parravon!

I have the same "problem" as you. I bought ships from both factions and play almost exclusively with friends who use my models.

I typed up all my cards in a .pdf file and my friends use that one when making their squad.

The rule is that either of us can use only the cards I own. For example this means 2 heavy laser cannons and 13 proton torpedoes. Mostly we don't both decide to use the same cards (It has never been a problem with the torpedoes for example) but sometimes one of us uses 2 heavy laser cannons, and the other uses 1 for example. In that case we use proxy cards.

It was a conscious choice to only allow cards that I own. I wanted it to be a little tactical when choosing upgrades. If you want to allow "everything" you can easily find scans of all cards online, and just print 20 copies of each.

I have the same "problem" as you. I bought ships from both factions and play almost exclusively with friends who use my models.

I typed up all my cards in a .pdf file and my friends use that one when making their squad.

The rule is that either of us can use only the cards I own. For example this means 2 heavy laser cannons and 13 proton torpedoes. Mostly we don't both decide to use the same cards (It has never been a problem with the torpedoes for example) but sometimes one of us uses 2 heavy laser cannons, and the other uses 1 for example. In that case we use proxy cards.

It was a conscious choice to only allow cards that I own. I wanted it to be a little tactical when choosing upgrades. If you want to allow "everything" you can easily find scans of all cards online, and just print 20 copies of each.

I use a cool little program called Strange Eons to recreate hi-resolution cards for printing in order to try various pilots and upgrades before buying the ships to get the cards. The online scans are sometimes a bit blurry, but still helpful.