Was thinking of teaching it to a child who is around 5 years old. Think he would be able to grasp the game?

Every child is different, that being said its probably to young, thats kindergarden is that K even reading these days?

Every child is different, that being said its probably to young, thats kindergarden is that K even reading these days?

Ditto.

I've taught a bright first grader, and a couple smart third graders. But I'd say 5 is just too young. Only kid that age I tried to teach walked off with one of my tie control dials. I need to write a nice letter to FFG to see if I can get a replacement.

I tried teaching it to a fairly immature and dense 40 year old friend, she kind of got it...

I have taught my 7 year old daughter to play and also taught her to play a few different games when she was 5.

I'd say you will probably be able to teach the rules and have a 5 year old be able to understand how to play but may struggle a bit more with any kind of strategy.

My daughter is at a stage where she gets the principle of focused fire and maneuvering for fire arcs but upgrade cards and pilot skills are beyond her.

Sorry. double post.

My daughter has been playing since she was 9. She doesn't get to play to much but enjoys it and has gone to a couple store events.

Like chess, the basic rules are easy. The complexity of this game are in the subtle things. How much of the game a kid understands at what age will be based on the child.

Just start with the basic of basics. Movement, target in arc and range, and dice rolling. Leave out actions, asteroids, stress, and upgrades. Then in the next game add one element in like stress, then asteroids, then actions, but probably not upgrades till later. You'll find the spot where the number of concepts can be grasped or it is too difficult/confusing.

My son who is 6 likes to deal damage cards to my ships by removing the cards from his ships. If is a great tactic.

I play with my 5 and 3 year old.

They like to play together & the older one is good at focus firing and encourages the yonger one to use "teamwork" to help blow up my ships.

I have to prompt them with how they are moving. I'm just moving away from showing them my dials first and explaining where I'm going to be so that they can pick on a ship to getting the older one to think about where my ships might go. He's starting to get the hang of it.

The problem is daddy almost always loses because "he's rubbish!"

It's a fun way to spend an hour. Any more than that then they get bored & wander off. It plays very slowly. I generally ask them what they want to play today, and I pick a squad of roughly equal points.

The important thing is not overcomplicate it, and make sure you know what they want to get out of it (normally winning, and having fun), and what you want them to get out of it (for me it's teamwork & an understanding of strategy, with the ability to lose well, and having fun), and then trying to marry to 2 up.

My 10 year old son picked it up pretty easy.

The big downside is you get into a habit of losing and can be difficult to get out of that habit.

I would say 5 is too young though.

It depends. My son is 5, soon to be 6 and he has been playing X-wing with me for maybe a year. But since he can't read, and even if he could, he would learn his native language first we tend to stay away from named pilots and too much skill cards. We mainly just play with basic ships and he has learned that orange is pilot skil , red is attack etc.

He sometimes have a hard time with the dials, but we try to solve it like a puzzle and it works out great.

He does know the differenr phases and understand the underlying structure of the game.

But it will never be the same as playing the game with someone who understands it all. I more see it like a fun puzzle we can solve together. We also watches Clone Wars together and he has a lot of Star Wars Lego. Quality time with my son, which is nice.

Also, We have been playing many different games since ha was about 4, or a little before that. Making games like Space Hulk and Talisman easier has been a lot of fun (and it has also evolved my view of different games). We also play a lot of Children games of course, for instance we have a wooden Winnie the Pooh game with easy but awesome mechanics that I probably loves more than him.

So, the answer is: Yes, and no. Hope I was clear

My son is 9 an he currently plays. I think the trick is for the child to be old enough to recognize that the ships are not toys, that they are very fragile, and could be broken. After that it is a question of understanding the rules. I would say 7-9 is a good place to start.

My son who is 6 likes to deal damage cards to my ships by removing the cards from his ships. If is a great tactic.

Brilliant lmao.

Every child is different, that being said its probably to young, thats kindergarden is that K even reading these days?

Ditto.

I've taught a bright first grader, and a couple smart third graders. But I'd say 5 is just too young. Only kid that age I tried to teach walked off with one of my tie control dials. I need to write a nice letter to FFG to see if I can get a replacement.

Contact FFG through their Customer Service link. I had a problem with my dog getting hold of three maneuver dials (GR-75, Firespray, and YT), and even though the "official" policy is no replacements for parts broken/lost through normal use, they were quick to send me the replacement dials with no questions asked. Best customer service I've experienced.

I had a problem with my dog getting hold of three maneuver dials

Apt username...

As most have said, it depends on the child. I taught my 8-year old in a multi-step process detailed below. This was kind of also based on how I bought into the games with upgrades and such.

1) Start with 1 X-Wing and 2 TIEs and just do the basic quick-start rules. No focus, no cards, no named pilots (although my son did insist on being Luke Skywalker), no stress, and no asteroids. Just do dials, attack dice, and defense dice.

2) Add the second starter set. Same basic rules. I tend to play as well as I can until the point where I believe I have the game won, then I make "strategic blunders" so he wins about 60% of the time. All my kids play competitive sports, so they understand that they do not win every game.

3) Add the X-Wing expansion and TIE expansion. Now you have 3 X-wings vs. 5 TIEs. This makes a fairly long game with the basic rules.

At this point my 15-year old, who had been lurking around our games (my 12-year old wants nothing to do with it), starting asking questions about what the various numbers and symbols on the cards and bases were. Then I taught them the "real" rules and point totals and squad building (a shout-out to voidstate's excellent and easy to use squad builder).

Now that I have Slave-1, Falcon, and other ships, we can't use them all on the kitchen table so we mostly pick and choose what we use and just have fun flying ships around and blowing each other up. I use these games to get used to the dials of new ships and get a general idea of the ship's durability. I still make enough "tactical errors" to let them win, but not every game. Kids need to feel that they can succeed, or they will give up the activity. However, they don't need to win every time or they don't learn anything. It is a great way to spend a rainy afternoon without turning on the idiot box.

I just played the game this past weekend with my nephews who are 5 and 7. I chose to modify the rules and boil them down to three phases:

1.) Pick your move on the dial

2.) Move (or have daddy and myself move your ships for you)

3.) Shoot

I omitted the more complicated action rules like target lock, focus, evade, barrel roll, etc. because I didn't think they could handle it. Instead I treated every attack and defense roll as a focused roll. So any focuses (eye balls) crits or hits were just plain hits. Any focuses or evades were just evades.

I removed the special pilot skills and treated every X-wing the same whether it was a rookie pilot or Luke Skywalker (though I did tell them they 'were' the pilot they wanted to be. In this case Han and Chewie).

For some reason they both loved the HWK so I let them use that ship with a blaster turret that could shoot range 2 in all directions.

They understood the Falcon could shoot in all directions with its turret.

I did decide for the 2nd game to add one missile or torpedo card to ships that could carry them and my nephews seemed to be able to handle this level of detail.

That said, the 5 year old played 1 and a half games before he got bored and tired, though the 7 year old took to it and seemed to love it.

So don't be afraid to simplify the rules at first to see if they take to it. Even though I didn't get "official" games of X-wing in, I did introduce my nephews to miniatures battles and they had a good time.

Also, I started them with 1 ship. Then in the 2nd game I gave them the choice of 1 big ship (Falcon, Slave 1, Shuttle) or 2 small ships.

My 7 year old easily understood the concepts of the game, but doesn't have the attention span to undertake a full 100 point game yet

My Niece has been playing for a year, shes five and loves the rebels

My son is still learning to read, but he is 6 and his dice rolling consintently kicks my butt. He has flown every rebel ship except the HWK once since we just recently started using the upgrades. Start out slow with just the starter and work your way up. What I did for several matches was use a smaller table then 3X3 so he was able to get used to turning and moving in cramped spaces. We didn't use asteroids until moving to the bigger table and that was after he learned about stress and actions. I'm afraid of the Tantive coming because he wants to use it against me.

my 7 year old loves it. Wants to play every day. I just let him pick pilots and sometimes the occasional upgrade card. I also tend to give him more points than me. And that usually leads to him kicking my but. Which is fun for him

I just introduced my 5 and 3 year old to the game. My younger son used two TIE fighters against his older brother's single X-wing. The had fun, but the 3 year old got a little bored (even though he rolled much better than his brother). My 5 year old had so much fun, he asked if we could play every Saturday and Sunday! I'm looking forward to it. I told them that they can play with the Millennium Falcon only after they complete a few games, so they're excited to play some more.

My kids have been playing since they were 3 and 5. Get the maneuver reference cards off the Board Game Geek forum, and have them pick their move when its their turn (no planning phase). We don't use actions, but we do stress for maneuvers. Mostly I just run a bunch of ties for them to shoot at. The Falcon is good for kids because they never miss a chance to shoot.

At that young age, it's all really about getting them to get used to taking turns, following sequence, and adding dice. I see it as building good habits as a gamer, not so much as building X-wing skills.

Rather than identifying the lower age range, there are some other questions that I have:

• What are good ways to teach the kids?

This Friday for the 4th of July, I'm having some kids come over to play the game. They're Star Wars fans, 10 & 13, but probably more of the Clone Wars side than the OT. I think they'll be into it, but I wonder if I should start off with the quick game, or launch directly into the full rules. I'm leaning towards full rules; simple builds (50 points?).

• When is it not a good idea?

This last weekend I attended a tournament and one contestant had brought his son (14?) who also participated in the tournament. The boy was just not into it. I played against him, as did one of my closest friends. I tried my best to fire the kid up with enthusiasm (even though I took his X-Wings out early on, and then concentrated all of my bombers and TIEs on his Chewie YT), and didn't fly as well as I might have were I playing against an adult. I was animated.

My friend, who is really new to the game and had the curse of the bad dice, lost to the kid, but the kid wasn't enthused, barely was able to keep his stuff organized so that you knew the damage cards were being applied to the right ships, rolled his dice semi-out-of-sight, etc.

I'm guessing that he was simply going along with his dad, but wasn't really interested in the game himself. I really do applaud the dad for trying, I really do, but ... yeah.