Hello XWing Community!

With my first post in this Forum I would like to introduce an Idea I had to make XWing more diversified:

XWing Draft play

I searched for it and didn't find anything near my idea so I don't think it's a repost...

Before I explain it in detail let me say how I came to it. A good friend of mine and me play a lot of XWing and we soon had no clue what to play, because we already tested so many combinations. We then started to shuffle all of our Pilot-Cards (seperating rebels and imps) and drawing from those stacks until we are as near to 100 points as possible, filling up with upgrades. This way we played ships and combinations we usually never would have and we had a blast!

Now to my Idea: Extend this random play with a little bit of tactics known from trading card games and get a new way to play XWing

What you need:

Well, you need ships. Lots of. In this variant it doesn't disturb gameplay if you mix rebels with imps to have plenty of ships to choose from.
Every player must provide parts needed to field his ships and he has to bring his own stack of upgrades to tweak his list.

How to set up:

Since you have more Pilot-Cards than ships you need to reduce the amount of cards down to the amount of ships available for play.
That's easily done: Take all cards of one ship-type and shuffle them (only take one of every unique pilot to prevent doubles). Now draw an amount of pilots until you have as many as ships. Keep all cards face down. Now put all the cards you have drawn from the differents ship-types together into one stack of pilot-cards which should have as many cards now, as you have ships for play. Next step is to deal six cards to every participating player. There might be some spare cards which is totally fine. Just put them aside faced down.

Every player now has 6 cards. As in usual draft play you pick up ur cards, choose one of them putting it in front of you faced down. When every player has chosen his first pilot, everyone passes the remaining 5 cards to his left neighbor. Now pick another pilot from the cards you received and pass the remaining cards to your left again. Repeat this until there are no cards left. Every player should have 6 pilots now. Use these 6 pilots to build your 100 points list, including upgrades you might want to use.

I recommend playing a swiss turnament of 3 to 4 rounds, so you have lots of different games
this variant can be played with any amount of players up from 2, but it's best with 4+

And that's it! Enjoy

I wasn't able to playtest it since my buddy had no time last days, but I made some test-draws with the cards I have and I had some interesting setups.

Feel free to give me feedback when you tested it. Maybe we can add some details to increase the fun.

May the force be with you

This idea has been tossed around from time to time and it seems very fun. Not sure who's actually done it yet, but I'd love to try with my group some day.

I actually really enjoy this idea. For many, drafting random pilots and ships will help them get out of their comfort zone. Established gaming groups regularly have that one guy who always plays the same thing repeatedly ( I was guilty of this for a monthlong stretch, tweaking a list I loved because I wanted to use it in a tournament, though I ended up dropping it in favor of something else). With so many options available, some of these matches could yield new strategies or experiences for new and veteran players. Maybe you could also have your opponent deal a ship you have to use as well?

So Rebels and Imperials on the same list? That won't work.

Rebels and Imps in the same list are not impossible. There might be some strong combos which should not be done, but it simplifies the draft when you don't sperate the factions. It has to be tested

I spent some thoughts on it earlier, but I think to get those super-combos you have to be extremely lucky.

I like the idea except for the mixed factions, I'd hate to face a Biggs/Howlrunner swarm.

since every unique pilot is only once in the entire stack it is very unlikely to either have both of them in the same draft and its nearly impossible to get both in the same list.

my buddy plays rebels only and i'm the darksider, so when we test this variant next week (maybe) we will see how tough mixed factions could be

edit:

when i tried some darfts using my ships (21 ships in total including 9 tie fighters) i wasnt able to build a real swarm. maximum was 3 tie fighters. if you mix up more different ships the rate of tie fighters in a single draft will drop and swarm will be much harder to pick.

Here's an idea to prevent abusement of mixed factions:

When creating your list you must choose a faction. You may then use unique pilots from that faction only.

This way you play Rebels for example, the Tie Fighters in your list can't be unique pilots and are treated as hijacked ships.

Thoughts?

I think the option to mix factions is the WHOLE POINT of doing this. Naturally cards like howlrunner are going to be sought after... thus they'll always get picked first. Same with Biggs.

It'd be very simple to choose mixed or segregated factions. Announce the type of draft you're doing (mixed or not), then players either divide by faction (Rebel players draft from the available Rebel cards, same for Imperials) or players secretly draft the faction of their choice. The second way, getting stuck with something you can't use is a possibility but that's also the nature of the draft format (seems like it could happen in most of the card games that use draft formats).