For me, what got me interested was:

1. Its Fun

2. Its Simple

3. Its Star Wars

What keeps me interested:

1. More minis to collect and play with

2. More minis to paint

2. New people to meet and game with

Pre-painted already put together models.

Easy to learn game play

lots of star wars fans

For $200 you can have enough ships for two people to play the game and build a tournament competitive fleet with.

So, especially considering how young the game is, what has made it so popular, compared against other established table top miniature games?

Pre-painted models? (coming from 40k, I can't help but repaint my ships) :-)

Low cost of entry?

Easy setup/cleanup?

Quick game time?

Subject material?

Other?

YES, to all the above!!!

As to "other" the game plays smoothly, is easy to learn and has so many options for squad builds, it is always fresh and unique!

What more could we ask for?!? More ships!!!

B-Wings made me drop 40k and convert to X-Wing.

X-Wing is the BEST miniatures game on the market. It blows away the competition in so many areas that everyone has mentioned above. Another selling point of ANY FFG game, is that its an American company. Its not Hasbro, GW, or so many euro published fare. Its from the heart of the USA, and its all ours collectively.

FFG have the midas touch except it turns things into happiness.

Another selling point of ANY FFG game, is that its an American company. Its not Hasbro, GW, or so many euro published fare. Its from the heart of the USA, and its all ours collectively.

I'm pretty sure I could count the number of people who buy board games out of nationalist sentiment on one foot.

What attracts players from other games is seeing people laughing, having fun, and enjoying the experience with others. What keeps them around is all of the great aspects of this game.

I've played Heroclix for quite awhile, and it's become horribly imbalanced, annoying to collect,oversaturated, and a mass of hurt.

X-Wing is pretty well balanced in comparison, no blind purchases, WizKids isn't involved, and I dig Star Wars.

@CharVell I jnow that feeling...

Because it is Star Wars done well and that always comes with a built in audience.

If FFG had created the same rules, quality of models, etc and instead centered it on a brand spanking new space-civilization I don't think it would do as well.

Granted...high quality minis with a very good factory paint job, (as opposed to unpainted or crap rush factory job) only really need a handful of units to play (rather than an army) & continued support all add up to a good game. But without Star Wars on top, I think it would have 10% the popularity.

I'd say just what you listed

Cheaper

Less maintenance

No building

No painting

The awesome detail

The simplicity

How long it takes to play a game

Its star wars

Its fun as hell

The correct answer is D all of the above

Side note you compare to 40k, (which I played for a while too) this is less space intensive in terms of travelling and in space required to play. My entire X-wing Collection (reasonable sized I would say 2 cores 11 small expacs, 2 large ships and imperial aces) into the same case as my 2k 40k army fits (Flying Circus Daemons, which is a very small low model count army as far as 40k goes)

Also the rules are more balanced than 40k, you don't see certain builds that are just unbeatable, and for the most part everything is competitive even wave 1 stuff (Biggs, Wedge, Luke, Howlrunner etc,) So not only have I spent less money than 40k for a bigger variety of builds but it "lasts" longer because nothing new that comes out "invalidates" anything older, heck even Imperial Aces didn't make the regular Tie Interceptor pack obsolete it made it even better

X-Wing is the BEST miniatures game on the market. It blows away the competition in so many areas that everyone has mentioned above. Another selling point of ANY FFG game, is that its an American company. Its not Hasbro, GW, or so many euro published fare. Its from the heart of the USA, and its all ours collectively.

I imagined you saying that in a mesh ball cap while driving a Ferd Fteenthousand with dual stacks and a crying eagle mural on the tailgate.

I was sucked in at GenCon 2012. I'm not a miniatures gamer, but I'd played D&D Miniatures competitively before. After D&D Minis effectively suicided, I was looking for something to replace it (although I didn't know that until I saw X-Wing). What got me:

* Visual impact. The game just looks great.

* "Secret" movement. I just thought this was genius, and the "gimmick" of the dials just made it more intriguing.

* Templates for movement. Again, I thought this was a genius medium between grids and measured movement.

* Pre-painted miniatures. Lots of minis games look awesome. Almost all of them require painting.

* Star Wars. Come on.

* Not cost-prohibitive. It's cheaper than D&D Minis was, and D&D Minis was cheaper than most minis games.

Before X-Wing, I came very close to getting into Dust Tactics, and I probably would have, if Dust Tactics Premium had been cheaper and more widely available.

I came over from Heroclix becuase it's not blind boosters. I get what I see. Plus, PC Tie Fighter

X-Wing is the BEST miniatures game on the market. It blows away the competition in so many areas that everyone has mentioned above. Another selling point of ANY FFG game, is that its an American company. Its not Hasbro, GW, or so many euro published fare. Its from the heart of the USA, and its all ours collectively.

You might want to be careful there, you're getting socialism in your 'Murica.

X-Wing is the BEST miniatures game on the market. It blows away the competition in so many areas that everyone has mentioned above. Another selling point of ANY FFG game, is that its an American company. Its not Hasbro, GW, or so many euro published fare. Its from the heart of the USA, and its all ours collectively.

Now that's just silly.

Greetings from Switzerland.

I'm pretty much just restating what everyone else has said, but the factors that make this the perfect game for me are an IP I love, gameplay that is simple but tactical, creating squads is incredibly fun, the miniatures are fantastic quality, it's relative inexpensive, it's a younger game so I don't feel like I have to spend a bunch of time and money to get to where the long-time players are, and it's shorter than a lot of other miniatures games while still being satisfying. I'm sure there are more reasons, those are just the ones off the top of my head.

* Rules that are easy to understand

* Abilities that are not too complex yet encourages strategic and tactical thinking

* Interesting subject matter (Star Wars is fairly mainstream, not limited to a particular niche or cult fanbase)

* Emphasis on Quality over Quantity

* Releases are spaced apart well

I would say quicker games, ease of play, great community, no models to paint and assemble - unless you want to - so you can play straight out of the box, its Star Wars lol and off course its a good solid balanced game.

True the price point per ship is high but with the waves being so far apart you can save for the next wave, compared to some games you don't need a bazillion models for an average size game

Unless you're only joining now and have to catch up

Im an ex 40k and fantasy player as well as GW's closest comparison to this battlefleet gothic (sigh...) and as its already been listed, its cheaper, its ready to go straight out the box, its relatively simple and for me the real defining point is that bar one or two configurations there's no 'ive put X model down, i've won the game'. You can put down what you want, but if you don't have a good grasp of what to do with it, it wont get you far.

That and its Star Wars

X-Wing is the BEST miniatures game on the market. It blows away the competition in so many areas that everyone has mentioned above. Another selling point of ANY FFG game, is that its an American company. Its not Hasbro, GW, or so many euro published fare. Its from the heart of the USA, and its all ours collectively.

Now that's just silly.

Greetings from Switzerland.

Star Wars was invented by an american, and this game produced by an american company. Its not from England, Germany, Japan, Russia, or any of those other places. All we have to do is figure out how to get it MADE in the USA. That and all the other things once made here and I can die a happy man.

"Here comes America, f@ck yeah!"

X-Wing is the BEST miniatures game on the market. It blows away the competition in so many areas that everyone has mentioned above. Another selling point of ANY FFG game, is that its an American company. Its not Hasbro, GW, or so many euro published fare. Its from the heart of the USA, and its all ours collectively.

Now that's just silly.

Greetings from Switzerland.

SILLY!?

Star Wars was invented by an american, and this game produced by an american company. Its not from England, Germany, Japan, Russia, or any of those other places. All we have to do is figure out how to get it MADE in the USA. That and all the other things once made here and I can die a happy man.

"Here comes America, f@ck yeah!"

I'm not sure why any of that matters, really. Though I do find it funny that you're pining for American made products, when capitalism is the very reason that companies seek out cheap labor overseas.

Let's face it like most things it's made in China, once upon a time they just made cheap knock offs now they practically make every thing.

The American politics is based around American excetionalism all ways telling them they are the freeist( patriot act says high) and best, it's not their fault they grow up with that mind set, but in this global world the concept of national jingoism is dying off as we become a global community.

It's frankly time we all gave up on the old tribal ways and became one world, then we can get to the business of conquering space and all sentient life in the galaxy.

It just takes so long to boat it from China. Its even too expensive to make it in Mexico! Even all their stuff is made in China too!

We all know why Americans > anyone else.

Here is an example:

Personally, i got into the game because i like starship fleet combat & this game offered a close up on what tends to happen with the smaller class ships & fighters that are usually represented by tokens or smaller ships that are quickly removed whilst the cruisers/battleships/etc slug it out with one another. when i stumbled across the release of the cr90 for the game, i was intrigued by the idea of a game focusing on the small ships in a fleet, where frigates become the big guns (also been wanting a combat fit EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate model for a bit now), the corvettes the mainstays of the fleet & the light freighters/assault transports/gunships(boats) take on the role usually filled by the frigates in fleet battle games. this game becomes a 'zoomed in' version of such games as bfg/firestorm armada/dystopian wars (e.g. as bolt action would be to flames of war or combat patrol 40k would be to epic Armageddon). (though I'm miffed that you can't equip a Luke Skywalker crew card variant on the cr-90 (to command it informally) yet in official epic tourny rules as he's the character i identify with in the series & EU; but, it is nice to have a chance to get physical models of some of the better visually designed ships from swg:jtl such as the vt-49 & hopefully the incom x-4 gunship)

A buddy of mine suggested that we (our gaming group) give it a look. So far, three of us have bought in at various levels.

I've been an RPG guy most of my life, and haven't done anything with miniature games. That said, I really don't want to think about how many hours of my life have gone into painting minis to support the RPG, or building scenery etc. Along came kids, and making time, much less juggling an inquisitive toddler who will one day make a great gamer while trying to paint / build is well nigh impossible.

I started out with a core set and a few wave 1 expansions, and was hooked. As a former MtG player who left the game after dropping too much cash on cards that would likely never make it into a deck, but still enjoying the finer points of deck building, X-Wing seemed like a great fit. I like knowing what I'm buying, and being able to play right out of the box. I also like the rules-light approach, as I had also dumped the D&D/Pf systems in favor of a simpler rules set that, as has already been opined, isn't conducive to hours of tearing through rulebooks in a never-ending effort to break the game through loopholes.