The small city I live in has a population of roughly 70,000 and only a handful of X-Wing players. We have a small liberal arts university and a community college (technical college is the US term I think?) that will inflate the city population by almost 10,000 once September arrives.

I'm curious, and looking to also try to build up my local community of players, so I'd love to hear what it was that brought you to actually take the financial leap into playing X-Wing. Was it a love of the movies - original trilogy or prequels, or both? Was it a love of the comics? The books? The Empire Strikes Back bedsheets that you had as a kid (and may still have now)?

Did you play WH40K before? Or another major system? What steered you into the ways of the Force, or of crushing the Rebellion, or of freeing the galaxy from the yoke of tyranny?

I saw the game on the net somewhere and it caught my eye, but it wasn't released yet so I forgot about it until I saw it in Target one day.

I did a little digging and watched the intro flash movie on the main page, and thought "my god this looks like a ton of fun."

I was already a TT gamer, play various RPG's had a 40k, Warmachine and Flames of War collection. But few of my friends were that interested in those. Finally got one guy to try FoW. Told him about X-Wing and he was interested as well. Since then I've sold my 40k army, and haven't painted a thing for WM or FoW.

The draw for me was a number of things, Star Wars, it reminded me of X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, nice models, low price, quick game, ect...

I'm curious, and looking to also try to build up my local community of players, so I'd love to hear what it was that brought you to actually take the financial leap into playing X-Wing.

I'm a long-time Star Wars fan (although more as part of general sci-fi and fantasy geekery, rather than being specifically SW-directed), and a friend said "Fantasy Flight has this new minis game out I think you might like". It was November 2012, so the Kessel Run tourney was being publicized; that pushed me into playing a couple of times a week before the tourney started, and after that I was hooked.

I have been collecting vintage star wars and transformers toys.

Along with anything that looks cool or rare.

Anytime is go into my flgs is see the core set and ships in display.

My friends and I are also Boardgame gamers so this always caught my eye. The detail was just amazing and I debated buying it just for the ships.

I wasnt really sure about the two player aspect of it as we usually play 4-6 player games.

I decided to you tube it and see what it was like.

After watching a couple of videos I was sold.

I took it over to my buddies house and the next day two of my friends bought into it.

Sad to say though that's about all I get to play in my area.

I'm located on a small province east coast of Canada. Population of the whole province is about 130k so there really isn't much of an xwing community.

I've managed to get a couple new players and been going to down to my local game store Thursday nights to have demo nights and game night.

I saw this game day one and was completely smitten with it. I grew up with Star Wars, actually Star Wars was my introduction to all things fantastic and amazing. But I waited to see what would happen with the franchise and so I patiently waited, playing with toy soldiers from Games Workshop and other lesser known companies. Two years and four waves later I have taken the plunge. There were many variables to consider about jumping into another game but the ones that always surfaced at the top were "Rules", "Release Schedule" and continued support.

The fact that Fantasy Flight has kept balance with this game is nothing short of amazing. Coming from Warhammer and Warhammer 40k is like being in love and in an abusive relationship... You know that honestly Games Workshop doesn't have the games overall balance and playabillity in mind when they design things and yet you love them and refuse to leave because they have been there through everything in your life. Yet they slap you around with shoddy rules, price gouging and lack of support.

With my friends going over to Star Wars as a way to balance out the craziness of GW. Currently at the moment they have had nothing but positive and glowing things to say about the game. So I decided to take the plunge.

Factors:

I love Star Wars

I love game balance

Star Wars X-Wing had this and much more. Oh and the community happens to be one of the best communities in gaming I have ever had the pleasure of being a part of.

I figured it would be a good starter game to get the GF into tabletop gaming since she's a big starwars fan which combined with the significantly lower cost and simpler rule set would make it more attractive compared to Warhammer 40k (which I normally play)

Because I love Star Wars and the Models/Game looked cool. Luckily many people felt the same way in my area =P.

I like star wars and a few guys whom I play other games with got into it. The initial price point is what convinced me though. I'd never really liked miniatures before because just to get in was a serious financial commitment. Xwing was not.

my reasons:

Cost - not that expensive compared to other Mini games

Effort - the hardest part of putting together your Mini's are those **** dial pegs compared to assembling/gluing/painting other mini games

Learning Curve - Easy to learn, Tough to master.

Re-playability - the more i play, the more i want to play - and its different every time.

Star Wars

I've played a lot of minis games, and games in general, with probably the most time spend on 40k. I'd heard about this game a couple years ago, but I sort of dismissed it because of pre-painted minis and didn't look too closely. I decided to take a step away from 40k because I didn't have the time and rulebook costs were just getting insane. I heard some good things about X-wing and decided to check it out. The models were worlds better than most pre-painted stuff, it was Star Wars, it was uncommonly well balanced, and the rules were just great. After a few games, I felt like I was making far more interesting decisions than a lot of minis games (the planning phase/movement dial is a great mechanic). It's like twice the game in half the time.

It doesn't hurt that for the price of merely updating some rule books for new editions of 40k, I instead have a non-trivial X-wing collection.

edit: It's also way easier to find a game, because you can wrangle non-mini-gamers into it because it's Star Wars and relatively simple, and there's not a world of exceptions to the rules.

I've been a Star Wars fan most of my life and, even though I've never played miniatures games before, this one seemed so cool and intuitive that I got into it when it was first released. For the longest time I played with friends on occasion, introducing a few to the game. The community of players grew exponentially in my area this summer (around the time of the AoIA event). Now, we have a weekly X-Wing night with 3-5 tables going simultaneously. I'm a board game player mostly, with a respectable ever-expanding collection (and several games that still haven't hit the table), but the one game I can never play enough and that will always have priority is X-Wing Miniatures. So many possibilities, amazing production quality and, more importantly, it's FUN!

As a kid I was big into X-wing and TIE Fighter, and really enjoyed the X-wing books in middle/high school. Then for a long stretch after Jedi Knight 2, Jedi Academy and Knights of the Old Republic I kinda fell out of Star Wars fandom. Everything new was prequels focused, and though the Phantom Menace had been neat when I was 12, the other movies mostly fell flat for me and I just wasn't interested anymore.

I came into table top gaming through video games. Specifically, Dawn of War 2 getting me into 40k. Way back in middle school I had a friend who bought minis, and it looked really cool, but didn't have the money to invest at the time(I was also big into the Pokemon card game at that point...). So after really getting into the setting through DoW2 I eventually split the 5th edition starter kit with a friend and started my Blood Ravens marines. I still do paint minis and play 40k, though not much lately; between con prep and competitive season for both X-wing and Netrunner plus leagues this summer I just haven't had the time. Though it's because of being into 40k that I even heard of X-wing in the first place, and when I first did I was at least curious. Then I saw it for the first time at Celebration VI in the vendor area, FFG was giving demos. I didn't actually play, as the line to demo was a bit nuts, but I watched. FFG was still sort of an unknown quantity for me at that point.

Something like half a year later I was at another con and someone in the Vendor room had the Starter set for some crazy discount so I figured I'd bite the bullet. It was after that that I discovered the FLGS I play 40k at had a 'Star Wars Sunday' going on for both X-wing minis and the FFG card game, and the rest is history I guess, I've been playing since. I guess you could say X-wing has reignited my Star Wars fandom, because once again the Star Wars I loved as a kid is front and center. X-wings and TIE Fighters dogfighting, Luke, Wedge, Vader, and it's a good game to boot.

It doesn't hurt that for the price of merely updating some rule books for new editions of 40k, I instead have a non-trivial X-wing collection.

yea the prices on warhammer stuff are getting stupid I could build a complete x wing army list for what I spent on a single Contemptor Dreadnought from forgeworld

I'm part of a board gaming crew that also played Warhammer 40k, but we just tired as hell of painting miniatures all the time so the whole miniatures gaming thing disappeared from our group for several years. We all still admired from a far, but no one had the will to paint terrain, miniatures... organize. Board games are much simpler... you bring it over and you play.

So when a game of pre-painted miniatures came out from our favorite board gaming company (there are about 7 of us in the group and 90% of the games we play are FFG games) it didn't take much for one of us to fly of the handle and buy a crap ton of them. We played it pretty heavily for several months and I came to the conclusion that my friends collection as nice as it was, wasn't going the direction I wanted it to go so when we played he didnt have the ships that I wanted to fly. So I started buying my own.

Thats the story.

Cool stuff, guys and gals! Keep it coming! This is giving me some good ideas on what to try locally to try and encourage more people to try the game out.

Huge Star Wars nut - Check
Huge Miniatures Gaming Fan - Check

Love Competitive Games that make me think - Check
The miniatures look great - Check

FFG is an awesome company and supports this game with FAQs and Competitive Support - Huge Check

A great 'Fly Casual' (Thanks Doug Kinney) vibe to the game - Check!

Overall, all the things a good game needs to succeed! A no-brainer actually!

This is actually the first miniatures game I've played. I first heard about it because I keep an eye out for Star Wars flight simulators, as a big fan of X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter in the 90s, and I've been very sad that there hasn't been a real heir to that franchise in over a decade. This game, especially with the pilots from the novels I adored back in the 90s, is the closest thing to a good Star Wars flight sim available. Additionally, after watching Wil Wheaton's TableTop episode about the game, I thought the rules were very nicely designed, and it would be a fun experience.

And it was!

This is actually the first miniatures game I've played. I first heard about it because I keep an eye out for Star Wars flight simulators, as a big fan of X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter in the 90s, and I've been very sad that there hasn't been a real heir to that franchise in over a decade. This game, especially with the pilots from the novels I adored back in the 90s, is the closest thing to a good Star Wars flight sim available. Additionally, after watching Wil Wheaton's TableTop episode about the game, I thought the rules were very nicely designed, and it would be a fun experience.

And it was!

Which is a bit ironic given how much they got wrong in that episode.

I miss those old TIE Fighter vs X-Wing games. Mine I still have, on 5 or 6 disks I believe when I bought it. Back before every PC had a CD-ROM! God, did I just date myself.

I still have my Windows 95 on disk as well!

I'm okay with the mistakes that Wheaton and Co. made in playing it, simply because of how much fun they had playing. And it carried through very well for the audience that they were having a good time at it.

Went to GenCon in 2012 for the first time in nearly a decade and at the last minute. Everything FFG was sold out except intro x-wing events because they were late additions. Played the game and it was a lot of fun so I bought it when it was released.

Huge Star Wars nut - Check

Huge Miniatures Gaming Fan - Check

Love Competitive Games that make me think - Check

The miniatures look great - Check

FFG is an awesome company and supports this game with FAQs and Competitive Support - Huge Check

A great 'Fly Casual' (Thanks Doug Kinney) vibe to the game - Check!

Overall, all the things a good game needs to succeed! A no-brainer actually!

I am going to be a bum and use EE's answer for my very own.

I will add that I played 40K and similar games for ten years and got out of all of it for almost fifteen years. Then one day back in 2013 I saw The Falcon on Amazon while window shopping...

I miss those old TIE Fighter vs X-Wing games. Mine I still have, on 5 or 6 disks I believe when I bought it. Back before every PC had a CD-ROM! God, did I just date myself.

I still have my Windows 95 on disk as well!

Fond memories of TIE Fighter have caused me to spend a stupid amount of money on both X-Wing and Star Citizen...

The small city I live in has a population of roughly 70,000 and only a handful of X-Wing players. We have a small liberal arts university and a community college (technical college is the US term I think?) that will inflate the city population by almost 10,000 once September arrives.

I'm curious, and looking to also try to build up my local community of players, so I'd love to hear what it was that brought you to actually take the financial leap into playing X-Wing. Was it a love of the movies - original trilogy or prequels, or both? Was it a love of the comics? The books? The Empire Strikes Back bedsheets that you had as a kid (and may still have now)?

Did you play WH40K before? Or another major system? What steered you into the ways of the Force, or of crushing the Rebellion, or of freeing the galaxy from the yoke of tyranny?

I started playing after i was told about it at my LGS. I was playing 40K at the time and had played Fantasy before that.

Because... why not ?

And then i got hooked.