Just had a 150 point game and it was a blast! (Literallyy, his bombers blew me away)

Although that game was played on a 33" by 33" card table, i think a 4' by 4' table would work better. Have other people tried it? How did it go?

I highly encourage people to try out 150 point deathmatches, they are great fun! Oh, and tell us about them so we can break down the data, discuss about it, and learn from it too!

My play group plays exclusively 150 point matches. We felt too constricted by 100 point limits, and it really let's us just have a blast with pricier ships in various combinations.

My current favorite squad is three Onyx Defenders with Shields and Echo with VI, ACD, FCS and Rebel Captive. It wrecked my opponent's poorly flown HWK/Y/XX something or other. I'm looking forward to trying it out more against rebels that are actually flying well!

I definitely prefer 150, I would love to it become the new standard now that there are two years worth of ships. I don't know about a bigger board, maybe only 4 asteroids?

Forgot to mention we still play on a 3x3 foot area with a full set of asteroids. Maneuvering is key! Although, we typically fly fewer, more expensive ships, so it doesn't really get crowded.

Yeah, when flying on our smaller area, maneuvering really was key. The problem was he brought 3 proton bombs to the mix XD.

Hopefully either tomorrow or sometime later this week I can get my game group to try out a few 4' by 4' games with 8 asteroids. We are thinking of running anything from 3-4 small expensive ships fighting each other to 10+ ships duking it out on both sides. Hopefully by flying with both extremes we can decide if we need to decrease the asteroid count to 6 or increase it further to 10 or maybe even 12.

Really glad to hear other people have already been playing this alternate formate for a while now! What sort of ships do you use? Is there a greater or lesser amount of generic pilots to uniques? In terms of points, what is the ratio of points spent on ships to points spent on upgrades? (or, do you find yourself really tricking out ships mores than you do in 100 point matches?)

Do you find taking ordnance for alpha strikes to be worth its points in 150 points more than 100 points?

i played some 125 games, they were much more fun. actually felt like more of a real battle versus a skirmish. you could really have two theaters of activity and pull off crazy things like sudden concentration shifts.

at 150 you might run into problems like Etahn.

3 feet by 3 feet is 9 square feet; 4 feet by 4 feet is 16 square feet. I'd double your asteroids if you increase the size of the play space.

Hmm, thanks V.S. for solving problems before we even need to test them.

Might try a 3' by 4' as well, but I like the ideas of square battles cause that's what the game has as standard for its 100 point games.

We will give 12 asteroids on a 4' by 4' a go, and if it feels too heavy, might reduce it down to 10. With more asteroids you can probably create more fire lanes and multiple dogfighting "pockets" by dividing the board into 2-3 sections...

Sweet this even shakes up the asteroid and deployment "meta" part of the game!

Will be fun to sail into uncharted territories!

When increasing point limits I usually play by a slightly different set of squad building rules

-build a 100 point squad

-you are now locked with the the ships types and numbers that you have, but you can replace pilots with higher cost pilots of the same ship type and add upgrades as normal

Essentially it prevents swarming larger than normal numbers of cheap ships and I find it really encourages the spending of points on upgrades and higher PS pilots when you have X-100 points worth of points that cannot be used to increase the number of bodies in your squadron

A possible exception to this in the future might be the IG2000 since limiting your ship count to the default 100 point level might actually restrict interesting combinations due to its unique title and pilot spread

My Club plays 150 almost exclusively (people downgrade to 100 points during tournament preperations). Mostly we do it so the game lengh lines up better with other systems that are played in our 6 houres (including lunch break) timeframe.

We use 4' by 4' tables with 6-12 asteroids, with 6 being the most common, since most people just take the 6 they have from one player-owned starter to prevent ownership issues.

Using only 6 asteroids makes things a little difficult, since both players can simply spread them too thin around the table, but with more asteroids agressive asteroid placement becomes more common (if that is what you want, take it).

We also expanded the deployment zones to Range 2 to compensate for a larger table space. So turn 2 confrontations are still the norm; if you keep the deployment zones at 1, deployment in a block is becomes increasingly difficult as the block becomes deeper. And of course with a smaller deployment zone, you postpone the initial confornation between the ships.

The 150 points level certainly allows for a lot of nice combos that don't cut it in 100 points, since committing 50 points to single ship becomes less of a deal. Ships that are ussually sidelines because their cost find their places.

On the Rebel side things like multi-token-dealing combos become the norm; on the Imperial side you often see pincers instead of hammer-and-anvil-builds.

my friend prefers it as well and I've said I'd do 50/50... now that epic looks d.e.e.d. deeeeed... we don't have to split it again!

At 150 points, on average I spend between 20 and 35 points on upgrades. I don't ever really try ordinance alpha strikes, so I can't speak to those ends. As for shifts in pilot skill, my experience has been a few named uniques, and higher-PS generics.

Come the full Wave 5 release, I'm hoping to drop two named Decimators and Soontir. And Wave 6, all four IG's is gonna be great.

Obviously the potential to spam a bunch of generics exists. Howlrunner with 11 Academies is 150 on the dot. That might be attractive to some people, but that's honestly too much for me, haha. I'd rather run Echo and Whisper with two OGP's (which I totally have. Note to self: never do that again.)

Does anybody notice an uptick in game time then? If so, by how much?

at 125, very little to none.

150 perhaps another 15 minutes

Casual fly with breaks for drinks and pizza, a match of ours usually run between an 1.5 and 2 hours.

My son and I often take a 100 point squad, and then add upgrades to make 120. That way you get a bit more use out of the upgrade slots. Seems to work pretty well.

My little group play on 4'x4' boards with twelve asteroids. While we have been using 100 point forces, we have dabbled with 120 point forces and it works fine, The restriction makes you think hard about your force selection. However, 150 points would mean more toys on the board that haven't had a run lately.

When it comes to number of asteroids to keep the same asteroid/square footage you need to go from 6 on a 3x3 to 10 on a 4x4. Technically, something like 10.7 but I'm also ignoring the border zone which doesn't cut out nearly as big of percentage of the play area.

At 150 points, I might set the rule at something like "No more than 4 identical ships per side". So you could still have your 8 Academy Ties, but they'd have to be 2 groups of 4, each group having different mods. At that point, it becomes a sort of self defeating waste of points.

However! That rule allows you to build squadrons of generic X-Wings, if you'd like, each running totally different upgrades, and filling different niches.

3 feet by 3 feet is 9 square feet; 4 feet by 4 feet is 16 square feet. I'd double your asteroids if you increase the size of the play space.

Hmm, thanks V.S. for solving problems before we even need to test them.

Might try a 3' by 4' as well, but I like the ideas of square battles cause that's what the game has as standard for its 100 point games.

We will give 12 asteroids on a 4' by 4' a go, and if it feels too heavy, might reduce it down to 10. With more asteroids you can probably create more fire lanes and multiple dogfighting "pockets" by dividing the board into 2-3 sections...

Sweet this even shakes up the asteroid and deployment "meta" part of the game!

Will be fun to sail into uncharted territories!

The asteroids only go inside of range 2 in the play area. Range 2 is 20cm, so that works out to:

3 foot linear play area: (3 ft - 2*20cm)^2 = 2.85 ft² of asteroid area

4 foot linear play area: (4 ft - 2*20cm)^2 = 7.22 ft² of asteroid area

7.22 / 2.85 ~= 2.53, so you should use 15 asteroids if you want the same density, not 12.

my friend prefers it as well and I've said I'd do 50/50... now that epic looks d.e.e.d. deeeeed... we don't have to split it again!

How did the idea that FFG is done with Epic become the conventional wisdom around here, despite the fact that there's literally no evidence whatsoever for it?

The asteroids only go inside of range 2 in the play area. Range 2 is 20cm, so that works out to:

3 foot linear play area: (3 ft - 2*20cm)^2 = 2.85 ft² of asteroid area

4 foot linear play area: (4 ft - 2*20cm)^2 = 7.22 ft² of asteroid area

7.22 / 2.85 ~= 2.53, so you should use 15 asteroids if you want the same density, not 12.

We're probably getting into too many specifics here. An asteroid must be range 2 from the sides BUT it also can't have another asteroid within R1. This tells me that the "asteroid belt" also claims the R1 distance around it as part of it's area leaving only a R1 band around the outside edge of the map that is not influenced by asteroids. Comparing those areas you're looking at the x2 increase in "asteroid influenced area" which takes you back to the "double the number of asteroids" that has previously been mentioned.

I played a 150 point game today and it was a blast as well. We played with no asteroids, which in retrospect might have made for less of a K turn fest.

The 6 ship Rebel fleet took on a 7 ship Imperial Fleet. At first, the one shot removal of Howlrunner spelled death for the Imperial 5 ship mini-swarm, but then Soontir and Whisper's flanking really took a toll on the Rebs, and after dropping a B-Wing that only shot once, a couple Rookie X's, and then an Elite E-Wing things looked grim for the likes of Luke and Lt. Blount. The Imperials ended up taking the concession with 5 ships left to the Reb's 3.

150 points gives you a lot more room for additional tools and tricks. Running a Mini-swarm AND an elite inty//phantom squad is both really fun and really punishing. With more planning it would have been more even.

Jacob

The asteroids only go inside of range 2 in the play area. Range 2 is 20cm, so that works out to:

3 foot linear play area: (3 ft - 2*20cm)^2 = 2.85 ft² of asteroid area

4 foot linear play area: (4 ft - 2*20cm)^2 = 7.22 ft²of asteroid area

7.22 / 2.85 ~= 2.53, so you should use 15 asteroids if you want the same density, not 12.

We're probably getting into too many specifics here. An asteroid must be range 2 from the sides BUT it also can't have another asteroid within R1. This tells me that the "asteroid belt" also claims the R1 distance around it as part of it's area leaving only a R1 band around the outside edge of the map that is not influenced by asteroids. Comparing those areas you're looking at the x2 increase in "asteroid influenced area" which takes you back to the "double the number of asteroids" that has previously been mentioned.

Good point! If you include the extra R1 then the ratio is almost exactly 2:1 as Vorpal suggested. I'll have to try it next time and see, only problem is I don't usually play on a 4x4.

Interesting point.

I tend to play epic games on those tables that come in schools and gaming stores... theyre usually 6 by 2.5. two together is 6 x 5 = 30sqft.

we did 2 sets of asteroids and that didn't quite feel as compact.

seems like its a lot closer to 3. in a way though, it feels like it still has an impact as it creates a variable zone that people don't want to go through quite creating multiple areas of combat.