Just got into the game. Have read the rules but have not played yet. One common thing I have read in forum posts and seen in youtube videos is that combats often get rather clustered, particulalry given the size of the models (and their bases) relative to the movement and turning distances. With a 3'x3' battlespace I suppose it is to be expected.

Our group has a large wargaming table and an 8'x5' felt gaming mat for space battles. I thought we might as well take advantage of the large space and make maneuvering all those models easier at the same time- by scaling our game up by 50%. The movement distances and weapon ranges would be increased by half. In our case we would use some of our red plastic 18" LoS/measurement sticks from the Necormunda game as range templates (though we could just use a yard-stick). We would scratch-build new turning templates 50% longer than the originals, but keeping the relative 45 and 90 degree turn arcs, and keeping the same 3/4" width to handily fit the "tabs" on the front of the ship-bases. For straight-line movment new templates could be made, but a ruler would probably suffice.

This solution could kill three birds with one stone:

1) Less "clustering" of the models.

2) Less fiddling with models whose physical postions might overlap.

3) Make use of all the space in our space!

Obviously much of the change would be aesthetic, but aesthetics is half of what 3D tabletop gaming is all about! Also, if you start adding in the larger ships like the Millenium Falcon or the Tantive IV it would definately make things easier. I was wondering if anyone has done this already. I don't think it would have any adverse affect on the game. What do you think?

Yes. Blocking by lower PS is the actual literal balancing of the game from high PS to low PS. making that 4x harder (by increasing size by 100 means 2x2) would break the game.

Blocking means to intentionally place a lower Ps pilot in the place that a higher PS pilot enemy would occupy, thus intentionally forcing a bump and a lost action. Also used to corner Phantoms and their multiple decloak options.

Yeah you'd be playing an entirely different game.

X-wing isn't like Battlefleet Gothic, Firestorm Armada or any of the other starship battle games out there... it's much more akin to WW2 dog-fighting like in Wings of Glory. If you modify the games mechanics such as by changing ranges, you fundamentally unbalance it.

By all means its yours to play as you wish, but i'd recommend playing at the same scale and just using part of your table. You could run a line down the middle and have two 4'x5' gaming areas - that's enough for two larger games of x-wing (150 to 200 points sort of size) without getting too bogged down or spaced apart. Then when you run Epic games that 8'x5' size of table is actually pretty good.

we played epic on a 6x5 table, two 6x2.5s together. I find the 6 foot side impossible to reach across. =/ ech.

But the game is a lot more fun on a square ish that is quadruple the area (A = x^2). Putting 24 rocks is also fun, or less if youre inclined. Makes for less British colonnial line them up and opens for superb fast flying action.

we quite often play on 4x8 but with regular rules.

It means your 'deployment' is more interesting as you can use very fast ships to 'reposition' after positioning and create deined flanks or false feignts.

Makes for a longer game but really lets interceptors and a wings and other speed ships actually USE that speed to be able to hit and run.

Not every game but now and them we have a 200 point or more a side game on this bigger table, each player (usually two or three players per side) having a dedicated part of the fleet... so one guys got the bombers, one guy the fighters, one the interceptors and you can ask each other for support. No showing dials to guys on your side but you can 'request' assistance.

It's a dog fighting game it's meant to get messy, properly judging the other guys moves is a skill you must develop, sometimes deliberately blocking a unit is the perfect thing to do.

Nothing is funnier that the look on the other guys face when he or she lands themself on an asteroid.

Bigger areas are fine, changing the move templates is a major nono.

I thought this was going to be a thread about using action figure scale vehicles for the game. So dissapointed.

One thing that I would point out is the physical access to the models. I've had the problem before where a store puts two 2.5' tables together, and creates one 5' table... It makes it very difficult to reach to the middle of the table to move the ships. I can't imagine going ANY larger than that since the middle will become unreachable.

Thats why you play 'wide' rather then 'deep', same in any big wargame.

The width of the flanks is what lets you manouvre. a deeper table just means if you do want to get stuck in you have three boring turns of flying forwards making noting but boost actions

Of course some of us can do wide and deep *winks*

Larger gaming areas create a lot of fun and more maneuvering games! I have a 5'x9' gaming table in my basement and wont give up the size of the surface! When we get real Epic Imperial ships, I will use the whole thing!

I tend to keep the large mat out and use masking tape for a 3x3 area if im playing proper games.

Honestly? It's a very bad idea. Just play with more points instead!

More map, more points. Win, win.

Ok, did everyone misunderstand what the OP was saying? What he was suggesting would have an effect on the game but not nearly as much as everyone is suggesting. He wasn't saying just up the board size, he was increasing the length of the templates by the same proportion. Functionally his idea is basically the same as mounting the models on smaller bases. In his plan it wouldn't take a ship any longer to cross the board, there would just be more room for players to get their hands and templates in between ships that are "close" together. The smaller base size relative to the board would make collisions less likely, but that isn't going to "break the game", although it might change the meta to a greater or lesser extent.

To the OP, my only caution would be to make sure you enlarge the asteroids too, or possibly even better, put more asteroids on the field. Having 15-20 asteroids scattered around a 5'x5' field would look petty epic.

Hey, thanks for the responses. Lots of food for thought. We will be playing our first games this week- for which we will be using NORMAL sized templates. Generally speaking it's always a good idea to play a game "unmodified" the first couple times at least. The positioning of models being a large part of the tactics makes sense. I wonder though if the movement vectors in the game were designed more to make sure the game could be reasonably played on a small area rather than being strictly related to the physical size of the models/bases. The 12" range of most weapons does certainly require models to get close to engage, but again.. is that design element meant to fit a reasonable playing space or is it actually related to the physical size of the models? Perhaps both? Would be interesting to pick the designer's brain on that one.

The rules themselves do not really give any indication that the designers' intent was for movment vectors and weapon range to be STRICTLY related to the physical size of the models. The rules for "Moving Through a Ship" and "Overlapping Other Ships" seem designed much more to simply adjudicate a situation rather than to create a specific set of tactical parameters in the game. Also, ships do not block Line-of-Sight and the rules themselves actually talk about the 3D nature of space on a number of occasions, so again... it seems that the footprint of the models in NOT strictly tied to the game design or rules.

That being the case, scaling up the movment and weapon range does not seem like it would cause a game-balance issue. Balance in a game which uses point-costs to build equal forces is about accurate point-costs and fair distribution of capabilities among the various factions in the game. I think it is unlikely that either of those things in this game is strictly tied to the size of the models. Also, a 50% scale up is actually not all that huge a difference frankly, when you actually look at the difference on the tabletop.

Some of the tactics people currently employ are obviously based on the footprint of the models relative to the the movement vectors and weapon range. But the rules do NOT seem to be tied to that relationship. Therefore those tactics do not seem to be strictly related to the game rules, point-costs, or game balance. Would up-scaling the game make it a slightly different game? Yes. Would the resulting game be worse? Less balanced? I see no evidence to indicate that. However, experience matters so I will take your warnings into advisement. We will play the game AS-IS a few times at least, but we will definitely give the 50% up-scaled version a try as well. If you have a large gamespace as well why not give it a try?

Perhaps Forgottenlore is right. Maybe some posters didn't quite understand what I meant by upscaling the game. I think some of them did but since they employ tactics based on model-size they think the game would be broke by scaling-up the ranges. Perhaps some of their tactics WOULD be broken. It all just comes down to how you like to play the game. I just think that creating less fiddly situations where models would otherwise bump into each other would be preferable for a number of reasons. Also, as I said: Aesthetics matter to our group. We have a background as tabletop wargamers so we perhaps have a different perspective from someone who is more of a Boardgamer. We have a LARGE tabeltop. We also have a $100 8'x5' space gaming mat we use for larger fleet sized games... so we like to take advantage of it! I think the game would "look better" if things didn't get so clustered up. Just an opinion. We also do have plenty of 3D asteroid and space-station models we use for fleet-games, so yes... lots of terrain. Hmm.... now I also want to give Star Wars: Armada a try! Up-scaling that one might be a bit more finnicky!

Perhaps Forgottenlore is right. Maybe some posters didn't quite understand what I meant by upscaling the game. I think some of them did but since they employ tactics based on model-size they think the game would be broke by scaling-up the ranges. Perhaps some of their tactics WOULD be broken. It all just comes down to how you like to play the game. I just think that creating less fiddly situations where models would otherwise bump into each other would be preferable for a number of reasons. Also, as I said: Aesthetics mat

Perhaps Forgottenlore is right. Maybe some posters didn't quite understand what I meant by upscaling the game. I think some of them did but since they employ tactics based on model-size they think the game would be broke by scaling-up the ranges. Perhaps some of their tactics WOULD be broken. It all just comes down to how you like to play the game. I just think that creating less fiddly situations where models would otherwise bump into each other would be preferable for a number of reasons. Also, as I said: Aesthetics matter to our group. We have a background as tabletop wargamers so we perhaps have a different perspective from someone who is more of a Boardgamer. We have a LARGE tabeltop. We also have a $100 8'x5' space gaming mat we use for larger fleet sized games... so we like to take advantage of it! I think the game would "look better" if things didn't get so clustered up. Just an opinion. We also do have plenty of 3D asteroid and space-station models we use for fleet-games, so yes... lots of terrain. Hmm.... now I also want to give Star Wars: Armada a try! Up-scaling that one might be a bit more finnicky!