Hi,

So I ordered this game and a few expansions, partly out of nostalgia for my old SW toys from when I was a kid. I have read the rules, but remain confused.

1. Does every player have to belong to either the rebellion or the empire? Or can you just throw a bunch of ships together and play?

2. How many ships do you need to play a good game? The base game seems to only have a single ship for the good guys.

3. Can more than two people play?

4. Is the 3x3' space mentioned in the rules realistic?

5. Is the playing time of 30 mins realistic?

Thanks in advance!

1. Rebellion, Empire, and soon Scum, yes. No faction-mixing officially.

A quick note @3 and 4, we have played in team games were players take a ship each in a normal 100 point game, if that's something that interests you.

You are supposed to pick ships exclusively from a single faction, but if your opponent agrees, then whatever.

4 ships is probably close to a "typical" number for 100 point games. Like he said, you can have 2 ship lists with the right ships, or up to 8 TIE fights in a 100 points.

Team games are quite common. Having multi player free for alls creates the same problems multi player does in any game but there are some ways to make it work.

3'x3' is totally realistic for a standard 100 points and even a bit bigger. Obviously as you add more points and more ships a bigger play area will eventually be needed. For epic 300 point games FFG recommends 3'x6'

I'd say 45 minutes is probably more common, but it is a very fast playing game. Tournament allow 60-90 minutes per game, depending on the TO but I don't think they go to time very often. Again, bigger games will take longer.

Welcome!

Point 1: covered well above. I will say that there are some hilariously broken combos if you faction mix.

Point 2: the core set has 2 ships for the good guys, and 1 for the terrorists. If you only got 1 Imperial Tie Fighter, maybe you got a defective box. the most common point total is 100, though 150 points is also viable. There is also Team Epic play at 200 points per person (2 teams of 2 players each team. 400 per side), and Epic 1v1, each player having 300 points.

Related: the maximum number of any given ship type in an Epic game is 8. Officially. If you and your friends want to run an entire 12 ship squadron against another squadron, Fantasy Flight will probably cheer you on.

Um. If you want to play Epic- or just enjoy the toys- there are some Huge ships available. Those toys are awesome.

Point 3: oh yes! As noted above, there are official rules for team play, and a whole lot of people have done some nonstandard multiplayer games. I'm looking forward to the 3rd faction being released, so some 1v1v1 free for alls can happen.

Point 4: in a standard 100 point match, 3x3 keeps the action moving along. Making the playing area bigger allows for too much drift. In an Epic 300 point match, you play on a 3x6 board.

Related: when I first started playing, I didn't use asteroids. In retrospect, that's a huge mistake. The 3x3 board with 6 asteroids makes the play so much more interesting.

Point 5: 30 min is kind of laughable. If it's me and friends, I'm playing a 2hr match. But tournaments tend to be 55 min to 70 min.

We regularly play 2v2 games with 60 or 70pts per person. Games usually run for 3ish hours, but thats with a lot of messing about, chatting & drinking included.

I don't think I've ever had a game of X-Wing under an hour. My average is probably 1.5 to 2 hours. If you squad-build right before the game, then that's another .5 to 1 hour of setup time flipping through cards, gathering tokens, setting up ships, etc. You can speed things along by preparing your squad list before the game, organizing your storage solution as best you can, and getting very familiar with your ships' abilities.

My 100 point games are usually from 60 to 90 minutes with most going to the high end of that range. Only a complete slaughter ends in less than 60 minutes

2. How many ships do you need to play a good game? The base game seems to only have a single ship for the good guys.

What do you mean? The core comes with two good guy ships.

Can we all agree that it is NOT OKAY to refer to an organisation responsible for destroying millions if not billions of lives without valid provocation as "the good guys"?

Can we all agree that it is NOT OKAY to refer to an organisation responsible for destroying millions if not billions of lives without valid provocation as "the good guys"?

This is exactly why we view the terrorists who murdered hundreds and thousands of innocent contract workers on the two Death Stars as the bad guys.

Luke Skywalker and Lando are the greatest and most prolific mass murderers in modern cinema.

You're missing the provocation bit. Everyone on board the first station is partially responsible for Alderaan, and anyone working on the second was willingly assisting the construction of a machine with the sole purpose of destroying inhabited planets.

Can we all agree that it is NOT OKAY to refer to an organisation responsible for destroying millions if not billions of lives without valid provocation as "the good guys"?

So you are saying America is evil and Isis are the plucky rebellion, got it.

Can we all agree that it is NOT OKAY to refer to an organisation responsible for destroying millions if not billions of lives without valid provocation as "the good guys"?

So you are saying America is evil and Isis are the plucky rebellion, got it.

Well that escalated quickly.

I saw Luke referred to as "the butcher of yavin" in a different post. Made me laugh.

Can we all agree that it is NOT OKAY to refer to an organisation responsible for destroying millions if not billions of lives without valid provocation as "the good guys"?

So you are saying America is evil and Isis are the plucky rebellion, got it.

Well that escalated quickly.

LOL, that's what I was thinking.

I have a couple uber-basic questions myself:

1. Are the various "tech" cards that come with a ship usable by any ship, either side?

2. Some ships seem MADE to be cross-faction: The YTs, Firespray, Z-95s. Any rules current or pending that would allow a rebel Firespray? Or even a Lambda?

All those things you say are true... from a certain point of view.

I have a couple uber-basic questions myself:

1. Are the various "tech" cards that come with a ship usable by any ship, either side?

2. Some ships seem MADE to be cross-faction: The YTs, Firespray, Z-95s. Any rules current or pending that would allow a rebel Firespray? Or even a Lambda?

1. all upgrades are use-able by any ship with the correct slots unless it says differently on the card for example rebel-only/empire-only and the "tie-phantom only" on the advanced cloaking device

2. the firespray. y-wing and z-95 will be use-able in the new 3rd faction scum and villainy and that set will come with dials and pilot cards for them. other then that.. no current rules for cross-faction ships

Also here is a tool you may find useful, and welcome to this fun game.

http://xwing-builder.co.uk/build

Can we all agree that it is NOT OKAY to refer to an organisation responsible for destroying millions if not billions of lives without valid provocation as "the good guys"?

This is exactly why we view the terrorists who murdered hundreds and thousands of innocent contract workers on the two Death Stars as the bad guys.

Luke Skywalker and Lando are the greatest and most prolific mass murderers in modern cinema.

Look, I'm a roofer, and speaking as a roofer I can tell you that a roofer's personal politics come into play heavily when choosing a job. A roofer chooses his jobs with his heart, not his wallet.

Hey now, that guy in cell block 2468 was totally innocent. how was he to know that spice was on the empire's restricted list?

And Klieba's Janitorial Services was definitely in favor of planet destruction when it signed its meager contract with the Empire for its newest facility. Many Mantequillans died that day.

On topic: Make sure you play with the asteroids. I know the book makes them sound optional, but when you start playing with other players, asteroids are rarely not included. I learned without them, so my first non-friend play caused me some pain.

::small tear in memory of Dark Curse's asteroid collision that signaled defeat at the Battle of Hobbytown Knoxville::

My favourite tip is this:

The rule book becomes more valuable each time you read through it.

It sounds funny, but there are things you may miss or misinterpret your first time through the book. After my very first game I decided that focus/evade tokens were overpowered so I read the book again to discover that I'd missed the part where you're supposed to remove them each round!

Even during my second game with my girlfriend, we were performing illegal barrel rolls with Rebel ships because we hadn't paid enough attention to the action bars! *face slap*

wow.... so much feedback! so x-wing....very faction building!

Thanks folks!