I am asking this question to get a better understanding of the forum content.

Every post or reply seems to assume players are playing tournaments or playing to practice for tournament play.

Is this the case?

So many posts don't apply to our games, both at home and the ultra small group at our local game store.

No one owns a falcon so we don't have those cards, or a transport so those cards are out, or huge ships.

No one flies Phantoms (due to complexity)

Is this normal or are we just that far from the norm?

You're probably normal, but most of the tournament fanatics are going to gather on online forums to figure out what'll land them the number one spot at their next game day.

(This is going to be true for most games with a competitive side, IMO.)

Nope.

I've played in a single local tournament for charity, with a squad built for fun. I don't fly either of the YTs or a Phantom because I want to do well due to my own skill, rather than because of a super-ship or combo. Hell, I fly multiple TIE bombers on a regular basis!

The main reason I visit and post here is because there some genuinely fun ideas and interesting concepts to be had, I also like to share some of the thing I've tried myself - I work in education so teaching and coaching come naturally. My ideas and suggestions will never win any serious trophies, but hopefully I can help newer players get to grips with the game, and more experienced players might look at things from a different perspective.

The most important rule of X-Wing for me? Fly what's fun, for both you and your opponent

I would side on the out of norm. Most people I know that don't play tournaments still have all the ships (huge withstanding). They play missions, large point battles, and free for alls. I would suggest trying stuff outside the comfort zone, ie phantoms.

I play with my roommate, and we have all the ships between us. I also play occasionally with a couple other friends. I've been wanting to try organized play, though.

I come on here to check out novel combinations and squads. I also spot rules clarifications and mistakes my friend and I have made. We used to cancel crits before hits, for example. Our games are a lot faster now!

I pretty much only ever fly 100-point dogfights, which happens to be the tourney standard, so I tend to look at everything through that lens.

Most people focus on the meta min/max garbage. I much more enjoy casual play with my buds.

It's store championship season, so that's what a lot of forum members are talking about.

Unless otherwise noted, most discussions here are in the context of playing the standard game (100 point dogfight). But I think most players enjoy, or at least try out, the other formats (Epic, missions, teams, etc.).

As for me, I play in tournaments once in a while, but I like to play a variety of different formats. 2v2 300 per side is my favorite at the moment. Some of the missions are fun. If someone wants to play a 60 point dogfight, I'm game.

I recently noticed that my gaming group has pretty much been through an X-Wing decathlon. We've done races, Escalation, one-ship free-for-alls, a tournament using the Political Escort mission, 300 and 400 point Epic games with and without huge ships, short tournaments, long tournaments, pretty much every kind of obstacle, all that stuff.

Same as most of the others I suspect; small group of buds who get together and play at the house or the local shop.

Nope pure casual player here.

This forum tends to focus heavily on tournaments, but that doesn't entirely represent the majority of X-Wing players. You can still pick up a lot of useful information here, but feel free to disregard any commentary that calls a ship useless (unless it's the Advanced, before the Raider comes out). The general assumption here is that you want your list to at least have a fighting chance in a tournament, and that you will have to have ways of dealing with Fat Han, Phantoms, and swarms. If you're looking for list advice, just mention the different meta in your area.

I'm more casual myself. I keep a loose idea of what's strong but I'd sooner field something that caught my interest than something brutal. I do make an effort to identify flaws in my playstyle and correct them but for listbuilding I just do whatever seems fun. The only concession I make is to rarely use Defenders because I'm just fantastically useless at flying them. Like Vogon poetry in motion.

Tournaments

I only play tournaments because I only get to play once a month (kids, wife, etc..).

I am not entirely certain I see the necessary distinction between "tournament players" and non-tournament players. The forum focuses on 100-point game play with all current legal pieces. What else is it supposed to do?

When posts clarify that a certain ship or cards are not available in the local scene, board members reply appropriately. But without such clarification, they respond under the assumption that players have access to the whole game. Similarly, without clarification, lists are compared to high-end tournament lists because, given the 100 page restriction and access to everything, these lists have been found to be some of the most effective lists in the game.

The only tournaments I attend are Store Champs and Regionals. Everything else is casual play at my FLGS.

I do both.

Tournaments are fun, but when it comes down to what I prefer, it would be casual games with my friends. My friends and I play "mini-tournaments" at home where the focus is to have fun more than it is to win. We order pizza, drink beer, and just have fun all around. My best friend has a son old enough to play and he brings him and his friend along so we can get a pretty decent group going.

What you'll see here is a group of people who have a higher amount of investment, both financially and otherwise, in the game. Of those players, a lot are naturally going to be interested in tournament play because we're exactly the sort of people that typically participate in tournaments.

That doesn't mean, though, that even "tournament players" play exclusively in tournaments. Everyone plays casual games, even if those games have half an eye toward tourney prep; like BaronFel, I don't think there's really a useful distinction to be drawn between tournament and casual players.

There's not a big enough X-wing group here in town to really have a competitive scene here.
And I'm okay with that. I like it casual, because I tend to get competitive when there are prizes on the line.

Competitive play has significantly more topics worth discussing in depth.

Casual play simply doesn't and those who are predominantly casual players don't tend to even bother to come to forums (or stick around once they do).

It's more of a selection bias than anything. Overwhelmingly more people play casual than competitive, but the forum presence will be dominated by competitive.

Why make the distinction between tournaments and casual play? You want to make the most out of your ships, don't you? You want to get advice whether a particular combination is really as good as it sounds, right? Even when you're just playing against your best bud, you want to give him a decent fight, right?

Whether there is a prize up for grabs or just bragging rights, you'd want a well-fought battle. One that you'll be talking about long after the game night. You'd want to discuss why your opponent's squad was so powerful, or was it really? Or maybe was it YOUR squad that was just too easy to kill?

This is what the forums are for.

Competitive play means min maxing taking the most powerful builds you can and generally tipping the advantage your way as much as you can because the objective is winning.

Casual is not running the meta but builds you like, you tend to have more freedom in the lists you can run because you won't constantly be running into phantom and Han lists., The objective is more about fun than winning.

Neither play style is invalid but they offer different attitudes, where a casual game may allow take backs or doing actions you forgot a competitive game is much less forgiving.

That is an extremely unhelpful breakdown. I understand that it seems self-evident and it is appealing to draw such distinctions, but "fun" is such a nebulously defined term that you're bound to get into trouble.

I have more fun when I win, therefore I try to win games that I play--whether they are casual or not. This doesn't mean that I always take a min-maxed list, but I certainly do my best to defeat my opponent. I expect my opponent to do the same thing to me. This makes it fun. Constantly taking back actions, playing sloppily with tokens, etc.. gives me less fun, because it's sometimes unclear what's actually happened and makes my choices seem to matter less. I will allow it, generally, and won't make a stink, because I'm generally a pretty low key dude. I get that people make mistakes and they're learning. Is this casual or competitive?

The other, more serious, danger of this approach is that setting up these opposing camps allows a "fun" player to complain that they only lost because their opponent is "competitive" with a "broken," "cheesy," or "beardy" "net-list." This can easily create a toxic environment where certain builds are stigmatized, only the stigma is far more arbitrary and contingent upon certain players sense of "what the game ought to be."

Certain builds are already stigmatized you don't bring a fat Han list to a friendly game without fair warning same goes for the phantom.

Endlessly facing the same list may be something you have to do but I don't see many people saying it's a fun thing to do.

When there's no stakes your free to use any wacky build you like and laugh about it when it dies horribly, in competitive play there are simply boxes you must tick to stand a chance.

Winning is fun but it's not everything to everyone.

I play in tournaments but feel that is not the optimal form of the game. I'm more into it as a way to explore the SW universe than I am to demonstrate how much better (or worse) I am than other players. I mostly play tournaments to meet other players. For me, a good scenario is more desirable than a standard 1 v 1, 100 point, 6 asteroid, death match- no context... no story... no fluff... no... Star Wars.

Star Wars is epic and that is the format I prefer to play. Likewise, I prefer multi-player games rather than 1 v1- the more, the merrier.

I went to the casual Tuesday X-Wing night at the FLGS last night.

A fat chewy with 3 z's, fat chewy with fat corran, phantom decimator, and a double doughnut.

Phantom hasn't strangled the meta, nope.