There's a lot of focus around her on meta-gaming and getting the most out of a list or ship, and I think this is a pretty cool thing. How else can we improve without knowing how to get the most out of our ships and upgrades? How would I know Expose is a terribad card for the cost and the fact that it uses up an action without someone pointing it out to me, barring playing it and finding out myself through process of elimination? This is something I love about the forum and I'm grateful you guys who work hard to become good don't mind sharing your discoveries with me and others.

And yet, often I don't really go to the trouble of putting together the perfect list. I can remember most of the "good" cards, but whenever I play, I find that I'm just putting together whatever feels fun to play. Last time I took a bunch of Y-wings and Roark. I lost horribly to the TIE Phantom my opponent used, but I had fun doing it. Same with the time I took a ragtag group of an X-wing, two A-wings, and a Y-wing out for a spin. I just wanted to check out the Garven/R5-K6 combo, purely because it's what he used in the Death Star Assault. It flopped miserably, FWIW.

This is probably the only game I play where I can have just as much fun losing as I do winning, apart from games like Fluxx where the point is to have fun, not to win. And this is an awesome thing.

I do the same thing. I don't have 'lists' I just run whatever I feel like in casual games. One time I ran two defenders and a Phantom, it did well enough and I won. Most people here would have lost their minds, but whenever I play, I just throw together something, sometimes with ships I've never played with and just run it to see how it does. If I lose, I lose and if I win, I win, and we always shake hands and say good game after each match, no matter how frustrating or awesome the game was.

I enjoy larger games, 250+, for the most part. My friend and I have been doing the Tantive Campaign and it has been a blast. I feel if I get caught up in tournaments and 'the meta' it will just suck the fun out of everything for me.

I'm sure we will have tournament guys come in here and be like 'cool man', but hey, whatever. I'll enjoy my casual gaming and painting / conversions.

Different strokes for different folks. Fun is a relative term; I have fun brainstorming lists where I see combos, synergy, and winning potential. The more I discover, the more it leads me to look for new opportunities elsewhere, and before I know it I've spent hours pouring through all the same cards and quickly jotting down lists. Then I play them, alter them, and move on to something else. If I find something worthwhile, I might play that at an event, or I might take a forgiving, low-pressure list instead. It all depends on my incentive to win, which can also be fun. But the lowest common denominator is always winning potential.

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Places like this mean almost nothing to the tens of thousands of casual STAR WARS Collectors and gamers. The Star-hipster in general culture might know about this place, and pop in once in a while to check on news and upcoming products status... maybe.

More often than not they see new products on Amazon, and buy them there.

I like being able to read what many cool Wingers post here, but ultimately I am going to play with my toys how I see fit to, it is all very casual fun-stuff made of dark-mater which is not part of the normal society.

Our forum is such a small thing, and we are nerds existing way out of the normal world.

I am fine with that.

To each their own, I like reading about what the flavours of the month are but equally I'm going to put my own spin on them or fly my own thing

roll with whatever your most comfortable with at the time, be it the current hotness or whatever squad you've thrown together, as long as good games are had then all is good

I think we all play for fun. And I think you will see less mainline meta lists than you think. At least I do. I took 2 x-wings to a tourney just for kicks, and was surprised to see that 2 others had x lists as well. I was sure I would be the only one.

The game is so wide open right now you can fly just about anything and be competitive. Even spamming support ships is seeing some strong outings(y-wings). Fun time to be in this game.

I agree that I find it frustrating at times to post on here. I'll talk about a combo that works for me and is pretty cool to have people shoot it down and say how it won't work against the Fat Hans or the Phantoms. Well, we don' really play with those and it works for me.

Campaigns are fun, too.

I play most games with my bro only thing close to a regular game i get these days. We play 150pts most often 100pts well thought out ish and 50pts just for the hell of it choices and now s&v's out he's really lovin just comin up with new list. Squadron builders really help with those 15min breaks at work

Yeah, I just fly the ships I like. And usually pilots I like, too. I enjoy playing because it's a STAR WARS miniatures game, not because it's a star wars MINIATURES GAME. (If that makes sense)

When a friend introduced us to the game during holidays we started monday evening and played till somewhere thursday night. Played many, MANY games. And lost them all.

Bought the game.

I wish I could just play for fun, but one of the weekly game days I go to is a tournament, so if I bring a 'fun' list I'll get stomped by some obnoxious power combo list, and if I bring a power list I'll luck out and everyone will have brought fun lists and they'll get stomped by me and I'll feel like a ****** and won't have as much fun as if I had brought a 'fun' list.

I think I'm just going to play 3x AP, howl, and a sigma phantom. It's a pretty good list that is also fun to play.

I also enjoy just casual fun games where you can just try whatever build you like without worrying too much about losing if it does not work the way you want.

I think everyone plays this game for fun. What qualifies as fun for different people changes and that's what makes this game so excellent. If you want to play thematic lists, excellent. If you want to min-max your list to maximize efficient, good for you. There's bo wrong way to play the game. (Well, it helps to follow the rules)

The one mistake we as gamers can make is to think this forum is all the xwing players in the world and represents the only way to play the game. Same with podcasts. If you only listened to nova squadron radio, you would think the game is only played competitively. (That's what their podcast is about, and I enjoy it) but if you listen to that and then assume that's all this game is, you're wrong.

I wish I could just play for fun, but one of the weekly game days I go to is a tournament, so if I bring a 'fun' list I'll get stomped by some obnoxious power combo list, and if I bring a power list I'll luck out and everyone will have brought fun lists and they'll get stomped by me and I'll feel like a ****** and won't have as much fun as if I had brought a 'fun' list.

I only get one night a week to play. If my only night was a tournament each week, I wouldn't want to play the game! I'm really lucky that I play fun games with friends. Oh, we try to win, but we take lists that we like and try to win. When practicing for a SC, we had to look up what a Fat Han was as no one ever plays with a YT-1300. One guy loves HWKs and always took lists that had two of them. He'd win games, too! The point is to have fun and we do that by not having the most competitive lists against each other all the time. I get that others like that. That's great for them.

My first post...

I, too, play for fun. I've been reading the forum religiously for months and would feel less intimidated about posting if there were a subforum for "Casual Flying"... I respect the knowledge and drive of the 100-point death match tourney players, and believe that their hard work likely helps FFG balance the game. But I'd like a "safe" subforum within which to address builds outside the 100 point range, casual rules variants, missions, and Epic variants.

I say just post, but include that you aren't super death match competitive. I've posted lots of stuff that wasn't hyper competitive and gotten good feed back. Ignore the people that just want to tell you to play a way you don't want and listen to the people that give good advice. I've learned stuff from some of the more competitive players and their input and gotten better at the game, but still like to think I'm a "fly casual" type of gamer. Well....I did get stressed for one game at my SC.

Fun is definitely relative and at the end of the the game needs to fulfill your definition of fun. Casual and competitive are not mutually exclusive and flying on way does not make you better than the other person.

I'm a competitive player I generally play in tournaments or the game night at our store is practice for tournaments and we all have fun doing it. We tried having epic nights, scenario leagues, campaigns but we all wanted to get back to 100 point tourney practice. I'm lucky that there are people in the area who want to do that.

That said if someone new was in we wouldn't try and crush them, we had a guy come in looking at the game and I told him he can fly one of my ships and I'll fly the other 2. He had a blast and bought a core set and has bought a ton more. Also if people came in wanting to do scenarios we'd be able to accommodate that as well.

As far as list building advice when people ask for thoughts and opinions most people are going to assume what they think of it in a competitive setting. It's a set of parameters to compare the list to. How well do I think it will do in a match lasting between 60-75 minutes? How long will it last against some of the common top tier builds? It's just an easy starting point for opinions and critique. If you just want to know if a list is fun or not then only you'll be able to answer that because we all have different definitions of fun. If you do want advice but don't want competitive biased advice then definitely put for casual play up there. Just know the opinions will be way more vague since people don't know if you use time limits or what kind of lists are played at your casual nights.

The most fun I have in games such as these is making the most out of "lower tier" or unexpected/rarely considered options and doing well with them, though we're fortunate enough to playing in a game where such distinctions tend to blur thanks to the viability of almost all the ships in circulation

so the meta definitely matters for me, since it becomes the thing I have to curbstomp into the concrete (especially during wave 5, because **** that boring piece of **** excuse of a meta)

Wave 6 definitely feels less serious because it just burst open the flood gates. With phantoms temporarily gone (cloaked?) and the turret population checked (get your turrets spayed or neutered, for the good of us all) we've been seeing a lot of different squads come into the lime light in the local scene.

Never played in a tournament. Never will.

The most competetive I get is when I'm playing strip X-Wing with my wife. I really .. REALLY .. want to win.

Never played in a tournament. Never will.

The most competetive I get is when I'm playing strip X-Wing with my wife. I really .. REALLY .. want to win.

Piece of clothing for each hit scored?

Yay, fun!

I only get an opponent once a month, at best, so I always have to max my fun list quota. Not that we don't try to beat the pants off each other, mind.

I played in my first SC not too long ago, and I'll never do it again. I made it to the eliminations just fine, but after 7 hours of non-stop x-wing, I realized I was no longer having fun. That, and it just killed me making a list that had to be able to deal with all lists.

I'll stick to my friends and the occasional league night.

But I will say the promo fel was worth the $5.

I don't mind the tournament atmosphere of playing power lists all the time, it's more so that playing against the same one wave 5 Turretwing build is getting a tad bit annoying. If it was just swarms or XXBB dominating the meta as hard as turrets/phantoms do/did, I wouldn't mind as much.

Wave 4/5 meta is kind of annoying. There isn't really any nuance to facing them or playing them, and action economy has gone to ridiculous levels so stressing a turret doesn't really do anything because it still has gunner and predator and a free focus to crit conversion. Even when I'm winning it's just because I plopped 8 TL's on your Decimator and blew it away, not because I outflew you or anything.

Playing for fun? You heathens!