Chadwick's description of WH tournie scene is also exactly what happened to Warmachine

if you aren't playing that game with objectives, you're not really playing the game at all

and now we have Armada, which is packaged with objectives as part of list building

Objectives add a ton of variety both to gameplay and the models the appear in games because you have to balance "kill ****!" with playing the scenario, giving you far more approaches to victory and therefore new scenarios in which lesser used models can be put to work

I'm not at all certain how objectives would end up working in X-wing, but if introduced properly by FFG (a company which does seem to deserve a measure of faith) it could well revolutionize the game for the better

Of course, I have no idea how they'd go about introducing scenarios for X-wing since it does not seem that the game was designed with them in mind

x wing was not designed to be an objective based game

x wing was not designed to be an objective based game

Then why does every product come with at least one Mission?

There are a number of people who state that FFG was going to introduce them to the game when they felt it necessary. I don't recall who, but I believe them. Perhaps it's later than they expected, but I'm sure they can now.

How do they introduce it? In the standard Tournament Rules pack.

Requiring us to buy something JUST to play in tournaments is completely against FFG's policies. Which constantly comes up when a new damage deck is brought up.

Quite honestly, the tournament scene is big enough that they probably feel it is best to keep it as is. And it keeps playtesting easier.

Requiring us to buy something JUST to play in tournaments is completely against FFG's policies. Which constantly comes up when a new damage deck is brought up.

Quite honestly, the tournament scene is big enough that they probably feel it is best to keep it as is. And it keeps playtesting easier.

Who said anything about having to buy something just to play in a tournament? I responded to barriercritzer's comment about to show that the game was designed with scenarios in mind.

In the same post, I stated that they could release a new Tournament Pack FAQ like they do for all tournament rules. FREE.

I'm sorry. It sounded like something to sell.

If you getting bored with the 100 points battles as I have talk your store into doing a 150, an escalation. I would be totally down for missions in X-Wing or some kind of blind box like Star Trek Attack Wing. Or just play star trek attack wing its focused around missions style tournaments. But more good fixes are Imperial Assault. Yet I feel one or two missions need balancing. Also Armada looks to be mission based. Looking forward into playing that next.

Gadge....just wanted to add some thoughts for you. Me and a buddy have been thinking about organizing a mission based tourney for a while. One of the things that we decided would make the whole thing 'fair', is to divide the entrants into 2 separate groups before the start. Have group A play against group B, with all of the A players on one side of the mission. Then have the groups switch sides of the mission. So after 2 rounds each player has played both sides. In this way you can play whatever mission you want....and it does not even have to be balanced. You only have to make it so that you can score points on either side.

x wing was not designed to be an objective based game

Then why does every product come with at least one Mission?

There are a number of people who state that FFG was going to introduce them to the game when they felt it necessary. I don't recall who, but I believe them. Perhaps it's later than they expected, but I'm sure they can now.

How do they introduce it? In the standard Tournament Rules pack.

Have you ever played those missions, most of them are awful

I started a role playing game with X-Wing miniatures on my end. We completed the first scenario which required all 3 players to be there last tuesday and the players had a blast! Now each scenario that follows is 1 player vs the DM with different objectives. So far, everything is gong extremely well (but then again, it is not a tournament setting in itself).

Scenarios are obviously working really well in Armada and Imperial Assault.

It wouldn't be simple to implement, but I think it would add a lot to X-Wing as well.

Fixing underlying balance problems and adding tournament scenario play are not mutually exclusive, and are both good ideas if done properly.

Fixing underlying balance problems and adding tournament scenario play are not mutually exclusive, and are both good ideas if done properly.

they'll add another element of complexity for mathwing to consider, though

Personally I have no interest in scenarios and know of few people who do. While it might be possible to design scenarios that would work within a competitive milieu, the problem would be getting players to show up for it. At the end of the day people like to blow sh*t up. There is something very satisfying about eradicating your opponent from the field that can't be matched by completing a scenario objective.

Unless you're getting blown up but still manage to win because you focused on scenario

Victory from the jaws of defeat!

I’m obviously a big fan of scenarios, but I am not sure about the feasibility of running tournaments with scenarios. I’ve worked a lot on the idea of making fun, balanced, thematic missions, and it is not an easy task. But playing a well-made scenario can be a blast, and I recommend playing one or two if you haven't already. I've put a ton of work into building and maintaining a library of such scenarios on Mission Control.

Creating a portfolio of tournament scenarios would be quite difficult. Tournament rounds need to be fast, so not only do the missions themselves need to be brief, but they also need to be easy to understand so players don’t spend too much time just learning the rules. Missions need to be symmetrical to be maximally balanced, which cuts into the types of scenarios available.

Furthermore, missions are additional headaches in terms of in-game rules. Increasing the scope of the game in a competitive environment in this way could breed the sort of ‘rules lawyers’ that make other games unenjoyable.

Those who have brought up the possibility of certain builds being favored also have a good point. Swarms are particularly dangerous in this regard because they have far more board coverage and action economy than other builds. It’s possible that a variety of missions could promote diversity, but the potential for maximal builds does not automatically decrease with objective based play. And, most disturbing is the potential for auto-win scenarios, where one build is so much better suited to the scenario compared to the opposing build that the game is virtually decided before the models are on the table.

In the end, I don’t think competitive objective based play is impossible, and I do think it could make for interesting gameplay, but I also think it is an incredibly complicated problem. I doubt objective based play is coming to official FFG x-wing events any time soon.

Personally I have no interest in scenarios and know of few people who do. While it might be possible to design scenarios that would work within a competitive milieu, the problem would be getting players to show up for it. At the end of the day people like to blow sh*t up. There is something very satisfying about eradicating your opponent from the field that can't be matched by completing a scenario objective.

You talk like the only objectives would ever be 'fly to the satellite, do something, win the game'. You could instead have something like:

After deploying ships, the player with initiative chooses 1 of his ships to be the objective ship. Then the other player chooses 1 of his ships to be the objective ship.

While attacking an objective ship, the attacker may reroll 1 die.

At the end of the game, the point cost of a destroyed objective ship is doubled. Do not double the cost of its upgrade cards.

Which is one of the Armada objectives, slightly modified (Most Wanted).

Armada does it like this:

You pick 3 objective cards as part of their build

Your opponent picks 3 objective cards as part of their build

The player with initiative picks an objective from their opponent's set. Then that is the objective for the round. It typically adds bonus points to the final scoring, like a certain ship is the flagship and is worth double the points.

Most objectives (from the combat set at least) typically favor few big ships (Imperial) or many small ships (Rebel). So it lets you build your squad to either go for the initiative and pick what best suits, or go jack of all trades (like tourney builds now) and deal with everything.

I'm not saying that this would work the way it is for X-wing. My point is that there are other ways to involve alternative point scoring objectives without making it 100% dependent on random chance.

Id be open to this sort of system in x-wing tournament play. the scoring mods could lead you in a range of directions and even add some depth and flavour to the game.

missions like first kill bonus or double points for name pilots etc could be really interesting (but perhaps not very balanced?)

Personally I have no interest in scenarios and know of few people who do. While it might be possible to design scenarios that would work within a competitive milieu, the problem would be getting players to show up for it. At the end of the day people like to blow sh*t up. There is something very satisfying about eradicating your opponent from the field that can't be matched by completing a scenario objective.

You talk like the only objectives would ever be 'fly to the satellite, do something, win the game'. You could instead have something like:

After deploying ships, the player with initiative chooses 1 of his ships to be the objective ship. Then the other player chooses 1 of his ships to be the objective ship.

While attacking an objective ship, the attacker may reroll 1 die.

At the end of the game, the point cost of a destroyed objective ship is doubled. Do not double the cost of its upgrade cards.

Which is one of the Armada objectives, slightly modified (Most Wanted).

This would make lots of the current best ships even better.

Personally I have no interest in scenarios and know of few people who do. While it might be possible to design scenarios that would work within a competitive milieu, the problem would be getting players to show up for it. At the end of the day people like to blow sh*t up. There is something very satisfying about eradicating your opponent from the field that can't be matched by completing a scenario objective.

I've seen a lot of people say that they won't go to tournaments anymore if they have scenarios for other events. Of course, when the time comes, they are there.

Some very good points for and against. I think 'hey chadwick' sort of said it better than i did.

But, my initial idea is to try and run a 'narrative' tournament at my local store and while i was going to use missions i'd written i'm really liking the Armada system where you each have a secondary agenda other than 'kill everything' which can sway things your way if you achieve it.

I'm sure not everyone will go for it.

I was originally going to run a narrative event that also would have a contentious element in that you'd be asked to bring two factions along to avoid 'rebel vs rebel' matches. Again loads of people who are very embedded into the current organised play system have a mare when this is mentioned but I personally know about 30 people in my playing circle and *none* of them only have one faction.

The other option is to get people to sign up to either one faction or another exclusively with the S&V able to fight either or themselves but that does leave the problem of having to make sure that an even number of players 'book in' and that we have a 'player ref' in the event of drop outs or an odd number.

Back in the day i used to run 'team events' at Warhammer World where around ten players would be in a 'task force' of the same faction (orks, imperium, tau &eldar etc etc). You challenged another team and whichever side won the most of those ten games gained a territory on the star map or warhammer map off the other side. To liven it up a bit each side was able to buy and play (with game currency generated from territories) a number of 'strategy cards' that allowed you to do stuff like deploy a unit in reserve or make pre first turn move with one unit etc.

It wasnt everyones cup of tea but it was popular and events always sold out well before the day.

One of the big appeals was that it took the pressure of games and they became more relaxed as you won as a team and your win or loss was not as critical as it could be in individual play as even if you got massacred in your game your 'team' might still be ok if the others held the line.

Without making any considerations about the level of balance (it's horrible) and the competitive value of 40k, I think X-wing is much less suited to scenarios than 40k.

In 40k, completely annihilating an opposite army within the standard game length is night impossible. I've been playing 1-2 times a week for the past year and I have never seen a tabled army live at 1850 points. Tournament level tablings are also extremely rare (And from what I saw it's usually 'I start most of my stuff in reserve' armies getting tabled before 'wave 2 arrives').

In X-wing, based on the number of 100-0 wins I see in tournament battle reports, removing an opponent off the map in a standard game length is not very unlikely. As such, a scenario would need to be carefully constructed so that 'clean the opponent off the table, then complete scenario objectives' is not the most viable strategy.