But any effort to revise or tighten the rules would be under at least three major constraints (among probably dozens of minor ones):(1) It has to remain consistent with all the cards released so far. That is, any rules revision for attacking can't require any changes in the card text for Proton Torpedoes.

While this is certainly a major goal, I don't think this is as absolutely necessary as you suggest. Magic underwent a huge rules revision for their 6th edition that necessitated hard errata to the wording of vast numbers of existing cards and it didn't break the game.

By all means, try to keep the errata to old cards to a minimum, but the game needs a rewrite of the rules and I don't think needing to change the wording on a small percentage of cards should prevent that.

Ultimately this is a discussion of principle: the FAQ method works. By the time these are useable everything will be clarified and we'll know what do in tournament situations.

My only real issue is how arbitrary the FAQ can be. I wish it was more consistent. It is mostly, but in cases like R2-D2 I have no idea why the rule is the way it is.

Ultimately this is a discussion of principle: the FAQ method works. By the time these are useable everything will be clarified and we'll know what do in tournament situations.

This has been proven false many, many times in the past. In fact, it's only been true once: we got an FAQ update for Wave 5 before the ships were actually available. Literally every other release has had the FAQ lag, often by months. All the way back to Wave 2 - the Kessel Run events meant Wave 2 was out and known for months before they were actually available. We had a whole pile of questions about them, and FFG helpfully released an FAQ update when the Wave finally released... that included exactly zero of the Wave 2 issues. Most recently, Wave 6 hit late February, and we didn't have an FAQ update for it until late April. Honestly, it's hard to even know where you got the idea from.

So while it might be POSSIBLE for the FAQ method to work, the way FFG applies it really doesn't.

Was there anything in Wave 4 or Wave 6 that really needed FAQ, and I mean really needed it rather than the restating the obvious that most of the FAQ is? Wave 5 had Stay on Target and Navigator, which was kind of urgent.

Wave 7 has Bossk, where the precedents from R7 and from Accuracy Corrector contradict. That, and Wave 2 was pretty much the start. You can't really blame them for not treating X-Wing as what it is now back then.

Furthermore, it's kind of hard to answer clarification questions before they've been asked, hence the delays on some FAQs. Given all these questions on Wave 7 are being asked on the forums which FFG read I'm fairly confident they'll be answered in time.

And if not, then maybe you're right and they aren't highly rigourous with their ruleset. It doesn't seem to stop people from buying and playing it though so maybe they don't see it as much of an issue.

1. The rules define the game. This prevents the old kid's game of "Cowboys and Indians" problem of "Bang! You're dead!", "No, you missed!". Rules define how I can move my ships, how they can attack, how they can defend, etc. Otherwise, I could just plop my plastic spaceships wherever I please, and forget the movement templates and dials. I'm sure most of us wouldn't like that approach to the game. It IS possible to fly "Too casual".

2. The goal defines how the players approach the rules. When you have rules, you have players exploring those rules interactions for advantages to reach the goal of the game. That's where Mathwing, meta lists, and the Action Economy comes from. My goal is to destroy the other player's squad, and I want to use the rules to give me as much advantage as possible.

3. Aggressive play pushes the boundaries of the rules. I want to drop a bomb in the path of my opponent's ship. Do the rules allow me to do that? That's where this K-Wing question is coming from.

Clear rules prevent the game from falling apart into "No, you missed!" or even worse, flipping through books and FAQs to see how a rules interaction works. It's unpossible to have a completely airtight set of rules, unless your game is uber simple like Tic-Tac-Toe. But it is possible to approach rules creation from an attitude that players are going to play aggressively and attempt to use the rules to win the game, and they need clear rules to do that.

And if not, then maybe you're right and they aren't particularly rigourous with their ruleset. It doesn't seem to stop people from buying and playing it though.

That's right. Gamer nerds buy stuff and put up with all the guff because they have no spine or care for quality.

This is why:

• day one DLC still happens
• day one critical issues patches happen
• endless monetization of items critical to play the game exist
• Season Pass!
• bad rules/game mechanics get shipped to games that are already late
• pre-orders pre-orders pre-orders! (why don't X-wing gamers get cool items for pre-ordering??)

Gamer's dgaf about anything but their next fix, right? They don't deserve a fair price on a well crafted item because they wouldn't know it anyway, right?

Yeah, I'm sick of getting the **** end of the stick because of the gamers tag.

Holy **** guys, they are slightly ambiguous on whether or not you can drop a bomb with a SLAM maneuver. Who cares, they'll FAQ it.

Holy **** guys, they are slightly ambiguous on whether or not you can drop a bomb with a SLAM maneuver. Who cares, they'll FAQ it.

Based on the comments in this thread that's apparently not good enough.

That's right. Gamer nerds buy stuff and put up with all the guff because they have no spine or care for quality.

This is why:

• day one DLC still happens
• day one critical issues patches happen
• endless monetization of items critical to play the game exist
• Season Pass!
• bad rules/game mechanics get shipped to games that are already late
• pre-orders pre-orders pre-orders! (why don't X-wing gamers get cool items for pre-ordering??)

Gamer's dgaf about anything but their next fix, right? They don't deserve a fair price on a well crafted item because they wouldn't know it anyway, right?

Yeah, I'm sick of getting the **** end of the stick because of the gamers tag.

They keep doing it because people do put up with it. It's all well and good complaining about it but you still buy it. They make those pre-orders, buy those day one DLCs and incomplete games and put up with everything while continuing to fork over their money. There's no incentive whatsoever for the developer to change practice.

So they don't.

3. Aggressive play pushes the boundaries of the rules. I want to drop a bomb in the path of my opponent's ship. Do the rules allow me to do that? That's where this K-Wing question is coming from.

Problem is X-Wing wasn't built for that. Look at the Core rulebook: Imperials have initiative on ties, you get initiative even when initiative is bad, intentional blocking wasn't even considered, mirror matches not even considered. They have a whoel separate tournament rulesheet because the Core rulebook is so throughouly unsuited to tournament play. X-Wing wasn't designed for the scale it grew to: its success was completely unexpected. They keep making expansions because it still sells like crazy and make the best of the ruleset they have.

The games that came after X-Wing, Imperial Assault and Armada, have much tighter rulesets.

It's also possible that tournament players aren't considered a priority. X-Wing is a massive seller and is the high end tournament scene that big a slice of it? The membership of this forum I doubt makes a dent in the total number of people who buy X-Wing. It's possible that writing rules in a manner that's (mostly) clear in intention but not watertight to the intricacies of the ruleset is considered a worthwhile tradeoff against writing utterly unambigious rules that require a couple to takes to decipher, like a fair few MTG cards are.

Was there anything in Wave 4 or Wave 6 that really needed FAQ, and I mean really needed it rather than the restating the obvious that most of the FAQ is? Wave 5 had Stay on Target and Navigator, which was kind of urgent.

Wave 7 has Bossk, where the precedents from R7 and from Accuracy Corrector contradict. That, and Wave 2 was pretty much the start. You can't really blame them for not treating X-Wing as what it is now back then.

Furthermore, it's kind of hard to answer clarification questions before they've been asked, hence the delays on some FAQs. Given all these questions on Wave 7 are being asked on the forums which FFG read I'm fairly confident they'll be answered in time.

And if not, then maybe you're right and they aren't highly rigourous with their ruleset. It doesn't seem to stop people from buying and playing it though so maybe they don't see it as much of an issue.

I may have missed one, but this is an impressively comprehensive list of excuses. But let's cover them:

Not actually that important: Then why have the FAQ at all? If it's important enough to resolve two months after release, why isn't it important enough to do pre-release?

Wave 2 was too early for X-wing to be important: This one is total BS. X-wing was already flying off the shelves, and we did actually already have an FAQ before that. You'll also note that I said they DID release an FAQ to coincide with Wave 2's release - almost to the week, if I remember right. They just didn't bother to address any of the questions which had already been around for months.

Answering before asked: Uhm... Yeah, no. Not with Wave 2, and not with now. If the question pertains to that one card that they didn't spoil, then sure. But otherwise, most of the serious issues are things exactly like this - we see a preview and someone says "What if...?" But wait!! (holds envelope to head, then opens...) "They can't know it'll be a problem with real play, preview theorizing doesn't work!" Ah, knew it! Even if you're going to hold up that very incorrect standard, the Vassal community consists of many of the best players in the game, and they actively update based on previews without waiting for release. So yeah, play time too. And sorry for the sarcasm, but the suggestion that it's impossible to know what the rules issues are before release, IN A THREAD ABOUT RULES ISSUES MONTHS BEFORE RELEASE, is pretty silly.

And "hence the delays on some FAQs..." I'm truly not trying to be insulting here, but do you actually pay any attention to how FFG handles their FAQ cycles? Because at this point it's hard to think your points are more blind support. The primary delay has nothing to do with the X-wing devs waiting N days for people to submit questions. FFG releases their FAQs on a company-wide cycle, with most if not all their competitive games updating around the same time. We get one spring update, one before GenCon, and since Nationals has spun up we usually get one before those (although that's new, relatively speaking).

Fair points. I maintain that X-Wing was not in Wave 2 what it had become by Wave 4 and certainly not what it is now, but the point I was making was more that it was ages ago. It's their recent practice that's more indicative to future practice.

But it brings us full circle: what are you going to do about it?

The games that came after X-Wing, Imperial Assault and Armada, have much tighter rulesets.

This is another popular view, and also very, very wrong.

At its core, X-wing's system is very much CCG-ish. Core rules framework, abilities that break it, timing to resolve things. I compared the FAQ volume to the LOTR LCG earlier, and LOTR is a much tighter system with far fewer issues. So it must have come after X-wing too, so they could learn from their mistakes, right?

Except LOTR launched a year before X-wing.

The idea that X-wing was some sort of "We never could have known..." unexpected failure that they learned from is simply and blatantly false. Honestly, the idea that they misjudged how people would play is fading on me too - again looking to LOTR, it's a cooperative game that didn't even have a scoring system in its initial release. Doesn't get much more casual than that. Yet, still, much tighter rule set.

The simple reality is that FFG tried to wing a cheap and easy game out the door, using mechanics that were heavily inspired by a game they had produced then dropped. Earlier games had better rules. More casual games had better rules. They got lazy with it, produced a vague pile of handwaving, and shipped it. Trying to give them a pass because oh it's casual, or oh how could they know how to write a good rules set, is getting a bit old.

Fair points. But it brings us full circle: what are you going to do about it?

My purchases are way down compared to earlier waves.

I've taken a complete pass on Armada because I don't trust them on rules.

I've largely stopped helping out in the rules forum.

I don't run demos any more, at stores or conventions, and what used to be monthly tournaments are now about every six months, and I never run normal events any more.

And I certainly don't tell anyone what an awesome game X-wing is any more, because I don't believe the rule set is going to survive another three or four years. As Vorpal said above, the easy design space is running out, and the rules simply can't support more complex interactions. I have no doubt I'll catch a lot of flak for that, but I'm not actually predicting doom for the game. I do think it's likely enough that I can't really recommend the game as a long-term investment any more.

I compared the FAQ volume to the LOTR LCG earlier, and LOTR is a much tighter system with far fewer issues.

Are you comparing length or is this a more in depth analysis? The X-Wing FAQ clarifies several blatantly obvious things.

The simple reality is that FFG tried to wing a cheap and easy game out the door, using mechanics that were heavily inspired by a game they had produced then dropped.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. It's an updated Wings of War with a Star Wars skin. Yet you expect a lot of it.

I compared the FAQ volume to the LOTR LCG earlier, and LOTR is a much tighter system with far fewer issues.

Are you comparing length or is this a more in depth analysis? The X-Wing FAQ clarifies several blatantly obvious things.

Just length, but wouldn't you expect the same proportion of blatantly obvious things in the other FAQs as well? But even if we grant that LOTR's is 100% pure meaning, and X-wing is half blatantly obvious fluff, it's STILL a bad comparison.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. It's an updated Wings of War with a Star Wars skin. Yet you expect a lot of it.

Is there any reason I shouldn't expect a lot out of it? At least to the level that FFG has demonstrated they're capable of with other games?

Is your argument here really boiling down to 'This is exactly the poor quality you should expect from this game'?

Fair points. I maintain that X-Wing was not in Wave 2 what it had become by Wave 4 and certainly not what it is now, but the point I was making was more that it was ages ago. It's their recent practice that's more indicative to future practice.

But it brings us full circle: what are you going to do about it?

I'm going to play the game and have FUN. That's it... I win!

The problem is not with the rules writing, per se...

I have been playing the game both competitively and casually for several years and I have not, personally had any problems with the rules (besides forgetting some of them on occasion).

If the problems with the game... with the way the rules are written... is mostly a problem with competitive play... ne, ultra competitive play... then perhaps you are using the rules for a purpose other than that which they were written for.

If the problems with the game... with the way the rules are written... is mostly a problem with competitive play... ne, ultra competitive play... then perhaps you are using the rules for a purpose other than that which they were written for.

If FFG didn't want a competitive game, they shouldn't have started a competitive scene. They organise and provide prizes for these tournaments, so they clearly intend for this game to at least have a competitive element.

welp, this thread's gone the way of the hindenberg

If the problems with the game... with the way the rules are written... is mostly a problem with competitive play... ne, ultra competitive play... then perhaps you are using the rules for a purpose other than that which they were written for.

If FFG didn't want a competitive game, they shouldn't have started a competitive scene. They organise and provide prizes for these tournaments, so they clearly intend for this game to at least have a competitive element.

Just looking at the original designers comments makes it clear he never designed this game with a competitive game in mind. And remember, FFG's official play program was miniscule compared to what it is today. X-wing and Netrunner grew the official play program faster than FFG could respond.

Still, back to the K-wing, looking forward to seeing Emon toss Conner Nets on people.

welp, this thread's gone the way of the hindenberg

No, there's way less flaming going on here.

welp, this thread's gone the way of the hindenberg

Don't cross zoola the old skoola!

Just looking at the original designers comments makes it clear he never designed this game with a competitive game in mind. And remember, FFG's official play program was miniscule compared to what it is today. X-wing and Netrunner grew the official play program faster than FFG could respond.

Again, this is a complete straw man for the quality of the game rules. LOTR, as a completely cooperative game that didn't even include a scoring system in its original launch, still managed a relatively tight rules system. "Good rules" and "competitive game" are not inexorably intertwined, so "It wasn't meant to be competitive" just isn't a relevant excuse.

And even if you DO think it excuses the poor quality of the original rules, it honestly does nothing to explain why they've done nothing to try and fix it over the last three years.

Well, before we start asking for Jay Little's head on a pike, I have to say that I keep thinking that the game rules are still solid, simple and extensible enough to keep this game alive for as long as it lives. The core rules could be updated in a PDF without need of a full second edition of the game.

Just start using a clearer language (more legalese if you want), define the game terms in a stricter way, and reword the cards and abilities.

Something of a hefty undertaking, although I'd agree it's worthwhile. Question is if the designers would.

6x Z-95 - 72

K-wing + Connor Net + Nien Nunb - 100

If you do a TIE Punisher and TIE Swarm+ you could go double Connor Net with Extra Munitions.

Wait are we still arguing over this? Chillax guys, FFG will clarify what is supposed to happen.