I do both tournaments and play for fun, but I must admit, I've personally found playing against a good friend for fun is still the best for me...I get to try fun things that aren't necessarily in the meta, plus I can actually joke around and have a laugh while playing when its casual play...which I think sometimes is just as important as the miniatures and gameplay itself.

So I really love this. But recently, I've gotten much much better than my friends who have much less time to devote to the game.

What's the best way to try and make it so they have a really good chance at winning while not making it obvious that I'm trying to go a little easy on them?

I ask this because at first I tried to just play "fun" builds against them, like 3 defenders, but even THEN I would win. And I've gone something like 20-0 recently and hey, I want them to win. But they're also proud and don't really understand how/why to get better and they have much less play time than I do.

If your friends are still having fun, what's the issue?

I currently have around a 20% win rate in my local Netrunner league. Yet, I'm still playing. And let's not go into how bad I screwed up in the local mega game of X-wing. Yet, still want to play. Winning is nice, but it is hardly the full game to enjoy.

Never played in a tournament - probably never will. Love scenarios!!! Asymmetric combat - YES!!! Search and destroy missions, interdiction missions, rescue missions, reconnaissance missions - yes, Yes, and more YES! Pick story bits from movies and books and replay them. I like winning but I like an imaginative challenge with a back-story even more.

I guess its my decades of historical and fantasy wargaming. The dog fights get repetitive for me. 100 x 100 lists are educational and good for an occasional challenge.

This sounds wonderful - https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/186308-x-wing-co-op-campaign-is-here/?hl=%2Bco-op+%2Bcampaign

How about 500 x 500 point in a gymnasium, with some serious space clutter and a worm-hole.....

Never played in a tournament - probably never will. Love scenarios!!! Asymmetric combat - YES!!! Search and destroy missions, interdiction missions, rescue missions, reconnaissance missions - yes, Yes, and more YES! Pick story bits from movies and books and replay them. I like winning but I like an imaginative challenge with a back-story even more.

I guess its my decades of historical and fantasy wargaming. The dog fights get repetitive for me. 100 x 100 lists are educational and good for an occasional challenge.

This sounds wonderful - https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/186308-x-wing-co-op-campaign-is-here/?hl=%2Bco-op+%2Bcampaign

How about 500 x 500 point in a gymnasium, with some serious space clutter and a worm-hole.....

AND... be sure to have random movements for that clutter... because: worm-hole!

Most of the time its for fun, some times (regionals) its WAAC, while still flying casual. I have a lot more fun with the small tournaments than with the 100 point ones. I think the thing that makes it fun is all the different formats you can play. Keep mixing things up! My favorite is still our 59 point 2 ship minimum cross faction tournaments. WILD stuff in those!

Never played in a tournament - probably never will. Love scenarios!!! Asymmetric combat - YES!!! Search and destroy missions, interdiction missions, rescue missions, reconnaissance missions - yes, Yes, and more YES! Pick story bits from movies and books and replay them. I like winning but I like an imaginative challenge with a back-story even more.

I guess its my decades of historical and fantasy wargaming. The dog fights get repetitive for me. 100 x 100 lists are educational and good for an occasional challenge.

This sounds wonderful - https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/186308-x-wing-co-op-campaign-is-here/?hl=%2Bco-op+%2Bcampaign

How about 500 x 500 point in a gymnasium, with some serious space clutter and a worm-hole.....

*shameless self-promotion...*

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/113789-beyond-epic-x-wing-apocalypse-3000-point-game/

Also did a 500vs500 recently. Doing another one this Friday. I'm sure if you were in my local area you'd love to get into the crazy games we throw!

Never played in a tournament - probably never will. Love scenarios!!! Asymmetric combat - YES!!! Search and destroy missions, interdiction missions, rescue missions, reconnaissance missions - yes, Yes, and more YES! Pick story bits from movies and books and replay them. I like winning but I like an imaginative challenge with a back-story even more.

I guess its my decades of historical and fantasy wargaming. The dog fights get repetitive for me. 100 x 100 lists are educational and good for an occasional challenge.

This sounds wonderful - https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/186308-x-wing-co-op-campaign-is-here/?hl=%2Bco-op+%2Bcampaign

How about 500 x 500 point in a gymnasium, with some serious space clutter and a worm-hole.....

*shameless self-promotion...*

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/113789-beyond-epic-x-wing-apocalypse-3000-point-game/

Also did a 500vs500 recently. Doing another one this Friday. I'm sure if you were in my local area you'd love to get into the crazy games we throw!

Your dat cute kinda pudgy (healthy) kid in black... I bet.

I only play for fun, even when I'm playing in tournaments. I'm certainly not playing for prizes or prestige. Anything I've won has gone into the prize pools for the tournaments I run for the locals.

Games are, and probably always will be, a social thing for me. I like to win, but mostly I enjoy spending time with people who have similar interests -- which happens to be hobby games and geek culture and movies. Hanging out with my friends is fun. Add some toy spaceships and it's still fun.

Your dat cute kinda pudgy (healthy) kid in black... I bet.

Nah, I'm the ugly as sin dude with his sunglasses on indoors eating his lunch tray full of rebels!

Your dat cute kinda pudgy (healthy) kid in black... I bet.

Nah, I'm the ugly as sin dude with his sunglasses on indoors eating his lunch tray full of rebels!

You ain't ugly... kinda mean look'n... but not ugly.

Allways having fun. Usually I play casual with friend, did 2 casual tournaments in a LGS (won one) and 1 competitive tournament (which did not go really well, 17th of 24 I believe). I like to play something different everytime I play and when playing 5 or 6 games in one day at a tournament I get a bit bored with playing the same list again (against more or less the same list). Usually my games are super close until the end so fun for both.

I do. I only fly "casual" with my old game buddys. Usually 200-400 Scenarios plus 40 pts 10 minute games. House Rules to fix the weak points ( advanced, x, defenfer, ordinance fixes ). We are 40+, so there is no point playing LGS tournaments

I generally only get to play against my fiancée during the week, with me catching up with my younger bro and best mate on weekends to play as well. Wouldn't have spent so much money if it wasn't fun.

I even find tournaments enjoyable, went 2-3 at my first and only tournament (Adelaide Regional lol) had a ball!

I've never played an official event, and I never will. I am a big fan of different sized games, on different sized tables with different scenario objectives. 100/6 deathmatches over and over and over and over must be so dull. I don't know how people do it.

Having said that though...

when are you gonna dust off and bust out the X-Wings and TIE Bombers and StarVipers for fun again and not worry about MoV or the brokenness of whatever card cramping your style?

It's not much fun taking a cool themed list and consistently having your teeth kicked in by brobots or RAC/Fel or some kind of fat pancake every game. I want to state that this isn't a problem I am personally having, but speaking for others striving for the highest possible level of balance between all ships and upgrades is a worthy goal even for the casual gamer. It means he doesn't have to fight an uphill battle just because he really likes X Wings or thinks proton torpedoes are really cool.

They do it because it isn't so dull after all! Just as with other forms of creativity, restrictions are what allows innovation to thrive. It may sound counterintuitive, but there you have it!

Don't get me wrong, I love asymmetry and I love throwing a fistful of ships at my opponent(s) too, but lets not throw the jawa out with the bathwater...

Tournaments and fun are mutually exclusive now?

In all honesty though, a few months back I found I wasn't having fun - partly for game reasons, partly because I was ODing on it.

So for a month or two I mostly played other things - lighter board games, some Imperial Assault etc. Then a friend and I decided to have a shot at the Rebel Transport campaign... And then all the news of Wave 7 hit and I have to say I haven't been this into the game for ages!

Truth be told, I have a couple of tournaments planned in the next month or so and I'm kinda expecting to need another break after that. But that's fine, I think I've learnt in general that I actively like being either all-in or on a break.

I haven't tried any of the scenarios yet, but we've been having a lot of fun writing the results of our casual X-Wing games into the storyline of an Edge of the Empire campaign.

Pitched battles are generally a background element for our RPG sessions, so it's nice to flesh them out a bit with some X-Wing games. There's a droid uprising in the works (if our IG-88 games are anything to go by, the droids still need a few more iterations before they're a real threat), and an Inquisitor active in the sector (discovered after the first brutal tabletop victories of a Decimator).

That affects our squad choices a bit - should the next game have a rag-tag bunch of inexperienced new recruits? A small but lean team of veterans? Has the battle for Scylla III intensified to the point where heavy ordnance is being deployed?

It keeps things interesting for every game. I haven't ever looked across the table and gone "oh boy, yet another Dash/Corran build."

I only play for fun.

As I said in another thread; at the end of the day, X-Wing is grown adults pushing toy space ships around a mat. If you and your opponent aren't having fun, you're doing it wrong.

The reason I like getting elbow-deep into the guts of the game and discussing what makes X-Wing tick is that I have so much fun playing it. My regular Saturday night X-Wing game at my mate's place is fun! Tournaments are fun! Analysis is fun! From a certain point of view.

Taking inherently childish things seriously can be the most fun in the world. See also: pro wrestling.

As many others have said, if it wasn't fun I wouldn't be playing.

I'm currently running a TIE/sa and Lambda based list in our club's escalation league. I'm not exactly slaughtering the opposition but every match has been competitive and I have my share of wins. I play Star Vipers too, Xizor and Black Sun Soldiers just looks awesome on the field and because people don't see it a lot they are not sure how to handle the Viper. I had a sweet game a couple of weeks back with that list against B-Wing aces that came down to Xizor and Farlander jockeying for position to set up a kill shot. In the end I won it by taking a punt and jousting based on the fact I had three hull left and he only had two. He did get to shoot first though, which made it squeaky-bum time. **** but that was an awesome match.

I only play for fun as well, getting competitive would detract from that for me as it restricts the lists I can use.

I only play for fun, and I just about only play in tournaments. My schedule is such that it's hard for me to do regular league nights or get some friends at my house on a regular basis, but I can carve out a day on a weekend to play a bunch of games. So tournaments are my chance to play a lot of X-wing in a day. The secondary advantage of tournaments is that you tend to play people closer to your skill level as the day goes on, so you have more close games, and close games are way more fun than blow-outs.

The secondary advantage of tournaments is that you tend to play people closer to your skill level as the day goes on, so you have more close games, and close games are way more fun than blow-outs.

Yeah, I feel like this aspect should be emphasised more - in a decent sized tournament you do end up with your fellow low/mid/high tablers. The last one I attended I went with a list I'd never played before, and wasn't great anyway. Very quickly I was down to the bottom tables with my last game against someone who had only played for a week and managed to give him his first every tourney win.

So, you know, if being competitive isn't your thing, there's always the charity aspect to the events.

^{My wife and I have designed a multi-level campaign that keeps the game fresh and interesting. Its EPIC in format, but involves the same type of dynamics you would find in a RISK game, the Empire at War computer game, as well as resource management of the Game of Thrones board game. Each of the three factions have different end game goals (Empire: Blow up Yavin 4 with the Death Star; Rebel: Blow up the Death Star, Scum: Control 8 of the 10 resources in the galaxy). Each planet a faction controls give access to the different upgrades, or raises the LIGHT/DARK force counter. There are 40 planets and the galactic campaign involves strategy on many levels.}

^{Needless to say, when a new expansion comes out, it really shakes up the campaign (in a good way). We definitely play for fun.}

I only play games against my two sons.

So every game is a fight to the death for dominance and bragging rights.

This is the most reassuring thread about the state of the game in ages. I've nearly used up all my likes

My group nearly always play story/narrative based games, missions, epic, wierd stuff, whatever. We have a great local store and while i've not been to any tournys there because they always clash with larping or work or my band i dont feel im missing out much either.

As with others to me its about playing out 'star wars' stories with plastic toys, the same was as paintball or airsoft is 'big boys playing army in the woods'

Once you start getting hyper competitive it has a tendency to turn into a maths exercise via the medium of card and plastic and you forget that its Boba Fett trying to outmaneuver Han Solo because you're too worried about the efficiency of your HLC + gunner combination.

As i've said a few times. I used to run GWs Uk organised play and i only ever saw high end tournaments bring out the worst in players whereas open days, games days and to a degree team campaign days saw people playing just to tell stories not prove they were the best.

Nothing wrong with building a hyper maths efficient optimum list and working out formulas to win acrylic tokens but its not the game i play.