I'll begin by saying I don't think situations like Autothrusters in the StarViper are deliberate attempts by FFG to make more money. They're an inevitable product of ship-based expansions with interchangeable upgrades: unless every ship came with every upgrade (an unrealistic proposition that'd result in a junk upgrade card situation even worse than every X-wing player's token glut) you'll always get a situation where a ship is in one pack and an upgrade it can take is in another. Furthermore, FFG has taken a few steps to mitigate this (redundant copies) which makes it a little harder to believe this is some malevolent marketing masterplan.

However, the fact remains: buying ships you'll never use for a few cardstock reference cards sucks. It's wasteful both financially and environmentally, it warps the metagame (there's a reason we don't ever see Predator Swarms) and if this forum is any indication, it irritates a lot of players to no end.

Furthermore, for players who build new squads every game, constantly getting out and filing away upgrade cards is a massive pain in the arse that adds a lot to time to setup.

Worlds, Nationals, Regionals and Sanctioned Store Championships are official FFG events and go by FFG rules. Personally, I think they could lighten them considerably (for example, by only requiring one official copy of an upgrade card as proof of authenticity) but X-Wing is a lot bigger than that.

Casual has a way to mitigate this in the form of proxies, but this isn't a universal solution. Some people don't like or trust proxies and some people refuse to play with them for whatever reason (usually because they aren't exactly lookers). Many players want a clear ruleset to not deviate from, and the tournament rules are the only existing one. Furthermore, one of the reasons for requiring upgrade cards to to prevent cheating.

So I figured, what if we as a community created a ruleset for playing without having physical copies of every upgrade card that could be used for everything up to non-FFG tournament level?

By drawing on the community's experience, we could create a system for not using upgrade cards that maintains the advantages of full upgrade cards while eliminating the need to buy unnecessary ships to play the squad you want to. We could create a system that a Tournament Organiser can have confidence in.

The idea here is to draw on everyone's knowledge and ideas, but we've got to start somewhere so I'll begin with my thoughts on this.

------------------------------

Firstly, we'd need an additional rules document: a list of all legal upgrades (I'm leaning all cards that are fully spoiled by default, but whether unreleased cards are allowed or not would be down to the TO and announced beforehand), their costs and verbatim rules text. This'd be easy to put together and serves as a reference that any player can check for the rules text of an upgrade at any time.

I'd personally centre it around printouts, in the format of those made by squad builders. They have each upgrade named, costed and with its rules text for reference with its ship: some of them are better laid out then the default game with a pilot card and upgrade cards. Such sheets are used anyway to submit squads in tournaments, so why could they not also be used for gameplay?

The answer? Because some upgrade cards are more than rules text: they serve a function via being discarded.

Luckily, the game has a fairly useless token that most players have in large quantities: the Critical Damage token. We repurpose these. When an upgrade on a ship is discarded, it is marked on the printout with a Critical Hit token, or alternatively a tracking token for those without an ample supply.

We could also do it by discarding tokens when a card is discarded, but given so many cards don't discard this is more token efficient.

Unless the printout has room for damage cards and shield tokens, pilot cards are used normally.

Tokens, templates, damage decks, dials and ships are used normally.

I'll begin by saying I don't think situations like Autothrusters in the StarViper are deliberate attempts by FFG to make more money. They're an inevitable product of ship-based expansions with interchangeable upgrades

Completely disagree, because there's nothing that really prevents them from just having some kind of online store that just lets you order individual cards.

Not having that is a choice THEY made, and the only reason to make that choice is to sell more physical ships.

To hear my friend that has this attitude justify it, it's because, "I went through the effort and expense of getting all the cards I wanted, why shouldn't I expect the people I play against to do the same."

Completely disagree, because there's nothing that really prevents them from just having some kind of online store that just lets you order individual cards.

Expense. Upgrade cards aren't digital content, they're physical things that'd need to be manufactured and shipped. If sales are too low it'd be a sizeable financial hit, and might even be poor PR with some people, especially when the issue of online store exclusives comes up. That'd also incentivise them to reduce the number of cards in the expansion packs.

The best way I could think of of doing this is wholesale packs of upgrade cards that groups like Team Covenant and websites like Chaos Cards can buy to fuel the secondary market (by making it a primary market). Even if it was a workable idea, there's lawyers to ruin it all.

To hear my friend that has this attitude justify it, it's because, "I went through the effort and expense of getting all the cards I wanted, why shouldn't I expect the people I play against to do the same."

Translation: "Match my spending or be weaker." It's like a sort of contorted pay-to-win mentality.

There are ways to break this attitude, but it depends on circumstances. I'm sure he'd rather put up with proxies than not play at all, but you need a majority on your side.

Expense. Upgrade cards aren't digital content, they're physical things that'd need to be manufactured and shipped.

I feel like all of that could be taken into account in the cost of the cards and they'd STILL be way cheaper than eBay prices on the more popular cards.

I mean, you aren't talking about a factory molding plastic here. You're talking about printing paper.

Expense. Upgrade cards aren't digital content, they're physical things that'd need to be manufactured and shipped.

I feel like all of that could be taken into account in the cost of the cards and they'd STILL be way cheaper than eBay prices on the more popular cards.

I mean, you aren't talking about a factory molding plastic here. You're talking about printing paper.

No, you're talking about four-color glossy printing on heavy cardstock, which is a more involved and more expensive process. And of course there's all the overhead that lies behind those cards, in terms of design, art, playtesting, etc. I don't think you can safely conclude that it would be way cheaper to do card packs than to do "full" expansions.

Just use Voidstate or Geordan and you have a list, you don't need the cards.

I feel like all of that could be taken into account in the cost of the cards and they'd STILL be way cheaper than eBay prices on the more popular cards.

I mean, you aren't talking about a factory molding plastic here. You're talking about printing paper.

Were FFG to do this as an online store run by them as you suggested, the costs are printing it and delivering it. Printing, with sufficient economies of scale (how big a market would this upgrade card store have?) is fairly cheap, but petroleum definitely isn't. All these cards have to be delivered. Furthermore, if this store is frontline business FFG is heavily incentivised to push its use: if it existed you'd probably get store exclusives or at least an end to redundant copies of things like TIE/x1 and Autothrusters.

Personally, I think the best way to go about it would be wholesale boxes of a wave's upgrade cards (thus achieving the required economy of scale). Not something a consumer would buy directly, but stores that sell single cards could buy the things. The purpose here is to drive down secondary market prices (plus it gives FFG a cut). The secondary market prices are only as high as they are because their costs are so high: they have to buy the booster, then somehow make a profit off of selling it piecemeal.

Again though, I suspect it's not that they won't and more that they can't thanks to lawyers and LFL. Imperial Assault's tacked on skirmish game (the most anti-consumer element of an FFG product I've ever seen, where to play the "best" list and myriad others you need to buy four huge box core sets for the total of eight little figures and cards you want, and where the miniatures for a lot of the units are replaced by skirmish-illegal tokens to incentivise buying the expansions) only exists to stop Hasbro from suing over them making a board game. I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't allowed to release card packs. Reminds me of those Star Wars lego minifigure packs LEGO used to do, then stopped doing because Hasbro convinced a court they counted as action figures.

Incidentally, this is something of a diversion from the topic, so I'd appreciate it if we didn't go off on this tangent for too long.

Honestly for casual games where i honestly can't be arsed keeping track of cards I just use the listmaker and do a printout, Cards are only really for tourney.

Just use Voidstate or Geordan and you have a list, you don't need the cards.

This is the idea, as detailed in the main post.

However, upgrade cards do serve a gameplay function (they discard) which needs to be replaced for the system to work, and current use of printed squad sheets is very unofficial. The idea here is to create a standardised, trustworthy (in the sense of preventing cheating), reliable and community accepted system for using printouts (or another way of doing it) in lieu of upgrade cards for everything up to official tournaments.

True, anything suggested here any mutually agreeing players could simply do right now: the system I suggested I've tested a few times at home. The idea is to design a more formal system for it that can easily become much more widespread.

Some people don't like or trust proxies and some people refuse to play with them for whatever reason (usually because they aren't exactly lookers).

To hear my friend that has this attitude justify it, it's because, "I went through the effort and expense of getting all the cards I wanted, why shouldn't I expect the people I play against to do the same."

Meh... I get it, and to those people I grumble and go through my folders pulling out all the cards exactly as I have it laid out on the piece of paper I brought, adding yet another 15 or so minutes of time I coulda been PLAYING the game... but instead was pulling out the cards for. I have a lot of builds, I play casually, I like to play various things on a whim, and often times they share cards between the builds. So I can't just have it set up before coming either.

This is why most of my friends use this really cool "x-wing" list builder, print the sheets, and play off them. It's just not worth the hassle. My 2 inch binder is absolutely STUFFED to the brim with cards. I have them... I just don't want to dig through them to pull them out and play them... and then sift through them again to put them away.

If it's a tournament it's a different thing. I'll have the cards and ships already out upon arriving at the store... But other than that... who cares?

Honestly for casual games where i honestly can't be arsed keeping track of cards I just use the listmaker and do a printout, Cards are only really for tourney.

This.

Nothing more is needed. Unless FFG decides to crack down on the squad builders, you can run whatever upgrades you you want unencumbered by card requirements. There's literally zero reason for any semi-official proxy rules or anything else.

Fair, although it might help people in situations like Ender's.

I've always just used my printer to make print-out copies of any cards I don't have in sufficient quantities, which I've then put in the card sleeves that I also used for my actual upgrade cards, which gives them a more firm feel. FFG still makes money off me buying their card sleeves in large quantity, I keep my cards pristine, and I don't have multiple redundant ships I won't use.

Plus, being able to proxy like this has gotten me to buy a few ships I otherwise was ready to dismiss and not buy. I do still like having cards available to use when I don't want to be on the computer or when I want to change up a build right before I play, though whether they are originals or printouts matters little to me.