As a hex and counter wargamer, 3 decades of wargaming moved my game likes far from the 3' x 3' 100 pts tournament play.

From tactical games like The Speed of Heat, Over the Reich, or Whistling Death.I.learned that your wingman.is your best friend, and that four fingers work better than five planes uncoordined.

Operational games like Downtown or Battle over Britain teached us that it is much more fun to fight to gain an objetive is much more fun.that simply fight head on, and that the moves you do before battle is as important as your skill during an evolving dogfight

Little gems like B17 remember you that a game has no need to be overcomplex, a good theme and smooth game mechanic is,.sometimes, better than a realistic set of rules 150 pags long

I didn't play any of those, but I have loved Wooden Ships and Iron Men. It's hex based Napoleonic era naval combat. Just pulled it out again for the kids to get into. But, yes, I agree, there is something to be said for having more of an objective than just blowing your opponent from the sky. It would be interesting to see a couple of other categories added to tournament play. Keep the 100 point 1v1 system, but add a random squad generation, scenario category, and team play.

So with random, each player is a different faction and they are dealt a random ship card. Based on what they receive, they can choose to take another ship or an eligible upgrade card (also randomly selected) for that ship. Each random deal alternates between the players with the player holding initiative deciding if they want to be dealt first or last. This continues until they reach 100 points (or a lower point level) or the player says they wish to stop.

For scenario play, the scenario is randomly selected from the FFG scenario builder (provided they aren't skewed in favor of a faction) and revealed to the players. Then, each player rolls for which faction they will be (or mutually agreed). Each player then

has 10 minutes to assemble their squad for the scenario (if it isn't already dictated) and fights that scenario.

For team play, you must have an individual player for each ship that is fielded. The players follow the rules laid out in the rule book for communication, however, the planning phase would be limited to 3 minutes and there is no team communication allowed during any of the other turn phases.

I know this would make tournaments a lot harder to administer, but if the popularity begins to wane, or you just want something different, these or some other variation might spice things up a little.

I remember playing "Sopwith" and that game was simple and fun. and the movement system reminds me of X-wing a little bit.. well the whole control panel/dial thing. other games like SPIs Airwar just got so complicated it became tedious to play. Same for Starfleet battles but they had at the time some cool miniatures!! but you HAD to paint them and compared to the X-wing miniatures they really looked like crap..

Yeah, x wing minis are.amazing, and the paint job is superb. WS&IM is an aged but excelent sistem that I love, too. And in the Avalon Hill company era the Air Force sistem.was quite similar, so it was a winning combo. Fight Jolly Roger saturday, Fly F4s vs Zero next day.

After buying some x wing stuff, after a few games, I wrote some rules about deflection shooting, Tail Advantage and the like...but I realiced that this game shoul mantain it beautiful simplicity.

But escenario play is much better to me than 100 vs 100 melee, because I play integrated im a closed ring of middle age wargamers

Air Force for me.

Wooden Ships and Star Fleet Battles are also good influences, but more Armada-like, since you have multiple things going on on each ship and damage tracks.

(Not to mention the obvious: the X-wing video games!)

I haven't played Armada yet; any of y'all? I'm thinking maybe for Christmas. Of any who has played Armada: what do you think of it?

Sorry for getting off-topic.

One of the main games that influences my X-Wing play is Renegade Legion: Interceptor (long out of print, but I still have everything ever made for it). Renegade Legion had rules for, more or less, inertia. So in a way you had to anticipate where you were going to end up vs. where your opponent was going to end up, much like X-Wing.