I started X-wing a little over a year ago and love the game. The one thing I find is that I feel I am constantly behind on ships and upgrade cards.

I only recently got a Falcon off of Ebay and have yet to get a Decimator or IG-2000. Would love a K-wing or Punisher, but not there yet.

I bought a StarViper before the Falcon or Firespray - primarily to get the Autothrusters for my Interceptors.

I am OK proxying upgrades in local play, but find it hard to go to store tournaments without the actual cards. I can borrow sometimes, but not always - depending on what my friends are running.

With the new tournament rule on damage deck, it looks like I need to buy a FO Core set by January.

My budget is limited, so I could maybe get a small ship once a month, but it just seems like everytime I think I have mastered a ship, something new comes out that changes the way I play or makes that ship no longer desirable to play. Twin Laser Turret has gotten me off of running Soontir...

Does anyone else feel this way?

This was something of a perfect storm- The Raider got pushed back, wave 7 got slightly pushed back, and Disney wanted the new core set for September 4th. The release schedule will probably slow down now. We might see overlap between the Gozanti and Wave 8, but it's unlikely we'll see either before mid-november, and I'm not convinced Wave 8 will hit pre-2016.

Don't get sucked into the groupthink. It looks like a quick and easy path, but it'll both drain your account (groupthink lists tend to be very cross-expansion) and ultimately leave you frustated when the current groupthink fails. That, or playing a list that's good against the current opposition but dull as watching grass grow to play.

Also, whenever the word "need" gets used, especially with upgrades, take it with a pinch of salt. True autoinclude is very rare in this game, and using a different ship is always an option in those rare cases. The groupthink also overreacts like crazy: amplify a small kneejerk by a hundred or so people and it's not pretty.

Anyway, the problem here I think is the Twin Laser Turret, which is a problem for everyone at the moment: the counters have yet to be fully explored.

I suppose the main question is what have you got to work with? Especially with the newer waves, upgrades tend to be pretty balanced.

Rejoice, for most of your initial purchases have just become much more viable.

Echoing the earlier sentiments, don't feel pressured to keep up! Unless you're hoping to go to Worlds this year, you shouldn't feel any anxiety about making sure you have everything. I sympathise with wanting it all though!

As far as playing competitively, even if you had everything you'd be relearning your own fleet as new stuff comes out anyway! I just had to rethink HWKs in a major way with Twin Laser Turrets on the menu; everything gets pretty shifted. And unless you play with people who do have everything, don't stress about trying every possible interaction. Use what you have, try and have fun, and do your best to understand what those ships can do. The forums are a solid place to find ship, pilot, and upgrade combinations, but you have to figure out what works for you. Autothruster Interceptors and the StarViper are in a good spot right now, too, but if you can fly your list well you stand a good chance against almost anything; it's more a matter of practical flying and understanding your opponent's list rather than making sure you have the "right" list. Soontir doesn't mind TLTs as much as many people think. Especially with either a Shield Upgrade (Falcon pack!) or a Stealth Device (Slave I or M3-A Scyk packs).

Was there anything in particular you were concerned about?

Yeah it not always this noisy or busy... welcome Brah!

Rejoice, for most of your initial purchases have just become much more viable.

That is to say, they fixed the other of the two upwards imbalances¹, which was large ship point forting in timed games and tournaments. Essentially squads with fewer ships were much more likely to score highly than squads with more because high health ships were more likely to survive. They changed it so you score half points for taking a large ship down to half health, removing that advantage and bringing them in line with the rest of the game.

Usually when something's unbalanced in X-Wing it's unbalanced down: FFG tends to underpower (they can always buff it later with an upgrade) instead of risk overpowering, which is much harder to deal with.

^{1: The other was the Wave 4 TIE phantom, which they errated the cloaking mechanic on. In case you don't have a TIE phantom and don't know this, the idea of the TIE phantom is a ship that cloaks: if cloaked it gets +2 agility, can't attack and it's in one of three places (or six for Echo, one of the named pilots) and you have to guess which. It chooses where it is (either 2 template to the left, 2 template to the right or 2 template forward) at the start of the Activation phase after dials are set but before anything has moved. At least, that's how it works now.}

^{It used to do this when it activated, so it'd know where every lower pilot skill ship had moved before anything else did. This turned high PS phantoms (with Veteran Instincts at PS8 and PS9) into uncatchable arc-dodging demigods instead of cloaking ships. Add the Advanced Cloaking Device., which lets it recloak after shooting, and you had the ultimate arc dodger with a practically permanent 4/4/2/2 statline. (The basic phantom effectively alternates between 4/2/2/2 and 0/4/2/2). Then add its system and crew slots and it became a true nightmare which, if you didn't build specifically against it, could solo your whole squad.}

The result was everyone playing VI Han Solo, which hard countered it. Even after the phantom was repaired, people never stopped.

Miniaturemarket.com is your friend.

Miniaturemarket.com is your friend.

YUP!

Thanks for all the feedback. Here are my ships:

5x Tie Fighter, 3x Tie Interceptor, Tie Advanced, Tie Bomber, Tie Defender, Tie Phantom,Shuttle, Firespray

2x Awing, 3x Bwing, Ewing, Hwk, 3x Xwing, YT1300, YT2400, 2x Ywing, 4x Z95, StarViper

Main builds I have had trouble with lately are Brobots, 4x Ywing BTL-A4 TLT, and a build with the new Hound's Tooth.

The new rules for large ships will help me with the IG-2000s, since the last time I played them, I had both down to 3 or less hull and only lost one ship.

I have found that Soontir doesn't like the amount of dice coming at him with the TLT builds - so I am rethinking my Interceptors.

Despite what people say, the ability of the Ywing to do a 4 Kturn makes staying out of arc harder than I expected. Even without a focus, them having 32 dice per round rolling at you almost guarantees 1-2 hits per Ywing and does a quick number on Interceptors and phantoms.

I have run a Dash-Keyan build that did pretty well against the Brobots, but still suffered against Ywings.

Like I say - proxying cards locally is OK, but trying to go to a store tournament is where I suffer.

Thanks for all the feedback. Here are my ships:

5x Tie Fighter, 3x Tie Interceptor, Tie Advanced, Tie Bomber, Tie Defender, Tie Phantom,Shuttle, Firespray

2x Awing, 3x Bwing, Ewing, Hwk, 3x Xwing, YT1300, YT2400, 2x Ywing, 4x Z95, StarViper

The great thing about the game is that, if flown well and put together with a modicum of forethought, most lists can be viable.

(Do you own Rebel Aces?)

From your stuff how about:

Rebels:

- AABBB

- Corran + ZZZZ

- Super Dash + ZZZ

- Fat Han + ZZZ

- YYBB

Imperials:

- Full TIE swarm (if you buy or borrow 2 more TIEs)

- Howlrunner + 3 AP mini swarm + Firespray

- Howlrunner + 3 AP mini swarm + Shuttle

- Triple Interceptor Aces

5x Tie Fighter, 3x Tie Interceptor, Tie Advanced, Tie Bomber, Tie Defender, Tie Phantom,Shuttle, Firespray

2x Awing, 3x Bwing, Ewing, Hwk, 3x Xwing, YT1300, YT2400, 2x Ywing, 4x Z95, StarViper

You've got the Lambda there, so you've got your trump card against TLT: Sensor Jammer. Stick that on an Autothrusters Sensor Jammer Xizor and you're all but immune to them. Put a load of cheap Z-95s and Y-wings in there and you've got a respectable mini swarm.

http://geordanr.github.io/xwing/?f=Scum%20and%20Villainy&d=v3!s!100:27,-1:16:15:U.44,U.-1;114:-1,-1:-1:-1:;114:-1,-1:-1:-1:;114:-1,-1:-1:-1:;123:120,-1,-1,118:-1:-1:

The S3 Y-wing with Autoblaser and Unhinged Astromech is a quick high hull ship. The Autoblaster can take on arcdodgers (as can Xizor) but its main role is something for Xizor to fob off hits onto. The Black Sun Soldiers shoot before TLT carriers, but if you need some more upgrade room you could knock them down to Binyare Pirates. If you've only got one Most Wanted you could also knock one of them down to a Binyare: you're allowed to use the Rebel dials and you should have enough baseplates to run two Black Sun Soldiers and one Binyare.

I made a spreadsheet of all the ships, pilots and upgrades indexed by the e xpansion they are in (x wing wiki has this info) and then checked off how many I have already accumulated. Beside that I listed how many of each upgrade I want to fulfill squad lists. Checking the deficit against the expansions I made a buying list to work through. I just bought two Starvipers for the Autothruster cards even though I don't have any plans to collect a Scum fleet. Some of the upgrades I will purchase singly from ebay because I don't want duplicates of the ship they come with. Expose is an example. I have one from the Slave 1 expansion but I want 4 for an A wing squad I have planned. I will buy another Firespray because of the other good upgrades it has but I don't need four of them nor can I afford that. So I will pick up two more Expose cards off ebay. They seem to sell for around $8 each.

Making a want list is a good way of planning ahead within budgetary constraints.

The sole good thing about the 2 ship meta is that you could buy 2 ships and ebay/trade for a handful of autoinclude upgrades and have a top tier list. Now that the 2 ship meta is gone you may actually have to buy more than 2 ships and a core set.

It hurts players that got into the game after the meta was trashed to move away from that, but it helps the game itself.

Standalone upgrade cards can be ebayed, and so can standalone ships that just come with everything except the upgrade cards (but sometimes a ship specific title). Spare new damage decks can also be acquired for much less than $40 and many players have multiple new core sets and you can try and trade with them.

I'm a player that has complete 100 point sets of everything in the game sans rebel and scum hawk, and the scum z-95. But if I had to start from scratch I'd settle with 4-5 TIE Fighters, a Phantom, and an Interceptor. This gives me room to get more TIEs for a swarm, and gives me a few powerful named pilot options.

I've been collecting since wave 1 and my collection is about as big as yours. I'm still missing the TIE Phantom, TIE Defender, Rebel Z-95, Decimator, Imperial Aces, all the epic ships, and everything from wave 7 except a Kihraxz.

My point is that I totally understand where you're coming from. I've made the decision to only buy a single faction from now on in hopes of limiting my purchases. Sure, I won't have all the upgrade cards I woulr like to have, but I still have fun with the lists I make. With gaming, you always have to judge how much enjoyment an expansion will bring. Do you really want a $40 expansion for a few cards and some obstacles? Or would you get more enjoyment out of a base set for a completely different system? I tend to fall into the latter category, but it's different for everyone.

Thanks for all the feedback. Here are my ships:

5x Tie Fighter, 3x Tie Interceptor, Tie Advanced, Tie Bomber, Tie Defender, Tie Phantom,Shuttle, Firespray

2x Awing, 3x Bwing, Ewing, Hwk, 3x Xwing, YT1300, YT2400, 2x Ywing, 4x Z95, StarViper

The great thing about the game is that, if flown well and put together with a modicum of forethought, most lists can be viable.

(Do you own Rebel Aces?)

Yes - Purchased the Imperial Aces, Rebel Aces, and Most Wanted expansion packs, which are less expensive than buying individual ships.

Some good thoughts on the lists there plus Blue Five's suggestion with Xizor give me some stuff to try.

I'm actually looking forward to The T70 and Tie/fo - just got to pull the cash together to order a new core set and get the new damage deck.

Keep in mind too - that I'm glad to see a game that continues to grow and change. It's just so much lately to try to take in - all in a relatively short period of time.

IMHO, buy and field something you LIKE! Play it a LOT to get to know what it can and can't do! Then tweak it by switching with only the ships and/or upgrades you currently have or specifically add to make it better! No need to get "everything" now!

Forget tournaments. The rules are silly. Campaigns, leagues and epic games are where X Wing truly shines!

Forget tournaments. The rules are silly. Campaigns, leagues and epic games are where X Wing truly shines!

Opinion noted as opinion.

As for the OP with the exception of a few ships everything out is fairly well balanced. Like for the TLT and Soontir issue. Easy fix fly high PS ships that are going to get rid of a TLT ship a turn. Those TLTs are good, but those 1 Agility ships they are on die fast! If you really sit down and look you can still use alot of the same things that you have been you just need to change your flight approach on the table. You might not have to buy alot of stuff to keep up. I mean with all the wave 7 ships I bought....I have used not 1 ship or any of the cards that come with them since I got them. All I have used is what came in my Raider. I am having fun playing ships I have wanted to for along time.

I was all caught up through Wave 6, but Wave 7 plus Raider is just too much. At this point, my plan is to save up for a serious storage bag before I dive back into ship purchases.

Forget tournaments. The rules are silly. Campaigns, leagues and epic games are where X Wing truly shines!

We have 5 guys - including me and my son - that play in town and the nearest store is an hour away.

Epic ships are a bit out of my price range right now.

I've played in 2 store tournaments and they were run pretty well.

The last one was a Wave 1 only, so it made good use of Xwings, Ywings, Ties, and Tie Advanced.

Not sure what it would be like to be in a league, but would love it if we had the local community big enough.

You don't have to own everything to compete it's fine to play what you like.

Me I came from 40k so two waves a year spending £70ish on each wave really isn't that expensive I spent £150 going from 1000 to 2000 points with my necrons army and I got way less for my money.

You do need more defenders though...one is not enough!

I started X-wing a little over a year ago and love the game. The one thing I find is that I feel I am constantly behind on ships and upgrade cards.

I only recently got a Falcon off of Ebay and have yet to get a Decimator or IG-2000. Would love a K-wing or Punisher, but not there yet.

I bought a StarViper before the Falcon or Firespray - primarily to get the Autothrusters for my Interceptors.

I am OK proxying upgrades in local play, but find it hard to go to store tournaments without the actual cards. I can borrow sometimes, but not always - depending on what my friends are running.

With the new tournament rule on damage deck, it looks like I need to buy a FO Core set by January.

My budget is limited, so I could maybe get a small ship once a month, but it just seems like everytime I think I have mastered a ship, something new comes out that changes the way I play or makes that ship no longer desirable to play. Twin Laser Turret has gotten me off of running Soontir...

Does anyone else feel this way?

Man, that's why I quit playing Magic....and I played that game almost from inception.

If you use Bing Rewards, you can convert your points in Amazon gift cards, and thus into X-Wing stuff. I've used it to get a Y-Wing, an X-Wing, and a K-Wing so far, and thus without spending any actual money yet.

Also, local events giving away ships or store credit as prizes is a great way to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, if you can get some luck that day!. I always make it a point to attend these events, especially when I can win something I'd never feel justified in purchasing, like a CR90 or Houndstooth or something that I will rarely actually use on the table. I DO hope for another Imdaar Alpha type event for upcoming waves, as lots of ships are given away at those.

Also, if you get into Vassal play, you can do a lot of your play testing with new stuff right when or before it comes out, with players who will be doing the same. It's quite helpful for REALLY knowing what you want before you purchase it.