All right. Preface: I'm SUPER new to posting here. Hopefully the general thread works as a good place for this post.

Been toying around with this idea for a while with my friends and thought that it might be something worth sharing. Finally going to test it this Saturday.

The idea was to provide plenty of people the opportunity to play X-wing without worrying about bringing their things. Using my own ships (at the time) I found that all the small ships I had, upgraded to their second generic (dagger, tala, red squadron, etc), came out to 250 points exactly:

3 X-wings

2 Y-wings

2 A-wings

2 B-wings

1 E-wing

2 Z-95s

Give two, three, or four players (or 6 I suppose) the task of splitting the ships evenly and using 50 points of upgrades to equip the force for a full 300 point Epic list (no upgrading to a named pilot or downgrading to a lower PS pilot). Once they're ready, they are to face three Imperial ships of escalating difficulty. A 100, 200, and finally 300 point list.

Gauntlet Stage 1 - View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Gauntlet Stage 2 - View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Gauntlet Stage 3 - View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Catch is, the party of twelve Rebel ships keeps all damage sustained throughout all three battles. 300 points versus 600 all chopped up. With it relatively structured, I could feasibly start up a leaderboard. Just record what the Rebellion started with, how far they got in the gauntlet, and if they succeeded, how many losses were suffered in the end.

And, if you care to, you could implement a couple modifications to the game. Sort of like skulls in the Halo games if that's an analogy worth mentioning. You could roll a d3 and regain that many shields between matches (to make things easier) or each Rebel player plans their dials faceup before the Imperial player plans theirs (to make this ridonkulously hard).

First point of saying this at all is to share the idea. Any hangups? Questions? Comments?

And second, this is a forum of list-making and collaboration. What would you equip this stock Rebel force to take on the Empire?

Keeping damage - do they get shields back? If yes to shields, the B-wing and E-wing improve drastically. If no, then the B-wings and Y-wings will suffer as they're built to tank damage, not avoid it. Either way, I'd be very wary indeed of regenerating cards like R2D2, R5-K7 (Or whatever his name is, I've gone and forgotten it) and the like - it might be possible to leave, eg, a single TIE on the table for a few rounds while the aces heal up for the next bout.

I'm not sure what is intended here - it's massively weighted to the Imperial side, for starters; and players running portions of a list are even less likely to plan as well as a single player running teh whole game-state in his head (abliet with less fatigue in the long run).

If it's an excuse to get a bunch of guys to play a couple rounds in the same side, have you seen the co-op campaign thread? Failing that are those all the ships you have? How many starter sets does that make up? If you've got one starter set per two players, you might be able to pull off a mini tournament; failing that, I've found giving each player one ace each and then running the 'bad guys' in a single game can provide an enjoyable afternoon in itself.

Reiver, thanks for the comments!

Yes, at its current iteration all damage is kept. Shields, damage, crits, etc. Brutal, but that's the idea. Noting those drawbacks (with B, E, and Y) is important, though! Yes, a couple astromechs give some pretty clear long-term benefits.

Really, it's meant to a) provide a difficult goal to face and b) get a bunch of my friends playing X-wing at the same time.

I have indeed seen Heroes of the Aturi Cluster! I'm getting the book and all the templates printed out tomorrow . Excited for it.

I've got about 17 Rebel ships (barring epic ships), 22 Imperial, and 13 Scum...last time I counted...which provides a few people with full lists easy. Add that to the ships each other dedicated player has in my group and we can definitely run a mini tournament. That's actually an operation we're trying to organize in the future!

Red Xwing needs focus badly.

Gold wizard Needs Food!

Elf Shot the Food!

Cool idea. It is weighted quite heavily in favour of the imperial side though.

How about have some pre defined set up locations.

So wave one the 300 point rebel force and 100 point imperial force deploy as per normal rules

Then the second imperial wave must deploy on the left side of the play area while the rebels are left as is

Last wave of imperials deploy on the right side.

Or just have some tokens near the edges of the play area that represent deployment zones for the imperial side.

Say range one of the token so the imperial player will have to split his force in the later waves

Thanks for the suggestions, stegocent!

It's true, the Imperial side is heavily favored. Our brave Rebel strike force will fall almost every time. The core idea is that it's a near insurmountable obstacle that, if iterated enough times with different groups and different loadouts, will create a neat little bragging record for my local community.

"Oh man, we got through to the third wave and killed about half the ships before going down."

"Sounds cool, I'm excited to try it this time with the new TLTs."

Perhaps after this Saturday, it'll be clear just how slanted it is and how we can modify it. Another big concern at the back of my head is that it might not be fun; the worst thing a game can be. That alternate deployment idea may shake things up enough to give the Rebels some breathing room.