I'm hoping to play with two of my friends this weekend; neither of them has ever even seen X-Wing (though they've both played a lot of strategy games). I have enough stock to make three hundred-point lists, with three different factions, but I'm thinking 300 points on the board for your first game is probably intense.

So, what's the best setup for three, you think? Three on three, maybe 50-pt lists? One on one with two playing a team?

I'm sure one or many of you old heads has encountered this before – happy to take some advice!

3 man on a 3x3 board doesn't go well, mostly due to the fact that 2 players engage head on and the third cleans up the rest. The two of them flying 50 points each against you flying 100 points will keep their units manageable for them. Make sure they are flying something that appeals to them. For example you could give one of them an ace to control and have the other fly his escort depending on their individual tastes. Make sure to keep the squads themselves relatively simple - this goes for you too. A few passive abilities isn't bad but anything with wicked action economy should just stay out for now.

I have played many three player games ... If you build 100 point squads with many ships, the game can take a long time to play ... Especially if drinking is involved, and sports on tv...

We decided that most of our three player 100 point games are two ship builds, free for all .. can be fun..

What Shirako said. Make some premade lists for them to try-out, of different varieties (swarms, aces, what-nots), so they don't have to waste time with list-building. If they get hooked, they will spend LOADS of time with that later!
With that said though. Such a game will take time (1 hour +), and you could try something similar to the quick-start match the core suggests (2xties vs 1x x-wing), just so they get the feel of the rules, the different phases, how to move etc. (before adding the concept of lists).

For the first game, keep it at 50-75 points per list. All those ships and dials can be overwhelming at first.

And I'd look to try and include characters they're familiar with. Having Luke and Vader lead the Imperials and Rebels is always a good way to go, though no clue who could truly fit that role for the Scum (if you go with 75, maybe Fett?). If they're not familiar with EU material, but are fans of the films, try to stick mostly with ships from the movies if possible.

I know what really hooked me is that in my very first game I got to flying "Dutch" Vander in a Y-Wing. I was a bit gleeful... and managed to shoot down Vader! Poor bastard K-Turned and got caught by my Ion Turret... which allowed Dutch to just lazily drift behind Vader, plinking away with Ions that he was action-less to dodge.

And I tend to play a solid chunk of three-way FFA games. We usually do 100 points, with scoring based on the points of the ships you shoot down. Can take a while, but it's good fun. And with that we tend to "discourage" two-ship lists it means whoever shoots down the Decimator gets the 60+points. Maybe we'll adapt the new MoV rules so being the guy to knock it to half health nets you half the points.

I do agree with the others about first time 3 player game .. maybe keep it at 50 points each, then when everyone learns more, you will find you can up the points ... Maybe only do three asteroids to start as well...

I disagree with the others, a 3 players game make for a cool casual setting to introduce new players to the game.

Every time I played in a 3 players game, there was a lot of funny situations where one player try to talk his way out for the other to target the 3rd player instead. A little politic is always nice. And since you are more experienced, you can play it neutral and split your force evenly against each player and "help" the one in need in case of early domination. And if they both go against you, just laugh about it, up your game to offer the best resistance, get totaly destroyed and then let them finish the game. Your objective is that everyone have fun and ask for one more game.

So my suggestion is a 3 players deathmatch with 100pts list each.

Yeah, I think that no matter what we're looking at an hour-plus. The first time I played it was a three on three team battle, which took forever for the negotiation of tactics between dials, but was fun nevertheless.

As it turns out, the group is up to four now, so we'll either have to pick sides, or each pick a ship and play for the points. I think either/both could be fun, especially – as many of you point out – the new guys are picking ships and pilots they care about.

I do agree with the others about first time 3 player game .. maybe keep it at 50 points each, then when everyone learns more, you will find you can up the points ... Maybe only do three asteroids to start as well...

Great point on the rocks, I would've messed that up.

I have played many three player games ... If you build 100 point squads with many ships, the game can take a long time to play ... Especially if drinking is involved, and sports on tv...

We decided that most of our three player 100 point games are two ship builds, free for all .. can be fun..

Yeah, when the beers start flowing things slow down considerably – this much I know. I haven't done any drunken X-Winging yet, but I've played many a rules-heavy strategy game that went for hours more than it should have, with lots of "Wait, who's turn is it now?"

3 man on a 3x3 board doesn't go well, mostly due to the fact that 2 players engage head on and the third cleans up the rest. The two of them flying 50 points each against you flying 100 points will keep their units manageable for them. Make sure they are flying something that appeals to them. For example you could give one of them an ace to control and have the other fly his escort depending on their individual tastes. Make sure to keep the squads themselves relatively simple - this goes for you too. A few passive abilities isn't bad but anything with wicked action economy should just stay out for now.

I was thinking 3x3 might be smallish even for three, certainly for four. I've got a square coffee table that's about 3'6"x3'6", and I think I'll just make that the play space for ease of use and the extra room.

Since you're playing with friends you can be a bit loose on things like play area and all that. I joined my two friends when Scum and Villainy hit and we typically play 3 way free for all to the last man standing. Our first game was 100 points but due to time constraints we dropped it to 60 each. At that point we found it a bit limiting so we settled on 70 points.

70 points allows us to experiment with various builds and try things out without the time investment getting out of control. (We fielded forces from 2-5 each, though 2-3 is most common)

We play on a section of a board room table so the play area probably isn't more than 3x3 and I guarantee that at some point there will be a clusterf**k in the middle of the map but that's part of the fun. Also, after our first couple three ways we stopped using asteroids simply because of how busy the table can get and we enjoyed focusing on other aspects.