Furball is a wildly enjoyable set of X-Wing variants, with each locale coming up with their own alternate rules.

In its essence, it boils down to three changes from the traditional 100 point games:

1. Furballs are Free-For-All Last-Ship-Flying Multiplayer, rather than a fight between two teams.
2. Each player has only one ship with which to fight.
3. Each list is constrained to a much smaller point-cost.

Now, in my experience in this format, there are a few things that may not be obvious to a new Furballer.

1. Anything you can do to prevent folks from attacking you will keep you alive longer. As you wish to be the last ship alive, this is the strongest changed gameplay aspect.
   
2. Ionization becomes more powerful, as you can catch an opponent, and through repeated 1 Forward motions, force them into a position where many opponents can attack them at little cost.
   
3. Diving into the thick of things will kill you swiftly, as many folks taking pot-shots of opportunity at you will evaporate your ship from the combined fire.
   
4. Combined Fire is an incredible rarity.
   
5. Motivating opponents into killing you will destroy your ship more swiftly than anything else.
   
6. Rebel Captive is overpowered, as he convinces folks not to be the first one to attack you, and therefore you are less likely to be attacked. Deadman's Switch similarly gives folks a reason at Range 1 not to kill you.
   
7. Regeneration is incredibly powerful, but only if you successfully flee from combat to do so.
   
8. Fleeing from combat is easier than usual, as folks are only motivated to come after you (and leave their backs open to everyone else) if you have drawn their ire.

So. All that being said, there is one giant question that was promised. And here it is.

Knowing that we want to maximize variety among viable ship builds, what is the ideal point-cap for the individual ships?

40 perhaps? Gives you space to 'max' out most small ships or improve the more expensive ones e.g. Corran or Poe). Anything more than 40 and you'll start seeing a lot of PWT ships turn up. Sure, they won't have many upgrades but they'll still have an advantage going up against lots of single small ships which will be fighting each other.

Anyone who brings a large ship to this sort of thing may as well paint a target on his forehead.

At our twice-annual game convention, we use a 35-point cap. This is generally when we're introducing the game to new players though. So we self-limit with no defensive upgrades, no regen abilities, and generally just single ships. We also allow people to jump right back in with a new ship, or the same if they want, as soon as they're destroyed. We have added the 3 TIE Academy option for people who play for a bit and want to try running multiple ships.

Big ships do tend to get targeted, so we tend to limit though although the point cap at 35 takes care of most of that.

I have played this mode 2 times and they were both very diffirent. The first time we had a limit of 33 I think and we allowed the use of lone wolf, this made the game go very slowly until I won with my undamaged jake that had ptl, lone wolf and stealth device that were almost impossible to hit.

The next time we decided that lone wolf was banned and we had a limit of 29 points. This made some super defensive setup not possible and the lone wolf couldn't be used since we agreed that is was to powerful in this game mode. Now this is a personal opinion but this game mode is often very slow if you can build too defensive ships. I have tinkered with another idea that you should get some sort of points for destroying ships in this mode, that would change it from a mode where you want to stay away at all cost to a game where you have to risk fire in order to take home the win.

My suggestion for the point limit is to keep it as low as possible because that will IMO make the game more interesting, watching 3 agility ships with tons of token and stealth devices miss eachother due to the lack of concentrated firepower is not that fun in my experience.

40 perhaps? Gives you space to 'max' out most small ships or improve the more expensive ones e.g. Corran or Poe). Anything more than 40 and you'll start seeing a lot of PWT ships turn up. Sure, they won't have many upgrades but they'll still have an advantage going up against lots of single small ships which will be fighting each other.

40 leaves a lot of ships as being non-viable.

TIE Interceptors max out at 35 with Baron Fel, for instance.

I've always seen the limit as 35 points. No large base ships.

I've always seen the limit as 35 points. No large base ships.

At 35 points, I see no harm in large-base ships.

You get Shuttles, YT-1300 and 2400... with only 2 attack power, and Firesprays with 2 points of upgrade to spare.

The Shuttle and the Firespray are actually viable, but neither is more powerful than, say, Soontir Fel.

Another mark against 40 points is that it allows for the Outrider to actually show up with Mangler and Title, but at 35 you can't afford them both. (You can use the Mangler and an Intel Agent if you wish, but again, Fel.).

We just did a tournament at 30 points, 4 people to a table, 3 rounds. You got a point for dying first, 2 points for dying 2nd, etc. We then re-tabled people after each round based on points. It went really well! Out of 11 people, only 2 used Lone Wolf. And neither took 1st place. We also banned large ships. There were a couple Soontir Fel's, but I think a tie advanced (not vader) actually took 1st place. I've also played them at 25 points, I think 30 seems to be the sweet spot if you're not allowing large ships.

I've toyed around with the points a bit and found I like 33. Our games usually came down to who has soontir at 35 points.

I also have been developing a bounty system variant. The basic idea is each player is assigned a color at the start of the game (2 players per color) and at the start of the game everyone is assigned a random color that they keep secret. At the end of a round when I player downs a ship of their assigned color everyone gets reassigned a color. If a ship is destroyed it gets redeployed at the end of the turn. We usually play to 3 kills. So far everyone has enjoyed it.

I've never played a furball format, but it sounds like a lot of fun. It especially sounds like fun for A-Wings... 35 points gets you Tycho w/Test Pilot, Experimental Interface, Push the Limit, & Daredevil. Sort of a semi-Psycho Tycho.

Reading through these posts, I confess that a version with respawns sounds like more fun than a last-ship-flying iteration. Not that that couldn't be fun too, but I'd rather see kills rewarded. The Tycho build above would be relatively hard to kill and could do well in a last-man format, but the A-Wings attack (sans prockets) is underwhelming. If going with a kill-count format, the A-Wing would still be fun but the lack of offensive output levels the playing field.

We just did a tournament at 30 points, 4 people to a table, 3 rounds. You got a point for dying first, 2 points for dying 2nd, etc. We then re-tabled people after each round based on points. It went really well! Out of 11 people, only 2 used Lone Wolf. And neither took 1st place. We also banned large ships. There were a couple Soontir Fel's, but I think a tie advanced (not vader) actually took 1st place. I've also played them at 25 points, I think 30 seems to be the sweet spot if you're not allowing large ships.

I was under the impression that Lone Wolf was generally "banned" from furballs.

We just did a tournament at 30 points, 4 people to a table, 3 rounds. You got a point for dying first, 2 points for dying 2nd, etc. We then re-tabled people after each round based on points. It went really well! Out of 11 people, only 2 used Lone Wolf. And neither took 1st place. We also banned large ships. There were a couple Soontir Fel's, but I think a tie advanced (not vader) actually took 1st place. I've also played them at 25 points, I think 30 seems to be the sweet spot if you're not allowing large ships.

I was under the impression that Lone Wolf was generally "banned" from furballs.

We didn't bother to ban it, just banned large ships in our furball tournament. I keep thinking that lone wolf and r2d2 are the most hated things out there for furball, but either we have transcended from such things or they just aren't as good as we think they are. I don't think anyone had r2d2. But I did see BB8 on an e-Wing, that worked pretty good!

We did find that anything over 30 points and Soontir becomes the pilot of choice (for our store), so we tend to limit it to 30 or below.

Lone Wolf is very good in Furball, but often your build has a better option for the Elite Talent.

Expert Handling, for instance, is a great way to keep folks from attacking you round after round, and allows you to arc-dodge far more frequently.

I still wouldn't consider EH better than Lone Wolf, as you're stressing yourself and not taking any defensive modifiers...

I put together a mish-mash of lots of furball ideas I'd come across and liked the best -- this is the variant we play: 760th Fighter Wing Furball Rules . It's a point-scoring system with regenerating ships. Everyone plays the full time, most points at the end wins. And as mentioned above, it rewards staying in the fight rather than trying to avoid combat until the end.

I mix the points limit up a bit each time, forcing people to try new things. We ran 35 points, then 32 points so far. I did ban large-based ships, Lone Wolf and Advanced Cloaking Device.

Here's link to the event annoucement of our last furball and the debriefing (recap). As you can see, Stealth Device is pretty popular. That'll likely be banned next time. Gotta keep these pilots on their toes!

I still wouldn't consider EH better than Lone Wolf, as you're stressing yourself and not taking any defensive modifiers...

Yes, but you're barrel rolling and breaking target locks. Arc-Dodging is far more powerful than modifying your dice.

I've played at 24 points. No named pilots. Very balanced. A bomber won it with a flechette and homing, surprising everyone.

My group plays Furballs a lot. We generally do either 35 or 40 points, but we usually have each player make up two ships. When one ship is destroyed, he just starts the next one on the next turn. That way, we play as long as we want. There are no winners or losers.

I still wouldn't consider EH better than Lone Wolf, as you're stressing yourself and not taking any defensive modifiers...

Yes, but you're barrel rolling and breaking target locks. Arc-Dodging is far more powerful than modifying your dice.

Case 1: A ship moving before you - your opponent focuses instead of target locks. Just as much offensive upside for a 3 attack ship. You could still use EH to barrel roll to get out of arc - great! But now you're stressed, and next turn you are that much more predictable. Against anyone competent, you won't accomplish this more than once.

Case 2: A ship moving after you - they can still target lock your ship without losing it that round. You can't BR out of arc.

Case 3: lots of ships are pointed at you. EH will not help at all.

Can you still say that those 2 points are better spent on EH than on LW? I just don't see it.

Lone wolf can be used on ALL of your attacks, and on ALL of your defensive rolls.

So, problematic upgrades:

Rebel Captive

Lone Wolf

I don't think they are really that overpowered and I'd only ban Lone Wolf to ensure a variety of builds instead of everybody just grabbing that one.

How does Ruthlessness handle itself actually?

Vader with Title, ATC, TIE MKII and Ruthlessness clocks in at 34 points. That's a force to be reckoned with.

So, problematic upgrades:

Rebel Captive

Lone Wolf

I don't think they are really that overpowered and I'd only ban Lone Wolf to ensure a variety of builds instead of everybody just grabbing that one.

How does Ruthlessness handle itself actually?

Vader with Title, ATC, TIE MKII and Ruthlessness clocks in at 34 points. That's a force to be reckoned with.

Ruthlessness pulls aggro: You damage two ships with an attack, and you get two ships that want to damage you back.

I still wouldn't consider EH better than Lone Wolf, as you're stressing yourself and not taking any defensive modifiers...

Yes, but you're barrel rolling and breaking target locks. Arc-Dodging is far more powerful than modifying your dice.

Case 1: A ship moving before you - your opponent focuses instead of target locks. Just as much offensive upside for a 3 attack ship. You could still use EH to barrel roll to get out of arc - great! But now you're stressed, and next turn you are that much more predictable. Against anyone competent, you won't accomplish this more than once.

Case 2: A ship moving after you - they can still target lock your ship without losing it that round. You can't BR out of arc.

Case 3: lots of ships are pointed at you. EH will not help at all.

Can you still say that those 2 points are better spent on EH than on LW? I just don't see it.

Lone wolf can be used on ALL of your attacks, and on ALL of your defensive rolls.

I'm not saying that EH is always better, just sometimes.

For instance, on Palob God damnit alhi. The extra mobility and range control is amazing, and breaking the target locks mean that folks have to be a higher PS than you to have any offensive actions at all!

Ruthlessness pulls aggro: You damage two ships with an attack, and you get two ships that want to damage you back.

It also weakens two ships for the rest. .

Ruthlessness pulls aggro: You damage two ships with an attack, and you get two ships that want to damage you back.

It also weakens two ships for the rest. .

You also can't turn it off for when you're the only ship at Range 1...