My son and I are avid fans of Star Wars, and so we HAD to get this game! I have the patience to read through the excellent materials on this forum (and I'm a statistician by trade, which means the probability aspect is second nature) but my 9-year-old son doesn't. He's advanced for his age (and an excellent nerd-in-training) and understands a lot of the ideas but has a hard time putting them into practice, especially with movement. He's good at building squads and plays turrets quite well, but since he adores flying Scum he loses out a bit on options there. Often he gets a pretty hot alpha-strike since he somehow managed to dodge my terrible dice-throwing gene but can't follow it up.

I'm wondering if there was any practical game-playing (rather than reading/studying) modifications or variations that would teach him how to put guns on target. I've been considering trying to take out some of the "distractions" and reducing the game for a bit into just tallying guns-on-target or g-o-t/agility differential. I was wondering if any of the wiser and more experienced folks here have any insight into making this work or perhaps other useful modifications.

Maybe try some scenarios with obstacles and fixed targets? Use the satellite tokens form the core sets and either take terms trying to blow them up in as few turns as possible or disallow ship-to-ship firing and both charge in trying to blow up more than each other. If he doesn't intuitively grasp the action economy benefits of getting a shot without repositioning actions, disallow ships with boost and/or barrel roll to really focus on obstacle avoidance and target acquisition.

I have a 7 year old son who plays and does not want to learn to read at anything exceeding a snails pace. Play A LOT and keep his lists simple 4-5 small ships or 2-3 big ships with limited upgrades. Ask them questions to make them thing thru problems. (if my ship will end up here what maneuver do you need to do to be able to shoot me?)

The spatial aspect of the game can be difficult for new players, regardless of age. Here's a tip for some quick practice and can be its own fun little mini-game:

1. take a ship and place it anywhere on the board.

2. choose or select a random manuever.

3. take a blank/empty base and place it where you *think* the ship will end up.

4. perform the manuever and see how close your guess was.

5. repeat.

All good suggestions, that I completely echo. One thing I might add is lowering point totals. If he only had one or two ships to worry about, it'll be easier to keep it straight in his head. Another thing that helps a lot is to mix up the play area. I was inspired by a mini game that SpaceMonkeyMafia ran in a tourney a couple years ago, and drew a giant oval on some cardboard like a race track. Add some ion gates (think slalom but with the flags linked by ion beam) and some power-ups (weapons to shoot with, extra boost etc.). Disallow combat except for power-ups, set a lap number and viola! You have a movement variation that emphasizes spatial reckoning and thinking ahead a move or two. Pretty soon your boy will be flying circles around you

When I play with my 7 and 9-year-old, we do not use the damage deck. Just shield tokens for both shields and hull. If you roll a crit, it is double damage.

Grab the heroes of that Arturi Cluster co-op guide. Play on the easy setting, be his wingman.

With my sons we total and divvy XP rather than use the calculation's. We win as a team and improve our ships/pilots as a team.

My son and I are avid fans of Star Wars, and so we HAD to get this game! I have the patience to read through the excellent materials on this forum (and I'm a statistician by trade, which means the probability aspect is second nature) but my 9-year-old son doesn't. He's advanced for his age (and an excellent nerd-in-training) and understands a lot of the ideas but has a hard time putting them into practice, especially with movement. He's good at building squads and plays turrets quite well, but since he adores flying Scum he loses out a bit on options there. Often he gets a pretty hot alpha-strike since he somehow managed to dodge my terrible dice-throwing gene but can't follow it up.

I'm wondering if there was any practical game-playing (rather than reading/studying) modifications or variations that would teach him how to put guns on target. I've been considering trying to take out some of the "distractions" and reducing the game for a bit into just tallying guns-on-target or g-o-t/agility differential. I was wondering if any of the wiser and more experienced folks here have any insight into making this work or perhaps other useful modifications.

I play with my daughter and when we started we took the planning phase out of the game for her. She was allowed to pick a maneuver on the dial when her ship activates and can place the template down to see where the ship will end up. The next stage was to introduce the planning phase and then have her pick a maneuver at that time but be able to use the templates to see where she would end up.

My son and I are avid fans of Star Wars, and so we HAD to get this game! I have the patience to read through the excellent materials on this forum (and I'm a statistician by trade, which means the probability aspect is second nature) but my 9-year-old son doesn't. He's advanced for his age (and an excellent nerd-in-training) and understands a lot of the ideas but has a hard time putting them into practice, especially with movement. He's good at building squads and plays turrets quite well, but since he adores flying Scum he loses out a bit on options there. Often he gets a pretty hot alpha-strike since he somehow managed to dodge my terrible dice-throwing gene but can't follow it up.

I'm wondering if there was any practical game-playing (rather than reading/studying) modifications or variations that would teach him how to put guns on target. I've been considering trying to take out some of the "distractions" and reducing the game for a bit into just tallying guns-on-target or g-o-t/agility differential. I was wondering if any of the wiser and more experienced folks here have any insight into making this work or perhaps other useful modifications.

I play with my daughter and when we started we took the planning phase out of the game for her. She was allowed to pick a maneuver on the dial when her ship activates and can place the template down to see where the ship will end up. The next stage was to introduce the planning phase and then have her pick a maneuver at that time but be able to use the templates to see where she would end up.

Doing something similar over new year with my daughter. When Ghost arrives, Hera will have almost this effect anyway - why I love the sound of that ship so much; it almost comes with Training Wheels!