Announcing Season Zero of an online X-Wing League, open to all! Sign up here!

Some Backstory : in the past few months a bunch of Reditors self organized to try to create an online Reddit league. Earthworm and I picked up the thread and, after discussions with various folk, decided to expand the league to be more general. In parallel, KelvanTiberius and I have run several seasons now of another online league -- the TC Aces League -- and my other S&V Podcast mates Theorist, MrFroggies, and Antigrapist have run more than their share of online tournaments as well -- so I'd figured I'd learned enough to try it out in a larger setting. So we've decided to launch a "Season Zero" -- basically, a testing season to help us gather data/learn some lessons/establish a community. Over the coming weeks and months we're hoping to add some sponsors (S&V Podcast, NOVA podcast, the Team Covenant crew, etc).

How to sign up: All of the details for the league - how to sign up, linked resources, and overview of the league, league structure, etc, can be found over on the main reddit announcement page . Because most of the initial interest in the league came from reddit, Earthworm and I decided to use it as the main platform for communication and community.

Other stuff: Some cool things have happened recently that I think makes the viability of an online league particularly timely.

• Challonge.com has really come into its own. It is a very effective platform for handling the administrivia of league play. See for example the TCA Aces Season Two challonge site , and the 2015 World Championship . It has some sweet features like voting, file attachments, an API, etc.
• The Vassal port of the X-Wing Miniature Game is an incredible resource for playing this wonderful game - huge thanks to Muon and crew for their efforts! This has allowed things like online twitch casting of games -- see, for example, the Scum and Villainy Podcast's recent broadcast of the Aces League Semi-Finals match between World Champion Paul Heaver and ELO #2 blairbunke.
• The various listbuilders - YASB , voidstate , and fabs - have all collaborated to create a single specification for interchanging X-wing list data . This has in turn enabled the creation of sites such as listjuggler .
• stmack and the Vassal community have successfully created an unofficial rating system , based on the internationally established ELO ratings system (used in online and over the board chess).

All good things, and, when you put them together, you get an environment that is well suited for our Season Zero test.

Please join us over on Reddit if you're interested in joining/learning more/helping out!

11 players so far!

19 now

28 now!

IN

looks FUN

JOIN, you fools!

We're up to 37. Make it happen people!

I am IN! This is what I have been waiting for!

Just got signed up. Looking forward to this.

In!

looks like its full already

looks like its full already

All 200????

looks like its full already

All 200????

We're having a minor technical issue with the Challonge.com utility. If you've identified yourself on the reddit page per the instructions, you're good to go, and we;ll sort out your Challonge signup when we resolve our player limit issue.

Very explicitly, we do not intend to limit entries to the league.

I'm in

The player limit issue on Challonge.com has been resolved and the tournament is ready to accept your registration!

The player limit issue on Challonge.com has been resolved and the tournament is ready to accept your registration!

I will do what I can to represent NOVA Squadron Radio, and see about getting the other cast members on as well!

A wild Mynock appears!

I'm signed up!

We're up to 60 players now.

I would love to be part of this, but I only downloaded Vassal last night. In fact I spent some time watching one of your games Sozin.

So I guess for me the question is... is it "new Vassal player" friendly or reserved for the seasoned vets?

DarthDane - totally new Vassal player friendly! The community on Vassal is very cool and always seems to help the new players get their footing.

I'd like to try it out too but not sure if I can find the time for it. how do you guys communicate over vassal? mainly through the chat window?

DarthDane - totally new Vassal player friendly! The community on Vassal is very cool and always seems to help the new players get their footing.

Well thats good! Because right now I cannot get a squad to save for the life of me. Been messing around for an hour here, following all instructions but when I try to Load Continuation it comes up empty...

DarthDane - totally new Vassal player friendly! The community on Vassal is very cool and always seems to help the new players get their footing.

Well thats good! Because right now I cannot get a squad to save for the life of me. Been messing around for an hour here, following all instructions but when I try to Load Continuation it comes up empty...

Have you watched any tutorials? Vassal has a good number of funny quirks, but once you get them down, it's fantastic.

Here is a good one. A little outdated (the collisions are much easier to deal with now as you just have to hit "C" after your movement instead of selecting the template and adjusting it on board, for example), but the saving of logfiles and loading is still spot on.

Here is a link

We've also linked in our resources section the tutorial kept by MuOn , who also maintains the vassal module itself.

This sounds fun! I'm sold!

I'd like to try it out too but not sure if I can find the time for it. how do you guys communicate over vassal? mainly through the chat window?

Almost all games are played via the chat window- you can quickly learn the shorthand we all use by observing a few games. Games range in length (vassal play is to the death, not timed) but probably average a little under 90 minutes. If you want to play your game over Skype or similar, it does go a bit quicker, but this isn't common right now.