I'd get one of each core set. And if its possible one of each rebel and imperial aces. (No really calculated the cost but you might be able to with current discounts on line stores are giving).

On a budget I would aim for the original core set as they are starting to come down in price as the TFA is an undeclared 2.0 upgrade.

Second thing would be looking for someone selling off their collection. You may not be able to get anything for $100 as some collections can easily hit above this pricepoint.

Ace packs are better bang for your buck than large single ships. A second core is just as good as well.

Purchase what you like but one thing to note: Empire runs on a strategy of numbers over quality so it is useful to keep the purchases a little more slanted with an extra Empire ship expansion or two over even faction spending.

And games can be quick, but get progressively slower with the more ships and upgrades you add on. Also depends on if you store your ships in pieces or ready on their stands (In a home environment keeping them in ready to go state will save on setup/tear down time). 100 point games can be quick with 2-4 ships and get slower if you get to the 6-8 ship swarm level.

I find this game a lot faster than Imperial Assault. Imperial Assault has a much, much longer setup time than X-Wing. It's fun, but it's kind of a commitment to play a few missions or skirmish battles unless you somehow know which maps you'll need next and set them all up in advance. The LCG can be faster if both players had decks ready to go and play very quickly but generally X-Wing will take about the same amount of time but feels much faster than the card game does.

My beef with the LCG is it's complexity. I think it's a fantastic game, but it's really hard for people to get. Imperial Assault is a piece of cake to explain, you just have to reverence the RRG for keywords occasionally.

What looks great about X-Wing is that a lot of people say it's easy to explain - you don't have to spend a lot of time before you can jump into it. Is it safe to say it's as complicated as you make it out to be?

I find this game a lot faster than Imperial Assault. Imperial Assault has a much, much longer setup time than X-Wing. It's fun, but it's kind of a commitment to play a few missions or skirmish battles unless you somehow know which maps you'll need next and set them all up in advance. The LCG can be faster if both players had decks ready to go and play very quickly but generally X-Wing will take about the same amount of time but feels much faster than the card game does.

My beef with the LCG is it's complexity. I think it's a fantastic game, but it's really hard for people to get. Imperial Assault is a piece of cake to explain, you just have to reverence the RRG for keywords occasionally.

What looks great about X-Wing is that a lot of people say it's easy to explain - you don't have to spend a lot of time before you can jump into it. Is it safe to say it's as complicated as you make it out to be?

Yes, the LCG is more complex. The biggest problem I have with the LCG is the nature of hidden information. In X-Wing, the only hidden information is what's on the dial. If you've explained ahead of time what green-white-red means and any special moves like K-turns, S-loops, T-rolls, and stops, your opponent should have no issue with that. If they have questions about rules on their cards, it's fine because that's open information. In the LCG, if they have a timing question about a card, they can't ask you about it or they reveal their hand and it makes the game feel kind of weird.

Don't get me wrong, I love the LCG*, but it's much harder to find someone to play that with than it is X-Wing. And Hockeyzombie is right about the time. The LCG is much shorter to play, but if you don't have a set group and you're constantly teaching new people, X-Wing goes smoother. The LCG is shorter in play time but it does require some time studying the rules before play.

*

I haven't been thrilled with the LCG design. The last cycle didn't really excite me, and the upcoming one is similar. Someone on the team is trying too hard to fit SWCCG into the LCG, it feels like at times.

Look for someone getting out of the game, usually 100$ will get you much more in a lot than it would individual (even vs online prices). Also people getting out will tend to take a decent offer close to their original price. Especially if they need the $$

I find this game a lot faster than Imperial Assault. Imperial Assault has a much, much longer setup time than X-Wing. It's fun, but it's kind of a commitment to play a few missions or skirmish battles unless you somehow know which maps you'll need next and set them all up in advance. The LCG can be faster if both players had decks ready to go and play very quickly but generally X-Wing will take about the same amount of time but feels much faster than the card game does.

My beef with the LCG is it's complexity. I think it's a fantastic game, but it's really hard for people to get. Imperial Assault is a piece of cake to explain, you just have to reverence the RRG for keywords occasionally.

What looks great about X-Wing is that a lot of people say it's easy to explain - you don't have to spend a lot of time before you can jump into it. Is it safe to say it's as complicated as you make it out to be?

Pretty much. Most upgrades and all actions are pretty straightforward in their use, so timing of abilities tends to be the great complicator. Most of those are reasonably intuitive. The biggest one I kept having to explain was that the rule about not performing the same action more than once applies no matter how you get the action. If a card says "perform a free evade action" it still counts, so you couldn't evade later that round or perform that evade if you had done so earlier. The basic gameplay is quite simple and almost all of the complexity in the game is caused by players attempting to outplay their opponents.

The BIGGEST reason I'm interested in this game is because I want a game that is lighter and faster than the current Star Wars FFG games I have: Imperial Assault and SW Card Game. Is that a fair assumption?

Funny, I started off with X-wing and was looking for a more compact game that was easier to introduce to players. Imperial Assault was the answer.

I’ll echo what allistorpreist mentioned. Start small, and force yourself to keep it that way for as long as you can.

Currently, as a casual gamer who only plays with friends, list building is an absolute nightmare in our group. The game is a little bloated right now (it’s an opinion that many are beginning to share) and for players that don’t excessively keep up on forums/with your purchases, the sheer amount of upgrades right now is staggering. This will either excite players or push them away. Missions, pre-built lists and squadron builders online definitely help.

Keeping your collection small avoids this issue.

Secondly, as someone who shares your opinion that cardboard tokens (proxies) in board games suck, there are upgrade cards that only come with certain ships.

This becomes an issue if you only collect certain factions (I only collect Rebs/Imp, Scum ships never appealed to me) or you really want to avoid purchasing a certain ship (TIE Advanced upgrades come with huge, expensive Raider).

Be prepared to trade for certain cards or print out proxies at home.

But again, not really a problem if you keep your collection small.

If I were to do it all over again, I’d pick up the core and only a handful of must have ships.

As it stands right now, I’ve got heaps of pilots, upgrade cards and even ships that don’t get much use.

Of course, this all depends on your group!

Is it a big deal to get a playmat?

Nevermind, that would be silly to buy on this budget.

However, looking at prices, which is better: Rebel Aces or Millennium Falcon?

Whenever it is that I do this, I'll be getting two cores for sure.

The falcon can be 2/3 of your list so on a small budget it's good value but it may be a tough ship for the inexperienced imp player to face and lead to frustrated peeps.

If your getting the falcon get a decimator to keep things fair.

The falcon can be 2/3 of your list so on a small budget it's good value but it may be a tough ship for the inexperienced imp player to face and lead to frustrated peeps.

If your getting the falcon get a decimator to keep things fair.

I was thinking something like this as well. I watched a pretty fun video with Wil Wheaton and some of his friends playing X-Wing. They ran Luke, Han, Boba Fett, and an Academy Tie with some special Tie pilot. It seemed pretty balanced, and that fact that anyone who knew anything would know who the main people in the game were. Theme is super important for new peeps - is there a big difference between Han and Boba in this game? From noobish thematic eyes the Decimator seems cool, but not as cool as Boba.

Instead of getting a second core at first, it might be better to get 1 core ($25), 1 Falcon ($25), 1 Boba Fett ($25), 1 set of extra dice ($8) = $83.

The falcon can be 2/3 of your list so on a small budget it's good value but it may be a tough ship for the inexperienced imp player to face and lead to frustrated peeps.

If your getting the falcon get a decimator to keep things fair.

I was thinking something like this as well. I watched a pretty fun video with Wil Wheaton and some of his friends playing X-Wing. They ran Luke, Han, Boba Fett, and an Academy Tie with some special Tie pilot. It seemed pretty balanced, and that fact that anyone who knew anything would know who the main people in the game were. Theme is super important for new peeps - is there a big difference between Han and Boba in this game? From noobish thematic eyes the Decimator seems cool, but not as cool as Boba.

Instead of getting a second core at first, it might be better to get 1 core ($25), 1 Falcon ($25), 1 Boba Fett ($25), 1 set of extra dice ($8) = $83.

Different ships, means different playstyles. Boba Fett and Han both have different abilities. Boba's ship is a more maneuverable ship that can shoot backwards, Han's ship has a great dial, high health and a 360 Degree turret. Also, Imperial Boba Fett is pretty lacking, though Scum Boba Fett is a beast.

I would drop the dice pack and go with a second core, the second core gives 3 more ships, all the dice you would get from the dice pack, and more upgrades/pilots.

From an upgrades standpoint, I think getting both of these iconic ships is a great idea. Each comes with 2 copies of a modification (Stealth Upgrade from Slave I and Engine Upgrade and Shield Upgrade from Millennium Falcon) and each comes with 1 copy of Veteran Instincts (increase your pilot skill by 2). These are great upgrades and because getting 2 of these expansions gets you two copies of each, you can easily house rule something like each side gets 1 of each when list-building or something.

From a thematic standpoint, you can't beat getting the Millennium Falcon and Slave I to the table. That theme is what will make it fun. That's the reason you want to fly these ships in the first place. After a few games, you may start to have a concern about balance, but keep flying and building lists, and pretty soon you'll figure out how to fly with and against these ships.

I remember getting the Slave I and Millennium Falcon when they first came out. I'm a huge bounty hunter fan so I played Fett and my wife played Han. She won every time. I've learned a lot since then, so I'm not sure that's how it would be these days, but I do feel that in a 1-on-1 match, Han beats Boba Fett every time. As long as you don't expect a Firespray to be able to handle a YT-1300 by itself, I think you should be fine.

[below you'll find too much detail on my thoughts on why it's hard for the Slave I to take on the Millennium Falcon.]

However, you do get more pilots than just Han and Boba Fett, so there is still a lot to explore with these expansions. It's going to take more practice for whoever is flying the Firespray, but I think you'll still have a lot of fun flying it. And when you browse the forums and see people talking bad about large primary weapon turrets (PWT) or Fat Han, most of these are complaining about specific builds, particularly with upgrade cards you won't have at the start. It's far from impossible to take down a YT-1300.

EDIT: But I do think you may want a second core set or some other small-based ships before jumping in with the large-based ships.

Hmmmm....... Imperial Boba seems too weak for this fight.

Han + Poe out of the box VS Decimator + 2 TFA Core Tie Fighters = fair fight?

OR

Han + Poe out of the box VS Scum Boba Fett (screw the no-combining factions rule for now) + 2 TFA Core Tie Fighters = fair fight? I'd prefer this one because Boba Fett is just cooler.

I did it! I ordered TFA core and the original core. Very excited to try this game out.

I was wondering what you guy's thought about getting Most Wanted? Then I'd have roughly the same amount of ships for 3 factions?

Great news Boba Rick, let us know how you get on!

Most Wanted contains a hell of a lot of additional content for the game, but a lot of it is in the form of upgrades for other ships not included in the set (Firespray, HWK etc), and two Z95s and a Y-Wing are not really going to be much of a match for your Rebel and Imperial forces on their own.

Have a play with what you've ordered when it arrives, see what you think and go from there. Personally, if you were wanting to expand your forces I'd still look at picking up the Rebel and Imperial Aces box sets first.

I did it! I ordered TFA core and the original core. Very excited to try this game out.

I was wondering what you guy's thought about getting Most Wanted? Then I'd have roughly the same amount of ships for 3 factions?

We'd wish you luck as its sold out pretty much everywhere these days.

If you can find it then it's a solid start to a scum force that lets you buy HWK's, y-wing's and Firespray's for use with two factions.

Thanks guys. I went ahead and played it safe by sticking to just Rebel and Imperial. I got the Millennium Falcon and the Slave 1, but we're going to wait until we get a few X-Wing/Tie Fighter games under our belt before incorporating those things.