Hey guys, I've recently started playing casual games of X-Wing.

It all started when I bought the TIE Bomber expansion purely for the model. Being interested in both Star Wars and air/spacecraft combat (I'm an Air Force Cadet), I became interested in the game, despite the fact that I hadn't okayed a board game for something like 5 years, leading me to buy the Force Awakens core set a couple of days ago.

I'm looking forward to getting to know you, and learning more about the game

First question - does a critical hit cause an affect and the target's shield/hull value being reduced by one, or is it only the affect?

A critical hit to shields removes a shield. That's it, you don't deal damage cards at all when removing shields.

A critical hit once all shields are removed counts as 1 damage plus whatever the card text says (except Direct Hit which counts as two damage). A ship dies when it has damage cards (whatever way up) equal to its hull value, unless any of them are direct hits.

Note though that there is a difference between 'suffering a hit/crit result' or 'taking a damage' and 'being dealt a (face up) damage card'. If an effect deals a damage card, this ignores shields and goes straight through to hull.

Welcome to the game, welcome to the forums, welcome... to the Empire!

Welcome.

Great game. You'll love it.

A quick heads up. You have a bomber. You'll want it to do 'bomber'y things like drops bombs and fire missiles. Currently, many people find ordnance frustrating and expensive (points wise). FFG has been / still is trying to bring ordnance back into the game through various upgrades but just be warned, ordnance might not be as awesome as you'd hoped.

Apart from that .. great balance, great options, great community .. great game!

Welcome to the Game.

There are many local gaming stores that run pick-up game nights of x-wing. Search Facebook/local store websites and such. They are out there.

If you have a rules question, try a look-see at the rules sub-forum. There is a lot of information and very helpful forum members over there.

Since you are new, I would also suggest looking at the pinned thread in the x-wing main forum area. This thread has many reference threads to anything a new player could need to know.

quick link here: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/126226-index-of-useful-links/