Hey everyone, I have 5 kids and I know four of them could play this game. I played X-Wing with my 9 year old once this week and she thought it was "okay." She played two FO Ties and I was Poe, and blew them up. This week I'll be getting the Millennium Falcon, Boba Fett's Ship, and the original red core with Luke Skywalker's T-65 X-Wing in it.

What can I do to make that game easier/funner for my kids?

I just keep it simple with my daughter. She owns her own ships but we tend to not use upgrades right now and have only started to use pilots with abilities recently. Mostly focusing on flying.

What can I do to make that game easier/funner for my kids?

Take less points then the children. I started with 66% of children's point value (quite a challenge for yourself), and stepped up later to higher amounts.

Alternatively, have a look at scenarios, e.g. at FFG http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/xwing/

And maybe the coop campaign heroes of the Aturi cluster. The latter however requires a lot of print-outs and ships, probably too much if you just have begun the game, but gives some ideas for scenarios.

I have 4 children myself. A 10 year old, who arguably is gifted and has won and placed at high level tournaments. He regually kicks my but and I consider myself to be a good player! lol!

I also have a 6 year old son who plays, but on a very different level.

For me, my 10 year old not withstanding, is to keep it simple, do not over complicate the game and make it about dice rolls and blowing ships up. Its a fun game and they get to fly the ships they see in the movies/TV.

To get started, naked ships, ideally with no pilot ability, just to learn the whole moving and shooting. Getting a cheap turret would not be a bad idea, Dash does a wonderful job at making asteroids less scary, though a Y-wing with a simple turret works as well. Depending on the kids, even ignoring focus, evades, and TL might be a good start.

Then start adding features as they get as addicted as you are.

My 4 and 6 year old play with most of the features, but limited upgrades and no hyper-synergistic upgrade that require them to fully grasp the intricacies of the game. I usually stick with a 20-40 points differential for now, depending on the ships, but we're playing it loose.

To get started, naked ships, ideally with no pilot ability, just to learn the whole moving and shooting. Getting a cheap turret would not be a bad idea, Dash does a wonderful job at making asteroids less scary, though a Y-wing with a simple turret works as well. Depending on the kids, even ignoring focus, evades, and TL might be a good start.

Then start adding features as they get as addicted as you are.

My 4 and 6 year old play with most of the features, but limited upgrades and no hyper-synergistic upgrade that require them to fully grasp the intricacies of the game. I usually stick with a 20-40 points differential for now, depending on the ships, but we're playing it loose.

I echo this exactly. I tend to run generic pilots, usually a few ships as it makes them feel like they have more pieces on the board. So Academy and Obsidian TIEs vs Red Squadron X-Wings works best for me. (3 on 2 but not really a fair fight as the X-Wings usually win). No upgrades.

I tend to leave Focus in the game, as they come up on the dice rolls and most kids get the idea.

Don't fly using abilities yet. What I did once with an 8 year old was to give them what was essentially a squad of 3 Red squadron X-Wings, led by Luke Skywalker, against my flight of 4 basic Ties. With Luke, we just used the one ship to indicate that he was on the board, and then it was down to who could blow up 4 ships faster. If I were to take it more steps, I'd add more familiar characters, like Darth Vader and Han Solo, but essentially ignore all the abilities and upgrades.

I think at a certain age you can add those in, but in many cases, kids don't quite grasp the advanced strategy yet. It can be fun, but I try hard not to win.

Jacob

Im playing with my son who is 7 years and we have played together for 8 months or so. We're using upgrades card and everything, it isnt often he wins tho, because he so focused on using the upgrade ASAP, so he is quite easy to predict.

But he don't mind losing, it just makes him wanna beat me more. And one point we kept a score board and when he reached 10 wins I would buy him a y-wing. That was great motivation.

When we started out, he started playing rebels with the falcon because of the turrets and without astroids, and now with Dash we started using astroids. Unfair squad points as helpful as well. So he played with 80 points and I only had 40.

If the interest is there go all in with upgrades as long as your willing to spend the time explaining everything. If kids wanna learn and have fun doing it, they will improve fast.

If the interest is there go all in with upgrades as long as your willing to spend the time explaining everything. If kids wanna learn and have fun doing it, they will improve fast.

Very much this. We've started playing in late November, and my 4 and 6 year old understand the possible actions (though they may not always take the optimal one) and understand the pilot abilities of the pilots they use most often. They very rarely land on, or clip, asteroids now.

We're still trying to find the balance where they have a fair shot at winning. In the mean time, the oldest is learning that you can still have fun when losing, this is very much not something that came naturally to him, which makes him shy away from any chance of failure. X-wing is so interesting to him that he's willing to step up and try again, knowing he'll likely fail, I'm very happy about that!

I still very much play to win, they'd know if I was going easy on them, they don't notice it as much if the point differential is the reason they're ahead though.

If the interest is there go all in with upgrades as long as your willing to spend the time explaining everything. If kids wanna learn and have fun doing it, they will improve fast.

Very much this. We've started playing in late November, and my 4 and 6 year old understand the possible actions (though they may not always take the optimal one) and understand the pilot abilities of the pilots they use most often. They very rarely land on, or clip, asteroids now.

In our first game my 9 year old girl came within 1/8th of an inch of an asteroid, it was awesome.

Kids have to have a chance to win in their first few games or they will lose interest. That might mean taking on an unbalanced match or two, or it could mean playing a co-op game.

When I started teaching my son (5 yrs old) we started with 2 naked TIEs vs. a rookie X-Wing. We didn't use actions (just assumed a ship focused every turn unless it did a red maneuver) and played it straight. In our second game, we added in stress and focus, and in our third game we added target locks, barrel rolls, and evades. Since then we've been playing co-op games, where my son, daughter, wife and I each take one PS2 ship (without upgrades) and fly against a similar number of TIE Fighters that use Armoredgear7's Aturi Cluster AI cards. My son likes the Y-wing, so we treat it as having a 2 attack PWT.

I'm sure that we will get into list-building and competitive games when he's older and can read, but for now this is good.

My four year old boy LOVES board games. He told me he'd rather play board games than watch a movie.

I just started my 11 year old little brother playing. I started him out with letting him pick either a Z-95 Headhunter or a TIE Fighter just to learn the basics. He picked the Z-95 and didn't do half bad in grasping the basic concepts of the game.

Now that he's getting it I'm gonna show him how crits works. I'm also gonna change ships to the basic X-Wing and TIE Advanced.

The thing my 12 year old daughter loves is flying the ships around and having a reasonably decent chance of beating dad. I let her pick out some ship, total up her points, and then reduce it by about 20% and consider that my point limit. This has crept up a little since we started because she's gotten better at playing. I want it to be enough of a challenge for both of us for it to stay interesting.

She often picks the YT-1300, the Millennium Falcon title card, and Han Solo as her pilot (though she says he is now Hanna for the game). She then will pick some upgrades she'll often forget to use. Usually, she also flies Poe Dameron in a T-70 X-Wing.

Lately, I have been flying against her using S&V ships. The last game I played with her was a hard fought battle until I blew it, mixed up the Firespray's firing arcs, and accidentally flew the Slave I off the board. Whoops.

The main thing is that I am keeping her interested in playing miniatures games.

Last night my four year old boy flew Corran Horn and his nine year old sister flew Biggs and Han. The Imperial team was headed by me as Whisper, my 6 and 8 year old daughters as two Tie Fighters and Boba Fett. Late game I flew my Phantom into Boba Fett's bomb and then my son crashed into an asteroid. Han and Boba Fett basically took each out and the only thing left was Biggs and a lone Tie Fighter.

Biggs was the last one standing in the end.

my eight year old and I play some. I usually leave actions out entirely (except barrel roll) we maneuver and roll dice. no upgrades or special pilots just to keep it simple. I bought him his own falcon, so our games are usually :

Me 4 academy pilots

Son: Han solo (I do let him use the reroll ability, as he can read and it is printed on the card.)

He generally wins, but I will intentionally not block him and will put a tie out of arc one or twice to limit the incoming red dice a bit.

In short: Let the offspring win (I do beat him once in a while, as learning to lose is an important life skill)

I usually drink a lot of beer to the point it severly clouds my judgement. It helps the kids win everytime!

I let my 10 year old daughter beat me a few times and then when the conversation regarding playing in a tourney came up with the wife, the daughter asks how I expect to beat others if I can'teven beat a 10 year old.

The gloves have come off.

Played two games with my son so far. No upgrades. He played the xwing and I did the FO ties. He won both games. I did not let him win. He just got good rolls on each game. Our next game will introduce the aces pack for him to pick which one and me the imp ace. Still no upgrades. I will let him pick which ace to fly though. After a few more, we will introduce upgrades.

Silly parents, X-wing isn't for kids.

It's a highly sophisticated scale-model based dogfight simulation system.

Silly parents, X-wing isn't for kids.

It's a highly sophisticated scale-model based dogfight simulation system.

(Reads this, then moves plastic ships around on table and makes pew pew pew noises.)

I just started teaching my daughter to play (she's almost 10) and she understands the basics but she also thinks the game is too complicated for her. I definitely agree with what others have said about keeping things as simple as possible (maybe only use generic pilots at first and avoid using upgrades or only allow one or two upgrade types).

My son (6 years old) wants to play X-wing but after two attempts I've decided he is too young and destructive ... I'd spend more time gluing broken miniatures back together than actually playing if I let him play regularly.

My son is 9 and he does a pretty good job. Turrets help a lot since he still has issues putting guns on target. He really loves all the cool upgrades but he tends to get overwhelmed and forgets he has them, so I've been trying to limit the more complicated combinations. I've found that spotting him 15-20 points on a 100 point game with at least 1 pwt in his squadron puts us on a pretty level playing field

We've changed approaches, using the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster AI to run small scenarios against the empire.

Last night, Chiraneau was carrying a very dangerous weapon, escorted by 3 TIEs and a Defender from a corner of the board. A weapon so dangerous Scum and Rebels had to join forces, each starting from one of the side opposite of that corner. My oldest (6) ran Bossk (the new hotness in our house), my middle son (4) ran Talonbane Cobra and Kavil, while I took Wedge and Red Ace.

The Admiral was blown up and the galaxy saved. A lone Defender limped back home (also known as "dinner is served, clear the table now").

The oldest pulled a well-timed stop on Bossk, while the middle son's interest waned as he started too far back from the fight.

I need to think up a simple scenario for tonight. We already did a "this scum Y-wing holds crucial information, but the empire wants it too!"

My son has been playing in some form since he was four...he just loves the models. Unfortunately at that age he couldn't rotate the dials himself so I placed all my dials and then asked him where he wanted to go.

He would say "straight" or "left" arcing with his hand, I'd ask hard or gentle and what speed. He was very good at judging where things would end up and he loves throwing dice.

As for lists, I would just ask him what ships he'd like to fly and maybe add a torpedo or astromech for flavour.

His favourite game was the Tantive IV campaign first mission. He loved shooting down the six TIE fighters with the Corvette. He even ran over one much to his delight.