One thing that bugs me greatly about threads like these, is the sometimes thinly veiled and sometimes not veiled at all insults aimed at people who enjoy competitive gaming.

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I mean how many people are going to go out of their way to accommodate someone when that person treats them like they're somehow inferior because of how they like to play a game?

I agree with this....and notice the opposite, as well. People just want to say, "Fly better lists, dude". It's hard to stay on the fence of the issue and I'm sure I'm guilty of being snide to others when I shouldn't. Like Vorpal said, there is probably less differences between the two than one would think. I used to say "fun" based X-wing for casual games, but that implies that tournament games aren't fun. I've had fun with them, as well.

If casual gamers want to attract more players, they need to not be insulting to tournament game play.

People just want to say, "Fly better lists, dude".

Yeah L2P Newb! helps no one and isn't even a good answer most times. It's not that people don't know how to play, it's that they prefer to play a given way. Although when someone says the Defender is OP there may be a point where better learning the game is part of the issue.

If casual gamers want to attract more players, they need to not be insulting to tournament game play.

There's people on both sides who seem to think that their way is the way to play, and neither is correct. There's hardcore tournament players who show little to no respect someone who just wants to play for fun. There is also people who feel that playing to win = WAAC jerk. Neither group helps their side when they're insulting or belittle people for what is honestly just a simple difference of opinion.

The narrowest reading of the OP is that someone who misunderstands a lot of rules isn't aware that Rebels have been winning a plurality of tournament games for years now. And people piled on, which is... fine, I guess? But a broader reading is that there's a player who's really unsatisfied with the lists he wants to play, because he can't seem to do it successfully.

Another note to that: It seems to me, that the OP is regularly playing against players, who are abusing the rules (like misusing Bossk's ability, or equipping free HLC to a Scyk with the title), and that can easily create the impression that his opponents' ships are overpowered.

There's people on both sides who seem to think that their way is the way to play, and neither is correct. There's hardcore tournament players who show little to no respect someone who just wants to play for fun. There is also people who feel that playing to win = WAAC jerk. Neither group helps their side when they're insulting or belittle people for what is honestly just a simple difference of opinion.

I think this is a good reading of the situation.

An easy way to have a bad game is to not know what the expectations of your opponent are. If a hardcore competitive player annihilates a new player more interested in just flying fun or thematic lists, then chances are that neither player had a very fun game - assuming the hardcore player doesn't get their kicks from stomping 'newbs' and the new player doesn't like getting tabled with little chance of winning.

Competitive x-wing is exploding. Clearly people are enjoying it. I enjoy it. And it's been made painfully clear that the competitive game rewards skilled players who have a keen understanding not only of the game but the metagame, AND are willing to put a lot of work into honing their skills. Otherwise, Paul Heaver's threepeat world championship would be inexplicable. X-wing is clearly a solid, skill-based game.

On the other hand, I think that non-tournament style games; call them 'casual' for lack of a better term, can be fun and engaging in ways that the standardized tournament games cannot. In a casual game, you can play missions and scenarios. Just by changing up some of the basic parameters of the game, you can prompt players to rethink conventional listbuilding and playstyles.

I don't know about you guys, but one of the best aspects of X-wing for me is creative listbuilding and tactical innovation. Taking brand-new releases and trying to build powerful lists, or the more arcane art of taking under-rated game components and making a viable list from them -that's a lot of fun. If you're changing the underlying parameters of the game, you have to adapt your list and tactics on the fly to those changes, and I think that's a lot of fun. Only casual games can change the rules so rapidly as to create a constantly fluid metagame where there are no established top-tier builds.

On the other hand, changing the rules of the game is dangerous to game balance; making balanced scenarios is not easy.

Just by changing up some of the basic parameters of the game, you can prompt players to rethink conventional listbuilding and playstyles.

Good point, just changing the points to 110 makes for a fairly different experience, one in which the current meta favorites may not work as well or simply be easier to counter. Going up to 150 will have a fairly drastic effect on list building.

So that means if you don't like the current meta and what it brings maybe just start a 150 point league and see how that goes. I think the biggest problem is some people look at the current meta and competitive play, decide that they don't like it, and just quit.

At my LGS which is about 45 min's from the Twin Cities in a little town, so not a ton of gamers out here... I was able to start a league that had 6 or more people showing up every other week. It didn't take a ton of work, just some cross posting on FB pages and the like.

I honestly believe that for most casual players the biggest problem is they aren't putting enough effort to finding or making a group that shares their mindset to play with. But to be fair, part of being a casual player is that most times you don't want to put a ton of work into it.

Another thing is this... While I understand that playing against TLT's, Phantoms, PWT's, or the new triple scout may not be fun for some people. There are others for whom the complaint seems to be that they can't win without playing the current hot list. But that again seems to be a lack of effort on their part. There's a ton of options out there to try, and sometimes just knowing your list really, really well can be enough to overcome the current meta hotness.

For them it seems less that they're casual players and just that they don't like losing and rather than get better just want to blame the meta.

I'm a little nonplussed by this thread.

The narrowest reading of the OP is that someone who misunderstands a lot of rules isn't aware that Rebels have been winning a plurality of tournament games for years now. And people piled on, which is... fine, I guess? But a broader reading is that there's a player who's really unsatisfied with the lists he wants to play, because he can't seem to do it successfully.

And there are a lot of echoes of that in later posts. But if you restate the problem as "I can't seem to find people who want to play the same kind of games I do," it's a totally reasonable problem to have--but it's also a familiar one, and not that difficult to solve.

The first thing is that this isn't a problem that's unique to X-wing. You could substitute literally any board game with alternate rules or customizable elements, and the same thing is true. When you play Monopoly, what rules did your family use when you were growing up? When you sit down with a new group for a game of Power Grid, which maps do people like? When you play bridge in a new setting, are there any bidding conventions they use that you might not know?

Hell, it's not even unique to board games and minis games. When you're trying to date someone new, how do you find out if you have compatible interests? Do you both want kids? Is your prospective partner a traveling kind of person or a homebody? Do you both love to cook, love to eat, love to do both, or neither?

And the second thing is that it looks to me as if the solution (whether it's X-wing or dating) is to talk to your prospective partners. Locally, we only have 6 or 8 regular players, and while the FLGS is happy to host us, they don't currently have a regular X-wing night. So we usually organize our own ad-hoc games via text, e-mail, or (usually) Facebook. And those conversations almost all start the same way: "What do you want to run tonight?"

I think that's part of the reason I still enjoy this game. If I was playing against small variations on the same rotating cast of four very popular lists over and over again, I probably would get bored. Instead, for example, I'm meeting a friend this evening for a game, and he has a new TIE swarm he wants to try out. He's worried about how it matches up against new-meta things like the Ghost, so I'm running a list that's fairly new to me rather than my reliable Palpatine Aces list. Another friend is going to be playing a parallel game at the same time, and he wants practice playing against bombs and ordnance--so that's what his opponent is coming up with for tonight.

It's not hard, at least for us, to negotiate who's going to play what, and as a result there's a lot of variation from game to game. I still get plenty of tournament-style practice in, and often against other common tournament lists--but it's because I say "I'm looking for tournament practice tonight, so bring your best game." It's just... not a problem.

So I wonder whether a big part of the problem described over the course of this thread is that people sit down together without talking, and only when they're laying out their components do they find out that their expectations for the terms of the game don't match up.

I've done that a few times, and then found it seems like my opponent ends up flying something that counters it, and it's not fun.

Usually the extent is "I'm flying **** and giggles build" which means fun. So then I'd know I better not bring whisper, palmobile and omega to the table, but as mentioned, if I do mentioned exactly what I'm bringing, then my opponent knows, OK, I'll use this to counter this, maybe not intentional but kind of seems like it.

I think I'm just getting bored of gaming in general. Our boardgame night is also starting to feel as little stale as well

Wife and kids been I'm Japan since January, so I also think been spending too much alone time

Thankfully I'm heading there week from today. Maybe when I get back I'll feel different, but overall I just feel bored with just about everything, not just xwing

On the other hand, I think that non-tournament style games; call them 'casual' for lack of a better term...

And I think that's the issue right there. Casual games are still competitive! You're still playing a game that will have a winner. You're maybe not going as all out and there aren't any stakes like prizes or recognition, but there's still an element of competition there. But too often people think "casual" means "Eh, they're moving ships around and rolling dice, but they're not really playing."

On the other hand, I think that non-tournament style games; call them 'casual' for lack of a better term...

And I think that's the issue right there. Casual games are still competitive! You're still playing a game that will have a winner. You're maybe not going as all out and there aren't any stakes like prizes or recognition, but there's still an element of competition there. But too often people think "casual" means "Eh, they're moving ships around and rolling dice, but they're not really playing."

Yeah, I get that. The tournament people always talk about "competitive" games or things being "competitive". Well, I'm pretty darn competitive when I play my casual games! I may only have All Generics, but I'm out there to win.

On casual game day, some players in my area will use a random squad generator. Use one of those and ask your opponent to do the same, or pick something truly awful like triple E-Wing.

For me I wish there was more support for non-standard formats like epic or scenarios. It would be WAY easier to convince people to try other formats if there was some sort of official prize-support involved. Most people just want to play 100pt deathmatch because that's the only format with any real support. I maybe get to play one epic game every 6 months or so, which makes me sad.

For me I wish there was more support for non-standard formats like epic or scenarios. It would be WAY easier to convince people to try other formats if there was some sort of official prize-support involved. Most people just want to play 100pt deathmatch because that's the only format with any real support. I maybe get to play one epic game every 6 months or so, which makes me sad.

Epic games taking 2-3 times as long as normal games is the culprit for it not being a standard tournament format.

For me I wish there was more support for non-standard formats like epic or scenarios. It would be WAY easier to convince people to try other formats if there was some sort of official prize-support involved. Most people just want to play 100pt deathmatch because that's the only format with any real support. I maybe get to play one epic game every 6 months or so, which makes me sad.

What do you mean by "real support"? They do have Mission Control website. Or do you mean like prize support? Yeah, I'd love a story based tournament or something like that.

For me I wish there was more support for non-standard formats like epic or scenarios. It would be WAY easier to convince people to try other formats if there was some sort of official prize-support involved. Most people just want to play 100pt deathmatch because that's the only format with any real support. I maybe get to play one epic game every 6 months or so, which makes me sad.

What do you mean by "real support"? They do have Mission Control website. Or do you mean like prize support? Yeah, I'd love a story based tournament or something like that.

Yeah, prize support. Something to incentivize players to give another format a try.

On casual game day, some players in my area will use a random squad generator. Use one of those and ask your opponent to do the same, or pick something truly awful like triple E-Wing.

Or you could each build a squad that the other player then flies.

I'm as casual as you get but I still build lists designed to win, now cold dice and poor decisions may lose me a game but that's wargaming for you there's just no consequences for me losing just a bit of frustration.

But if you make a bad list you've no one to blame but yourself.

On casual game day, some players in my area will use a random squad generator. Use one of those and ask your opponent to do the same, or pick something truly awful like triple E-Wing.

Or you could each build a squad that the other player then flies.

Maybe; but watch out for the guy with 6 HWKs!

I'd recommend a lottery approach if you ever try this, where everyone brings a list, and then each list is randomly assigned to a player. So you may get your own list back out of the mix.

My home store has a weekly casual game night. It used to be more or less strictly 100pt dog fights. But in the last 4-8 months we have transformed it to change things up. We meet on Friday nights and generally start between 6:30 or 7pm informally (get there when you can) and often can play until well past midnight. We started with doing Epic nights on the last Friday of each month. Most of us had epic ships, but had either never played them or had only once or twice. Then on the 2nd Friday of last January a buddy of mine and I planned on going and playing a round or two of the Hero's of Aturi Cluster campaign. When we got there, a number of others said they wanted to play it too. So now the 2nd Friday of each month has become HoAC night. Sometimes we have informal themes (like... must use a tie bomber, scyk, or T-65 in your list OR must have at least two differnt bombs in the list). No one is forced to comply with any of the weekly themes, sometimes people show up on epic nights and a few just play 100pt dog fights. But the themes keep things fresh. And we stay in contact. I've had a big tournament the next day I was planning and asked a few people to fly the hard meta counter to my list for a game, others have asked the same of me.

It's very friendly and we all are there to have fun. Keeping it fresh and not always justly playing 100pt dog fights with the latest meta list every single week allows us to enjoy the game and the friends we've become who enjoy the game.