Our Group meets up once a week to play and normally we run 100pt games that are just your standard x-wing game, I'm always looking for new fun ideas that would help keep x-wing fun and interesting . Honestly i'm looking for a way to run a tournament that forces people away from meta lists without just straight up saying " No TLT's or U Boats dickheads" . Don't get me wrong I don't mind playing those in a competitive tournament but I don't think they have a place in a casual setting that's meant to be fun.

Looking forward to some great idea's.

We regularly run 59 point cross faction tournaments (due to time limitations of weeknight evenings). They are fun and competitive, and I don't think anyone has ever shown up with the same list! Mostly people fly their favorite ships and have a blast doing it.

Rules:

Minimum 2 ships, from different factions. (Ex: Soontir Fel and Wedge, or 2x Tie Fighters and Biggs)

All faction restrictions (such as the atanni mindlink "scum only") are removed. Feel free to put Han Solo crew on either Boba Fett ship. All other regular restrictions are in effect - you can't put a scum droid on an x-wing (they are different slots)

Each player brings 6 obstacles for a total of 12. The only place you may NOT place them is the deployment zone. They still must be range 1 apart from each other, but they may go to each side edge.

59 points max. 45 minute rounds.

Some of the stronger lists use Vader on some sort of turret (ORS, etc), but oddly enough that's not what wins tournaments! I can't wait for our next one to see what kind of shenanigans people come up with. I think someone is running Manaroo with Jake

Our local store has already run one Escalation tournament, and there's another at the end of the month.

The different point bands and increasing game size really makes you think differently - for example arc-dodgers are great early on, but lose a lot of potency when there are more ships on the table at the larger games. The 30 point increments also make some ships trickier to fit in, and make it a lot harder to fit in really expensive ones, at least all at one go.

Try either:

TLT: Turret-less Tournament

A-Hole Free TLT: No Ace Turret-less Tournament

Try playing a "scenario event" - the starter box and each large box comes with an included scenario which plays very differently to standard X-wing "first one to die loses".

Each scenario includes rules for playing it with 'generic' units instead of the 'recommended' forces, and works well to give you options you wouldn't get in a normal game.

For example, Preystalker is the Slave 1 scenario - the 'Imperials' start behind the 'Rebels', and the Rebels start stressed - but the 'bounty' pilot gets an extra elite pilot talent (or two if he didn't have any to start with!) and 10 points of free upgrades. A double-EPT x-wing or b-wing is not the easiest prey!

We have been seriously entertaining the idea of doing a "Best of the Worst" Style tournament, or a "Random Squad" Tournament. The "Best of the Worst" involves each player bringing the worst legal squad they can think of...and you have your opponent fly it against you, while you fly their terrible list! The "Random Squad" simply has each player generate a random squad from their collection in Voidstates online squad builder and go for bust with a very un-optimized list!

Either format will be silly and super fun to do. And still be a bit competitive, while not being the same old stuff you always see in the meta.

You know how when you were a kid and they had to pick people to be on each team? Try something like that. Here's an example...

You line-up all the ship types. Start with the worst (or oldest, or prettiest, or whatever) player and they choose one, then everyone else takes turns choosing a ship. Repeat until everyone has all the ships they want (they must field every ship, but can pass on picking another ship if they want). Then they have time to decide what pilots and upgrades to use.

Thanks for the great Idea's. We settled on a Random Squad from Squadron builder tournament . Hopefully be trying out a lot of these great idea's as well on upcoming events thanks for the replies and hopefully see some more idea's

We also ran an "Anti-secret-santa" tournament. It turned out to be a BLAST. Everyone brings their entire collection, and you put all their names in a hat. Have people draw other's names, then "gift" them a ship to use. When I did this, someone gave me a generic starviper. You can use either generic if gifted that, otherwise use the pilot given and make a 100 point list. Arvel anyone? Captain Kagi?

We got all kinds of strange lists, and it really emphasizes your flying of different ships. You can't really build a meta-anything if someone knows what you fly best, and gives you a different ship.

A store in my region is hosting a 'Crazy-8s' event this weekend, which entails the following:

- Squadrons are limited to 88-points max

- Squadron members must meet one of the following requirements: A) Be a 'Wave 8' ship; or B) Be a PS8 pilot (once placed into the field of play); or C) Upgraded point value must be a multiple of 8.

Many in the region (including myself) are looking forward to this event, for it's a unique deviation from the norm. So many fun lists can be made, with so little time to decide which of my squadrons I want to use.

Here's an idea I want to try now that the dial upgrades are out. I call it "The squad builder challenge".

You sort out 1 set of the ship icon tokens for each faction. Each player decides on what faction they want to play. Then they blind draw 2 ship icon tokens one at a time from that faction's tokens. Because some tokens are double sided, them must put them down with one side up (without looking). If the side up has one of the Epic ships, flip it over. Now they must build a list using at least 1 of each type of ship they drew.

The only exception to the draw is for Scum. If the 1st ship drawn is an Aggressor, they may add it back to the draw pile to perhaps draw it again.

The two best ways to create interesting tournament packs is through either a) giving some bonus perk in list building, or b) interesting scenarios that change how the game is usually played.

With a) the goal is to avoid anything that will break lists *too* hard. You want it to be fun and novel, not janky and obnoxious. Often times a good way to do this is by giving people a free unit that's underpowered, or some other free bonus that encourages people to make interesting list decisions. Giving people a free ship that "levels up" based on how it performs over the tournament could be really fun, for instance.

As for b), there are lots of examples of cool scenarios out there. The best scenarios will have a significant impact on the game without being too complicated or annoying. Also, the later in the day the matches get the more simple you need your scenarios to be.

Honestly i'm looking for a way to run a tournament that forces people away from meta lists without just straight up saying " No TLT's or U Boats dickheads" . Don't get me wrong I don't mind playing those in a competitive tournament but I don't think they have a place in a casual setting that's meant to be fun.

I see a false assumption here. Why do you think TLT's or U Boats aren't for people who are looking for fun or casual games? Competitive players also play for fun - fun means completely different things for different people. For one person fun of X-Wing lies in optimalization and competitive play for other in random lists or epic plays. But both of those types of players play for fun.

id like to see an event where u can mix faction in ur list or even have one ship not of the same faction.