After playing an Advanced Squad Leader scenario, yesterday we played a little 100 pts skirmish with ordnance and modification upgrade cards face down. You see where they are but not what they are.

I choose a Grey Y wing with Advanced Proton and EM. Bad choice, blow up prior to firing. The Assault Misiles on a Green A wing worked much better, with GC 3 Hits plus one Crit on a Decimator, plus one bonus hit on Omega Leader and one Academy.

My Lando Falcon was loaded with Countermeasures, extra green was pure gold when Academy at Range 1 and Deci at Range 2 fired.

The Deci was loaded with Cluster Misiles, and I feared them to be advanced homing.

Again, another good experience playing with some upgrades FD.

Definitely something I look forward to trying at some point. Glad it's working for you!

So....you buy your upgrade cards and put them face down on the table? You only flip them over when you use it? Is that right?

That's......pretty cool! I like it.

Yup, really, really like that idea. X-Wing need be no stranger to a bit of fog of war.

Yes, we have played this way quite often. It changes quite a lot the game.

The easiest way, by far, is limit the "fog of war" to.ordnance. It is much more intimidating, you do not know what type of torpedos are on that B wing...you only see two face down cards. So ordnance carriers are much feared, especialiced weapons as ion pulse or advanced homing are more "surprising"

In my game group we all like this variant. I am a big fan of face down cards but as some of my fellow players do not like the surprise to discover that the ship ahead you can White K Turn because of "Adrenaline Rush" we do not play face down EPT.

But quite often, face down ordnance. It works fine

I love doing this... I've been doing Crew, Mods, Systems, Astromechs and Illicits- but now I will be including ordinance.

I wonder if you could do this with pilots, too. You'd need to house-rule some stuff to figure out activation order pre-reveal, but I like the idea of seeing three x-wings out there, and then discovering one of them is Wedge.

Sounds like how upgrades work in the upcoming Tanks skirmish game.

No idea about that game. But the face down option is on play a looong time ago in my group. I.have played two games in.a LGS and OK. Of course we talked about it and prepared our ships with this in mind.

And face down bombs are even more rewarding. Proton, Proximity, Cluster...tic, toc.

As we say, better learn to walk prior to run. In.your first time with this House Rule, limit yourselves to ordnance. If it works, go ahead.

I wonder if you could do this with pilots, too. You'd need to house-rule some stuff to figure out activation order pre-reveal, but I like the idea of seeing three x-wings out there, and then discovering one of them is Wedge.

This format is a huge buff to adrenaline rush/lightning reflexes.

I wonder if this could be done in a tournament.

In Imperial Assault, you don't have any idea what's in your opponent's Command deck, and there doesn't seem to be any issue with that.

As long as it's all written down on the sheet that's given to the TO.

You could play with all cards, including pilot cards, face down, but since the initiative order would give it away, I don't see much point.

You could also have it that all cards on a given ship are revealed when an enemy gets within range 1 (like the scanning mechanism in the computer games).

I would love to see this brought to a competitive event -- I don't have enough time to really play X-Wing without "training" for tournaments in mind, so we don't do things like missions or campaigns that are otherwise appealing to me as a play. X-Wing is my competitive game, so any time I play before an event (and it's always before an event, one way or the other), it's 100pt dog fight training. We switch up lists to gain experience with how they fly, so it's not quite constant tournament list practice, but it's close enough.

Interesting concept.

As an idea for a variant: your "list" consists of just pilot cards. Before every match, you pick out the upgrades you want, and then play them face-down. So your opponent knows what kind of ships and pilots you're bringing, but not their exact loadout (allows you to customize your equipment for the mission).

After playing an Advanced Squad Leader scenario, yesterday we played a little 100 pts skirmish with ordnance and modification upgrade cards face down. You see where they are but not what they are.

I choose a Grey Y wing with Advanced Proton and EM. Bad choice, blow up prior to firing. The Assault Misiles on a Green A wing worked much better, with GC 3 Hits plus one Crit on a Decimator, plus one bonus hit on Omega Leader and one Academy.

My Lando Falcon was loaded with Countermeasures, extra green was pure gold when Academy at Range 1 and Deci at Range 2 fired.

The Deci was loaded with Cluster Misiles, and I feared them to be advanced homing.

Again, another good experience playing with some upgrades FD.

Nice to find another ASL player. ASL, still the best game ever!

Yep, we were an ASL group in past times...

Yesterday another experience with FD upgrades. Droids and Ordnance, Scum vs Rebels 120 pts. I will be brief.

R5P8. Since he was revealed on turn 2, irrelevant FU or FD

2 x R2. Also, FU or FD not important

Genius. Jijiji. Drop Proton bomb and then Boost with EU. FD was very, very important to drop his bomb quite unexpected and Crit to a Tansarii Veteran and a Y ( the Y lost action bar, but she was a TLT carrier so not very important damage )

Seismic. My rival was 99% sure it was a "Action" munition. So playing FD was key

Ion torps. I got caught. My last two ships.ioniced, and I was badly beaten. The most decisive FD card, no need to be at range 1 but...99% sure they were not ion torps

Advanced Homing. Advice, if playing FD and you are milimeters short of range 2...SHUT UP and do not cry NOT IN RANGE OF ADVANCED HOMING...DAMM IT

We have played where all upgrade cards for all pilots were placed under the pilot card. Opponents did not know what was equipped to any ship! Upgrades were not revealed until they were declared and used.

Another variant is to turn pilot cards face down as well and treat the ship as the baseline generic version until the player wants to deviate from the generic stats.

It's a very fun format for casual play but I would not recommend it for serious competitive play. There can be some interesting loopholes that would flip out WAAC players. Both players need to be able to quickly negotiate solutions to rules anomalies that result from having all cards face down.

Try it if you haven't already done so!

To be fair, this was one thing I always thought was a nice concept with Star Trek: Attack Wing. Much of the early stuff is lifted from X-wing concepts, but Kirk's mechanic was a nice one as a captain (pilot) ability.

"Any Federation (Captain) Upgrades [Read 'Elite Pilot Talents'] you purchase for Kirk cost exactly 3 Squadron Points and are placed face down beside his card. Each Upgrade remains face down until you decide to use it, and then it is turned face up for the rest of the game."

A pilot with a 'hidden' elite pilot talent could prove a nasty surprise, especially in a manoeuvre game where you might have Lightning Reflexes or Adrenaline Rush up your sleeve...... or at least your opponent has to allow for the possibility that you do.

I wonder if this could be done in a tournament.

In Imperial Assault, you don't have any idea what's in your opponent's Command deck, and there doesn't seem to be any issue with that.

As long as it's all written down on the sheet that's given to the TO.

But as people are advancing through a number of games in a torunament, it is more and more obvious what they have in their squad, and then known form the beginning in the later matches.

I wonder if you could do this with pilots, too. You'd need to house-rule some stuff to figure out activation order pre-reveal, but I like the idea of seeing three x-wings out there, and then discovering one of them is Wedge.

Sure you can. Just treat every pilot as the lowest PS for that ship until they reveal themselves.

I would even suggest keeping all cards out of sight (behind a small screen for instance) until used. How would the opponent know you even had ordnance equipped in the first place?

Bumping this thread, as it's _way_ more interesting than any of the discussions about Identification in Virginia.

We play x wing with a lot of variants and House Rules. As I am single I can write a little to explore new ways, and my friends are quite open minded too. We love scenario play and Fly Casual. Asteroids that explode, or move randomly, or give you an extra green if you are range 1 because they emit EM waves, hidden minefields...

FD upgrades, microjumps, Reinforcements, Space Monsters, Y 666 as refugees transports, new crewmembers from the EU, SAM Sites and Fleet Officer in a control tower...

As I play I think there are many players that really want to play non standard games, and they only need to play only once this way to enjoy x wing from a non competitive perspective. No MoV, no prize, no swiss cuts...

Man, I have enought problems in my job...

Hexdot, have you looked at Mission Control? There are some really cool missions out there. Babaganoosh writes a lot of them, but there are others. One of my favorite is a 3 way fight that is pretty cool. Well, it starts out 2 vs 1, but at some point the Scum turn on everyone.

I like the idea of turned down upgrade cards. It almost makes ordnance a lot more interesting. Do they have a close range missile or a long range one? Do they have Ion or who knows what?

I'd like to try this some time.

Mission Control is simply superb. I recomend every player to, at least, read the most popular scenarios