I believe you can simply get bored with a faction's play style. Imperials are all about tie swarms and aces. It is neat to sometimes hop to a different faction and see how it plays - wanting to enjoy a strong alpha strike list is certainly one reason to try Scum, Rebels also have some unique mechanics that you might find appealing. Also, playing with a faction allows you to learn the strengths and weaknesses of different ships, improving your overall skill.

not touching rebels unless my buddy needs to playtest a list vs rebels, all imp and scum

I'm just always impressed that mono-faction players can get by with missing out on all the cool cards from the other factions' expansions.

I play primarily imperial but I am never opposed to playing scum or rebel. For some reason list building rebels is rarely attractive to me though so they're certainly my least played.

I have been an Imperial player since the beginning but I have played Rebel lists multiple times and had a blast. However, I really like outmaneuvering my opponent with fast and nimble ships and I feel that I can do that better with the Empire. I own only Imperials and Rebels because when I started, those were the only two factions. I wanted to have enough for both myself and someone who did not have any X-Wing stuff. I also wanted both sides to be on equal footing in terms of options. By the time Scum came out, I already had quite a substantial number of Empire and Rebel ships. To bring Scum up to speed, I would have to invest even more money on building an entire new faction from the ground up. Being a college student, my budget would not be able to support such an endeavor haha. I highly respect Scum and I never ignore its potential. Heck, I even recommended it to a friend who recently got into X-Wing and he comes up with some good stuff. To defeat one's enemy, one must know one's enemy. Still, I love how the Empire ships look and fly, with the Rebels being a close second and Scum being a respectable third.

Rebel and Scum are my thing. I've only played Imperial a couple of times, when I was teaching the game and when flying an Imperial Ordinance ship (Punisher and Advanced). I'm going to fly a little bit more Imperial just so I know how they fly when I would face them across the table; other I stick to Rebel or Scum.

I've always found it silly how people seem to play only one faction. I play all three.

Yup. I've never seen the point in deliberately limiting myself to only one flavor of the game.

Indeed, people who do so miss half the game's pleasure. FFG made the Rebels, and they delight me. FFG made the Empire, and they delight me. FFG made Scum, and they delight me.

When it comes to X-Wing... I don't choose sides.

This. 100%, absolutely this. Lock the thread.

Primarily, I play Rebel, probably about 50%, followed by 30% Imperial, and around 20% Scum. Part of it, I'm sure, is my own background with Star Wars, in which the Rebel and Imperial ships stand out as the more iconic ones. (I'd never heard of the Kihraxz or Scyk, and I'd never seen the Mist Hunter or Punishing One until Fantasy Flight previewed them.)

The Rebellion offers the most familiar ground to play with, as I know not only a lot of the ships, but the pilots, too.

So far I have only played as Imperial, but I have ships for all three factions. Scum is by far my smallest group. I do thought excercises with lists for them all. As a newer player, with right around 20 games in at this point, I am concentrating on a few ships, and a single faction, when I win a bit more, I will experiment more outside my comfort zone. I've only been playing a couple months, and have bought a bit here and there, I will need to buy 19 more expansions including Imperial Veterans to have one of everything, except the huge ships and upgrades.

I feel the good in you, turn away from the dark side and embrace the light!

Seriously though, I say play all the factions, they are all fun! I can't wait for Imperial veterans so I can get down with my bad self.

Since the launch of X-Wing, I have flown Empire excursively, and by that I mean I have never even touched a Rebel or Scum ship.

I've recently started to "dabble" with Scum and today, I've ordered my first Rebel ship.

I feel like am cheating on my old buddy the Emperor here.

But I was just wondering if anyone else, has made the jump from one faction to another.

And mainly how you are finding the difference in those factions.

This man is a traitor to the empire. He must be brought in for reconditioning.

Play what you want, but if you only buy a single faction.... YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG...

or something like that. Hey, but have a great weekend!

I find it harder and harder to play empire

because green dice

but even they have the lovely punisher

not really possible to pick favorites, though atm Rebel Sabine and auto-blaster ghost take the cake for dice independent damage

Play what you want, but if you only buy a single faction.... YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG...

or something like that. Hey, but have a great weekend!

Some of us enjoy the roleplaying aspects of tabletop games. Why would I want to fly a bunch of terrorists hiding behind turrets when I could use Carnor Jax to protect our glorious Emperor?

i started as a rebel player. i would not play anything else for the longest time, then i switched to imperials when the Lambda Shuttle aka Space Cow was released. I loved teaming this underrated ship with the firespray. The i gave scum a try and have been a scum player since its release. Wave8 has really given scum a boost, one it needed. so there u go from rebels to imperials to scum.

I will generally fly rebel if given the choice, but I do find myself playing an opposing faction to whatever a friend throws down. So if they bring rebels I'll throw down imperial ships.

I started out rebel and my friend was imperial.

I used to think ge was an amazing Pilot, that he had figured out the game mechanics faster than I had.

Then I played a few games with soontir and realized that wasn't really the case.

It's the very best way to practice, playing other factions. You'll very slowly learn the limitations and strengths of ships by playing against them. By playing with them you'll learn very quickly - for example, that soontir lives and dies by his green 2-speed maneuvers, in particular on his 2-hards. Once I realized I was dialing in a hard 2 almost every round when I played soontir, it became much more easier to block and/or predict fel when I went up against him.

Or that vader doesnt have a 1 straight, or just how fast a yv-666 really is. Or how easily a phantom can be corralled into a position where they really only have 1 or 2 decloak and move combinations that will work.

Single best way to improve your skill in this game is to play all factions.

But this can be a trap, because it's also important to continue trying the same list over and over to see how it stacks up in different situations, and to normalize dice roll and opponent list and skill variances.

So the happy medium, for me, is to play half of my games using my current favourite list, and the other half with lists made of ships or upgrades I don't have much experience with. Maximizes the learning.

Since the launch of X-Wing, I have flown Empire excursively, and by that I mean I have never even touched a Rebel or Scum ship.

I've recently started to "dabble" with Scum and today, I've ordered my first Rebel ship.

I feel like am cheating on my old buddy the Emperor here.

But I was just wondering if anyone else, has made the jump from one faction to another.

And mainly how you are finding the difference in those factions.

Rebel Scum

I seem to always end up paying imperials for their aces or scum for their... I don't know, large ship fetish?

Absolutely nothing wrong with rebels. I just never seem to play them.

X-wing isn't like Warhammer 40,000 or Warmachine/Hordes where all you have is one army that you can tweak into any number of different builds while you adjust to the meta. IT is set up so that you at least play with two factions.

I always say have a primary faction (your tournament and epic one) a secondary faction (your competitive and casual) and if possible a tertiary faction (just enough to get 100 points, mostly experiment and practice).

Give me a T! Give me an R! Give me a 8! Give me another R! What's that spell?

I've always found it silly how people seem to play only one faction. I play all three.

I've flow all three, but I've found that Imperials don't really suit my flying style. Not sure what it is, but I just can't my head in the right space to fly Imps effectively. I think Rebs and Scum and suit me better and are more 'forgiving' of my rather blunt flying style.

I fly primarily Rebels with Scum as my preferred alternate, but I always like to get in an occasional game as imps (I.e. The bad guys.) for fun and profit! If you limit you limit yourself to one faction you're missing out on part of the fun as all factions fly a little bit different.