I didn't see anyone post this yet.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/8/17/x-wing-for-beginners/

• What to Buy
• Focus on the Basics
• Some Things Can Wait
• Don't Be Afraid of Tournaments
• Just Have Fun!

Demo Guide

The article is by Guest Writer Erik Blythe

Erik Blythe is an award-winning podcaster and the former Network Director of the ForceCast network. A fan of science fiction and a Star Wars trivia expert, Erik has been around since the very early days of podcasting and has run such shows as RandomChatter, Echo Base, The Outer Rim, and The ForceCast. He enjoys X-Wing and reminds us that, above all, the game is meant to be fun!

Thoughts?

This ranks down there with that fly casual article.

New players often wonder whether to focus on getting the most recent ships or on starting with the earliest ships first. Fortunately, the game is so well-balanced that it really doesn't matter.

New players often wonder whether to focus on getting the most recent ships or on starting with the earliest ships first. Fortunately, the game is so well-balanced that it really doesn't matter.

Not sure if troll or joke.

Umm speaking of trolling you left out the next two sentences which are important to context.

Fortunately, the game is so well-balanced that it really doesn't matter. A "swarm" of six original TIE fighters with generic pilots is still considered a deadly build. Don't worry about selecting the perfect combination of ships—nearly any grouping will be fine starting out. You can't really go wrong at this point!

The added emphasis is mine.

New players often wonder whether to focus on getting the most recent ships or on starting with the earliest ships first. Fortunately, the game is so well-balanced that it really doesn't matter.

Not sure if troll or joke.

Confirmed troll

- T-65

This is some bad advice, lol.


If you like Rebels, buy a second X-Wing and a Y-Wing! Uh, it forgot to mention that X-Wings are terrible and that you're Y-Wing is pretty useless unless you buy a Rebel Transport (R3A2), a K-Wing (TLT), or whatever the hell has the autoblaster.

They recommend more basic TIEs (though without Crackshot) or an Interceptor but no Starviper (Autothrusters) or A-Wing/ImpAces (PtL).


The truth is, X-Wing is not a game for beginners, so it's bit of a disingenuous article to make the entry bar sound so darn low. It's not a game for beginners in the sense that your available lists will always be strictly inferior to the general meta unless someone is willing to invest $300-500 dollars at the outset. So, no article, they should be afraid to play in tournaments if all they've bought is a Core, a TIE, an Interceptor, and a Slave-1... hah! Dat Krassis!!

This is some bad advice, lol.

If you like Rebels, buy a second X-Wing and a Y-Wing! Uh, it forgot to mention that X-Wings are terrible and that you're Y-Wing is pretty useless unless you buy a Rebel Transport (R3A2), a K-Wing (TLT), or whatever the hell has the autoblaster.

They recommend more basic TIEs (though without Crackshot) or an Interceptor but no Starviper (Autothrusters) or A-Wing/ImpAces (PtL).

The truth is, X-Wing is not a game for beginners, so it's bit of a disingenuous article to make the entry bar sound so darn low. It's not a game for beginners in the sense that your available lists will always be strictly inferior to the general meta unless someone is willing to invest $300-500 dollars at the outset. So, no article, they should be afraid to play in tournaments if all they've bought is a Core, a TIE, an Interceptor, and a Slave-1... hah! Dat Krassis!!

Wow you guys are tough!!!

When we started playing X-Wing we played both X-Wings and Y-Wings all the time without those upgrades. I hate to point out the obvious but...

Do you realize this article is about playing X-Wing and only mentions tournaments in the last part. It isn't about tournament micro level inefficiencies of playing math-wing using calculus instead of dice.

Again being Mr. Obvious here but the Auto-Thrusters really wasn't a big thing until turrets.

Are you suggesting that FFG should stop trying to get new players or even casual ones that simply want to have fun playing X-Wing?

Honestly sometimes I think I'm playing the wrong game.

In case you haven't tried playing casual for a while I just wanted to let you know that X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, TIE, TIE Interceptors and even the TIE Advanced, especially with Darth Vader, is fun to play.

You don't even need the Rebel Transport of Star Vipers.

I think you guys are all missing the point. This is a game and it should be fun. The way you're all acting, it's like you don't want new people to join. The game is fun even if -- nay, especially if -- not playing at the top tier tournament level. So many people are focused on getting consistent results from round to round that they don't remember that there is enough luck in this game that pickup-game builds still have a chance to beat other lists. And as the article recommends, you have to find someone willing to teach you, which is apparently very difficult on these forums. Seems everyone's idea of teaching is to pull out Palp Aces or Triple Scouts and show the new player how much they have to buy to be competitive. That's ridiculous!

And I'll ask you this -- if Palp Aces and Triple Scouts are so powerful, why don't more people fly them? Because winning the tournament is not their #1 goal. Their #1 goal is to have fun and perhaps those squads aren't fun for them. If somebody wants to join in the game, don't scare them out by showing them how far behind they are. Welcome them! Help them! Teach them where THEY are at, not where you want them to be.

We need more articles like this. The backlash against it is evidence that some attitudes need to change in this community.

X-wing is absolutely a game for beginners.

I can't imagine how you can fool yourself into thinking you weren't one at some point.

Honestly sometimes I think I'm playing the wrong game.

In case you haven't tried playing casual for a while I just wanted to let you know that X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, TIE, TIE Interceptors and even the TIE Advanced, especially with Darth Vader, is fun to play.

You don't even need the Rebel Transport of Star Vipers.

I play nothing but casual and none of those rebel ships do very well.

I disagree very strongly with the idea that X-Wing is not beginner friendly.

Our group has 15-20 people show up every Tuesday, 3 of which will have placed top 16 in at least 2 Worlds and the rest have half a dozen store/regional championships every year distributed among them. It's a solid, solid group of very competitive X-Wing players.

We ALSO have a handful of new players at any given moment. Last night one fellow came in and played his second game of X-Wing, EVER, and several more who have been playing only a couple of months. This is normal, and the new players who come in can take whatever ships they like, play games, and have a great time. T-65s and Y-Wings are approachable and well known, and a great place to start playing. Are the new guys rampaging through the group? No, but then again the group is not bent on bringing their A++ 1st team "Win the Regionals" list when they face the new guys. Tuesday nights are for playing with new ships, finding the grooves between the "meta" and experimenting while still improving your skills. You don't need to play the "best" list over and over in order to improve your game, in fact doing so provides you less benefit than playing the entire field.

You absolutely can follow the advice in this article and have a great time at X-Wing, learning to play and improving your game until you reach a point where your knowledge and skills allow you to create and play a tournament level list with success. Even our once-monthly tournaments don't feature a large number of top-meta lists, that is reserved for the big regionals/major tournaments, and even when new players do happen to face a top player on his A-Game at a tournament good sportsmanship and a desire to learn/teach make those games fun and helpful for the new guys. "Hey, I played so-and-so with their best list and did a whole lot better than I expected. I saw how/he explained how he beat me and know exactly how to deal with that next time" is a perfectly satisfying way to walk away from a match with the best at their best.

It's a game. The ultimate goal is to have fun. If you believe the ultimate goal is to win, and expect to do so from the second week of playing, then I'm afraid you are going to be disappointed no matter what game you choose.

This is some bad advice, lol.

If you like Rebels, buy a second X-Wing and a Y-Wing! Uh, it forgot to mention that X-Wings are terrible and that you're Y-Wing is pretty useless unless you buy a Rebel Transport (R3A2), a K-Wing (TLT), or whatever the hell has the autoblaster.

They recommend more basic TIEs (though without Crackshot) or an Interceptor but no Starviper (Autothrusters) or A-Wing/ImpAces (PtL).

The truth is, X-Wing is not a game for beginners, so it's bit of a disingenuous article to make the entry bar sound so darn low. It's not a game for beginners in the sense that your available lists will always be strictly inferior to the general meta unless someone is willing to invest $300-500 dollars at the outset. So, no article, they should be afraid to play in tournaments if all they've bought is a Core, a TIE, an Interceptor, and a Slave-1... hah! Dat Krassis!!

_{All true points as long as both you and your competitor are hyper competitive. What about people who just like playing the game? No you don't need all this stuff. Just play a sh*tty list. So what? For me its more important to have fun. I don't need the rebel transport or the starviper to do that. I can fly a sh*tty list and have fun with it. If I'm playing someone who has a better list and I get creamed....So what? If I am playing someone who also just wants to have fun, maybe they'll have a sh*tty list too, or maybe they'll go easy on me in the name of just having a good time. These are little plastic toys. What good are little plastic toys if not to have fun with? If you're in it just for the win and nothing else matters, then why are you even doing it? Is your personal life so empty and hollow that winning a game is the best you got? If X-wing (or anything else that, lets just face it, doesn't matter) then perhaps you should hang up your collection and find something that is real and tangible. If you already have something real and tangible then what's left for X-wing? To have fun with little plastic toys.}

Are you suggesting that FFG should stop trying to get new players or even casual ones that simply want to have fun playing X-Wing?

No, but they should be a little more sincere about the difficulties of entering the game at a competitive level, unless they want people bright-eyed new people to go to tournaments and casual leagues and friendly game nights and go 0-10 in their first few outings of X-Wing. But not only will they go 0-10, they'll likely get absolutely shellacked in every single game if they're flying with just three or four Wave 1 & 2 ships (especially X-Wings, Firesprays, and Falcons, lol!).

The truth is, that X-Wing is not that balanced of a game, such that just about any combination of ships can do well. Quite the opposite. There are auto-includes (autothrutsters, PtL, etc.) for some ships. To act as if this is not the case is disingenuous and sets up new players for frustration and failure and hidden purchases.

If FFG took appealing to new players seriously, they would be very upfront about the hurdles (both in cost and experience) to entering a game like X-Wing, but would point out that for players who are interested and willing it is very possible. Then they should have articles where they explain why certain ships are so popular and good (instead of lying and saying that Six generic TIE Fighters without Crack Shot are some sort of current meta-dominating list), and they'd have an interactive list-builder that would generate a list of products players would need to buy to build the lists they have in mind. But FFG is unlikely to do that, since they want to give new players the impression that you can be reasonably competitive right out of the gate regardless of what $100 of ships you buy (rather than saying that you'll have to limit yourself to particular ship types and you'll have to shell out money for ships you might not want for the obligatory upgrades), which is the actual case).

It's not a bad thing that X-Wing is packaged as it is and that players have to sometimes buy ships for upgrades, that's the nature of the game and thousands of us that play understand the situation and still love the game. But FFG shouldn't be painting a rosey false picture that is so misrepresentative of the actual meta game, which is a lot more like Magic: the Gathering than they want it to sound here.

Honestly sometimes I think I'm playing the wrong game.

In case you haven't tried playing casual for a while I just wanted to let you know that X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, TIE, TIE Interceptors and even the TIE Advanced, especially with Darth Vader, is fun to play.

You don't even need the Rebel Transport of Star Vipers.

I play nothing but casual and none of those rebel ships do very well.

You and I have spoken a fair bit so I do trust and value your opinion. But from my experience, especially with new players, we've used X-Wings and Y-Wings and have had fun. X-Wings with R2.

I do understand how bad they are supposed to be though.

...

The truth is, X-Wing is not a game for beginners, so it's bit of a disingenuous article to make the entry bar sound so darn low. It's not a game for beginners in the sense that your available lists will always be strictly inferior to the general meta unless someone is willing to invest $300-500 dollars at the outset. So, no article, they should be afraid to play in tournaments if all they've bought is a Core, a TIE, an Interceptor, and a Slave-1... hah! Dat Krassis!!

It's prolly not a game for someone who buys their core set from Target, but anyone who has played other games knows how to hedge their investment.

One piece of advice the article didn't mention is that you can learn a lot from the Forums about lists and where to invest wisely in building a faction. I think I've cut through a lot of expensive trial and error by reading up on lists and advice on this forum. (There's absolutely no truth to there being a lot of whining and groaning about nerfing ships and DOA ships on the forums!) My signature list is around $200-$300 and a lot of fun to play. I actually expected to lose every match for months but have surprised myself with wins and taking a few experienced players to the wall.

FFG may not want to endorse eBay or secondary markets, but must-have cards can be had for less than investing in a ship that may not be used or appeal. That would be important advice for a beginner, too.

X-wing is absolutely a game for beginners.

I can't imagine how you can fool yourself into thinking you weren't one at some point.

Eh. it's a lot different if you started in Wave 1 and spent ~$50-100 twice a year on each new Wave and have been playing in tournaments for four years. That's not even comparable to trying to start out now from square zero. To say otherwise is, I think, optimistically naive. It's like starting to play Magic now: sure, it can be done, but it takes a hell of a lot of commitment and investment to catch up to vets who have been playing for years. You can't just buy a a few packs and go expect to win. This isn't a bad thing, it's just the nature of the game. But to publish an article that says the opposite is, I think, questionable.

My very first game of X-Wing was at a small FLGS tournament. A player gave me (what I now know as) a Fat Han build and I went 2-1.

Less than four months later, I now have 75(!!!) ships of my own, and I'm having a blast playing all of them, getting a feel for each with at least three games per ship before moving on. I read these forums daily, so I feel up to date about the meta status, but when choosing my squads, I approach my decisions based on what unique combination of ships I think are fun to fly.

[...]

The truth is, that X-Wing is not that balanced of a game, such that just about any combination of ships can do well. Quite the opposite. There are auto-includes [...]

If FFG took appealing to new players seriously, they would be very upfront about the hurdles (both in cost and experience) to entering a game like X-Wing, [...]

I sincerly hope that game is not as unbalanced as you portray. If so then I am in the wrong game. Yet I still have fun playing casually

You and I very different things away from this article otherwise.

Are you suggesting that FFG should stop trying to get new players or even casual ones that simply want to have fun playing X-Wing?

No, but they should be a little more sincere about the difficulties of entering the game at a competitive level, unless they want people bright-eyed new people to go to tournaments and casual leagues and friendly game nights and go 0-10 in their first few outings of X-Wing. But not only will they go 0-10, they'll likely get absolutely shellacked in every single game if they're flying with just three or four Wave 1 & 2 ships (especially X-Wings, Firesprays, and Falcons, lol!).

The truth is, that X-Wing is not that balanced of a game, such that just about any combination of ships can do well. Quite the opposite. There are auto-includes (autothrutsters, PtL, etc.) for some ships. To act as if this is not the case is disingenuous and sets up new players for frustration and failure and hidden purchases.

If FFG took appealing to new players seriously, they would be very upfront about the hurdles (both in cost and experience) to entering a game like X-Wing, but would point out that for players who are interested and willing it is very possible. Then they should have articles where they explain why certain ships are so popular and good (instead of lying and saying that Six generic TIE Fighters without Crack Shot are some sort of current meta-dominating list), and they'd have an interactive list-builder that would generate a list of products players would need to buy to build the lists they have in mind. But FFG is unlikely to do that, since they want to give new players the impression that you can be reasonably competitive right out of the gate regardless of what $100 of ships you buy (rather than saying that you'll have to limit yourself to particular ship types and you'll have to shell out money for ships you might not want for the obligatory upgrades), which is the actual case).

It's not a bad thing that X-Wing is packaged as it is and that players have to sometimes buy ships for upgrades, that's the nature of the game and thousands of us that play understand the situation and still love the game. But FFG shouldn't be painting a rosey false picture that is so misrepresentative of the actual meta game, which is a lot more like Magic: the Gathering than they want it to sound here.

I think you missed that the point of the article was how to get beginners into the game of X-Wing. Not how they get into competitive level of X-Wing. They only have a brief bit about competitive play towards the end of the article. And even then, it's just an incredibly brief overview that tries to encourage beginners to give competitive a shot and learn from the experience there.

Competitive X-Wing is it's own beast altogether and would need an entirely separate article (or series of articles).

This is some bad advice, lol.

If you like Rebels, buy a second X-Wing and a Y-Wing! Uh, it forgot to mention that X-Wings are terrible and that you're Y-Wing is pretty useless unless you buy a Rebel Transport (R3A2), a K-Wing (TLT), or whatever the hell has the autoblaster.

They recommend more basic TIEs (though without Crackshot) or an Interceptor but no Starviper (Autothrusters) or A-Wing/ImpAces (PtL).

The truth is, X-Wing is not a game for beginners, so it's bit of a disingenuous article to make the entry bar sound so darn low. It's not a game for beginners in the sense that your available lists will always be strictly inferior to the general meta unless someone is willing to invest $300-500 dollars at the outset. So, no article, they should be afraid to play in tournaments if all they've bought is a Core, a TIE, an Interceptor, and a Slave-1... hah! Dat Krassis!!

This attitude is one thing that is wrong with this forum, and maybe the game. Getting into the game DOES NOT MEAN GETTING INTO THE COMPETITIVE GAME!!!!

This is a very easy game to get into. A $100 investment, and you can have some variety of 100 point squads to play around with. Squads that you can have fun with.

C'mon guys, lighten up. If you're playing casual that article was just fine. When I first started I found that out-of-the-box Millennium Falcon and Imperial Firespray were not too unbalanced, it's not until later on that I learned the rest. But starting out, just having Boba Fett and Han fighting is space is awesome, and that's what this article is about.

Keeping it simple and fun, I mean, c'mon - they talked about playing without asteroids. How many times have we recommended that people just buy what ships they think look cool at first and worry about the rest later? The article was well written in that spirit.

Tournament play is an entirely different thing.

Honestly sometimes I think I'm playing the wrong game.

In case you haven't tried playing casual for a while I just wanted to let you know that X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, TIE, TIE Interceptors and even the TIE Advanced, especially with Darth Vader, is fun to play.

You don't even need the Rebel Transport of Star Vipers.

I play nothing but casual and none of those rebel ships do very well.

Yea, seriously. Unless your opponent is either horribly inexperienced themselves or intentionally handicapping themselves in the list-building process to compensate, the sorts of ships and lists suggested in the article would get walloped routinely.

Sure, I agree that in a casual setting any ship/list can be fun and can win, IF there is a gentleman's agreement that no one will bring a remotely competitive list. But this requires a community to self-police and self-limit themselves to artificially create scenarios where any ship can win. Because otherwise hodgepodge Wave 1 & 2 lists (e.g. Firespray + TIE + TIE + INT without PtL or Autothrusters) will lose 95 out of a 100 times (if not more) to Crack Swarm, Torp Scouts, or Palp Aces assuming the two players are of relative experience level.

Pretty sure the point of the article is if you are new... don't try to setup a meta list. Just try to learn the game and any set of random ships is about as good as any other if you are learning.

The article was not called. The beginners guide to being a tournament pro.

The only part of the article I winced at was when they said "If you're ambitious and want to pick up a "large" ship right away, stick with the Millennium Falcon or Slave I."

I didn't wince because I think they are bad ships for a newbie to buy, I winced because if they buy the Millennium Falcon right now and then in two months they see the Heroes of the Resistance expansion they are definitely going to feel pretty crappy.