We’re now accepting signups for next season of The X-Wing Vassal League.
What is the League?
The Vassal League is a pyramid-shaped stack of 9-player round robin divisions, sorted by skill and by geography or preferred play time. There are 5 tiers of divisions, from the single Coruscant division at the top, to the twelve Unknown Reaches divisions at the bottom. New players start in one of these bottom divisions, and at the end of the season, the top players in each division are promoted to the next tier (inward toward the core of the Star Wars galaxy) and the bottom players are demoted, much in the manner of Association Football.
We typically see about 300 players sign up each season.
The league is currently hosted out of reddit.com/r/xwingonline, and you can go there to find info on the current season, as well as our periodic newsletters.
What is Vassal?
Vassal is a Java-based boardgame client originally designed for live and PBEM play of Advanced Squad Leader. There are now hundreds of game modules to play online. The module for X-Wing is quite sophisticated and is now the most popular game on Vassal. Vassal does not present complete game information and is not a substitute for physically owning X-wing materials- you must have access to all of the cards and rules separately.
One advantage of Vassal is that newly spoiled cards and ships are available to play as soon as complete information is known about them. This is a great opportunity to plan your future purchases: You’ll remember how hard to get a Jumpmaster right after they became available, and that everyone seemed to buy them in threes….
You can get all the info you need about X-Wing on Vassal at Mu0n's tutorial page. You can also check out the upcoming Vassal Webinars in the Reddit community.
I just started playing, or just started playing online. Should I join?
The vassal interface takes a little getting used to. Most players are fairly comfortable with it after their third game or so, and highly proficient after about ten games. The vassal community is a very welcoming one, and you can freely spectate games to get a sense of how we communicate, and you can often find an opponent who is willing to walk you through your first game.
If you’re new to X-wing in general, please understand that this is a competitive league, and while there are multiple levels of play represented here, it is important that you have a solid grasp of the game. It’s a big game, and there are lots of combinations- you don’t have to understand all of them, but be prepared to review your opponents list before you play, as some of the more popular card interactions are difficult to explain over chat. If you’ve played more than a few 100 point games or competed in even one local tournament, you’re more than ready.
What is the time commitment?
Players will play each of the other members of their division once during the season. This works out to 8 games in about ten weeks. You are free to play these games in whatever order and at whatever time you and your opponents find mutually convenient. This means that you could be gone for a week or two and still have no trouble keeping up on your games, freeing you from the one-game-per-week schedule of most online tournaments. You’ll be grouped with players who want to schedule games at the same time of day as you.
What’s in it for me?
Beyond the joy of playing competitive games online and the challenge of climbing up the ladder, we have prizes! Our Prize Sponsor is Team Covenant, and they’ve created some awesome league-custom Range rulers for us. Division winners at every level, top players and selected other players who are active participants receive these. Your first ruler will be a Range 1 ruler. If you win a second ruler during your career, you’ll win a similar Range 2 ruler.
Additionally, the folks at Scum and Villainy support some more prizes, including alt-art cards for the top two players in the league as well as a template set that is randomly drawn from among all the players who keep up with their assigned games, regardless whether they have a winning or losing record.
How do I sign up?
You’ll need to have an account with Challonge.com (free), which we use to manage our pairings and match reporting. Optionally, you should also have an account on the Challengeboards ELO page, a chess style ladder for x-wing. The league doesn’t require ELO play, but many players like to record their games here, and it’s open to non-League games as well. You’ll also need an email address that you’re willing to have passed to your opponents.
With all this in hand, you can sign up on our Google Form. Once you’ve done that, you’ll receive an invitation into a Challonge.com tournament. YOUR REGISTRATION IS NOT COMPLETE UNTIL YOU HAVE ACCEPTED THIS INVITE. We use this to validate your information and continued interest.
Registration closes on Monday, September 19, and play will begin on Friday, September 23rd.
Edited by Earthworm
