Hi all -

As the title indicates, I am making a concerted effort to compile a list of all tournament formats, including the official versions of yester-year and any fun, casual, or home-brew formats.

I would really appreciate the community's help by contributing tournament formats below. These can be tried and true or just formats you'd like to see. Please include as much detail as you can, links to videos, documents, or other threads that discuss or show these formats in action.

Thanks everyone.

I will compile as many formats below as I can. Those looking for ideas should skim through all the contributions in the comments!

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FFG Official Tournament Format (effective 08/01/2016)

Description : Tournaments supported by the Organized Play (“OP”) program for the Star Wars™: X-Wing™ Miniatures Game, sponsored by Fantasy Flight Games (“FFG”) and its international partners, follow these rules. 100-point builds progress through rounds Swiss or Single Elimination until a winner is declared.

Useful links : Tournament Regulations ; GenCon 2016 Final in this format

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Deal or No Deal Format - created by LVL UP Bournemouth, UK

Description : Each player chooses a pre-built box containing unknown X-Wing pilots and upgrades; only the faction is indicated on the box. One hour is allotted for standard 100-point list building, using only the contents of your box. The tournament is then run as per official FFG tournament rules (see above) for standard play. Potential variant : List building phases occur between each round where players may "tweak" their lists based on prior rounds. This variant may afford some players unfair advantage if they are exposed to upcoming opponents' lists.

Useful Links : (none, yet)

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High-Powered: Pilot Skill limitation

Description : List-building and play follows standard tournament rules (above), with the exception that a Pilot Skill level is chosen as the maximum allowed for any ship. Adaptability may not be used to lower a pilot to the allowable limit.

Useful Links : PS 6 variant discussed here .

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Furball (w/ variants)

Description : Players build a list valued at an agreed upon point total, usually under 100 points (60 points is customary). More than two players are allowed to play per match. There are many variants of this format.

Useful links : From jme , the 760th Fighter Wing Furball Rules (regen variant); 760th Figher Wing: Hyperspace variant

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Grinder - created by swammeyjoe

Description : Each player builds or is assigned as series of 3-5 ships, each with a point limit 10-20 points higher than the last ship. Each round, player places their the lowest-costed ship in their starting area and a destroyed ship with the next highest cost ship. Play continues until the "last ship standing" wins. Similar to Furball , more than two players may compete on the same mat.

Useful Links : Introduced here .

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Underdog Draft

Description : The traditional 100-point tournament rules remain in effect, with the exception of the Squad Building rules. Rather than bringing an existing squad, players instead construct a squad using a drafting mechanic. Squads will be constructed from a limited set of pilot cards and an unlimited set of upgrades, up to a total of 100 points. Normal restrictions against using ships from multiple factions may be removed, allowing for new and unexpected combinations. Draft variant detail below.

Useful Links : (none, yet)

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FFG 2016 Series Open Hangar Bay Tournament Format (official)

Description : Used in the 2016 System Open Series side event and follows the standard 100-point list building/tournament rules, with the following exceptions: Each player builds two lists from different factions; at the start of each match, players review their opponent's lists and secretly select one of their two lists to play.

Useful Links : Official resource, here .

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You Have Your Orders: Mission Tournament

Description : Customer created mission scenarios by J Rhea. Unfortunately, these links are all broken as of the migration to Asmodee servers.

Useful Links : X-Wing Wiki: Missions

Missions by J Rhea:

• Bombing Run
• Squad Leader
• Minefield
• Divide and Conquer
• Escort Duty
• Recon Patrol
• Asteroid Belt
• Bombing Run
• Bounty Hunt
• Debris Field
• Divide and Conquer
• Escort Duty
• Minefield
• Recon Patrol
• Reinforcements
• Squad Leader

Missions by Babaganoosh:

• Satellite Control
• The Jump Point
• Dogfight
• Junkyard
• Fleet Engagement
• Vendetta

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Secret Refits ( from Babaganoosh)

Description : Players create two decks: a Pilot deck and an Upgrade deck. Pilot decks consists of pilot cards whose squad points combine for no more than 100 points; the Upgrade decks consists of 12 upgrade cards ( duplicates in either deck may or may not be allowed ). Players should not share the contents of their Upgrade deck with opponents and are not permitted to modify their Upgrade decks during the tournament. At the start of each match, players share the contents of their Pilot deck with their opponent and then each selects a number of pilot cards from their own Pilot Deck to play during that round. These pilot cards should be displayed on the play area. Each player then secretly equips upgrade cards from their upgrade deck to their selected pilots by assigning them to pilot cards face-down. When both players are satisfied with their squads, the match begins with upgrade cards remaining face down. Upgrads are flipped face-up when the effect of that card is triggered during game play. Variant: Players may forgo the effects of a card and keep it face-down. Once revealed, a card's effects remain in play until that ship is destroyed or the card discarded as a result of a game effect.

The combined squad point cost of equipped upgrade cards and a player's core list may not exceed 100 squad points. If a player equips upgrades exceeding 100 points, their opponent may remove upgrade cards of their choice from the player's list until its cost is 100 points or less.

Useful Links : (none, yet)

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Escalation

Description : Players build lists per a predetermined sequence of allowable squad points, called Tiers (e.g. 30, 60, 90, and 120 points). Players start by building a list that is equal to or less than the lowest squad point Tier (in our example, 30 points). Players then, using the exact same list from the prior Tier, add to that list with ships and upgrades equaling up to the next Tier (60 points). Players may add new ships and new upgrades to ships from prior Tiers but may not remove upgrades or ships from prior Tiers.

After each round, all players use the next highest Tier list. There are typically an equal number of rounds in the tournament as there are Tiers.

Useful Links : (none, yet)

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IRONWING

Description : IRON WING is a multi-faceted tournament designed to challenge players to excel across various formats of the X-wing Miniatures Game. Each player will build their list in a fashion similar to Escalation, compete in Furball rounds, lead a group of non-unique pilots with a Squad Leader, progress through increasing point values, and finally construct a Dual-Faction list to take down all opposition!

Useful Links : PDF of event rules

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Character Assassination

Description : Lists brought to this otherwise standard tournament format are subject to the following adjustments:

- If you and your opponent have the exact same unique pilot, you must flip the cardboard base to the non-unique pilot on the other side for the match. Any EPTs that can’t be used by the replacement pilot are flipped face down for the match. (If it’s a large base ship, you replace it with the non-unique from that expansion)

- If you and your opponent have the exact same astromech, you must replace it with the generic R5 astromech. Any EPT granted by the droid is flipped face down.

- If you and your opponent have the exact same unique salvaged astromech, title, or crew: they must be flipped facedown for the match. Any bonuses granted by aforementioned are also flipped face down.

- If the expansion did not come with a generic pilot (i.e. IG-88 and attack shuttle) the individual pilot abilities will not be in effect for the game.

Useful Links : (none, yet)

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Bare Bones

Standard rules apply, one exception: Absolutely zero upgrades.

Useful Links: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/233417-bare-bones-x-wing-format/

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Examples:

FFG Official Tournament Format (effective 08/01/2016)

Description : Tournaments supported by the Organized Play (“OP”) program for the Star Wars™: X-Wing™ Miniatures Game, sponsored by Fantasy Flight Games (“FFG”) and its international partners, follow these rules. 100-point builds progress through rounds Swiss or Single Elimination until a winner is declared.

Useful links : Tournament Regulations ;

Deal or No Deal Format (unofficial) - created by LVL UP Bournemouth, UK

* Each player chooses a box with no knowledge of the contents other than chosen faction.

* 1 hour for standard 100pt list building using only the contents of your box

* The rest is run as per official FFG tournament rules for standard play.

A few format we've tried locally:

Straight up furball capped at 40 points

- No rules about large ships, lone wolf or anything else

Furball capped at 40, capped pilot cost

- Same as above, but pilot's base cost cannot be over 25 points (ie: no Soontirs or Defenders)

60 points tournament with no restriction

- No rules about large ships, lone wolf or anything else (expect fat turrets to dominate)

60 points Lesser elites

- Minimum 2 ships

- Cannot be over PS6 once all effect are applied. e.g. Whisper can be adaptability'd to PS6, but you can't VI Echo to PS8. Roark and Epsilon Ace bend the rules.

- Unique pilots only

Some that were fun on Vassal:

150pts Elite EPTs

- Uniques only

- Everyone gets an EPT, even those who don't have one normally

- Expect PS9 Heragator to scare the living hell out of many ships

Coruscant-style

- Bring a list of each faction

- Each faction has 1 "must bring" ship

We're starting some form of prototype league locally and I'm really looking forward to it!

This is a relaxed draft format I ran for a small tournament - it would need some adjustments for player counts above ~10 players. It requires either a single player with a large collection, or players willing to pool their collections, so it may not scale well.

Underdog Draft

This is a variant on the Dogfight format that gives less-used pilots a chance to shine while also opening up new squad building possibilities.

The traditional 100 point Dogfight format tournament rules remain in effect, with the exception of the Squad Building rules. Rather than bringing an existing squad with them, players will instead construct a squad at the tournament using a drafting mechanic. Squads will be constructed from a limited set of pilot cards and an unlimited set of upgrades up to a total of 100 points. Normal restrictions against using ships from multiple factions have been removed, allowing for new and unexpected combinations.

Drafting

At the start of the tournament, players will be seated at a single table and a deck of Pilot cards will be assembled. This deck will contain a single copy of each small ship pilot with a Pilot Skill value of 3, 4, 5, or 6.

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Optional Rule
Each player may pick up to a single pilot to remove from the draft deck before it is shuffled and dealt.
Design note: this allows players to exclude pilots perceived to be problematic for this limited format.

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The draft deck is shuffled and each player is dealt a hand of six cards face-down. Any remaining cards are removed from play, and not revealed until the draft is complete. Players select a single card from their hand of six to add to their squad building pool. This card is placed face-up in front of the player. Players then pass the remaining set of five cards to the player to their left. Players continue selecting a single card from each set passed to them, placing this card face-up in front of them as part of their squad building pool and then passing remaining set of cards to their left until each player has six cards face-up in front of them in their squad building pool.

Players must then construct a 100 point squad using any of the six pilot cards in their squad building pool and any legal upgrade cards that may be equipped to each individual pilot. Squads may contain pilots from multiple factions. Once each player has chosen their pilots and any upgrades, any remaining unused pilot cards are discarded.

59 point cross faction (unofficial) - created by a bunch of local players

Minimum 2 ships of different factions, 59 points maximum, all faction specific restrictions removed

Each player brings 6 obstacles for a total of 12 on the board. Can place anywhere except player deployment zones and must still be range 1 apart

45 minute rounds

Anti-secret-santa (unofficial)

All names in a hat, participating players choose a name out and "gift" someone a ship to fly by writing a ship and pilot. Players have an hour to build their standard-rules 100 point list using that ship and pilot. Play the rest of the tournament like normal

34 point epic-not-epic (unofficial) - works best with 10+ players

All players bring a rebel and imperial lists without unique pilots or upgrades that totals 34 points. If multiple ships are used they cannot be the same pilot skill. Randomly separate players into rebels or imperials and use 1 foot of playmat for each pair of players. TO randomly places asteroids as they see fit.

Get 1 point per kill. Play 2 games, switching sides. 30 seconds per activation/firing. All ships move simultaneously, all ships of same pilot skill on same side fire at the same time as well. Initiative swaps sides each round. Yes, its a fun cluster

I would love to play a Missions Tournament: Using ONLY the official X-wing Missions.

I hope this is already a 'thing'...I've only played casual contests with friends- no prize supported tournaments that I've seen.

Official FFG Hangar Bay Tournament Format

as used in the 2016 System Open Series side events

Link to official resource: here .

As the standard 100 point dogfight tournament, with the following exceptions:

- 2 100 point squads, which use the same damage deck and obstacles

- Rival Rule: the two squads must be from different factions

- At the beginning of each match, both players reveal their lists, designating one their "first" squad and one their "second"

- After reviewing their opponent's lists, each player uses a maneuver dial to secretly choose which of their squads they will play

- (a speed 1 maneuver indicates the first squad, a speed 2 the second)

- The dials are revealed simultaneously, and play begins with the two selected squads

Hmm...i like the mystery box idea...interesting...

That would force some out of the box (HA PUNS!) thinking and could easily remove the meta lists from the scene.

Hmm...i like the mystery box idea...interesting...

That would force some out of the box (HA PUNS!) thinking and could easily remove the meta lists from the scene.

There was a total of ZERO meta lists that day. It was really fun and interesting to see what people came up with and see some cards that are usually relegated to binder chaff coming out and seeing daylight. Very much enjoyed the format

I would love to play a Missions Tournament: Using ONLY the official X-wing Missions.

I hope this is already a 'thing'...I've only played casual contests with friends- no prize supported tournaments that I've seen.

This really would be awesome.

I am thinking that only missions that require ~100-point builds on each side would be allowed. And missions would stay with a table as the players moved around. The final table would be an interesting point to discuss.

Pulling this off would take a massive amount of work, I imagine, but would throw some neat curve-balls at players. I'll put some effort into compiling some information in the OP.

You are welcome to link our Furball Rules, if you like:

https://760thfighterwing.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/760th-fighter-wing-furball_v2-3.pdf

It's a regen variant, variable points (I usually set it at 31-36).

[EDIT] And here's the Hyperspace Add-on ruleset add-on I've just finished & posted for our upcoming event, allowing players to jump from battlefield to battlefield in a multi-table furball event.

(Also posted below)

Secret Refits

I would love to play a Missions Tournament: Using ONLY the official X-wing Missions.

I hope this is already a 'thing'...I've only played casual contests with friends- no prize supported tournaments that I've seen.

This really would be awesome.

I am thinking that only missions that require ~100-point builds on each side would be allowed. And missions would stay with a table as the players moved around. The final table would be an interesting point to discuss.

Pulling this off would take a massive amount of work, I imagine, but would throw some neat curve-balls at players. I'll put some effort into compiling some information in the OP.

I've given a lot of thought over the years to scenario-based tournament formats. Overall I'm on the fence despite being a huge fan and author of missions in general. Other than general balance issues inherent in many of these missions at the core rule level, there are also problems with list choice per mission. If you were locked into one list choice at the start of the tournament, I worry that there would be a lot of auto-win or nearly auto-win situations in some of these ffg scenarios, and I wouldn't recommend using FFG missions as the set in a scenario-based tournament. I'm not saying you should strike it from this list or anything, but I thought I'd voice that opinion.

There are some missions specifically designed for tournaments, however; i might dig up those threads later.

From what I've read of the Deal or no Deal format, weren't players allowed to re-build their squadron between rounds, in order to make best use of the experience from previous games, and play with the contents of the box? If so, that's an exception to the standard FFG tournament rules.

Our local group is going to try out the Hangar Bay format next month - there's been some discussion about a Reverse Hangar Bay - all rules as per the Hangar Bay, except your opponent gets to choose your list, and vice versa... at present this is entirely theoretical though!

I would love to play a Missions Tournament: Using ONLY the official X-wing Missions.

I hope this is already a 'thing'...I've only played casual contests with friends- no prize supported tournaments that I've seen.

This really would be awesome.

I am thinking that only missions that require ~100-point builds on each side would be allowed. And missions would stay with a table as the players moved around. The final table would be an interesting point to discuss.

Pulling this off would take a massive amount of work, I imagine, but would throw some neat curve-balls at players. I'll put some effort into compiling some information in the OP.

I've given a lot of thought over the years to scenario-based tournament formats. Overall I'm on the fence despite being a huge fan and author of missions in general. Other than general balance issues inherent in many of these missions at the core rule level, there are also problems with list choice per mission. If you were locked into one list choice at the start of the tournament, I worry that there would be a lot of auto-win or nearly auto-win situations in some of these ffg scenarios, and I wouldn't recommend using FFG missions as the set in a scenario-based tournament. I'm not saying you should strike it from this list or anything, but I thought I'd voice that opinion.

There are some missions specifically designed for tournaments, however; i might dig up those threads later.

I agree. There are definitely some auto-wins. And for some reason, most of the pre-built missions require odd squad values, so who knows how they would be in a standard 100-point tournament setting.

Let me know what you dig up - I may try to run something like this in the near future if there's not a ton of prep involved.

Player-designed missions for tournament play:

J Rhea's Missions:

Bombing Run

Squad Leader

Minefield

Divide and Conquer

Escort Duty

Recon Patrol

My Missions:

Satellite Control

The Jump Point

Dogfight

Junkyard

Fleet Engagement

Vendetta

I like some of these better than others, and there are probably more out there that are suitable for tournaments, but I think there's a good case to make for these.

Escalation is my personal favourite...

Round 1 60 points

Round 2 90 points including everything from previous round

Round 3 120 points "

Round 4 150 points "

You can improve on ships already used but you can't swap or remove any upgrades.

Player-designed missions for tournament play:

J Rhea's Missions:

Bombing Run

Squad Leader

Minefield

Divide and Conquer

Escort Duty

Recon Patrol

My Missions:

Satellite Control

The Jump Point

Dogfight

Junkyard

Fleet Engagement

Vendetta

I like some of these better than others, and there are probably more out there that are suitable for tournaments, but I think there's a good case to make for these.

Much appreciated!

Escalation is my personal favourite...

Round 1 60 points

Round 2 90 points including everything from previous round

Round 3 120 points "

Round 4 150 points "

You can improve on ships already used but you can't swap or remove any upgrades.

Classic. Thanks for the add.

Objective Tournament, adopted from Armada.

Rules below:

Double or Nothing (or other silly names)

note: I haven't tried this in a competitive setting so it might be broken.

Teams of 2 , each team brings 1 list of each faction. (3 lists total)

Upon pairing, each team secretly picks 1 faction. Both teams will play the 2 chosen factions opposite each other (ie I picked Scum and opponent picked Rebel, so we play 2 matches of Rebel vs Scum). If you destroy an opposing ship, you score the full points and your teammate may spawn the ship in his deployment zone the next turn after at full health with all upgrades. Game ends after 75 minutes / 200 point total reached by a team / 1 player has no ships left on their board.

Here's a tournament format done by my LFGS a while back. I unfortunately wasn't able to participate at the time, but the concept seemed like a cool way to get people to try playing non-standard unique pilots. Or at least a way to keep the high-power unique pilots and some upgrades from dominating games all the time. I did not create this format, just wanted to share it.

I'll be honest, I don't know why it's called "Character Assassination" as you're not trying to assassinate a specific character on your opponent's team.

Character Assassination Tournament

Standard 100 point list.

Three Swiss-style rounds

Cut to Top 4

- If you and your opponent have the exact same unique pilot, you must flip the cardboard base to the non-unique pilot on the other side for the match. Any EPTs that can’t be used by the replacement pilot are flipped face down for the match. (If it’s a large base ship, you replace it with the non-unique from that expansion)
- If you and your opponent have the exact same astromech, you must replace it with the generic R5 astromech. Any EPT granted by the droid is flipped face down.
- If you and your opponent have the exact same unique salvaged astromech, title, or crew: they must be flipped facedown for the match. Any bonuses granted by aforementioned are also flipped face down.
- If the expansion did not come with a generic pilot (i.e. IG-88 and attack shuttle) the individual pilot abilities will not be in effect for the game.

Here's a tournament format done by my LFGS a while back. I unfortunately wasn't able to participate at the time, but the concept seemed like a cool way to get people to try playing non-standard unique pilots. Or at least a way to keep the high-power unique pilots and some upgrades from dominating games all the time. I did not create this format, just wanted to share it.

I'll be honest, I don't know why it's called "Character Assassination" as you're not trying to assassinate a specific character on your opponent's team.

Character Assassination Tournament

Standard 100 point list.

Three Swiss-style rounds

Cut to Top 4

- If you and your opponent have the exact same unique pilot, you must flip the cardboard base to the non-unique pilot on the other side for the match. Any EPTs that can’t be used by the replacement pilot are flipped face down for the match. (If it’s a large base ship, you replace it with the non-unique from that expansion)

- If you and your opponent have the exact same astromech, you must replace it with the generic R5 astromech. Any EPT granted by the droid is flipped face down.

- If you and your opponent have the exact same unique salvaged astromech, title, or crew: they must be flipped facedown for the match. Any bonuses granted by aforementioned are also flipped face down.

- If the expansion did not come with a generic pilot (i.e. IG-88 and attack shuttle) the individual pilot abilities will not be in effect for the game.

This is intense! I love it.

I'm always looking for ways to make our FLGS tournaments less meta and this offers a unique approach!

I'm also running an event in a couple weeks utilizing this add-on ruleset to my standard Furball rules linked above.

It's a HYPERSPACE mechanic for jumping from table to table in a multi-table furball event. Should be a blast, looking forward to it.