So I'm a newer player and want to try new stuff. Since I'm new, I know I won't do too well in tournament stuff anyways as I'm still learning the tactics and nuances to the game and the ships I have.

However, my main goal with this game is just to game with the local group and have fun. We have regular regional tournaments here, so I'm not concerned about tournament play at the moment. I'm new so I don't mind losing too much (again, main goal is to hang out and have fun). What I really want to know is not what's good to fly but what's fun to fly. So I'll ask you guys, what ships/lists have you guys flown that you had fun flying?

Honestly? The advice I always give new players is to buy the ships you like. You're more likely to have fun flying ships that you already know and love than picking up some obscure ship that you've never seen or heard of just because other people tell you its good.

Grab a few of your favorite ships from the original trilogy, such as the Falcon or Slave I, or A-wings, B-Wings, Interceptors, Bombers, etc.

If you loved the X-wing and TIE fighter video games, you'll probably love flying the Phantoms and the Defenders (especially with the TIE-Defender titles in the new Imperial Veterans pack).

Are you excited for the new movies coming out? Grab some resistance T-70 X-wings and some TIE-fo fighters.

Fan of the Rebels TV show? Buy the Ghost and TIE Inquisitor expansions, and check out the new ships that are coming out this week.

You get the idea. If and when you get to the point where you want to start really being competitive, then you can worry about what ships are "powerful" and what ships counter those ships and so on, and odds are, you'll probably already have the ships you need to put together a couple different competitive lists.

I don't fly the Ghost competitively, but I picked it up because I love Star Wars Rebels so much. It is an amazingly fun ship to fly because that one pack comes with so many options and combinations of crew and pilots. Love it! The best is doing the unconventional Sabine Crew on the Ghost with Chopper crew, too: K-turn, Chopper let's you suffer a damage to take an action while stressed, so you can drop an action-bomb right in front of your opponent's forces. Hilarious! There are so many other ways to fly it, too.

But my all-time favorite is flying TIE interceptors. I don't care whether it's Soontir Fel's antics, Carnor Jax's frustrating shenanigans, or just a bunch of generics, that ship is fun to fly! I have eight of them - I can't get enough. So I'll just refer you back to what Herowannabe said: fly the ships you like the most!

P.S. TIE defenders are fun, and their really good, and I'm having a blast making First Order squads with the TIE/fo and the new TIE/sf.

P.P.S. Some people find different things fun. For one person, it may be winning. For another, it may be having that close match where it's a one-on-one dogfight in the end, and win or lose it's the most exciting part of the game (that's me). Still others like to come up with a crazy squad idea that does something special, and if they can just pull it off at some point in the match then they're pleased as punch (also me; see the Ghost example above).

Buy everything just make sure not to tell your Wife and hide all your models at work...

Seriously though everything has its merits, fly what you think looks cool

Buy everything just make sure not to tell your Wife and hide all your models at work...

Seriously though everything has its merits, fly what you think looks cool

Sabine (flying the attack shuttle) is probably my favorite to fly. Push the Limit, Kanan Jarrus (crew), and turret of choice. She is so insanely slippery that she's just so much fun. The possibilities are endless.

Yet she's PS 5, so her ability isn't crazy broken.

Guri is my second favorite in the same way. The starviper is my favorite ship in the game and Guri has an amazing ability that would be absurd on a PS 9 character, yet is fine since she's (again) PS 5.

I also have a lot of fun with either generic YT-2400s or Eaden Vrill if I have the points. Between a cannon, crew, and barrel roll, it's a treat to fly and I've always liked the sleek, asymmetrical design.

Basically I like highly maneuverable ships that don't have a high enough PS to make it unfun for the opponent.

Anything including A-Wings, 3 Scyks with Mangler Cannon & Mindlink plus Palob with TLT, Mindlink & Boba Fett.

Fun is subjective. What means "fun" to you?

For me, fun means flying the ships I like from the lore (B-wings, TIE Defenders, Y-Wings) and so I try and make some squadrons that include these ships.

Other people don't have a preference on ships and instead seem to find fun on playstyles. My wife likes squadrons that are agile, fast, hard to catch. She plays Imperials with TIE Phantom, TIE Inquisitor, TIE Interceptors... If she played Rebels, she'd play A-wings.

My son likes to go close and personal. She plays with Scum Boba Fett's Slave I, Guri's Starviper, and feedback array Z-95. Probably with the new coming wave he will go for the protectorate fighter, because it's a ship designed around that playstyle.

My brother finds fun on playing whatever is disruptive to net-list players. He would never play something someone else is playing. His definition of fun is being original, unexpected, and aggravating to the meta lists, even if he doesn't reach far in tournaments. In the Wave 7 meta, he played lots of cluster missiles and accuracy correctors to make the TLT Y-Wings sad. In the Wave 8 meta he flew the Ghost and attack shuttle with some combo that included Leia and Sabine crew to rush in the first round and drop a bomb between the formation of torpscouts. It wasn't very effective otherwise, and he lost most of the time, but the faces of disbelief and panic from his opponents fueled his fun, as they limped for some turns trying to understand what was going on. When K-Wing players started using 3 pegs on their bases to keep their wings from hitting other ships, he made a squadron of TIE Bombers and Vader, where all of the bombers had 6 pegs. It was silly, but it was fun.

There are 2 types of fun in this game.

Fun 1 - having a strong enough list that can gank a ship , so you feel there is enough chance for you to luck out a win.

ship to use - party bus + X

Fun 2 - look at me fly I'm a nyancat in disguise

ship to use - Super Dash

Incredibly biased, but I would suggest Scum. Lots of fantastic and fun combinations.

Mist Hunter is my favourite. Tractor beam your opponent into an asteroid, if they try to dodge make them reroll, then give them the stress at the end of the phase.

You may not win, but your opponent has to think about something other than arcs and volumes of dice.

Defenders!!!!

Everyone has their thing that they love to fly. Mine is TIE FIghters.

Flying what you like is good advice. I'd go with that.

Personally, I think you should look in your local area for people that aren't so competitive. You always get the die hard competitive folk and then you get people with varying degrees of tournament type and casual play. Try to find the people that are a bit laid back. With them, you get to try all sorts of different types of lists and don't have to worry about beating the nasty tournament stuff. These people are also more likely to try playing Missions and things like that.

If anyone in your area is offering to run Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, then take them up on it! It's a fan made co-op campaign that pits 2-6 players on the same team vs. an AI controlled Imperial force. It's a ton of fun and is worth playing.

A lot of times people are looking to play Epic games and often just are looking for other people to play it. They often have enough minis on their own and just want someone else to try it. Epic is a big blast and a lot of fun. Offer to play, even if you don't have the minis. These guys will usually be appreciative of it.

Personally, if it were me, I'd try to stick to the early stuff first and just play it with a bunch of X-wings and Y-wings vs. Tie Fighters and Tie Adv. Just kind of learn the game as if it were Wave 1 and then look at all the stuff that came after. Learn what an X-wing can do and then move on to see what others play with now. Learn what a Tie Fighter can do before picking up Tie Interceptors. That's my advice. I started in Wave 1 and appreciate all the ships. Some people who came later don't really rate the Tie Fighter as a very good ship, but I feel like I can make normal Tie Fighters dance on the table.

I will echo the sentiment: find laid-back players, and buy ships you think look cool and want to see on the table. I started with the core box and Rebel Aces, so I had an X-wing, A-wing, and B-wing. Next I bought another A-wing (for more pilots) and the Falcon. From there it was a steady stream of "Oh yeah, I want to try that one!" until now, where I have at least one of everything except the Raider and Gozanti.

After you pick up a couple ships, then I would say look back at the FFG news articles about each wave, and find one that just looks like a lot of fun. The news articles don't get terribly deep into the mechanics of the game but overall do a pretty good job of describing the feel of ships.

If you want a specific recommendation, my personal favorite ship in the game is the Hound's Tooth (bounty hunter Bossk's ship). It has a lot of viable options and a 180-degree forward-facing firing arc that is unmatched by anything else in the game. It was easily my favorite Wave 7 ship and became a true monster when Wave 8 released.

... where I have at least one of everything except the Raider and Gozanti.

...

If you want a specific recommendation, my personal favorite ship in the game is the Hound's Tooth (bounty hunter Bossk's ship). It has a lot of viable options and a 180-degree forward-facing firing arc that is unmatched by anything else in the game. It was easily my favorite Wave 7 ship and became a true monster when Wave 8 released.

For shame for not owning the Raider and Gozanti!

It's funny you say that about the Hound's Tooth as that is one of the very few ships I don't own because I just have no interest in it.

... where I have at least one of everything except the Raider and Gozanti.

...

If you want a specific recommendation, my personal favorite ship in the game is the Hound's Tooth (bounty hunter Bossk's ship). It has a lot of viable options and a 180-degree forward-facing firing arc that is unmatched by anything else in the game. It was easily my favorite Wave 7 ship and became a true monster when Wave 8 released.

For shame for not owning the Raider and Gozanti!

It's funny you say that about the Hound's Tooth as that is one of the very few ships I don't own because I just have no interest in it.

I was skeptical at first when it was initially revealed in Wave 7, but the article convinced me that it had a few potentially fun shenanigans, so I picked it up.

Boy did it catch me by surprise. To try to sell you on it, let me share a story about the title. (You may already know how all this works, but for the sake of the new player I'll go into detail)

The title itself isn't really competitive, but can be a TON of fun. If you equip it, then once you are destroyed, you deploy the Nashta Pup, which is a Z-95 with your Hound's Tooth pilot ability and pilot skill value. So you get an extra 4-hit-point ship for only 6 points.

One time, I was flying the Hound's Tooth title (don't remember the pilot or the rest of my squad), but it came down to a 1-on-1 between the Hound's Tooth and (I believe) a 1-hit-point Boba Fett. The Hound's Tooth had Dead Man's Switch equipped, which does 1 damage to all ships at Range 1 when you are destroyed. So Boba shot at and destroyed me from Range 1, but Dead Man's Switch triggered and did the final damage to him, and the Nashta Pup flew out and was the last thing on the table.

There are very few moments I've had playing X-wing where I was as giddy as when that occurred.

So that ship is probably the single reason I got so emotionally invested in Scum.

Porkins with R5-D8, k-turn as often as possible. The recklessness of it is so much fun! I am eager to try him with PTL soon...

One time, I was flying the Hound's Tooth title (don't remember the pilot or the rest of my squad), but it came down to a 1-on-1 between the Hound's Tooth and (I believe) a 1-hit-point Boba Fett. The Hound's Tooth had Dead Man's Switch equipped, which does 1 damage to all ships at Range 1 when you are destroyed. So Boba shot at and destroyed me from Range 1, but Dead Man's Switch triggered and did the final damage to him, and the Nashta Pup flew out and was the last thing on the table.

There are very few moments I've had playing X-wing where I was as giddy as when that occurred.

That does sound really fun. I think the ship is fine and has a lot of things going for it, but it just hasn't captured my interest. I don't really care to fly the big ships much and kind of regret buying a few that I never fly with. So, I just didn't get it. I don't think it's a bad ship, but it just doesn't excite me. I just don't find myself wanting to put it in lists. I keep wanting to put in more Kihraxz Fighters instead. Maybe if I had spare hobby cash I would get it.

Porkins with R5-D8, k-turn as often as possible. The recklessness of it is so much fun! I am eager to try him with PTL soon...

I love Porkins. He's great with with R5-D8. If he does a red and uses his ability, there is only a 3/8 chance of him taking damage. Overall, even if he does take damage and then uses his action to use his astromech, there is only an 11% chance that he keeps damage at the end of the turn. I've used him and he's even healed legitimate damage later in the game when he peels off for a round or two.

I've used him with PTL, but what else is there that might work on him? There are new ships. I've not tried Rage, but that seems a bit crazy! Would you be able to try to remove BOTH stress that turn? I mean, you could try to remove the first. If you take damage, then stop. If you don't, then keep going! Man...now I want to try a list with Ragin' Porkins!!!! He would get a free Focus and re-roll 3 attack dice!

Oh, and Extra Hull Double Wide is the best upgrade on him.

You must start out by using ships that are not tanks! And no 360 firing arcs! That being said, whether you like imperials or not, fly interceptors. You'll get a feel for a lot of maneuvering including barrel rolling and boosting. Also, you'll appreciate why good piloting is key since they're glass cannons! Get good at that and you'll be able to fly anything. Especially rebel regen ships (Corran, Poe, Miranda, etc.) or Scum beasts (Slaver, Jumpmaster, etc). The meta right now is not really that much about flying skill, but having it is a game changer even now. The people I see win use lists they get off the internets and fly them well.

These guys are so on point with the general advice of fly what your attracted to....in the end, it's all about fun!

Just be wary, this game is addicting in the aspect of adding ships and modification; really addicting!

Feel free to proxy cards, too.

Feel free to proxy cards, too.

While I'd agree with that. My advice to someone just starting out is to avoid upgrades at first. I think more ships and less upgrades would both make list building a lot easier, and would help teach you how to maneuver better.

I find the A-Wing one of the most satisfying ships to play, especially with the Ace's expansion. But really, almost all the ships are fun to play.

Here are some not fun things:

Stressors, I would stay away from things that are just built around delivering stress. If is just frustrating for your opponents. The main culprit is the Y-Wing with R3-A2. While on the tournament scene these are important to win, but for a casual game they take away from the fun factor.

Regen. Again, things like R2-D2 just frustrates your opponent during casual game play.

Turrets. While they are fun, just make sure Autothrusters are available.

Also I would avoid the super combination that rule the meta for tournament play.

While I'd agree with that. My advice to someone just starting out is to avoid upgrades at first. I think more ships and less upgrades would both make list building a lot easier, and would help teach you how to maneuver better.