I have been asked to gamemaster some Xwing for 5 or 6 ten year olds at a birthday party. I would love to hear anyone's ideas on making sure everyone has fun.

My thoughts right now are:

Rebels vs Imperials

3x6 play area

Small base ships only

No obstacles (but maybe a few mines for laughs)

Naked ships only (no upgrades for the most part)

Turret weapons added to Y, K and HWK (maybe Blaster turret without the focus cost?)

Treat crits as hits, and don't use face up damage cards.

Named pilots just for purposes of character fun and diverse PS values, but no special abilities in play

Action step will simply be "assign a focus token" (not introducing repositioning actions or TL mechanics at the start)

Maneuvers...I'm wondering how to handle red maneuvers. Actually introduce the idea of stress? Or maybe just say, if you do a red maneuver, you don't get your focus token.

Bumping: I don't know if there should be any penalty here. Maybe still get your focus action, but you can't shoot an enemy you're touching.

I would like to be able to have each kid flying two ships, to minimize the chance someone gets left out of the game early on. I don't know what level of interest to expect. I would expect to start off with a learn to play short game, each kid has one ship and we just proceed long enough for everyone to practice dial selection, maneuver template use, rolling dice and deciding on how to spend their focus token. But maybe if it's going well, on round 3 (or whenever) I say everyone gets to field their reinforcements.

I'm thinking us dads could maybe field a Falcon and a Decimator, and the first kid to lose their ships can take it over for the rest of the game.

These are my rough ground rules. Any suggestions? Anything I'm missing?

Get the glue ready.

You could run it where everyone flies one ship but re-spawns when they die. You could then keep track of how many kills each side gets and declare a winning side when the kids' attention starts to wane. I would caution against turrets, unless everyone gets to use them, because it will be frustrating for those that do not have them and won't get to shoot unless the enemy is in their firing arc. I like the idea of keeping stress out of it and keeping the abilities to a minimum. With that many new players, it will be complicated enough to keep track of what is going on. I play with my son, who is 9, and while he has a good grasp of player abilities and the phases of the game, movements are still a source of frustration for him.

Do 50p simple premade squads and let them have fun. Maybe few obsticles, like two or so.

30point ships. furball. everybody against everybody. youy die, you respawn. have a bunch of premade ships that the kids can pick from .

Yeah, I think a furball or Hunger Games might be the best thing to do.

Do 50p simple premade squads and let them have fun. Maybe few obsticles, like two or so.

I am not planning on taking points into consideration at all. Just let each kid have different models than everyone else so there's lots of visual variety. The only balancing I'm doing is PS for diversity, and making sure total health, attack and agility dice are about even on each team.

I'm pretty sure the game says 14+. So your safe for four more years.

You could not pay me enough! One 10 yo is driving me to distraction I can't begin to imagine 5 or 6!

Super glue solvent for when those little fingers get stuck together. Is this party for the dads or the kids? Do these group of kids normally play this game? If they don't this may not turn out so well, especially if only one or two of them play and the rest are going to lose badly.

I suggest you hire a clown and have 5-6 nerf bats handy. It works every time.

Best of luck my friend. This sounds like my worst nightmare. Hopefully their attention spans can last and their awkward hands don't smash too many ships.

You are gonna let young kids play with breakable miniatures? May the Force be with you.

But yeah if you are serious either 1 ship at 30 points max or 2 ships at 50 points max for each person. I would avoid the whole stress thing as that means they have to recall they have to do a green maneuver to clear it. That also includes the problem of doing red maneuvers when stressed, so yeah I say just no focus of they do a red maneuver.

Maybe have prizes for most damage done then kills, if one kid badly damaged a ship and another got that one hit to kill it you might get a temper tantrum.

And yeah if someone loses all their ships you could have one of their ships come out of hyperspace to continue the fight.

That's not the setting I'd pick to introduce kids to x-wing. Unless you're certain it'll click with all of them, it may be hard to get them to grasp the basics while everyone is excited with a birthday party.

That being said, at 10, they should be able to handle it. My son is almost 7 and kicks ass at tournaments, so it's not impossible!

I read that as "Help me ruin an X-Wing party for 10 year olds." and it reminded me of a birthday party a friend was asked to come to as he had a full Darth Vader costume, the birthday boy, broke in tears and ran out the room crying as he was so scared

The kid with the actual birthday is pretty sharp. I taught him and his dad Xwing a year or so ago. This year he finally wants to go all in. I don't know if he's introduced any of his friends to the game yet. All he has is a core set, but my sources tell me he will have more to his collection when the day is done.

I hadn't thought about keeping score. Tracking hits may be best. I bet stress tokens would be a cool way for them to accumulate a victory pile.

I think something quick and easy would be good. It makes me think of Flames of War and World of Tanks. Someone made a demo game with FoW that was like World of Tanks. Each person gets a tank and can keep respawning at a spawn point. It made for a fun and quick game for those with short attention span. Jump in or out whenever you want. Last for as long as you want it.

Just do something like Hunger Games where you can get power ups in the middle. If you blow up, that upgrade drops for someone else to pick up. Have people fly all different ships. Fly around and blast each other. Play for as long or as little as you want. Maybe keep record of number of kills. Maybe track Imperial vs. Rebel vs. Scum and see who wins? Or not. I think if you make it loose and free form, then you can't really go wrong.

Get the glue ready.

Simple one-ship per fellow with similar point costs (may be a mod on some ships to even the game)....but

I have had some less than stress free encounters for my collection while introducing others to our game; age sometimes doesn't matter sadly. I have needed to smile through gritted teeth and say something like, "that's OK, I'll fix that tomorrow, no problem." (and, as I said, many times that was the touch of adults that caused calamity) Sure, my nephews are young chaps (7-14) and one ship and a few pegs were broken during their first indoctrination, but man, a birthday party of 10 year olds? I know you already know this but, when you don't have good control over the situation, these miniatures can quickly come under a bunch of possible calamities....they'll come under some anyway. Wow. Bold.

I wish you good speed sir, for you will be sailing some very dangerous waters.

Scum vs scum, everyone in naked generic fangs, get some small smiley face stickers to mark whos ship is which.

buy 3 or 4 core sets and just let them break that stuff.

Super glue solvent for when those little fingers get stuck together. Is this party for the dads or the kids? Do these group of kids normally play this game? If they don't this may not turn out so well, especially if only one or two of them play and the rest are going to lose badly.

I suggest you hire a clown and have 5-6 nerf bats handy. It works every time.

I seriously LOL'd at the nerf bat thing... and then it reminded me. Fun-noodles cut in 2 or 3 pieces make GREAT lightsabers (duct tape the end). I fully expect a bunch of 10 year olds to want to release some energy somehow, boardgames can only last for so long...

I just started a middle school club, I had twelve 11 year olds join with some older students. For their first games, they paired up and each person chose a single small base ship (not worrying about points or fairness)

I had it easy, lower pilot skill for rebels, so they always moved first and shot last.

I did no actions,and didn't worry about red maneuvers. All crits were regular hits and we didn't do range bonuses. This was good way for them to learn how to play.

Next I'm introducing actions, only focus or evade. Still no stress, but red maneuvers mean no actions. They will also be on a team, so more ships.

With a large battle, I would do respawning, possibly have them respawning as a weaker ship (academy/epsilon pilot or bandit/prototype). I suggest have an objective, like protect the falcon or transport so it isn't just a free for all and it will have an end. (Have the objective ship do 1 straight to get off the board)

Super glue solvent for when those little fingers get stuck together. Is this party for the dads or the kids? Do these group of kids normally play this game? If they don't this may not turn out so well, especially if only one or two of them play and the rest are going to lose badly.

I suggest you hire a clown and have 5-6 nerf bats handy. It works every time.

I seriously LOL'd at the nerf bat thing... and then it reminded me. Fun-noodles cut in 2 or 3 pieces make GREAT lightsabers (duct tape the end). I fully expect a bunch of 10 year olds to want to release some energy somehow, boardgames can only last for so long...

We did this at my son's party when he turned 10. It was a big hit (literally).

I would go with one ship each, keep track of kills and respawn suggestion. Much more likely to keep each kid engaged that way.

If you're still open to suggestions, I'd like to add that you do a quick hands-on tutorial on movement. Set each kid up with a ship that has an asteroid lined up directly in front of him 4 ship lengths ahead and just have them maneuver to the opposite side of the asteroid, then fly back to starting position. No dials, just templates.

In the interest of keeping the kids working together instead of being adversarial, how about you have a large ship (Lambda, Falcon, Decimator, even a huge ship) have cargo that the kids need to recover (maybe save a character from the films) by neutralizing the ship (i.e. just get it down to 0 hull). Start the large ship 1/4 from one end of the game space and it has to try and leave off the opposite side of the board. Maybe have a pair of ties, tie f/o's or Z's to offer them some mild resistance that can be flown by some of the dads. The kids of course would all start at the far edge opposite the escape route. I would add two or three asteroids in the path of the large ship, so it's not a straight run to the other side.

Also to speed things up, to maintain interest, I'd omit dials entirely, allowing every ship except the large ship to have all basic maneuvers available to them (no barrel rolls, boosts, talon rolls, S-loops--K-turns are OK).

It might be extra work, but it would be good to offer the kids to choose from three custom kinds of pilots: 1) High PS, 1 shield, 3 Hull, 2) Low PS, 3 shields, 4 Hull, 3) Mid PS, 2 shield, 3 Hull. Each kids ship has 3 attack & 3 agility. No actions, no upgrades. You could print out the stats for 4 on a sheet & cut them out. And each kid can choose whichever model they want since they're all going to behave the same anyways.

Maybe game 2 can be teams, 3 on 3 with re-spawns. First kid to make Ace (5 kills) wins.

Kids are smarter than we give them credit for; they probably can handle as much as we can in X-wing.

Do they know it's a miniatures game? Could you get away with just flying the bases around?