No.

Yes.

Darth Vader and Kylo Ren in the Lambda-class!

Agent Kallus and General Hux in the Upsilon-class!

Poe Dameron flying wingman in a T-70 to Shara Bey's ARC-170!

Dude, why? Those are just wrong.

It bothers me as well. I actually haven't used any of the TFA era stuff yet. Now that HotR is out, I feel like there are options for Resistance lists. I have a First Order list I have been wanting to try. 3 fo and 2 sf, all generics. It will go down in glorious flames.

I have tried to rationalize mixing the various timelines by thinking of the named pilots as archetypes, instead of the actual pilots, but it still feels wtong.

Nope. Quite the contrary, I think it is only FANTASTIC when all the good guys are allowed team together across timelines. This will FINALLY allow us ultimate victory.

While I understand why FFG allows mirror matches in competitive play, I've always felt it detracted a little from the classic Star Wars experience.

If I see the same pilot on the other side of the table, I usually call him out for being a clone/impostor and do my best to prove it.

I like doing it and coming up with stupid reasons for thematicness. Of course that doesn't quite work with characters, but those are either imposters or people who are recognized as as good as whoever they are.

Resistance flying with normal Rebels is easy, since they take whatever ships they can anyways and many Resistance members will use their own ships. So you have the weird guys who just prefer their old T-65, Y-Wings and A-Wings. New Republic ships are just prototypes that never made mass production.

When the First Order flies with imperial ships thats them picking up a group of imperial fanatics from outside their territory, who would conceivably pose as their heroes. Or if it is Defenders or Punishers they fly with its them retrieving imperial research projects.

Scum makes really no trouble with the imposter idea.

Doesn't bother me in the slightest.

I'm into Star Wars first and foremost and this and other FFG games only because of my love for that Universe.

However when it comes to having models on the table they're just that to me...game pieces. I'm never actually imaging a Star Wars battle at the time and so what part of the Star Wars Universe those game pieces come from doesn't even enter my head.

I do prefer a squad that 'feels' like it makes sense.

A triple aces list where you've got three different imperial aces in three different craft from three different eras (say, a TIE/fo, a TIE advanced prototype, and a late-series TIE defender) feels odd. You're supposed to be a disciplined military, not a classic car rally.

I certainly don't like mixing eras in my squads. For that matter, I tend to fly "Epsilon Squadron" - literally, Leader, Ace & Pilot x 4. I quite like trying to make pure "squadron" lists, and in some ways I wish there was a mechanic to support it.

I agree with Ficklegreendice that gameplay will always, ultimately, trump background, but the gameplay is mutable - the rules are what FFG says it is.

If they wanted "characterful" lists to be a big thing, they have the means to make it happen; some sort of title or "squadron upgrade" or whatever that rewards you taking the canonical composition of a squadron (you can, for example, do a rather nice 100 point list which is all the named members of Black Squadron, including Vader, which is a very nice thematic opposition for a Luke, Wedge, Biggs, 'trench run' squad).

I doubt they'll do it. They clearly want individual characters to sort-of-feel-right, but ultimately they have no intention to restrict who you can take with what 'era' (otherwise Finn and Kylo Ren would be Resistance and First Order only rather than just Rebel and Empire only).

Yeah, a little bit. But in the end it doesn't really matter. It's fun to play bad fanfiction sometimes.

Just wait til you can fly Assaj (died during the Clone Wars) alongside the Quadjumper...

A triple aces list where you've got three different imperial aces in three different craft from three different eras (say, a TIE/fo, a TIE advanced prototype, and a late-series TIE defender) feels odd. You're supposed to be a disciplined military, not a classic car rally.

The "classic car rally" is a good way to put it, though mixing up elite aces feels a little less odd to me than some totally random-seeming combination - aces could maybe justify teaming up for a special mission or something.

My thing is that I rarely play Rebels, in part because a blue-on-blue Rebel vs Rebel match seems weird to me. Imperial vs Imperial is more justifiable (some kind or rogue faction or military coup within the Empire) and scum vs scum is easy (turf war, mercenary action, etc.) but Rebels don't seem like they'd kill each other.

In the same vein, I like generic pilots. My Star Wars gaming background is mostly RPGs, and there, the famous characters like Han and Vader rarely appear, the players have their own characters. In X-Wing , generics fill that role of the blank slate who could be anyone, and so could be a character I could feel more like he/she is "mine" than one of the big names. Unfortunately there are not many competitive lists that have generics as anything but filler.

The "classic car rally" is a good way to put it, though mixing up elite aces feels a little less odd to me than some totally random-seeming combination - aces could maybe justify teaming up for a special mission or something.

I guess. But it still feels bizarre.

In the same vein, I like generic pilots. My Star Wars gaming background is mostly RPGs, and there, the famous characters like Han and Vader rarely appear, the players have their own characters. In X-Wing , generics fill that role of the blank slate who could be anyone, and so could be a character I could feel more like he/she is "mine" than one of the big names. Unfortunately there are not many competitive lists that have generics as anything but filler.

One reason I like TIE/fo fighters - they're all nameless serial numbers like "Epsilon Ace". I kind of wish they'd kept that up for the TIE/sf.

It's also another reason to like Heroes of the Aturi Cluster. Being able to really customise your 'character' is nice.

The "classic car rally" is a good way to put it, though mixing up elite aces feels a little less odd to me than some totally random-seeming combination - aces could maybe justify teaming up for a special mission or something.

I guess. But it still feels bizarre.

In the same vein, I like generic pilots. My Star Wars gaming background is mostly RPGs, and there, the famous characters like Han and Vader rarely appear, the players have their own characters. In X-Wing , generics fill that role of the blank slate who could be anyone, and so could be a character I could feel more like he/she is "mine" than one of the big names. Unfortunately there are not many competitive lists that have generics as anything but filler.

One reason I like TIE/fo fighters - they're all nameless serial numbers like "Epsilon Ace". I kind of wish they'd kept that up for the TIE/sf.

It's also another reason to like Heroes of the Aturi Cluster. Being able to really customise your 'character' is nice.

However call signs are not unique, if a Backdraft got prematurely retired, it's very possible someone else would be assigned the call sign.

I do prefer a squad that 'feels' like it makes sense.

A triple aces list where you've got three different imperial aces in three different craft from three different eras (say, a TIE/fo, a TIE advanced prototype, and a late-series TIE defender) feels odd. You're supposed to be a disciplined military, not a classic car rally.

I certainly don't like mixing eras in my squads. For that matter, I tend to fly "Epsilon Squadron" - literally, Leader, Ace & Pilot x 4. I quite like trying to make pure "squadron" lists, and in some ways I wish there was a mechanic to support it.

I agree with Ficklegreendice that gameplay will always, ultimately, trump background, but the gameplay is mutable - the rules are what FFG says it is.

If they wanted "characterful" lists to be a big thing, they have the means to make it happen; some sort of title or "squadron upgrade" or whatever that rewards you taking the canonical composition of a squadron (you can, for example, do a rather nice 100 point list which is all the named members of Black Squadron, including Vader, which is a very nice thematic opposition for a Luke, Wedge, Biggs, 'trench run' squad).

I doubt they'll do it. They clearly want individual characters to sort-of-feel-right, but ultimately they have no intention to restrict who you can take with what 'era' (otherwise Finn and Kylo Ren would be Resistance and First Order only rather than just Rebel and Empire only).

I am totally the same way. For Imperials, I have to have some kind of symmetry on my squad, 3 ship lists can be 1+2, but 3 different ships are so hard for me to take.

For mixing eras, I made up a while headcannon about how TIE/fos evolved from stock TIE/lns, and called TIE/fos mixed with civil war era ships early field modifications that would eventually be codified as the FO production model.

Q: Will the little plastic spaceships fly around the board and go 'pew pew' at each other?

A: If yes, I play them.

I first got into Star Wars: W-Wing because it was ' Star Wars '. It was the theme that got me into. I've stayed with it though Wave IX but yet it does feel a bit weird.

It is all what we are into. For me I enjoy the Star Wars universe but haven't gotten into the book or comics so much. So I wouldn't even know about most of the people crossing time lines, but the ship... well yes it's a little weird. I could see others more immersed caring more and some who just play any game named Star Wars regardless of which ships or character.

The people who do care about theme, however, are 'mostly' the ones who drive the IP sales. It would be interested to see if interest level keeps up. I suppose mostly it will depend on the interest and response to the movies.

I like Sabine's TIE, but that's because I saw the episode and liked it. I don't really care for the Bat-Wing or the Quad-Jumper with its 1.5 screen time. I'm not sure why the director needed a new TIE so we'll see.

Weird? Yep! Will I limit mixing them. Of course. Will I be as 'line in the sand' as others. Probably not but it just doesn't fee the same does it.

I started playing X-Wing because I love Star Wars. For me, it was all about playing thematic battles. I always asked my opponent which faction he wanted to play and then take the other one. I was always trying to come up with thematic squadrons. I never forced it on my opponent, so he could fly whatever he wanted, it has always been a self imposed restriction. Then I started to play a little bit more seriously in tournaments, and while I still restricted myself to not play the netlists and tried to come up with my own list, I started to mix and match. Gradually, the game lost more and more of its charm, it didn't felt like a Star Wars game anymore. Sure, the miniatures was representing them, but I started to look at all the ships for their stats and not the model. It was just some game pieces with stats moving around on a board that could be from any franchise. It was not the game I fell in love with.

So recently, I got back to only playing thematic list, Resistance and First Order more specifically. I won't mix timelines, so no Kanan flying with Rey. The only exception is the astromechs because except for R2 and BB-8, I don't really know them and I see them as an extension of the ships. What I found is that the game got its magic back. I feel like I'm playing a Star Wars game again. I just tried out a Poe, Snap and Jess team the other night and it was a lot of fun, I could see the pilots again, I felt like it was a T-70 X-Wing I was using. Not sure what will happen in the next tournaments, probably won't perform as well as before, but I'm having a blast again moving plastic ship and that is all that matters.

We've got a 120 points team tournament coming up in a few weeks. I'm considering flying this:

I haven't bought any fo ships so not an issue for me I've been very unimpressed by the fo sf and upsilon.

But if I were to fly them together I'd repaint them first the fo colour scheme is crap.

I have no problem with mixing, at all. Then again, I'm not sold on the sequel storyline at all. So, I can just look at Rey as an alternate name for Jaina Solo, Kylo as either Jacen or some Inquisitor or something. Poe is just some really good pilot. T-70s are just a New Republic era update of the X-wing. The First Order simply represents a unique, elite unit within the Empire, with slight upgrades to maneuvering thrusters and defense system (and a TIE variant seen nowhere else). We already have alternate paint schemes in the Empire. The First Order just offers a large body of ships using the same scheme.

If Ep. VII and/or IX prove better than VII, I might rethink this. For now, though, in my gaming, I don't count VII as having any impact.

No real problem with it. It's not like its just Biggs. I mean, of the 14 unique pilots available in the game's initial release, 6 died in the Battle of Yavin. Starfighter pilots just don't generally have appreciable lifespans for cannon encounters to function in the game.

I wanted to go for X-Wing for quite a long time. I have finally made my decision to join this fine community of gentlemen right before I went to The Force Awakens midnight premiere and this "moment of truth" sticked so I started collecting Resistance. After some time I got bored with only flying T-70s so I bought some Scum and even very few Imperials (actually, I bought Vader to join forces with Boba). But still, I don't mix timelines. I don't even play Rebels (my wife does). When I go to a tournament I go with either Resistance or Scum. Now I consider to sell the Scum and only play Resistence and the two bad guys for Empire (if I want to go OT).

I am pretty uncomfortable with the idea of mixing timelines. The only Force Awakens era expansion I have bought is the new core set, and I just swapped out the damage deck and put it in the game closet with Settlers of Catan and Monopoly. It just doesn't belong with the rest of my collection.

I don't mind mixing the timelines at all. I would like to try out a thematic list sometime, but I usually reserve that for the nights that we play furball. I will usually run Vader and my son runs Luke using the double sided cards we received after participating in a Father's Day event.

Well, as I haven't bought any Resistance or First Order vessels yet I don't feel weird. That said, Biggs and Porkin's makes me feel kinda weird as to me, they are dead characters.

That said in a way Corran would be out of place if Darth Vader and Palpatine are still in play. so *shrugs*

I personally prefer a narrative over gameplay.