Suppose there was an X-Wing 2.0

By JoeyBriefcase, in X-Wing

Have you given any thought how much upgrades and component overall would become obsolete?

How much stuff would need to be in this 2.0 box? Unless we would have to buy dunno some faction specific new pilot boxes.

That would be nightmare for veteran player - all this cards unusable and forcing them to rebuy? That is half the playerbase gone....

All I want is new versions of old pilot/crew/upgrade cards, updated with rebalanced stats/abilities/costs, etc.

The game's probably in the best place it's ever been, but some of the cards are really showing their age (basically, most things from Wave 5 and older.)

Even little things, like one additional hull for YT-2400s, better versions of crew cards for important characters like Luke and Leia, or better maneuver dials, or a range 1-3 limit for Palpatine.

People argue that fans will feel gouged at having to buy new 'fluff' (i.e., expansions without models) to stay competitive, but we basically already are; Imperial Veterans was basically a mandatory buy for Defenders.

Besides, the game really needs to be allowed to evolve. If we take the limiters off, this could become the most successful miniatures game since Warhammer.

Edited by StriderZessei

People argue that fans will feel gouged at having to buy new 'fluff' (i.e., expansions without models) to stay competitive, but we basically already are; Imperial Veterans was basically a mandatory buy for Defenders.

Imperial Veterans is an expansion with models; you don't need to buy the original models. I prefer to buy these expansions rather than doubling up on stand alone packs. Thanks to veterans and the standalone packs I have two defenders and two bombers and a nice variety of cards and model variations to chose from.

The only issue I have with X-wing is having to buy ships you'll never play just to get a card. Autothrusters only in the Star Viper, for example, is particularly irksome for those of us who just want to buy into one faction.

Armada is getting a cardboard expansion, it's looking great, and is why I bought into Armada recently. If these expansions are done right they can work well.

I like the pilots tied to the ship. Here are my big ones that I would like to see in 2.0:

1) Separate large ship maneuver templates. This would give the larger ships a different "feel" to them.

2) Different category of dice, separated by sides. (So each category of dice would have different critical/hit/focus/blank ratios or evade/focus/blank.) So each ship would get 2 attack and 2 defense stats. The first one picks the category of dice, the second one picks the number of dice rolled.

3) Transparent decals overlays for current cards. This would allow the correction and update of cards in the game. (Adding an Elite on Eaden Vrill and Hobbies please!!)

4) Conditions cards. Start over and do it right instead of an after thought add on.

5) I like the squadron idea.

With all the fixes being requested for the game's main ship, it made me wonder if now would be the time for a so-called X-Wing 2.0. I think there are many advantages to a cardboard expansion, especially now that the devs can assess the balance in one Fel swoop now that everything's on the table. The waves are running out of ships, and every new ship doesn't seem to add much more variety with the sheer number ships there are now. Your B-wing and G1-A seem very much alike, your TIE/fos and A-Wings, and every ship is supposed to point and shoot very much the same. If such an expansion was released, I think there could be many benefits in regards to clearing "fix" clutter. We have dozens of cards that change how one specific ship is to behave and in some cases you have to buy the cards that make them better (Imperial and Rebel Aces, Integrated Astromech, Most Wanted Firespray). I'm not saying they shouldn't have done it, but I think now would be a great time to streamline all of the unique ship abilities, tweak point costs, revitalize ships archetypes, and maybe introduce new widespread mechanics. I would gladly pay for $30 bucks of cardboard as long as its a one time deal, and the game has changed for the better.

Here are some things that I hope to see if X-Wing 2.0 comes to fruition.

1. Pilots cards independent of the ship.

Tycho Celchu flew X-Wings and A-Wings, so why not have 2 listed point costs depending on what he's flying? This promotes your list building to really consider not just what, but who you are using in your squad since there can only be one Tycho Celchu.

2. Unique Squadron Titles

These are titles like Rogue Squadron or Phoenix Squadron that can only be applied to a squad that follows a certain formula. Your 3 X-Wings consisting of Luke, Biggs, and Porkins could be granted the Red Squadron title, giving them a unique buff since you went through the trouble of bringing them all together in a 100 point list.

3.Increased weight for ship states

I love the constant internal math associated with considering your moves and actions. Am I in arc or out? Am I in range 1 and stressed? Or am I facing down 2-3 ships clustered together? Ion and Stress are good limiters, but I feel like there should be one more element more common than a crit but less devastating.

Now that you've hear my case, what would you like to see in a supposed X-Wing 2.0 cardboard expansion?

1) no, that just sounds painful, and more useless cards to keep track of. I really feel at this point adding pilots to the T-65 is not what the game needs anyway. (we're getting some anyway with rogue one no doubt, so i'll just have to endure with my opinion). Also that leads to all sorts of other crazy shenanigans, I.E. Vader in a Defender, and what do you do with big ships like the falcon?

2) Sounds like a good idea that could be included in a campaign box...

3) you have heard of tractor beam right? It really does fit the bill of being a good limiter, reducing agility and Barrel rolling/boosting a small ship. Doesn't break the game but is allot of fun to pull off.

I don't get why there's a notion that we need a 2.0. Competitively speaking, there's always going to be ships that people flock to create a "meta", and just because your flavor of the month has been out for awhile (mine has, oh where art thou B-wings?) does not mean the game needs a complete overhaul. If something gets to broken out of control (triple toilet seats) FFG takes care of it. This doesn't instantly make contracted scout bad, you just now have to build the ship a little different. Same with the syck. It's been underperforming since it's release, and FFG is testing the waters with a buff to the title. The timing chart everyone was complaining about was really really really simple to break down.

Casually speaking the game is doing really well, minus a dedicated campaign box, but we have homebrew HOTAC, so there is that. The only part i would overhaul would be Epic rules, and I would have the capital ships shoot at the same time the fighters did for time saving purposes (they would still go last, just last at their pilot skill, not the very last thing to shoot).

Personally the games simplified mechanics are a plus. I know what the TIE striker does already with an automatic boost action. I know what the boost action is because I have flown A-wings before. However the TIE striker uses the boost action differently than the A-wing, but I still have a general Idea of how it works. It's allot better than "from my codex I gain blah blah blah blah blah" which I then have to read about on page 23, in section b, which simply says I can "roll one extra attack dice." (Not that 40k/bolt action isn't fun, but it's nice not to have to spend half of the play time digging through a book to look up that one rule.)

The game will need a 2.0 at some point. It's only 4 years old and it's already a creaking, groaning mess of patches, fixes and erratas. As time goes on the problem will only get worse, not better.

Ideally, I'd like to see a couple of core things adopted:

1 - Separate damage from accuracy. At this point in time, all accurate attacks deal lots of damage, and all inaccurate attacks deal very little damage. If we introduced special ordnance dice, or simply broke the attack action down into rolling 'to hit' and then rolling 'to damage' using separate stats, we open up a LOT more design space. We can actually have torpedoes that are easy to evade but hit like a truck, or missiles which are hard to evade but do little or no damage. And since there are two steps to damage an opponent, we don't need to try and come up with a thousand different ways to modify that single attack roll or defence roll. It's seriously getting ridiculous at the moment, having to add dice, re-roll dice, flip dice, convert dice, cancel dice, add tokens, remove tokens, ignore tokens, make tokens have secondary effects...

And 2 - Increase the points value of everything. There are many instances where a ship or upgrade is underpriced at X, but overpriced at X+1. If we doubled all prices then we add more pricing granularity and can more accurately price things.

There's other things I'd like to see: Move away from cards and have printed rosters/rosters on an app. Move away from custom dice and just use the humble D6. Totally remove the 'standard format' game from the equation, and so on. But they are purely personal preference. Adding another step to the attack sequence by separating accuracy from damage is just plain good for the game, as is increasing all points values across the board.

1 - Separate damage from accuracy. At this point in time, all accurate attacks deal lots of damage, and all inaccurate attacks deal very little damage. If we introduced special ordnance dice, or simply broke the attack action down into rolling 'to hit' and then rolling 'to damage' using separate stats, we open up a LOT more design space. We can actually have torpedoes that are easy to evade but hit like a truck, or missiles which are hard to evade but do little or no damage. And since there are two steps to damage an opponent, we don't need to try and come up with a thousand different ways to modify that single attack roll or defence roll. It's seriously getting ridiculous at the moment, having to add dice, re-roll dice, flip dice, convert dice, cancel dice, add tokens, remove tokens, ignore tokens, make tokens have secondary effects...

This would also make the game more like the Star Wars films for me.

With all the fixes being requested for the game's main ship, it made me wonder if now would be the time for a so-called X-Wing 2.0. I think there are many advantages to a cardboard expansion, especially now that the devs can assess the balance in one Fel swoop now that everything's on the table.

Why is there this persistent leap of logic that it'd be some sort of conversation kit?

2.0 is a reset: you go back to two ships and you build up again. They're not going to do a huge cardboard patch kit: in terms of profit versus design work it simply can't compete with continuing to release new ships normally.

The game will need a 2.0 at some point. It's only 4 years old and it's already a creaking, groaning mess of patches, fixes and erratas. As time goes on the problem will only get worse, not better.

I think it's far more likely they'll make X-Wing until it stops selling then make something new.
Armada is getting a cardboard expansion, it's looking great, and is why I bought into Armada recently. If these expansions are done right they can work well.

Armada is getting a book expansion: it's a campaign book with some tokens and cards included.

1. Pilots cards independent of the ship.

Tycho Celchu flew X-Wings and A-Wings, so why not have 2 listed point costs depending on what he's flying? This promotes your list building to really consider not just what, but who you are using in your squad since there can only be one Tycho Celchu.

This is another thing that keeps coming up: FFG tested this idea when they designed the game in the first place and discarded it. It forces every ability to be balanced for every ship and every pilot to compete with every other pilot. Allowing Vader to fly anything would simply kill off the other PS9 pilots.

Edited by Blue Five

This is another thing that keeps coming up: FFG tested this idea when they designed the game in the first place and discarded it. It forces every ability to be balanced for every ship and every pilot to compete with every other pilot. Allowing Vader to fly anything would simply kill off the other PS9 pilots.

There are some extremely good pilots in crappy ships out there. Lt. Blount in a TLT Y-Wing (or imagine the Ghost!), Nera Dantels in a K-Wing, Kanan in an E-Wing, N'Dru in the Punishing One, Jake Farrell in the Outrider, there are just too many exploits without rewriting the whole game.

Edited by Jadotch

A rules revision would be fine (Game workshop does it quite often). But what you are suggesting is a new game that requires new miniatures and accessories. Not being able to use your previous miniatures will be a no-go. Think that most of the potential customers are already in and will not start over a "new game" filling the same role.

The current model of upgrading ships adding cards to an expansion is actually helpful if you ask me (it will be even more helpful if you could get this without the ship trough official channels though)

There's too much dice modification now, but you want to add a whole other round of dice rolling to the game? Like that's not going to add even more modification?

I would separate pilots from ships, but still limit most pilots to having one or two ships that they could fly. Example: Tycho Celchu's pilot card would allow him to fly an A-Wing or an X-Wing. Some pilots, like Keyan and Maarek, would be able to fly many ships, maybe all of a certain size.

Then I would use the space on the ship cards to give some or all ships their own inherent ability, to make each of them fly and play differently. Example: T-65 X-Wings would have the "Integrated Astromech" printed on their ship card as an ability that wouldn't use up their modification slot. T-70's would have something else but could take Integrated Astromech as a mod.

Currently, title cards have devolved from being unique names of ships, to ways for the designers to patch ship to make them better. In X-Wing 2.0, Ships could be assigned a Configuration card to further separate different models of that particular ship. The D and X7 Defender models are an example. Titles would be reserved for actual titles, like "Millenium Falcon" and so on. I wouldn't be opposed to Squadron cards, either, which are like generic titles that give ships membership in famous squadrons, like Rogue Squadron.

Finally, I'd like to tweak some of the base rules a bit, which I may post after I've fed my 5-month old.

Edited by Mike_Evans

I really dont want new rules ever 4 yrs that just will get out of hand

But you play GW games they do new rules every couple of years.

I really dont want new rules ever 4 yrs that just will get out of hand

But you play GW games they do new rules every couple of years.

And they've got out of hand.

I really dont want new rules ever 4 yrs that just will get out of hand

But you play GW games they do new rules every couple of years.

And they've got out of hand.

40k's borderline unplayable at the moment it's a slow tedious grind, I can get 4-5 games of x-wing in the time it takes to play one game of 40k.

I really dont want new rules ever 4 yrs that just will get out of hand

But you play GW games they do new rules every couple of years.

And they've got out of hand.

That's more a result of them continuously increasing their prices driving people away, which in turn made them kill warhammer fantasy.

I'm hopeful an X-Wing 2.0 will come eventually (and be good), but given FFG's love of nickle and dimming I'd be surprised if it did.

Any X-Wing 2.0 that required me to buy the ships again would be a non-starter for me.

This. I don't even want to buy the cards again. Rules overhaul is the furthest I would ever be willing to accept. That being said, I think it is doing fine now. I like warhammer, but plz don't turn this game into warhammer.

Edited by Gibbilo

Not really sure how you are shoe horning a GW price complaint in when the issue is the relationship between rules complexity and the frequency and method of making a new edition.

I am glad you did though because at least it is out of the way now.

I think X Wing could support an incremental step. Maintain the core values of the rules so most resources will remain usable at switchover, bring together FAQ and clarifications into a single release.

Take the opportunity to amend the Torpedoes/Missiles to create a noticeable game difference.

Can include rulebook, replacement cards and some new cards to make it a worthwhile release.

With all the fixes being requested for the game's main ship, it made me wonder if now would be the time for a so-called X-Wing 2.0. I think there are many advantages to a cardboard expansion, especially now that the devs can assess the balance in one Fel swoop now that everything's on the table.

Why is there this persistent leap of logic that it'd be some sort of conversation kit?

2.0 is a reset: you go back to two ships and you build up again. They're not going to do a huge cardboard patch kit: in terms of profit versus design work it simply can't compete with continuing to release new ships normally.

The game will need a 2.0 at some point. It's only 4 years old and it's already a creaking, groaning mess of patches, fixes and erratas. As time goes on the problem will only get worse, not better.

I think it's far more likely they'll make X-Wing until it stops selling then make something new.

Armada is getting a cardboard expansion, it's looking great, and is why I bought into Armada recently. If these expansions are done right they can work well.

Armada is getting a book expansion: it's a campaign book with some tokens and cards included.

1. Pilots cards independent of the ship.

Tycho Celchu flew X-Wings and A-Wings, so why not have 2 listed point costs depending on what he's flying? This promotes your list building to really consider not just what, but who you are using in your squad since there can only be one Tycho Celchu.

This is another thing that keeps coming up: FFG tested this idea when they designed the game in the first place and discarded it. It forces every ability to be balanced for every ship and every pilot to compete with every other pilot. Allowing Vader to fly anything would simply kill off the other PS9 pilots.

Yeah but i dont want every pilot to fly every ship. Vader only flew the Advanced right? Tycho and Keyan spent time in X-Wings, but they wouldn't ve found in the Falcon or in E-Wings.

This level of detail isn't how you start a system redesign.

I'd be looking at a few key points personally:

1: PROPER TEMPLATING AND KEYWORDING. Oh my goodness, how many things this would fix. MTG is not a good example of many things, but it is (these days) a good example of how a bunch of disparate designers can use a well-written card-templating system to design properly inter-compatible game elements without need to make a mess of language and use a bunch of different ways of saying the same thing to have subtly different meanings. I'm all for keeping the game conversational, but when tokens can be assigned, given, and passed, and removed and discarded, and these all mean the same thing (except when they don't), the game needs some more formalised writing rules. It could also really benefit from 'Card Y gets X' type upgrades, to allow the easier addition of powers and upgrading of upgrades which could make certaint hings (though I've had these thoughts before, no specific ones spring to mind right now) easier to use.

2: More points flexibility - make everything double or even triple cost, to allow for finer-grained distinctions between costs, and maybe avoid some of the awkwardness of things with different power levels costing the same because the next price up would be too much for one, and the next price down would be too little for the other.

3: Different attack dice - the current ones, and a high-accuracy low-damage one, and a low-accuracy high-damage one, at the very least, so that Torps can have a different character from Missiles, and TLTs can be not-broken.

4: Some reduction in defence variance, probably by mixing agility with armour in some way.

5: I actually agree with making PTL a default. People think it's crazy, but... PTL is so key to the arc dodging game, that you couldn't remove it, but as soon as you keep it in the game, it becomes amazing for basically everyone who can handle the stress, because multiple actions are how you win. So making it a default option means you don't have to spend your EPT slot on it, which makes building suddenly a LOT less restrictive.

Balancing pilots to be portable between ships is a design/balance NIGHTMARE. It shuts down design space to a ludicrous degree, because you've got to be so incredibly careful about how pilot abilities interact with ships. E.g. Omega Leader is only remotely balanced because he's in a 2-attack low-HP ship. Give him the option of upgrading to a bigger hit point value and particularly a bigger attack value and he suddenly goes from annoying-but-manageable to AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHH. And that's just one single case.

Edited by thespaceinvader

Armor? Yes.

Which means Armor piercing on certain ships.

I love the idea of armor and armor piercing, or having broken armor. It absorbs 1 hit every attack but it is rarely found on ships.

So a reinforce action...?

Armor? Yes.

Which means Armor piercing on certain ships.

I love the idea of armor and armor piercing, or having broken armor. It absorbs 1 hit every attack but it is rarely found on ships.

So a reinforce action...?

Ha,yeah, i suppose thats something we've got. But it doesnt work as well for the concept of armor piercing

Armor? Yes.

Which means Armor piercing on certain ships.

I love the idea of armor and armor piercing, or having broken armor. It absorbs 1 hit every attack but it is rarely found on ships.

So a reinforce action...?

Ha,yeah, i suppose thats something we've got. But it doesnt work as well for the concept of armor piercing

I do think that the reinforce action has some potential to be used outside of huge ships though. I would actually like to see it on a punisher, that way you'd actually be able to potentially get off all that ordnance they are capable of carrying.

Sorry but I vote against having pilots separate from ships. I'd rather have what FFG is currently doing (i.e. Maarek in Defender, Maarek in TIE Advanced, etc.) because I really don't want to see Biggs flying the Falcon or Wedge in the Ghost. Having them separate also opens the door for way more broken combos since it would be much more difficult to playtest them all properly.

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Nobody's forcing you to participate. :).

yep...

Was just answering the OP's question will my grumpy imperial kitty.