Brand noob. I bought the red starter kit plus a few extras to get going including the blue Heroes of the Resistance not realizing the color meant anything.

Are the rules different in blue?

Ion tokens: HotR rules say that a large ship isn't affected by ion tokens until it has two, then effects are as normal. Red rulebook doesn't mention ion tokens. What are the effects?

Boost: Some upgrade cards and pilot cards in HotR allow for a 'boost'. Red rulebook doesn't mention boost.

Action icon: T-70 pilots have an Action icon not mentioned on the Red rulebook. It is three parallel arrows, with the two ends ons turning 90 degrees and the center one going straight. What is it?

Is there a download with all the rules together in one place?

Upgrade cards: I realize this may be a personal preference question but can action cards be stored together or should they stay with their own ships? Any card can go with any ship as long as it has the appropriate icon, no?

I am sure I will have more questions, thanks.

Steve

So in short there is no difference rule wise between the red and blue sets. The blue core set came out along with the Force Awakens film and added the Resistance and First Order factions plus characters from the movie. However, for X-Wing purposes Resistance is considered part of the Rebel faction and First Order is Imperial and you can mix them as you wish.

The red rulebook you have is what originally came in the core set and when it was released it was the entirety of the game. There have been all kinds of things added in the years since that may be missing from that but the basic rules in there are still valid. I would recommend you go download the Force Awakens Learn to Play and Rules Reference as well as the most recent FAQ. They are easily available on the product page as PDFs. I would look through them but don't like try and memorize it all right away, just refer to them as questions arise it will answer almost anything you might need.

As to your questions here though:

Ion tokens cause a ship to become "Ionized" when a ship is ionized, at the next planning stage it does not get a dial assigned to it and when it activates it must do a white 1 straight. Then it removes all Ion tokens no matter how many it has. Small ships are ionized by a single token. Large ships need 2 to become ionized. A large ship with 1 Ion must keep it until it becomes fully ionized.

Boost is an action that let's you reposition a ship after it moves. To boost you choose a 1 straight or either 1 bank and then move the ship the same as if you were doing a maneuver. However, unlike a maneuver a boost cannot overlap a ship or an obstacle and cannot land off the board. If you attempt a boost and it won't fit in the direction you tried you have to take it back and then you can either try and boost another way or do a different action entirely.

The three arrow symbol you describe is the action symbol for boost.

Any upgrade can go on any ship that has the matching icon normally. Some will specify a restriction such as "Rebel only" or in some cases ARE restricted to a single ship, these are almost always Titles though like "Millennium Falcon" so store your cards as you like for your convenience.

2 minutes ago, sharrrp said:

So in short there is no difference rule wise between the red and blue sets.

This is completely wrong. The blue core set has a newer and more up to date rule book than the red set, but the blue set book is also freely available online.

There should be a rules inset in HotR which explains what ion tokens and boost are - either in the book, or on a rules explanation card (cream coloured front and picture of the trench run on the back).

As regards cards, most people store them by type I think. It's not helpful to have them stored according to the ship they came with, because they're almost always applicable to other ships as well (the exception being title cards). Personally I store them by type then cost then alpabetical (i.e. all the mods together, ordered by cost, and all the 1-cost mods ordered a to z) for ease of finding when I need them.

@sharrrp needs a fact check.

@player57090 Do yourself a favor and download the newest Rules Reference and FAQ from FFG's main X-wing page. These free PDF's are the best thing you can read as a new player. If you still have questions after reading those documents, the people in this Forum are happy to help. Sometimes people in the forum get it wrong. (Even me, and I'm the smartest guy in the room. )

Up to date rules can be found here:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/x-wing/

Scroll down to and expand 'Support'

Boost and Ion and other such effects were introduced in new ship expansion packs. The rules for any new effect in the game are included in the expansion packs they are introduced in, but are also now covered in the Rules Reference and FAQ docs, available from the link above.

Perhaps I should clarify when I said there was no real difference I meant that the information in the book was still valid not that it was still comprehensive.

Just now, sharrrp said:

Perhaps I should clarify when I said there was no real difference I meant that the information in the book was still valid not that it was still comprehensive.

You're wrong about that. A number of key rules have been changed a great deal between the rule books. There's a lot of the red rulebook that IS invalid.

Just now, thespaceinvader said:

You're wrong about that. A number of key rules have been changed a great deal between the rule books. There's a lot of the red rulebook that IS invalid.

Okay if you say so I admit I haven't actually looked at the Red Rule book in ages but I don't remember picking up the blue and thinking well this is way different but maybe so.

At any rate I do recommend as I and others both said download the updated one and the FAQ and all that.

It's not massively different, but the differences that do exist are important - for instance the change in the timing of the Check Pilot Stress step, which has a big impact on how a wide range of cards work.

I'll back Sharrrp to an extent and say that at the end of the day the rules for both SHOULD be the same. It's just that the Blue Core Set's rules have been put out after a LOT of other material has been released and thus includes things like Ion Tokens (rule card wave 1 plus later notes due to large ships) and Boost (rule card in wave 2) while when the Red box came out that was it so there was no need to cover anything that wasn't in the box.

If they haven't done so already FFG really should be putting the same (new) rulebook in BOTH boxes as playing with either in a tournament will be using the same rule. While they're at it they should also just print the newer damage deck for both boxes when they next reprint the original core.