So going back to an old format I came up with to allow some allies and give a soft split of the sub-factions as well as give scum their own separate sub-faction in a way. Here is a format I am proposing. In this version I have done away with the mandatory splitting of the primary factions so you could take any old tournament list and updated the clarification on mercenaries with new multi-faction restricted upgrades and cross faction personas.

As X-wing you have your 3 Primary factions, each primary faction has 2 sub-factions.

• Rebels
  • Rebel Alliance
  • Resistance
• Imperials
  • Galactic Empire
  • 1st Order
• Scum
  • Scum & Villainy
    • Mercenaries * (more to follow)

When making a list you may pick either one Primary Faction , or one Rebel or Imperial sub-faction and ally them with a Scum sub-faction. The allied Scum sub-faction is known as mercenaries.

When making an allied sub-faction list all of the regular list building restrictions apply with the exception that instead of limited to a single primary faction you are limited to your chosen sub-faction and scum mercenaries. You available allied sub-faction areas follows:

• Rebel Alliance w/ Scum Mercenaries
• Resistance w/ Scum Mercenaries
• Galactic Empire w/ Scum Mercenaries
• 1st Order w/ Scum Mercenaries

Allied Faction list building

In addition there is a limit to the number of points you can spend on scum which will always make most of your list coming from your chosen subfaction. This is your ally point limit, any pilot and upgrade attached to that pilot will contribute to points spent on allies. Your maximum allotted points for allies is based upon the total squadron cost (chosen sub faction and mercenaries). You can spend up to but not over your ally point limit on mercenary ships. Consult the chart below for ally point limits.

• <60 squadron points total ; No more than 15 points in allies
• 60-74 squadron points total ; No more than 20 points in allies
• 75-89 squadron points total ; No more than 25 points in allies
• 90-99 squadron points total ; No more than 30 points in allies
• 100 or more squadron points total ; No more than 40 points in allies.

• Cross Faction Unique Personas and Upgrades

There are many unique (*) personas in X-wing miniatures that exist in multiple sub-factions and across different ships or cards. As with standard list building your list cannot include more than one (*) of the same name.

Example, A Rebel Alliance list cannot have Sabine Wren <crew> in the same allied list with the pilot card Sabine Wren for the Lancer Class Pursuit Craft.

Allied List Faction Restriction

Lists are considered to be in the primary faction of their non-mercenary sub-faction. Therefore any list can take any faction restricted upgrade equipped to that pilot as long as it matches the factions of both the ship and their list. Mercenary ships are considered a sub-faction of the Scum primary faction, therefore they cannot equip any upgrade card with the Rebel Only or Imperial Only restrictions. Also since the list is considered to be in the Primary faction of their clients Mercenary ships cannon equip any upgrade card with the Scum Only restriction unless it meets certain criteria for mercenary ships (see Mercenaries below)

Mercenaries

Mercenaries are essentially the Scum & Villainy Sub-faction on loan to one of the other sub-factions. Because of this they are considered their own sub-faction and are separate from Scum & Villainy. They don't have the full access to all of the Scum arsenal but they still have considerable access to unique items such as illicit upgrades and salvaged astromech that their clients often turn a blind eye to. Any Scum pilot that is allied with another sub-faction is considered a mercenary ship and counts against both squadron point limit and allied point limit when list building. All upgrades attached to that pilot also count towards both squadron point limit and allied point limit. Mercenary ships cannot equip any upgrade card with the Rebel Only or Imperial Only restriction unless certain conditions apply. (see Mercenary faction restrictions below).

Mercenary Faction Restrictions and Personas

A Mercenary Ship may not equip any upgrade card with the Rebel Only , Imperial Only , or Scum Only restriction unless the restrictions include both primary factions of the two sub-factions in the squadron list.

example: A Mandalorian Mercenary for the Resistance may include a copy of the Arc Caster in their allied list. However the same Mandalorian Mercenary cannot equip Arc Caster if they were allied with the Galactic Empire.

Some Scum Only upgrade cards have cross faction personas. A Mercenary ship may equips such an upgrade card with the Scum Only restriction as well if the same persona can be found in the allied sub-faction. Since that upgrade has the Scum Only restriction it cannot be equiped to a non-mercenary ship

example: A Ruthless Freelancer allied with the Galactic Empire can equip Boba Fet <crew> upgrade card to it since Galactic Empire has Boba Fet as a pilot for their Imperial version of the Firespray-31. However Boba Fet <crew> upgrade cannot be equipped to a Mercenary ship that is allied with 1st Order, even though the 1st Order can still ally with the pilot card of Boba Fet with a Firespray-31 mercenary ship.

Allies and Mercenaries in Escalation

For Escalation when building an Allied list you must include at least one ship from each of your allied sub-faction (one primary faction, one mercenary). You must also follow the ally point limit when escalation squad building. You may not exceeds more than 8 small ships of the same type or 4 large ships of the same type, even if those ships are in different factions (i.e. 3 Binayre Pirates and 8 Bandit Squadron Pilots). In subsequent round as the point limit increases for ships in your primary sub-faction (Rebel or Imperial) they must follow all the list building rules for escalation. For your Mercenary ships you do not have to fly the same ship or upgrades as your previous squadron list but you must spend at least the same number or more of squadron points on allied mercenary ships while staying within the ally point limit.

Allies and Mercenaries in Epic

For Epic game other than the ally point limit nothing much has changed. Most of it is just clarification for huge ships and expanded allied point limit for list beyond 100 point. As stated you may not have more than 8 small ships of the same type or 4 large ships of the same type even if they are in different factions.

Ally Point Limits for Epic

• <100 squadron points total ; see chart for Ally point limits above
• 100-149 squadron points total ; No more than 40 points in Allies
• 150-199 squadron points total ; No more than 60 points in Allies
• 200-249 squadron points total ; No more than 80 points in Allies
• 250-299 squadron points total ; No more than 90 points in Allies
• 300 or more squadron points total ; No more than 100 points in Allies

Huge Ship Factions

Allied list can take huge ships from their primary faction of the non-mercenary sub-faction only, even if the huge ship is not in the same sub-faction of the two allied factions. An Allied Resistance list can take a GR-75 Medium transport belonging to the Rebel Alliance as it comes from the Resistance Primary Faction. Likewise an Allied 1st Order can take an Imperial Raider for their list as the Imperial Raider is in the primary faction of the 1st Order. The 1st Order still cannot take small or large ships from the Galactic empire sub-faction if they are playing with Mercenaries in their list.

notes:

So this is the 3rd take on it. I was thinking about waiting until the next movie Tie-in ships were announced so we could see what was coming for Resistance and 1st Order, but I figured it really wouldn't change anything here as far as formatting goes. The biggest changes would be from the C-ROC with the upgrade cards limited to 2 primary factions instead of a single primary faction essentially excluding a primary faction.

As for Balance, since Scum is on top of the meta some people are now worried about broken combos and why would anyone take a primary faction over an allied faction? Well for my answer is most of those top meta scum builds require a lot of upgrade cards with the Scum Only restriction. I think in this iteration I have addressed that limiting the faction restricted cards in a logical and thematic order. Since Mercenary ships can't take a lot of the Scum Only restrictions except for a few cards I think I have addressed that issue. As for which sub-faction-allied combo is stronger, I think it can be predicted that Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire will have an edge because they have more ships than their decedent sub-factions, however those sub-factions will have access to the same scum ships as the other sub-factions so the soft-split won't be much of an issue for balance. There is also the fact that as more waves and more movies come out the sequel sub-factions will start to get more ships. I also hope this is future proof for any more cross faction shenanigans that FFG may pull. If additional sub-factions come out I'll just have to do another revision expanding the allowed allies.

So what do you think of this format? Questions, concerns, comments? Think a tournament using this format might work or will it be the same net lists as the regular FFG premier tournaments?

Okay so i modified the FFG squadron sheet to include a check block for adding mercenary ships and a quick ally point limit chart for easy reference.

Also if any questions (maybe I'll consider how to make it compatible with Hangar Bay format)

xwing-squad-sheet-draft.compressed.pdf

Also here is the format published through FFG's Mission Control (had to remove examples to make space)

Preview

Download

18 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Okay so i modified the FFG squadron sheet to include a check block for adding mercenary ships and a quick ally point limit chart for easy reference.

Also if any questions (maybe I'll consider how to make it compatible with Hangar Bay format)

xwing-squad-sheet-draft.compressed.pdf

ETA on upload? I am very interested in this!

1 minute ago, Scopes said:

ETA on upload? I am very interested in this!

Well the squadron sheet should be available using the forum attachment system (Which reminds me I will have to upload the PDF file to my Scum GR-75 kit so it can stay without worrying about filedropper dropping it).

The only thing the full upload would be just a copy of the rules you see in the OP (written to be directed at players instead of the forum) and maybe some FAQ for any questions on what would be legal or illegal in this format. Let me know if the squadron list is missing a feature you think it might need. So far what is includes besides a basic squadron creation list for FFG tournaments is

• a check block to label a ship mercenary if using scum allies
• a quick reference chart of ally point limits if your squadron has any mercenaries in it
• a place to put the total # of point spent on Mercenaries right below the squadron total

Any feedback would help.

I like this - have been thinking about homebrewing a casual 'Trinity' (3 ships, 1 each faction) tourny but this has way more options for list building

Curious - I'm a Scum player, do you think the soft split can be done with any pair above except with Scum as the primary point host? I'll give that a stab. Would like to try building a scum bombing list with the ashoka tie + sabine crew

2 minutes ago, DragonDante said:

I like this - have been thinking about homebrewing a casual 'Trinity' (3 ships, 1 each faction) tourny but this has way more options for list building

Curious - I'm a Scum player, do you think the soft split can be done with any pair above except with Scum as the primary point host? I'll give that a stab. Would like to try building a scum bombing list with the ashoka tie + sabine crew

Well right now because the Scum primary faction only has 1 subfaction there is no splitting of the subfaction. The mercenary format is mostly an Imperial or Rebel player trading one of their subfactions to borrow some scum ships. In previous iterations I tired to place a restriction on the other subfaction by having Imperials or players picking one of their subfactions as a Primary faction then giving them the choice of taking either the other subfaction or mercenaries. However that soft split as pointed out by another person on the forums would have weaken those primary faction when compared to scum.

But as far as your question yes you can take Ashoka Tie + Sabine Crew on a Rebel Alliance list and pair them with Scum Mercenaries. Now majority of your list will have to be rebels and even though Sabine has a scum persona her <crew> upgrade card will have to be on a Rebel Alliance ship and not a mercenary one as they have more restrictions in place. Keep in mind that for this revision I had kept three things in mind:

• C-Roc expansion Scum and Rebel Only upgrades
• Wave 11 and the Scurrag
• The inevitable Movie Tie-In ships from Ep. VIII

So I don't think this format will have it's full effect until those three are released by giving another Scum only crew persona, cross faction scum ships and upgrades for mercenaries and more ships for the sequel factions. But I'd figure now would be as good of time as ever to test how such an alliance system would work and see if there is anything needed to clear up on.

I like this idea, it might give people the push to start another faction. And it can really change up the dynamics of a squad and add some real flavor.

So just to clear up things although I think I was specific enough, these are the only upgrades with faction restrictions that can go on mercenary ships based upon what subfaction they are aligned in using the definition of Mercenary Faction Restriction and Mercenary Personas in the format above. Remember that any upgrade with the Scum Only faction restriction (not including dual faction restrictions such as Rebel or Scum Only ) has to be attached to a Mercenary ship if it is allowed in the list meeting the other requirements.

• Boba Fet ; Galatic Empire
• Arc Caster ; Rebel Alliance , Resistance
• Pulse Ray Shield ; Rebel Alliance , Resistance
• Cad Bane*; Rebel Alliance

(*difficult to tell because all information is from the splash, so making a slight prediction here, will likely change once spoiled)

Also playing around with some Optional Persona faction restrictions for list (more for theme as it would be odd to see Han Solo and Boba Fet flying together) but again this is more of an option and if I ever run a tournament with this format I won't be including this , unless there is overwhelming support for this addendum.

• Boba Fet cannot be in an allied list that contains the Rebel Primary Faction
• Captain Nym and Sabine Wren cannot be in an allied list that contains the Imperial Primary faction.

So bringing this back up after worlds (especially with scum being so dominating right now)

Do you think an allied (mixed) list would be dominant even without mindlink (because this format currently only allows scum primary to be able to take it)?

Also if an allied list would be dominant which allied subfaction would you think be the one?

Okay so I uploaded the text to Mission Control, Had to remove the examples as mission control doesn't provide much space. besides the map you are restricted to a single page. Honestly I didn't even need the map. I will probibly have to streamline it so here you go for the first published draft of Version 3.

Preview

Download

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestion on how to streamline it.

I'm liking it...lots of flavor.

I may give it a go today or tomorrow with my kids. I'll keep you posted.

The numbers look balanced, but until you actually test it out...

On 5/31/2017 at 1:34 PM, Scopes said:

I'm liking it...lots of flavor.

I may give it a go today or tomorrow with my kids. I'll keep you posted.

The numbers look balanced, but until you actually test it out...

Let me know how it went if you ever get the chance to test it out. I know with Jumpmasters being the favorite scapegoat of the X-wing meta some might say this would just bring more of them to the table. Still I would like to see if there are any other combinations that could beat the Jumpmaster mindlink list that are controlling standard format.