34 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

Wave 9? Which introduced one new mechanic that only is a slight play on the already existing aux-arcs? I don't find that convincing.

Auto-include titles with a wall of text.

Yet another low-agility Rebel ship vessel.

A 3rd TIE.

Yet another large-based Scum ship freighter with a ridiculous dial.

Yet another Scum ship cruiser that does everything it's Rebel/Imperial equivalent does, but cheaper.

And it continues...

Wave 10:

A 4TH TIE!

Another Scum ship barge with a ridiculous dial.

Another shuttle!

CONDITIONS.

Wave 11:

Yet ANOTHER low-agility Rebel ship tanker.

A 2nd Scum ship caravel with a hideously packed out upgrade bar and PS3 elite

Probably a few more bits that I'm missing too.

Bloat.

You forgot ships.

The new waves included ships. Bloat.

1 minute ago, Stay On The Leader said:

You forgot ships.

Did I use ship too much?

Hang on.

26 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

It baffles me how someone could say the relatively simple game X-Wing is is bloated. Maybe it is coming from a DOTA background that removes me from such a way of thinking, but to this day the game is highly manageable.

I can no longer imagine teaching this game to a friend on a Friday night and having them be prepared for a casual tourney on Saturday. It used to be "set your maneuver, choose your single action, roll dice and choose when to use your single modifier." Super simple. Special rules at the time were the imperial barrel rolls, the Y wing turret, and the X Wing GOT TO ROLL THREE red dice!!!

Then wave 2 introduced boost and PTL, allowing people to do 2 actions (3 in the case of Fel), along with large bases (which didn't conceptually change the game). But the 2 action shenanigans were mostly kept in check via ship availability. PTL was stapled to every A wing and TIE/in, but they both were kept in check due to PWT. Other ships would try them out, but the greens limited their usefulness. EU was also introduced, but at this time didn't see much play. Oh yeah, there were "bombs" as well, so this was a new rule breaking thing (you can damage during the activation phase).

Wave 3 didn't add much to bloat the game. The systems slot differentiated the B wing from the X wing (and the X wing was no longer competitive). We saw the first inclusion of just BAD ships via the Bomber and the HWK, and while the TIE/x1 had pretty much been DOA as well, there was still a reason to play Vader. There was no reason to play either of those ships in 100/6 format, and there wouldn't be for another 2 years or so.

Wave 4... er, the Phantom added a whole new element to the game - pre-maneuver movements. And this was a huge change to how the game was played. For the first time since PTL there was something that broke the core rules of the game. Stress also came into play as something that can be controlled (R3-A2 had just launched in wave 3.5, Tactician in W4). Oh yeah, the Phantom also came with FOUR attack dice, which I suppose could have been previously achieved via a W2 HLC, but now it was being done with TL+F (and then cloak), and 5 at R1, all while being able to have pre-maneuver movements as well. It basically was getting 3 actions a turn with a 4/4/2/2 stat line.

Wave 5 didn't add much to break the rules or bloat the game. It added variety, but nothing particularly new.

Wave 6 added the scum faction and another slot (illicit), but most importantly added Sloops that fundamentally changed how ships turned around. This introduction was what started making the A wing and Interceptor obsolete - newer wave ships that weren't supposed to be as maneuverable as those ships found themselves having better dials just so they would have different dials.

Wave 7 came up with SLAM, making a POS ship one of the most manevuerable ships in the game, though it did come at the expense of a shot, but that is mitigated by the fact that they have a huge array of bombs and a turret, so they can only put themselves in places where either no one gets a shot, or only they get a shot. But they fundamentally broke the rules again, getting to do two maneuvers. Oh yeah, we also got "docked" ships, but that really didn't come into play until W8, but was technically introduced here. Palp made dice rolling a joke.

Wave 8 introduced Trolls, yet again making the older "more maneuverable" ships duds. It also gave us white sloops on big base ships, because no one thought at was OP for 25 points, and it gave us both Dengar and the Ghost, who could make multiple shots in a single round, breaking another rule. For the sake of completion, I suppose this was already introduced in W6 with the BTL-A4 title, but without numerous mods, it was kinda useless for anything except stressing. ImpVets made people laugh about action economy, and HoTR's PA broke yet another core rule about maneuvers.

Wave 9 continued to build off of those multiple shot things with the /SF, now giving folks choices on how to take those shots, but otherwise didn't really do much rule breaking that wasn't already broken.

Wave 10 introduced ships you can't shoot at and the coordinate action. Now all sorts of rules can be broken - boosting, PTL, dropping bombs, etc can all be done completely out of phase, both before and/or after maneuvers.

Wave 11 is bringing reinforce... look, now not only do you get to token stack, but the token doesn't go away when you use it...

And this was just a 5 minute review in my head of what all broke the core rules. The game is no longer easy to pick up and explain - there are so many interactions that are stacked upon each other that a new player is going to be overwhelmed easily. And so many things break the rules, that you have to question if they're really rules anymore.

8 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

You forgot ships.

The new waves included ships. Bloat.

Better?

54 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

It baffles me how someone could say the relatively simple game X-Wing is is bloated. Maybe it is coming from a DOTA background that removes me from such a way of thinking, but to this day the game is highly manageable.

If you played almost only XWing and remembered 2 actions ships, 2 tokens being a stack, and a 2 stat line being competitive, Paratani or x7 or KWing bombers could seem very bloated in the series of rules daisy chains. Heck, they had to make a pretty impressive for even a true Wargame flow chart to keep things straight... the very definition of bloat.

That being said, sure, I'm an old veteran of Star Fleet Battle Systems (all modules stacked, almost 6' high), original Battletech, Victory at Sea, etc. Even a more casual game like 40k has 26 campaign books, 38 codices, and 11 other rules books. Yeah, there's way more complex systems. But bloat is relative to a starting point. And by that yard stick it's fair to say both stats and rules are getting excessive.

1 minute ago, Lobokai said:

If you played almost only XWing and remembered 2 actions ships, 2 tokens being a stack, and a 2 stat line being competitive, Paratani or x7 or KWing bombers could seem very bloated in the series of rules daisy chains. Heck, they had to make a pretty impressive for even a true Wargame flow chart to keep things straight... the very definition of bloat.

That being said, sure, I'm an old veteran of Star Fleet Battle Systems (all modules stacked, almost 6' high), original Battletech, Victory at Sea, etc. Even a more casual game like 40k has 26 campaign books, 38 codices, and 11 other rules books. Yeah, there's way more complex systems. But bloat is relative to a starting point. And by that yard stick it's fair to say both stats and rules are getting excessive.

You could also say that X-Wing was simplistic at the start and I don't think that is wrong to say. Things like the free titles are actually great and should have been made maybe even earlier, as they open more design space than there was previously availiable. wave 9 was pretty much one of the best waves we ever had if you ignore the scum ships breaking Mindlink. Both sf and ARC manage(d) to coexist with existing options while still offering unique experiences. These expansions aren't bloat, they enrich the game by a lot.

1 minute ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

If you ignore the scum ships breaking Mindlink

Sure. But try that at Regionals or Hoth or when some net list shows up at a local tourney

2 minutes ago, Lobokai said:

Sure. But try that at Regionals or Hoth or when some net list shows up at a local tourney

That is not a problem of bloat, but one of balance, though. I feel a set of nerfs incoming after Worlds.

1 hour ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

It baffles me how someone could say the relatively simple game X-Wing is is bloated. Maybe it is coming from a DOTA background that removes me from such a way of thinking, but to this day the game is highly manageable.

Maybe, but to share an anecdote from last week.

We were playing in the store last Friday evening, I was running my TIE/sfs against Rey/Poe and over my shoulder I realised a guy had been watching us for a few minutes, and his opening line was "this looks way more complicated than I thought, I came down to give it a try but it looks very difficult".

We swept all the tournament stuff away, gave him 60pts of TIE fighters and TIE/fo against 60pts of X-Wings and he had a great evening, and hopefully will be back tonight. But all the stuff that we're using definitely adds layer on layer of stuff that, as established players, we don't really even see is there any more.

7 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Maybe, but to share an anecdote from last week.

We were playing in the store last Friday evening, I was running my TIE/sfs against Rey/Poe and over my shoulder I realised a guy had been watching us for a few minutes, and his opening line was "this looks way more complicated than I thought, I came down to give it a try but it looks very difficult".

We swept all the tournament stuff away, gave him 60pts of TIE fighters and TIE/fo against 60pts of X-Wings and he had a great evening, and hopefully will be back tonight. But all the stuff that we're using definitely adds layer on layer of stuff that, as established players, we don't really even see is there any more.

And that's how you teach the game to a new player, yes. It IS complicated, and unless that player is a strong gamer already (heck, even if they are, in many cases; I've done teaching games with people way better at tabletop games than myself, and it's been needed), it IS too much to just drop them into 100/6 against random people from the local club and expect them to get it instantly.

There's a reason that the game has a teaching version.

That doesn't mean it's bloated, any more than a random player wandering over and trying to understand Runewars and having the same reaction would.

I will say, surprisingly visceral attacks in this thread notwithstanding, it was like culture shock to go back to the 40k forums after spending so much time here.

The X-Wing community is quite a bit more objective, reasonable, fair minded, and calm than many other gaming sites. So if the occasionally unfair thrashing seems excessive here, just know that we've holistically got it good compared to the neighbors.

To those praising GW: while it's a huge step forward for them, they've only done it for a little while. I'm really curious what will happen when 8th edition drops and the unavoidable '8th is ****' vitriol will start flooding their communication channels.

From my experience, game designers openly interacting with players never lasts for a couple of reasons:

-people have a hard time taking in open criticism of their work

-people are much louder when they dislike something.

Most cases usually end up as one of the following:

-designers stop posting

-negative people get banned and/or chased away, turning the forums into an echo chamber of praise

55 minutes ago, Lobokai said:

If you played almost only XWing and remembered 2 actions ships, 2 tokens being a stack, and a 2 stat line being competitive, Paratani or x7 or KWing bombers could seem very bloated in the series of rules daisy chains. Heck, they had to make a pretty impressive for even a true Wargame flow chart to keep things straight... the very definition of bloat.

This right here shows me that you don't know what you are talking about. 2 dice ships from wave 2 onward were questionable, only real threat was a TIE swarm. 2 tokens were never a stack compared to the 3 Fel could toss out (remember PtL and he came out this wave). The timing chart was needed since the inclusion of cluster missile (wave 2 again, notice a pattern?) so I wouldn't call that bloat. Fettagator for a while was at least a thing and that it self was a daisy chain. People have watched me play 4 x wings and say it looks complicated so that is pretty antidotal and honestly will happen regardless unless you are playing a game of poker. Interceptors and A wings both had 4 actions available to them, one being a new one, boost! Most ships now really only get two actions even with Mindlink, unless you are running the nerfed manaroo (or GASP a wave 3 ship, Kyle in a HWK!). 4 dice attacks were also available since wave 2 when HLC came out, and just like then, it's limited due to chassis and points.

So honestly I suggest you guys actually stand back and take an objective look at your own complaints before screaming, BLOAT! POWER CREEP! etc.

Also, mind you PWT kinda recently got a nerf seeing as going forward I find it hard to believe most won't have a mobile firing arc instead.

I have zero problem with the complexity of x-wing as it currently stands. I may want to see other ships from the old waves come back because Star Wars, but I don't have much of an issue with the combination chains and what not. As long as moving minis correctly is the principle skill, I'm good.

That said, I wouldn't throw a new player in full bore and expect it to work. I'd grab a core set, dust off some of the elements, and start flying missions from the core sets. Or maybe set up some simple lists with minimal card usage and fly casual.

1 hour ago, Khyros said:

I can no longer imagine teaching this game to a friend on a Friday night and having them be prepared for a casual tourney on Saturday. It used to be "set your maneuver, choose your single action, roll dice and choose when to use your single modifier." Super simple. Special rules at the time were the imperial barrel rolls, the Y wing turret, and the X Wing GOT TO ROLL THREE red dice!!!

By this logic, I shouldn't try to teach someone new Netrunner or even try to start a new L5R group. Just looking at all the complaints, I think people would be more happy with a pure stats game than what the cards and abilities bring to the table. So, play generic only, no upgrades if that's what you want.

I'm sorry the game has evolved. But, we couldn't stick with the Wave 1 ships forever.

6 minutes ago, Sithborg said:

By this logic, I shouldn't try to teach someone new Netrunner or even try to start a new L5R group. Just looking at all the complaints, I think people would be more happy with a pure stats game than what the cards and abilities bring to the table. So, play generic only, no upgrades if that's what you want.

I'm sorry the game has evolved. But, we couldn't stick with the Wave 1 ships forever.

I'm not stating that you can't introduce someone to the game, it's just not as easy as it used to be. This is due to all of the additional BLOAT in the game, which is exactly what I was pointing out. Variety is one thing, but the amount of rules breaking is ridiculous these days. Playing X Wing has become sorta like playing 40k... You need to have several documents to reference, you have to constantly be checking the latest rules and FAQs... And that's just to get through a casual game!

1 minute ago, Khyros said:

I'm not stating that you can't introduce someone to the game, it's just not as easy as it used to be. This is due to all of the additional BLOAT in the game, which is exactly what I was pointing out. Variety is one thing, but the amount of rules breaking is ridiculous these days. Playing X Wing has become sorta like playing 40k... You need to have several documents to reference, you have to constantly be checking the latest rules and FAQs... And that's just to get through a casual game!

You mean, like since they added upgrades, tournament rules, and fixes to game states? Oh right, that was all wave one or before hand. Heck, I remember the arguments of expert handling allowing Vader to barrel roll twice, it was its own action not another native barrel roll. They had to errata that.

Impressive. Now the whole thread feels like an old, salty Starcraft forum thread.

Smeg it, I'll join in. "Blizz nerf Protoss plz. DTs OP. Cannon rush cheese crossmap every gaem. Terran ded race. Voids 2 stronk. RIP ladder."

1 minute ago, Hujoe Bigs said:

You mean, like since they added upgrades, tournament rules, and fixes to game states? Oh right, that was all wave one or before hand. Heck, I remember the arguments of expert handling allowing Vader to barrel roll twice, it was its own action not another native barrel roll. They had to errata that.

Yup, that's exactly what I mean. They had one card that was EASILY explained on the errata and the change. Now you have a complicated timing flow chart and have to reference not only the FAQ but also the email rulings... Because something like "what if someone has an Illicit Cloaking Device, swaps it out for FBA... can he FBA while cloaked?" isn't answered anywhere but via email. If you were to reference FAQ alone, you'd come to the conclusion that "Well, you can't FBA when you're on a rock or blinded (NEW DECK... Old deck you could!) because you don't have an opportunity to shoot. So it should follow that since you're cloaked, you don't have an opportunity to shoot either, so no FBA while cloaked." But oh wait, the Email ruling contradicts that and says you can FBA while Cloaked.

Yes, that's just one example. But there are numerous examples now of things that even if you know the correct ruling, you can't justify it unless you have the evidence of the rulings. And it changes fundamentally how you play against a list. There are ways to add variety without adding complexity and bloating the game and establishing power creep and whatnot. Heck, you can look back at W1 - the X wing and Y wing have the same maneuvers, and yet the 3 hards and 4 straight being red on the Y wing makes it a much slower and less nimble fighter than the X wing. The B wing introduced the Systems slot which added VARIETY without bloating anything. AdvSensors technically break the rules by allowing you to take action then move, but abilities that break rules by themselves are not a problem, it's when they stack in ridiculous ways that it becomes bloated. For example, Rainbow Dash, who gets to PTL to BR+Boost and Kyle who gives him a focus when he removes the previous round's stress, all stacked with M9-G8 allowing him to reroll his dice. Each card alone is fine and simple, but conceptualizing the synergizes of these 4 cards together is extremely difficult to learn. Not to mention it's disheartening when you're getting into the game and all you have are the T-65 and T-70s from the core set, and then a Rebel Aces A Wing and B Wing, and you feel like no matter what you do, you won't be able to compete on the same level unless you fully buy in. And then you don't know where to start because there's so much out there, and most of it is 100% outclassed by something else, so now you feel like you've wasted money on ships you'll never fly... Bloat. The game could really be about 1/3 of what it is right now without being really any different.

2 hours ago, Lobokai said:

How a generally loathed company is generating excitement and how the local darling is suddenly reviled, to me, that was note worthy.

It's interesting. I cut my teeth on warhammer about ... yikes ... 25 years ago. I played that game pretty continuously along with 40k up until 40K lost me with 6th edition and WFB blew up very recently. I have loved GW's games and I don't loathe them but they did lose me by taking the games and the fluff in a direction I didn't like, forcing me to find other games. I've not played 40k in at least 7 years. I wandered into a GW store and holy cow the stuff now is pretty amazing. Stuff that I always loved and never was part of the game (or hasn't been for a long time) like genestealer cults and deathwatch. But no matter how nice the miniatures are it better be an amazing game or I'm not getting back into it.

So I'm going to be looking at the new edition with interest. Age of Sigmar took a beloved game and ruined it for me. No interest at all, I'll play KoW or 9th age thanks or more realistically X-wing as the smaller scale and no painting is easier for me as a proper grown up with a job now. But 40K lost me a long time ago. Maybe the revamp will be good? After all GW has made excellent skirmish games in the past (e.g. epic armageddon). Don't hold out much hope but I'll certainly try it...

2 minutes ago, Khyros said:

Yup, that's exactly what I mean. They had one card that was EASILY explained on the errata and the change. Now you have a complicated timing flow chart and have to reference not only the FAQ but also the email rulings... Because something like "what if someone has an Illicit Cloaking Device, swaps it out for FBA... can he FBA while cloaked?" isn't answered anywhere but via email. If you were to reference FAQ alone, you'd come to the conclusion that "Well, you can't FBA when you're on a rock or blinded (NEW DECK... Old deck you could!) because you don't have an opportunity to shoot. So it should follow that since you're cloaked, you don't have an opportunity to shoot either, so no FBA while cloaked." But oh wait, the Email ruling contradicts that and says you can FBA while Cloaked.

Yes, that's just one example. But there are numerous examples now of things that even if you know the correct ruling, you can't justify it unless you have the evidence of the rulings. And it changes fundamentally how you play against a list. There are ways to add variety without adding complexity and bloating the game and establishing power creep and whatnot. Heck, you can look back at W1 - the X wing and Y wing have the same maneuvers, and yet the 3 hards and 4 straight being red on the Y wing makes it a much slower and less nimble fighter than the X wing. The B wing introduced the Systems slot which added VARIETY without bloating anything. AdvSensors technically break the rules by allowing you to take action then move, but abilities that break rules by themselves are not a problem, it's when they stack in ridiculous ways that it becomes bloated. For example, Rainbow Dash, who gets to PTL to BR+Boost and Kyle who gives him a focus when he removes the previous round's stress, all stacked with M9-G8 allowing him to reroll his dice. Each card alone is fine and simple, but conceptualizing the synergizes of these 4 cards together is extremely difficult to learn. Not to mention it's disheartening when you're getting into the game and all you have are the T-65 and T-70s from the core set, and then a Rebel Aces A Wing and B Wing, and you feel like no matter what you do, you won't be able to compete on the same level unless you fully buy in. And then you don't know where to start because there's so much out there, and most of it is 100% outclassed by something else, so now you feel like you've wasted money on ships you'll never fly... Bloat. The game could really be about 1/3 of what it is right now without being really any different.

I don't think you should be someone who tries teaching anyone how to play or get into X-Wing.

The majority of X-Wing players, including those who are new, are indeed smart enough to read the cards and understand the majority of interactions. Especially if it's explained to them if they don't understand it at first. Only a handful of cards have been errated and many of the FAQ or "email answer" rulings come up on pretty rare occasions.

Instead of telling a new player "all the ships you have suck in competitive. You'd best give up or spend money on all the ships," how about you focus on helping them improve what ships they have with what they own? Be honest with them that some ships just aren't very good competively, and that they're probably going to have a tougher time at their first few tournaments, but don't be the "Debbie Downer" and shut them down. If you're doing that, you're killing your own X-Wing community because you've now just turned a potential player away. Encourage them.

I can't agree with the assertion of a lack of innovation on the part of X-Wing. While I am not super happy with the way the game is being designed(overly granular and hyper specialized) the new style of giving each ship something unique to set it apart from the others brings a lot of innovation with it. Sure some stuff misses, the U-wing title is overly clunky and presents a too difficult choice, but a crew card or system slot released down the line could synergize really well with that ability.

5 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Maybe, but to share an anecdote from last week.

We were playing in the store last Friday evening, I was running my TIE/sfs against Rey/Poe and over my shoulder I realised a guy had been watching us for a few minutes, and his opening line was "this looks way more complicated than I thought, I came down to give it a try but it looks very difficult".

We swept all the tournament stuff away, gave him 60pts of TIE fighters and TIE/fo against 60pts of X-Wings and he had a great evening, and hopefully will be back tonight. But all the stuff that we're using definitely adds layer on layer of stuff that, as established players, we don't really even see is there any more.

Another anecdote: the same guy came back tonight, and after watching me play my QuickDraw/Backdraft/Vessery list again he played a game with it.

He loved it, and said it was way better than playing the generic ships last week.

6 hours ago, Khyros said:

I can no longer imagine teaching this game to a friend on a Friday night and having them be prepared for a casual tourney on Saturday. It used to be "set your maneuver, choose your single action, roll dice and choose when to use your single modifier." Super simple. Special rules at the time were the imperial barrel rolls, the Y wing turret, and the X Wing GOT TO ROLL THREE red dice!!!

Then wave 2 introduced boost and PTL, allowing people to do 2 actions (3 in the case of Fel), along with large bases (which didn't conceptually change the game). But the 2 action shenanigans were mostly kept in check via ship availability. PTL was stapled to every A wing and TIE/in, but they both were kept in check due to PWT. Other ships would try them out, but the greens limited their usefulness. EU was also introduced, but at this time didn't see much play. Oh yeah, there were "bombs" as well, so this was a new rule breaking thing (you can damage during the activation phase).

Wave 3 didn't add much to bloat the game. The systems slot differentiated the B wing from the X wing (and the X wing was no longer competitive). We saw the first inclusion of just BAD ships via the Bomber and the HWK, and while the TIE/x1 had pretty much been DOA as well, there was still a reason to play Vader. There was no reason to play either of those ships in 100/6 format, and there wouldn't be for another 2 years or so.

Wave 4... er, the Phantom added a whole new element to the game - pre-maneuver movements. And this was a huge change to how the game was played. For the first time since PTL there was something that broke the core rules of the game. Stress also came into play as something that can be controlled (R3-A2 had just launched in wave 3.5, Tactician in W4). Oh yeah, the Phantom also came with FOUR attack dice, which I suppose could have been previously achieved via a W2 HLC, but now it was being done with TL+F (and then cloak), and 5 at R1, all while being able to have pre-maneuver movements as well. It basically was getting 3 actions a turn with a 4/4/2/2 stat line.

Wave 5 didn't add much to break the rules or bloat the game. It added variety, but nothing particularly new.

Wave 6 added the scum faction and another slot (illicit), but most importantly added Sloops that fundamentally changed how ships turned around. This introduction was what started making the A wing and Interceptor obsolete - newer wave ships that weren't supposed to be as maneuverable as those ships found themselves having better dials just so they would have different dials.

Wave 7 came up with SLAM, making a POS ship one of the most manevuerable ships in the game, though it did come at the expense of a shot, but that is mitigated by the fact that they have a huge array of bombs and a turret, so they can only put themselves in places where either no one gets a shot, or only they get a shot. But they fundamentally broke the rules again, getting to do two maneuvers. Oh yeah, we also got "docked" ships, but that really didn't come into play until W8, but was technically introduced here. Palp made dice rolling a joke.

Wave 8 introduced Trolls, yet again making the older "more maneuverable" ships duds. It also gave us white sloops on big base ships, because no one thought at was OP for 25 points, and it gave us both Dengar and the Ghost, who could make multiple shots in a single round, breaking another rule. For the sake of completion, I suppose this was already introduced in W6 with the BTL-A4 title, but without numerous mods, it was kinda useless for anything except stressing. ImpVets made people laugh about action economy, and HoTR's PA broke yet another core rule about maneuvers.

Wave 9 continued to build off of those multiple shot things with the /SF, now giving folks choices on how to take those shots, but otherwise didn't really do much rule breaking that wasn't already broken.

Wave 10 introduced ships you can't shoot at and the coordinate action. Now all sorts of rules can be broken - boosting, PTL, dropping bombs, etc can all be done completely out of phase, both before and/or after maneuvers.

Wave 11 is bringing reinforce... look, now not only do you get to token stack, but the token doesn't go away when you use it...

And this was just a 5 minute review in my head of what all broke the core rules. The game is no longer easy to pick up and explain - there are so many interactions that are stacked upon each other that a new player is going to be overwhelmed easily. And so many things break the rules, that you have to question if they're really rules anymore.

I wish the game designers would read this post. It shows the progression of the Xwing from a new vibrant and easy to pick up game to the "meta fuelled mess it is now and all the small "rule breaks" that took it there. This is exactly how I feel. If every new thing breaks more and more basic rules, how is that not power creep. As far as the "bloated" part goes, I'm not sure I totally agree. A game this popular is bound to get complex with more and more ships being released. The problem lies in each new ship being the best thing ever and invalidating older, more iconic ships. And let's not kid ourselves about iconic ships not being a major reason this game is as popular as it is. Yes, the gameplay is what gets people to buy into this game and make it huge, but it was the Star Wars ships that even made you look at it in the first place. If it had been the exact same game with little kittens and puppies on the bases, most people would have just walked away. Even with a different, popular IP the game would be no where near as big. (I'm looking at you Star Trek Attack Wing and the D&D version)FFG, I'm sure, realizes how important their management of the Star Wars license is. They need to keep it relevant to the current canon without making each wave better and better. I'm not saying it will be easy, but it will be in their best interest to make a balanced game that last for years to come. They are not on track to accomplish that goal.