10 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

6-8 or so regulars, all solid people

Alot are in this goofy ultimately fun "casual but not casual" category.

Trying to get folks into the mindset of "discussing" the game and decisions while we play so the level of play improves a bit and so I can learn more.

I think the better people are at the game the healthier the community becomes. Slightly more competitive play helps that along. There are a few veterans who really can bring the heat when they want to. Its fun to see. They just dial it back most of the time for casual games.

Meta wise....Its all over the place.

One or two guys run a bunch of different lists mostly near competitive meta quality. These guys run the table since few other players even know what meta means, which im trying to change so "everyone" knows that 50% of the game is won during setup. One guy is the "bomb" guy. A few seem to put lists together just by randomly dumping 12 cards on the table.

Fun good group but needs to crank it up slightly to stay healthy.

I'd love to get "discussing" game decisions so I can improve. I make some pretty wild decisions and I need that sanity to ground me a bit. Heck, listening to the guys discussing my moves on the live stream was both hilarious and enlightening.

I disagree that you need competitive people to keep healthy though. Our group collects a fair bit of attention because of some of our more casual events. I pull out the Death Star run and we get visitors to play and plenty of interest and questions at larger events. Casual can be healthy, but you do still need a leader to drive it and provide different scenarios.

I literally just found a new group of players that are coming back from a 40K kick. They all seem pretty chill and are interested in setting up a 150 point league to spice things up. They took a break from the game since a few players settled into some REALLY cheap tactics that turned into boring, predictable gameplay. When I brought up how I usually played at home, they seemed REALLY interested in trying out the point bump.

Something around 60 people ready for competition, enough to fill a 24 player tournament roughly 2-5 times per month over the regions of Bern, Zürich, Luzern here in Switzerland. Whenever a 24-ish player tournament goes up, it's usually filled with signups within hours. We have a rather varied meta where many people will fly what they like (usually within reason) and not just the current flavor of the month, but there's always a couple of core meta lists with people who practiced them at every tournament.

Regionals will also get players from Germany and France, and we don't have Nationals of our own but rather qualify for the German Nationals with our Regionals.

Participation numbers are steady now, but the community throughout Switzerland has come together a lot during the last year, with a pretty active and steadily growing WhatsApp group, and a shared tournament platform that makes all those tournaments actually visible to everybody. We're using T³, which wouldn't be my primary choice (it looks and feels very last century), but absolutely works and also kind of pulls in cross-game players that also play Wh40k and the likes. About half a year ago, establishing that led to a major increase in participation numbers and cohesion.

19 hours ago, Velvetelvis said:

I'm just curious what it's like in different areas.

Around here it's never been a huge player base for x wing. But it's steady.

I can generally count on seeing the same 15-20 dudes at the three main get togethers that happen in my area.

Biweekly kit tournament and some casual weekly guys at a different store.

I'm seeing four guys playing 40k now but I know they haven't " quit" x wing, just playing other things.

Would you say your local scene is smaller,larger, or the same as it's been since...eh...whatever... Say a year ago?

My group is small - perhaps 15 total. We get around 4-6 on casual nights and 10 or so for our monthly tournaments. Most of us have family/parents/curses that prevent us from playing too often, so we've stayed around the same size for a while, although we're getting some new interest now.

The downside is their reading and comprehension is horrible. I had to spend a month convincing them that M9-G8 could reroll another ship's snap shot, another month convincing them I could stay cloaked after Cikatro swapped my cloaking device for an EMP device, and last time I was playing every other player was firmly convinced that the Auzituck had a full 180 degree rear firing arc, in addition to the normal one... I can live with it, but it's painful...

Hearing about communication methods for other regional player groups is interesting. Tournaments and info for my region are all shared through a Facebook group. There are maybe 40-50 people I recognize that showed up at the various store tournaments this season. The best ones were around 24-34 people in a tournament with others being smaller than that. The biggest local X-wing nights at stores have around 10 people who will show up. Another store I play at has about 4-6 people for a weekly X-wing night. Local people are always at worlds and GenCon every year.

The meta is wonderful since the 'Great Nerf'. Lohwrick has become a bit to common for my liking though in recent times. Most people are currently super excited about flying Starvipers with the new title & have already been proxying it.

Local community boomed when Force awakens came, then dropped significantly during the rise of filthy toilet seats (mid 2016). Afterwards, the great nerf happened and we see playerbase slowly growing again. This includes new players and old-timers who suffered PTSD of being touched in indecent manners by triple jumpmasters.

List-wise, we have equal distribution of competitive players, newcomers trying out lists and Jank players so games are always fun and unpredictable even for the most seasoned of players.

Gone. Scumwing, powercreep, an FAQ as long as the rules, having to buy ships you don't want to in order to get cards to fix ships that were underpowered by FFG in the first place and games that bare little resemblance to the Star Wars films that us 40 and 50 something year olds watched have killed it stone dead at our wargames club.

I believe it still has a presence in the two game stores we have here but I haven't played in months at the club, there's little interest. Armada is doing better, it has a small but loyal and keen player base. Its longer games tend to mean it's played less and subsequently enjoyed more. There's no player "burn out" and boredom doesn't set in. Scenarios keep things fresh too.

As an aside we all thought the idea of a Galactic Emperor appearing in a space dogfighting game was ludicrous.

1 hour ago, Bolshevik65 said:

I believe it still has a presence in the two game stores we have here

So not actually gone then, you just choose not to play for your own reasons? That's fair enough, but the objections you're raising would only be legitimate only if you were talking specifically about FFG's organised competitive play.

When talking about games amongst friends, there's literally nothing stopping you adjust the game to your own personal taste. Want to play with original trilogy ships only? That's fine, you can do just that. Bored with 100/6 or want to play longer games? Try Escalation, Epic or just tweak the points limit to your preferred level, it's all good. Like objective or scenario-based games? There's scenarios in the core set, in most of the large based expansion packs and campaigns in the Epic ship packs. Or you can create your own; plenty of players on this forum have done just that.

2 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

So not actually gone then, you just choose not to play for your own reasons? That's fair enough, but the objections you're raising would only be legitimate only if you were talking specifically about FFG's organised competitive play.

When talking about games amongst friends, there's literally nothing stopping you adjust the game to your own personal taste. Want to play with original trilogy ships only? That's fine, you can do just that. Bored with 100/6 or want to play longer games? Try Escalation, Epic or just tweak the points limit to your preferred level, it's all good. Like objective or scenario-based games? There's scenarios in the core set, in most of the large based expansion packs and campaigns in the Epic ship packs. Or you can create your own; plenty of players on this forum have done just that.

I'd love to play but I can't make it to the stores due to work and personal commitments. One of the stores seems to have some X Wing activity, the other tried to organise a league but it seems to have quickly folded.

At the Wargames Society I belong to, which has a membership of around 70 split between miniature gamers and role players (obviously not all there on the same nights, average attendence is about 20 to 25 on a club night) we have nearly finished a small campaign but the general consensus is to finish it and that's that. There is no interest at all in casual games or playing another campaign. Even the umpire has said he has no further interest in the game other than finishing the campaign for the sake of completeness and courtesy to the players.

So it's not really a matter of choosing not to play, it's that the people who I used to play with are no longer interested in the game. A general survey of their reasons gave the results I outlined earlier.

The SF Bay Area player-base has fallen off dramatically. I don't think all of the drop-off is because of disillusioned players like me (although I know a fair portion is) ... some players have just moved on to other games (like Destiny, which is so much quicker and easier to set-up, play, and tear-down). It's a combination of factors for most people, I'm sure.

But regardless of the reason, the drop-off is significant. Even a year ago (when the discontent was already growing), we could get 16-24 people at each two or three "competing" Bay Area seasonal kit tournaments. Store Championships were easily 40+, if the store could accommodate. This past weekend, one of the best and most active store tournament organizers couldn't pull together eight people for a tournament. (We also lost one of the more active organizers in the entire community, due to dissatisfaction with the competitive balance of the game, and with FFG OP. His loss had a disproportionate impact on the health of our local player-base.)

I suppose all of this is still anecdotal, even though it's regarding a huge swath of formerly very loyal player-base, but I hope FFG is paying attention to the weekend-to-weekend smaller community fall-off, and not just looking at high-profile events to make judgments on the health of the game. Because, from my perspective, X-Wing is dying. I b!tch about the game a lot, but that's because I love it, and I want to see it saved.

Variable. We get between a dozen and fifteen people for a tournament with prize support, but that's pulling from at least three different groups who have a bad habit of scheduling against each other. There are two main clubs, RPGS and Peterborough War Games, plus the Rift, our FLGS. I also know a few people who only really play with friends at home or work (my work lets us use meeting rooms out of hours). Not everyone who plays X-Wing at those clubs plays at tournaments though. We do have some really good players (not claiming to be one myself) and we have the advantage of being close enough to one of the more well known groups (Weekend Warlords out of Loughborough) that we get visiting players coming across from there. All in all we do pretty well with a good mix of casual and competitive games available to suit taste and mood.

We have about the same as we always do, about eight hardcore high calibre players and eight newer and less competetive guys. The number stays about the same though people pick up the game and some pack it in.

We have three or four consistent players in Chico, CA. And three or four rotating players that play every now and then. Lost a couple of consistent players in the last two months due to moves, switching to different games. Sometimes we have 8 people playing, sometimes two. We play every Saturday.

We're lucky that or FLGS gets prize support and always has room for us. A father and son came in last weekend saw us playing. They sat down and played, left the store with core set and a Falcon, hopefully we'll see them again. We know there are others around here that play at home.

The small sampling of lists we have here are always different, there is no meta here. We'll stick with a list for 3 or 4 saturdays, then change it up.

Casual and fun bunch of people here. I enjoy blowing up each others toy ships and hanging out with them. That's pretty important.

Jeff Wilder, where in the Bay Area do you play at? I used to play the Flames of War circuit at Endgame, Gamescape North and the GameKastle in San Jose. I know there are a few other stores in that area. Just in case I'm ever down there it'll be handy to know when and where X-wing is played.

3 hours ago, anthemius said:

Jeff Wilder, where in the Bay Area do you play at?

Endgame for League, Heretic (San Bruno) for occasional Casual Thursdays, and Anime Imports (Pacifica) for small weekend tournaments. I play larger tournaments at most of the stores within easy drive of San Francisco.

Uhg...My local scene frustrates me to no end...

Our local area is over saturated with game stores and has been for a while. There was one near me that held the Wave 2 release tournament and watching that really got me into the game. Then it closed for some dumb reason.

So I went halfway across town and found a small store with super competitive prices. Nearly bought them out of their X-Wing stock. They held a tournament which was my first event. Up until then I just played at home. I managed to come in second at that event. Then before they could get another tournament going, the store closed down.

I found another store by chance looking for a different game to buy. The owner sounded interested in X-Wing. She set up a couple events and I set up and online presence to spread the word. We had a group of 4-5 people with a surge of another 4-5 for tournaments. And that's how it stayed for a good while. The competition was pretty stagnant and didn't have any real desire of becoming competitive. For over a year, I only had one tournament that I didn't win. That was the assault on imdaar alpha. I got second at that one. Lost to someone who wasn't a regular.

In an effort to find some more competition, we went to another store which had some 40k players that also played X-Wing. We tried to get them more into it, but their 40k addiction was difficult to work around, and I simply don't have the time to really cultivate a store based community. Family takes up a lot of time.

About the time that Episode 7 came out and the new core set dropped, there was a surge of players at the non competitive store. Also, some players from a city about an hour to the south started traveling up for events. So we surged to about 8 regulars and could made nearly 16 for a tournament on a good weekend. Things were looking pretty good. There was an interesting mix of competitive levels. A few of us who were super competitive, a few who wanted to be competitive yet wouldn't put int the effort to succeed, and some super casuals. I tried to cultivate some different tournament formats to break people out of the box and have a bit more fun on the casual side. At this point, planning and running events became quite frustrating for me and a friend who was trying to help. We've pretty much bowed out of that group. Lets just call it creative differences.

These days, we just let that store do what they're going to do. Their group of players remains fairly constant. We try to push the other stores in the area to host events. They're fairly easy to work with as they buy the kit and let me run the whole thing with little interference. We had 3 store championships in our area. Unfortunately it hasn't sparked any consistent communities in the other locations. Those guys just don't really care to do tournaments. So our community consists of 3 stores. One with zero players, but they still let me do events. One with 4-8 (I can never really tell) 40k players who also do X-Wing when they feel like it. And one store with a decent community, but not a store I wish to be a regular at. We've got 2 really super competitive players, a couple players that are competitive and have sporadic success, a large number of bubble players that think they want to be competitive but are the type that will complain about the lack of success and not really take any advice on how to get better, and finally a bunch of players who are weaker but don't have the kinds of players around them to really push them to be successful. There's a massive number of players in the area that just play at home and don't really come to tournaments.

Fortunately, for a super competitive person, there's plenty of store champ, regional, and higher activity in the area if you're ok driving 1-2 hours. I've honestly started playing more things like campaign Imperial Assault and some friendly Armada games and leaving X-Wing on the back burner till Regional season. My local meta has so much potential, but is held back by a lack of drive from the players and the organizers. And that's what really drives me crazy. It keeps me from getting interested in any other competitive games in the area because I don't want to deal with it again. Legion looks awesome, but it's not worth it if I have to deal with the same stuff.

TLDR: 8-16 players with a mild competitive nature

Around 20+ players in my local club. Hard to say really, because some people disappear (sometimes for good, sometimes they come back) while newcomers keep showing up. There are 2-3 smalller communities of players (5-10 people) within an hour's drive from where we play too, so tournaments can get pretty crowded sometimes.

Difficult to say. We used to have a good regular crowd playing in the league I run. Now we have another gaming club and board games cafe (both involved with the same gaming store from another city) all clawing to get the same players. It's given people more choice and freedom in when/where they can play but ultimately killed the busy nights of old. A small crowd now regularly meet on Mondays. I can't do Mondays. I play more with people from other cities by going to tournaments on the weekends, I mainly see the local players to give them league prizes. Unfortunately; when too many places want the same few players it leads to an over saturation and dilution of the player base. I think I've had a total of 3 games locally this year...

@Killerardvark I wonder if someone had pushed something like our web system http://xwing.rebelleagues.com to all new players for the last few years, if your community would have gelled around it. I can almost say with certainty that ours could have crumbled without it. The centralized player-borne facebook group is our echo chamber, but that website creates a legacy of it all.

I'm in the St. Louis area, and I don't even really know how to describe it. Mid-sized and eclectic?

There are 3 shops in the area which I know have weekly X-Wing nights, having only been to 2 of those for weekly meet-ups Of those 2 shops I frequent, there are probably about a dozen folks who I see fairly regularly, but there's little to no cross-pollination of people between those 2 shops aside from myself. There are at least a couple dozen folks who I see every once in a while, but wouldn't consider them regulars at the weekly shop nights. From what I remember, the kit tournaments I've attended (4 of them) have had anywhere from 4 to 11 players. I went to 2 store championships this year, I think one had 26 players, the other had 12?...could be wrong on exact numbers.

As far as list variety, there's a ton. I don't think I've played anyone who just plays one list or anything like that. People are always trying out new stuff to greater and lesser degrees of competitiveness.

Player skill, I really can't gauge well. @Biophysical is probably the most "X-Wing famous" local player, but I've not had the pleasure of playing him (would love to, though!). Maybe he'll chime in with his historical perspective on our local scene! I've been playing around 10 months and, after those first few months of learning the game, I haven't played anyone who I would find...intimidating? No one is running circles around everyone else.

One part bitter X-wing veterans who hate the direction FFG has taken with what was once their favorite game, and have a massive axe to grind with FFG leadership and playtesters...
Another part bright-eyed young padawans that have just taken their first step into a larger world...

A large band of semi-competitive hobby players coupled with a medium group of hardcore players.

We have about 10 people. 6 of them show up every night. The others come once a month. I go every three weeks.

All of us are competitive, but there's an unofficial rule that we have to make the most unique squads possible.

Uuhhh, prone to tantrums if he doesn't get an advance on his allowance to get whatever expensive Lego kit or video game he just learned about two minutes ago?