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?

Small, friendly but still competitive, and rarely meta focused (they will regularly carpool to the australian regional/ nationals if feasible have had guys place top 30ish) . That said, we will often pull out "cancer" list just to see what it's all about

If i turn up to a torney kit event we are small enough everybody is garanteed at least the alt art card. Can def call it a flgs, often they will barely break even on a torney but still happy to host/time/score/support it. Overall scene is larger, armada is struggling but several other mini games have enough of a following that something is going on.

Half as many more playing within the past few months, but venue may have changed...new store coming to town, and loyalty to a flgs is apparently finicky.

There's 4 of us that I know of. No tournaments, no game store to play at- just friends around the kitchen table enjoying a game with cool little plastic spaceships.

Small group in town, but not too far from some other communities. Couple of tournaments here and there. Mainly just some casual matches, though some of us will occasionally gear up for bigger events. Started HotAC recently.

3-4 regulars, no events. I need to travel 2 hours north for those. 40k has an iron grip on the playerbase at the moment, though. The little play there was has ceased for the moment.

So happy that VASSAL is a thing.

Declining. Across 1 shop and 1 traditional wargaming club there are about 3 regular players and 4 or 5 occasional players - down from a peak of 8 regulars and 4 or 5 occasional 12-15 months ago.

In my area, x-wing has lost market share to GW (the younger players) and Team Yankee (the older players). X-wing (and Armada, IA etc) is undermined by a weak LGS (yes I deliberately left off the 'F') and FFG's OP policies - so the club can't get hold of the OP kits, and the shop won't buy in the OP kits.

Smaller than a year ago, but there are some new faces popping up.

Very high level of play, several of our regulars have done extremely well at international competitions. Not many meta lists.

Also, very friendly people.

I haven't even found a store selling X-Wing stuff within a 2 hour drive.

A number of people, having small 10-15 people tournaments almost every week, league play every month. We even have retro and epic games. Id say about 30-40 players but not everybody is coming to everything. We had our first store champ this year.

I'm my local player base.

Our core player base is more casual. I believe we are helpful, friendly, and accommodating. We get more competitive at Store Championship held at our LGS.

Personally, I woudn't mind if we at times get more competitive with our lists for more exposure during normal game nights. I've tone down my lists a decent portion over the years playing at my LGS.

We've got a very competitive core group of 10-20 players with some impressive credentials, along with lots of newer/more casual players (At least 8-10 joining in the last 6 months). Our local league has 40+ players across 3 divisions and the standard of play is high across the board - something I'd say is due to the atmosphere which is always welcoming but geared competitively. People aren't shy to talk about what went wrong in a game for them, or how they think a list could be improved. We also have a group playing through HotAC alongside the standard games, which is going well.

All that competitiveness aside, one of the local players runs monthly tournaments that are basically aimed at being anti meta, and everyone still turns up & has fun.

I'm going to miss them, as I'm moving away for uni. It's vassal time for me!

WOW!!! I thought I was in a bad spot until I read some of these posts!!

I'm in a small town. We do have a game store but a very small x-wing group. There is on average 8 in our group but nothing consistent. We try to meet each Monday night to play but more often than not, no one shows up. I get lucky about every other week and catch someone at the store for a game.

We've tried to get tournaments going every other weekend but had almost no participation.

There are some very strong player bases in other towns in the area. However, they're all about 2 hours away.

I'm in the Minneapolis-St Paul metro area... Suffice to say that we have a very strong player base of all levels of play.

We have a website that tracks activity since early 2014 at http://xwing.rebelleagues.com

There are something 163 players registered on it but only 45 active who have played at least once in the last 3 months or so. Lots of the inactive ones so far are some players who we see once and they never come back for all sorts of reasons. We've busted through 3000 games on it (mixture of tournament, organized group league, epic, but mostly casual and oftentimes at various player homes).

Our tournaments are spread across 4 stores (most try 1 per month, the least active one is like 2 per year but it's a board gaming pub and not really geared for miniatures events). We're close enough to our province's 3rd largest city that many of our players to compete there for season kits, while attending less and less one of our 3 active stores.

I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area, and I could play X-Wing every night of the week if I wanted to. The local game stores are very supportive of the game. There are two stores within a five minute drive of my house; one hosts X-Wing on Wednesday, and the other on Thursday. There are others slightly further away for Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. I'm sure there is something on Saturday too, but hey, football season has started.

I am most often found at the Wednesday night session, with my Heroes of the Aturi Cluster kit in tow. We had a crew start last fall and it quickly grew to the maximum of six players mostly made up of regulars. There were some other folks that wanted to play, and they would substitute for one of the core six if needed, but eventually I started running a second Heroes campaign. As long as the two missions didn't both require custom terrain, it was fine.

Group 1 has completed the entire Heroes campaign, and is standing by while I work through some details for Battlestar Pallas, as it's designed for only four people. Group 2 has nearly completed (4 mission cards left) and we've started Group 3 with some new folks.

We even had some people stopping by the store for comics or other reasons drop by our tables, and in more than one case, we managed to get them to play at least one mission.

So I guess you could say that our game store has a smallish but loyal following. The scene around my area is very active; you can search on Facebook for the North Texas X-Wing group and you'll see what I mean. It's one of the things I enjoy about living in a larger metropolitan area. (I'm not enjoying having to teach my 16 year-old how to drive in this environment, but that's another story...)

Ours has grown to six players every week, most of us pretty eccentric list builders. ARC guy, Punnisher guy, I'm the T-65 guy... We've done a lot of 100/6 recently but we have a lot of casual stuff in rotation.

We try to run a monthly tournament when the store schedule aligns, and we tend to draw between 10-18 players. Surprisingly our local tournament meta isn't so cut throat so we see very few of the 'power' lists.

A bunch of fine and reasonable people who mostly fly what they enjoy. A few of us travel and play competitively and fly more meta stuff. Also a time travelling alien child bent on humanities destruction

Moderately competitive.

Unless its a tournament we almost never have anyone fly a "meta list" - or if a tournament is coming up we'll see them. But at the same time nobody just screws around, its still competitive but with a small degree of experimentation in each list.

Tournaments around here are 20-35 people and usually half of it is whatever the current winning list is. i'm one of maybe 3 people that actually uses those experimental lists if i think it has a chance.

Weekly league night on Fridays brings in about 8-12 X-wing players and about 4-6 Armada players.

Our FLGS supports us very well. They get about 6 OP kits for us X-wing players and 3 for Armada.

I use 5 of the kit for league play. And one kit for a monthly tournament.

The league is based on a 12pt system. 2pts for a win, 1pts for a loss. You can play as many games as you want during league night but you can only count two games toward your overall points. At 4, 8, and 12'pts you get a participation prize and then also a rare prize at 12pts.

It a fairly friendly league night. Most players try out new squads on a weekly basis. We have 1 younger kid who likes to play the top meta squads and another player netlists but he's been slowly playing more fun squads.

There are two game stores in our city that have league nights and another store that just changed ownership which wants us to come and play. All the stores are with a 25min drive.

Variable in the extreme.

Seems strong in Portland, Oregon; there are numerous casual days at a few different game stores throughout the metro and surrounding areas. I don't tourney but those I ask about it report healthy turnouts. Steady players with normal attrition from moving, family, interest, etc... On casual days people fly a good assortment; trying the new hotness, new ideas and builds. Some really powerful lists at times but nothing I would call "meta net-list". Steady number of new faces either trying out the game or playing at a different store.
Overall a really great crowd; players with a poor attitude are too few and far between for me to mention, but that's just my experience in PDX.

3 hours ago, Odanan said:

I'm my local player base.

Yep, pretty close here. My only opponent is my brother. Use to play team epic with my other brother and his son, but they lost interest.

OTOH, my brother may have drummed up some interest with his board game group at GenCon, so we'll see.

I can't make it to any FLGS because I work til 7pm on XWM night or it would be a hideous drive. . .so, in truth, I have no local FGS. And, to be honest, I'm fine with dining room play. . .but I miss the days when "boys night out" was M:TG with 6-8 guys every Monday after work.

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. 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, really happy they are a great crew. Just need to crank it up very slightly to stay healthy.