"Age of Icons" - Version 0.7 *new ordnance rules*

By Shane Gooseman, in X-Wing

The new version (0.7 Beta) is available now. LINK(7mb). LINK(25mb).

When X-Wing Miniatures was released in 2012, it was new, it was fast, it was awesome, it was Star Wars!

Many waves later, the game is still quite awesome and fast, but the Star Wars feeling lacks a lot of its initial catchiness. It's only natural that as more content gets added, the great flavor of the original old movies - Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Re turn of the Jedi - fades away through power creep and ugly Meta-Atrocities.

So we decided not to lay down an see the game we love become something we cannot idetify with, but to create a gamemod which is balanced within itself, fun to play and full of this great "Old School Star Wars Feeling".

Titel_AgeOfIconsSmall.thumb.jpg.8843ecfca0ca0a8ff2be709555a8a8f1.jpg


The goal of this project is not to invent a new game or to introduce a whole lot of new rules or game mechanics. FFG did a very good job to keep the game simple, quick and easy to learn. A pretty fast paced dogfight simulator with beautiful toy spaceships.

We were intrigued by the idea of "Original Trilogy" tournaments with a limited the pool of ships to choose from. Only ships which appeared in the Original Trilogy plus some restrictions to the available upgrade cards would be allowed. Yeah, a good starting point. Now let's take it a little bit further.

A downloadable squad builder is also in the making to give the community quick and easy access to the altered material.

However, the intention is to keep the alterations to a minimum.

The major changes to the original X-wing systems are:

- all turret use a kind of mobil arc

- adding an initiative phase

- some additional balancing within waves 1-3

This ruleset is far from being perfect or complete an should be regarded as an open beta. So if you have any suggestions on how to make this system better, reply to this post or contact us at [email protected].

If you want to give it a try, click here to download the PDF containing the open beta version 0.1. Link to Beta v0.4 at the top.

We know that there are similar approaches to bring on altered an alternative rules in progress, right now. This is not intended to cause any thought of competition an rivalry but to be just another alternative to choose from.

so stay on target and cheers to all of you

Shane

Edited by Shane Gooseman

I approve! A few little things:

I like your large ship boost rules! Large ships should be able to boost straight - perhaps use the same rules but have it use the 3-straight template?

I like the Darth Vader only card, and that’s a good way to add the Force into this game, I think. I would like to see a Luke Skywalker only card as well (perhaps One in a Million: while attacking, you may discard this card to cancel all dice results. Then you may add five critical hit results to your attack.)

Keep up the good work! :)

Hey.

large ships can boost straight using the straight 2 template, perhaps the picture is a little misleading. The 3 straight would make no diffence to the old mechanic.

the discarable Luke Upgrade sounds good. We‘ ll dicuss that.

I started playing in Wave 1, and to be fair the game never really had a "Star Wars" feel to its gameplay. While the game certainly used to have a "Star Wars Look" to it as X-Wings and TIE Fighters filled tabletops, the games were just blocks of TIE Fighters jousting blocks of X-Wings (and sometimes Dutch). I've seen a lot of Star Wars movies, but I don't remember the part where the Rebel and Imperial ships just kept flying back and forth K-Turning past one another in these repeated jousts. Like, the Star Wars dogfights are largely about getting behind enemy fighters, or having enemy fighters behind you (save for the initial meeting of Rebel and Imperial fighers at the Battle of Endor, "There's...too....many"). I think people either forget (or weren't around for) the boring and repetitive "Joust-Fest" that was Wave 1 X-Wing, where it was "Fly Toward Enemy, K-Turn, Fly Toward, K-Turn, repeat" all day long. This, at least to me, never really felt much more like Star Wars dog-fighting than what we have now, though it certainly looked a whole lot more like Star Wars back then.


The best way to approximate Star Wars dog-fighting would probably be to get rid of K-Turns, Segnor Loops, and Tallon Rolls all together. But, at that point, you're going to have very long games, and turrets and arc-dodgers would need substantial point increases, to compensate. But, it would probably feel much more Star Wars-y, and fighters would actually be able to get behind one another without the ship their chasing suddenly flipping around and facing them.

4 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

The best way to approximate Star Wars dog-fighting would probably be to get rid of K-Turns, Segnor Loops, and Tallon Rolls all together. But, at that point, you're going to have very long games, and turrets and arc-dodgers would need substantial point increases, to compensate. But, it would probably feel much more Star Wars-y, and fighters would actually be able to get behind one another without the ship their chasing suddenly flipping around and facing them.

I had never really considered this before but you are absolutely right, k-turns suck. How much stuff, not all obviously, is or has been broken because of being able to space U’ey?

Arc dodgers would become much stronger though as you say, turrents are always above the curve this just makes them even worse. Remove turrents all together if you want to remove k’s and you might have something.

6 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

I had never really considered this before but you are absolutely right, k-turns suck. How much stuff, not all obviously, is or has been broken because of being able to space U’ey?

Arc dodgers would become much stronger though as you say, turrents are always above the curve this just makes them even worse. Remove turrents all together if you want to remove k’s and you might have something.


As an added bonus, if you got rid of K-Turns (and T-Rolls and S-Loops) entirely, some things that are currently awful options might suddenly become much more valuable and viable: Pivot Wing Landing Mode (U-Wing title), Lightning Reflexes , Daredevil , etc. ...

The problem is, even without turrets, it would all be down to turning and boosting. The whole maneuvering system would have to be changed then.

But perhaps someone has an idea about that.

Maybe the solution would be to just make reversal maneuvers more costly. Maybe 2 stresses, and/or can't attack afterward.

I’d just make red maneuvers generate 2 stress. Still can do it... much larger opportunity cost

edit: lol scrivner... we both post similar thing at the same time

Edited by Lobokai

I love the new boost rules. I like a lot of the tweaks to lesser used cards (Fel's Wrath!). I'm curious why the changes were made to BMST, Lightweight Frame, and Unguided Rockets. Were those too powerful?

Since I mostly fly Empire, I'd like something cool for TIE/LN or TIE/INTs. Something similar to the rebel ace pilot card or the A-wing amplified cannons for 2-att TIEs , for example.

What about k-turns still generate the one stress but also adds a token representing that the ship that just performed a k-turn either can't use offensive OR defensive dice until the next turn?

The k-turn manuever in this game has the real life equivalent of the split-s, something that can be used either offensively or defensively, but either way requires the pilot's complete focus to get either position out of it due to it creating a sense of tunnel vision in the pilot. I can't see why this would be different.

You either do the manuever to escape being shot at or to get into position to do the shooting, your focus isn't on BOTH things

Edited by Flavorabledeez

you guys are doing it right. nice job.

Your layout is great, and some of the house rules are pretty good. Giving a bunch of the named pilots EPT slots is a good change (though I wonder why some, like Hobbie or Tarn, got left out). Yet there is a lot in here I don't care for.

First of all, there is already a way to say "Limited to once per player." It is called " Unique ". Many of the cards you change to Unique , don't really need to be unique. The only one that might need that is Push The Limit, but I'm not sure.

Now for specific changes you've made:

Jek Porkins. This ability is almost worse than the original — assuming you can't gamble away the two stress tokens he just received, turning the game of X-Wing into a long game of drunken walk while the player just keeps rolling until Jek has no stress tokens on him. I've played standard Jek several times, and I've used his ability when getting an action was more important than avoiding damage. His new ability doesn't give me that option. I can't think of a situation where it is better to risk getting two stress to remove one.

Luke Skywalker. Yeah, Luke needs some love, but that's only in the current meta. Against wave 1 and 2 ships, Luke is fine as is. And in fact, his standard ability is probably stronger than the one you gave him, unless he has a way of piling on focus tokens. Currently, Luke is pretty resilient to multiple small attacks, but struggles against fewer large attacks. Your change merely flips that.

Ten Numb. Your wording is awkward. And again, I don't see why a change is needed here.

Fel's Wrath . Ok, this one I actually quite like. Well done!

R2-F2. This is much better than the standard version of this droid. At 3 points on an agility-2 ship, it could possibly be done without the stress token. Overall, though, I like this change.

R5-D8. This is another fine change.

R5-K6. At two points it should probably just work like Fire Control System. At least this is an improvement.

Bomblet Generator. I don't think this change is needed. Also, your wording is awkward, and like Jek it isn't clear that you cannot do both.

Autoblaster Cannon. Is this necessary? I haven't seen autoblasters really warping the game, honestly.

Sabine Wren. Ok. I'm not someone who sees any problem with the current Sabine Wren, but this version isn't awful.

Adaptability. Why?

Elusiveness. This is a fine change, but again I think the original card is fine too. I'm sure that your intention is to make the card stronger, but for some pilots (Ezra Bridger, e.g. ) this seems less strong.

Expose . 2 points is too cheap for this card.

Marksmanship . I like this change.

Push the Limit. I can't see any thematic reason why this should be unique, but I can understand why you would want to do so from a game mechanics point of view.

Veteran Instincts. Why?

The Power of the Dark Side . Ok.

Black Market Slicer Tools. I don't know why this needs to be nerfed.

Amplified Cannons . This is interesting. I would have to see it in play before forming an opinion.

Unguided Rockets. You don't like infinite rockets?

Engine Overcharge. Of all of the MANY proposals I've seen to "fix" the T-65, this may be my least favorite. For 2 points, I would prefer just to take Vectored Thrusters, even losing the Integrated Astromech. I fly X-Wings a lot. I mean A LOT! And the thing I love most about them is that they fly slow very well. But they need to take the focus action every turn, pretty much to survive. Taking that action away from them so that they can fly faster is not a good change for them.

Lightweight Frame. Why?

Autoblaster Turret. See Autoblaster Cannon above.

Blaster Turret. Pretty much how everyone thinks it should work.

Twin-Laser Turret. This is my favorite change you have made, and pretty much exactly how I've been wanting the TLT to work from the beginning. Very accurate, but not very powerful.

Cheers.

Edit : I forgot to add...

Initiative Phase. I like the idea of an initiative phase where the initiative changes. I don't like it to be random. If anything, it should switch back and forth from turn to turn. If it is random, then you will have a whole lot more unintentional bumping, which most people find to be a downside of the game. If I know you are moving your ace before I am moving my ace, I can account for that in the planning of the turn before (some of us do plan a couple of turns ahead).

Edited by stonestokes
6 hours ago, Shane Gooseman said:

When X-Wing Miniatures was released in 2012, it was new, it was fast, it was awesome, it was Star Wars!

Many waves later, the game is still quite awesome and fast, but the Star Wars feeling lacks a lot of its initial catchiness. It's only natural that as more content gets added, the great flavor of the original old movies - Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Re turn of the Jedi - fades away through power creep and ugly Meta-Atrocities.

So we decided not to lay down an see the game we love become something we cannot idetify with, but to create a gamemod which is balanced within itself, fun to play and full of this great "Old School Star Wars Feeling".

Titel_AgeOfIconsSmall.thumb.jpg.8843ecfca0ca0a8ff2be709555a8a8f1.jpg


The goal of this project is not to invent a new game or to introduce a whole lot of new rules or game mechanics. FFG did a very good job to keep the game simple, quick and easy to learn. A pretty fast paced dogfight simulator with beautiful toy spaceships.

We were intrigued by the idea of "Original Trilogy" tournaments with a limited the pool of ships to choose from. Only ships which appeared in the Original Trilogy plus some restrictions to the available upgrade cards would be allowed. Yeah, a good starting point. Now let's take it a little bit further.

A downloadable squad builder is also in the making to give the community quick and easy access to the altered material.

However, the intention is to keep the alterations to a minimum.

The major changes to the original X-wing systems are:

- all turret use a kind of mobil arc

- adding an initiative phase

- some additional balancing within waves 1-3

This ruleset is far from being perfect or complete an should be regarded as an open beta. So if you have any suggestions on how to make this system better, reply to this post or contact us at [email protected].

If you want to give it a try, click here to download the PDF containing the open beta version 0.1.

We know that there are similar approaches to bring on altered an alternative rules in progress, right now. This is not intended to cause any thought of competition an rivalry but to be just another alternative to choose from.

so stay on target and cheers to all of you

Shane

I still get the thrill up my leg when I play X-Wing.

Pew Pew Pew

3 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I think people either forget (or weren't around for) the boring and repetitive "Joust-Fest" that was Wave 1 X-Wing, where it was "Fly Toward Enemy, K-Turn, Fly Toward, K-Turn, repeat" all day long. This, at least to me, never really felt much more like Star Wars dog-fighting than what we have now, though it certainly looked a whole lot more like Star Wars back then.

The best way to approximate Star Wars dog-fighting would probably be to get rid of K-Turns, Segnor Loops, and Tallon Rolls all together. But, at that point, you're going to have very long games, and turrets and arc-dodgers would need substantial point increases, to compensate. But, it would probably feel much more Star Wars-y, and fighters would actually be able to get behind one another without the ship their chasing suddenly flipping around and facing them.

Not sure that this helps, but since I typically play Epic on a 3x6 board, I can spend all game never pulling a red maneuver. Often it is about fly-thru attempts at an alpha strike, followed by chasing down the next closest target. It feels like a space battle with units racing to engage units.

So, I suspect 3x3 has a lot to do with K-Turn Hades.

52 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Not sure that this helps, but since I typically play Epic on a 3x6 board, I can spend all game never pulling a red maneuver. Often it is about fly-thru attempts at an alpha strike, followed by chasing down the next closest target. It feels like a space battle with units racing to engage units.

So, I suspect 3x3 has a lot to do with K-Turn Hades.


I completely agree, and Epic is the only format of X-Wing I'll play casually (e.g., not at a Tournament). It actually feels like Star Wars, whereas Standard just feels like you're either circling a tiny fish bowl or constantly flipping around with K-Turns. It's not just the smaller board in standard, but also that there are so very few ships on the board, and they're usually hyper-defensive so the same few ships just chase each other for 75 minutes.

Cool

Some suggestions:

I like the choice between the different versions of Boba. Why not also make scum Kath an option?

Ten Numb ability is useless as worded, seeing as the opponent can completely surcomvent it by choosing not to cancel crits first. It should be "...the defender must cancel all of your ..."

Rouge squadron title would need a timing window for when to flip, for example beginning of combat phase. Otherwise you will be flippin' cards like crazy during the activation phase, as the ships move in and out of range from one another. The card is also absurdly uderpriced. Side A as a title should be at least 4 pts (compare to lone wolf without the range restriction, or predator for both offense and defense - and you still have your EPT slot unused). Side B would also be at least 4 pts (Put it on something with an EPT - move, TL for action. Beginning of combat, assign evade and then use Push The Limit to reposition in the combat phase! or to get that focus token). The difficulty of keeping the side you want up might make it slightly less attractive... but still. I would tone it way way down.

Darth Vader super EPT thingy is a really bad idea.

On a few upgrade cards the word 'once' is, I assume, used incorrectly (see for example adaptability).

I think you get way too detail-focused talking about Turret and Primary Weapon and Torpedo firing arcs. Not everything needs to be named that specifically.

Why don't you generalize it? You're just getting needlessly complicated if you name each type of arc (and yet oddly silent on how Nera Dantels' ability works with these rules). All you need is to give each secondary weapon a graphic around the attack value like the primary attack icon on the Firespray, only for turrets that would be pointing in all four directions, like a compass rose.

If a weapon can be fired from a different facing than the primary arc, you indicate that on the card. So, for almost everything, it's just a single arrow. Turret cards will have all four directions available.

Then, in your section where you describe arcs, you can say, "Some weapons are capable of being fired from a different arc than the printed firing arc. The valid arcs for a weapon are indicated by the <1 way>, <2-way>, or <4-way> symbol around the weapon's attack value. A weapon can only be fired from its active arc, which is indicated by a token placed adjacent to the corresponding edge of the ship base. Weapons with only one option for their active arc do not have a token.

At the start of the activation phase, a ship may rotate any number of its weapons to different arcs, if permitted by the <image> symbol, which then become the active arcs for the indicated weapons.

All ships may perform the 'Rotate Arc' action, in addition to the actions listed on their action bars and upgrade cards."

(Nera Dantels' pilot ability would then obviously get the rewrite, "Treat all of your <torpedo> upgrade cards as if they have the <4-way> symbol.")

Lol, I thought the topic said Age of Incom .

Hey guys,

As one of the three creators of this thing, I just have to say that we really appreciate the first reactions to our ruleset. We'll do our best to answer and discuss each and every one of them. You see, the rules are not set in stone. That's why we threw together v 0.1 for the community to discuss and to get some opinions on our alterations. We have a folder full of ideas and little tweaks which we'll put up for debate and also restock with new ideas that arise in this thread. The next step will be something like a community-tested version. We would really like you guys to give the game a try and are eagerly looking forward to your honest feedback.

Cheers guys!

14 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I started playing in Wave 1, and to be fair the game never really had a "Star Wars" feel to its gameplay. While the game certainly used to have a "Star Wars Look" to it as X-Wings and TIE Fighters filled tabletops, the games were just blocks of TIE Fighters jousting blocks of X-Wings (and sometimes Dutch). I've seen a lot of Star Wars movies, but I don't remember the part where the Rebel and Imperial ships just kept flying back and forth K-Turning past one another in these repeated jousts. Like, the Star Wars dogfights are largely about getting behind enemy fighters, or having enemy fighters behind you (save for the initial meeting of Rebel and Imperial fighers at the Battle of Endor, "There's...too....many"). I think people either forget (or weren't around for) the boring and repetitive "Joust-Fest" that was Wave 1 X-Wing, where it was "Fly Toward Enemy, K-Turn, Fly Toward, K-Turn, repeat" all day long. This, at least to me, never really felt much more like Star Wars dog-fighting than what we have now, though it certainly looked a whole lot more like Star Wars back then.


The best way to approximate Star Wars dog-fighting would probably be to get rid of K-Turns, Segnor Loops, and Tallon Rolls all together. But, at that point, you're going to have very long games, and turrets and arc-dodgers would need substantial point increases, to compensate. But, it would probably feel much more Star Wars-y, and fighters would actually be able to get behind one another without the ship their chasing suddenly flipping around and facing them.

Ok, you got us there. We got into the game at around wave 3, by which point there was quite a bit of variation and flavor to the game. Also, with the rebalancing of some later cards, we hope to give the game the varaiability that it needs to be exciting and to keep list-building fun, but also to keep it simple and quick.

Concerning the K-turn and other means of turning, I totally get your point. I guess the solution would not be to get rid of turn maneuvers, but to add a little more importance to actions.

14 hours ago, Scrivner said:

Maybe the solution would be to just make reversal maneuvers more costly. Maybe 2 stresses, and/or can't attack afterward.

14 hours ago, Lobokai said:

I’d just make red maneuvers generate 2 stress. Still can do it... much larger opportunity cost

edit: lol scrivner... we both post similar thing at the same time

You could be on to something here. My gut tells me that this would make most ships easy prey for arc dodgers, though. Especially Interceptors would really benefit from this. We'd have to introduce an extra mechanic (executing a 1-straight to get rid of 2 stress comes to mind, like the de-ionizing maneuver), because otherwise, I can't really see how anything would stand a chance against those Imperial goons.

I'll add the suggestion to the list. Thanks!

13 hours ago, BojambaMcMamba said:

I love the new boost rules. I like a lot of the tweaks to lesser used cards (Fel's Wrath!). I'm curious why the changes were made to BMST, Lightweight Frame, and Unguided Rockets. Were those too powerful?

Since I mostly fly Empire, I'd like something cool for TIE/LN or TIE/INTs. Something similar to the rebel ace pilot card or the A-wing amplified cannons for 2-att TIEs , for example.

Thanks, we are also big fans of the new boost. It's one of our non-negotionable alterations, because it just feels right. :)

I can answer all of your questions:

- Black Market Slicer Tools were toned down considerably, because we were looking to nerf any unavoidable sources of damage, especially when they come as cheap as BMST. As of now, there are only two ships that can use them, anyway.

- Lightweight frame was mostly a fluff decision. It could only be used by the TIE Bomber. And a TIE Bomber with basically 3 agility just feels wrong. With all the options a TIE Bomber has by now, we just didn't find it necessary anymore.

- Unguided rockets did just a little too well when we playtested them. Also, the Bomber has the reload action now, which kind of makes them redundant anyway.

A title for the TIE Fighter is definitely one of our (i.e. my ;) ) top priorities. I am a huge empire fan, too. So stay tuned!

14 hours ago, Flavorabledeez said:

What about k-turns still generate the one stress but also adds a token representing that the ship that just performed a k-turn either can't use offensive OR defensive dice until the next turn?

The k-turn manuever in this game has the real life equivalent of the split-s, something that can be used either offensively or defensively, but either way requires the pilot's complete focus to get either position out of it due to it creating a sense of tunnel vision in the pilot. I can't see why this would be different.

You either do the manuever to escape being shot at or to get into position to do the shooting, your focus isn't on BOTH things

Impressive. Most impressive.

I guess getting rid of all attack or defense dice would be a bit too tough, but a harsh penalty is definitely a nice idea. We'll add it to the list.

Thanks a lot!

14 hours ago, Velvetelvis said:

you guys are doing it right. nice job.

Cheers, mate! One-liners like that are always welcome. :)