Over the holiday weekend, my girlfriend and I decided to play her very first game of x wing. She knows how much I like the game, and she wanted to see what it was all about. I had played a small one ship only game with her before (just to show her the rules and the game-play), but this was the first 100 point format (asteroids and everything).
I don’t have a huge variety of ships (all imperial), so I gave her something that I thought would be easy to fly:
Two TLT ships and a mean Rexler that I thought would give me tons of trouble.
For me, I decided to play test some new builds that I’m now able to do thanks to the Silencer expansion (I also play tested the PS6 Silencer as well):
I love playing Backdraft, and I wanted to see if this build was better than the expertise build I usually saddle him with. I’ve also liked Omega Ace for a long time and thought that Advanced Optics would really help him with his ability. As for the silencer; I just wanted to see how this build would fly.
General overview of the game:
She actually did really well and made a challenging game of it! She deployed both aggressors center and her defender on her left flank. I had Backdraft center with Omega Ace and flanked on my left with the Silencer. I pushed HARD with the silencer and got around her aggressors. The silencer stayed outside arc on both aggressors the rest of the game and plinked damage on to them.
Backdraft and Omega Ace did their best to stay away from the defender at the start and helped to pound out damage on the TLT ships. I put as much hurt on her aggressors as fast as I could with the crits the both of them could provide.
To her credit, she managed to kill Omega Ace, take a shield off Backdraft, and all shields off the Silencer. She rolled hot with the TLT’s.
But, wait! What about that super Defender? Here’s the thing…Rexler never technically got off a shot. In her words: “I knew you THOUGHT I was going to be using this ship a lot, so I just did the moves I knew you were not expecting.” Mind games. I did all I could to get out of arc of the defender, but she ended up making me chase it all over. I only went after the aggressors as much as I did because they were the targets of best opportunity.
We had fun.
During the tutorial game before (and this previous game), I found she said some things that get right to the heart of the new player experience:
1. I thought the 3-turn would take me further…
2. Wait…FCS lets you get a target-lock for free? That’s like a whole action!
3. Why can’t I fire when on a rock? Did I actually land on the rock?
4. The rules for rocks in this game suck and don’t make sense. You should be able to fly under them in 3-D space.
5. Why are we playing the Empire? They are the bad guys!
6. This game takes a long time to set-up
7. It sucks when you roll blanks.