Beginner Question - How to keep track of damage?

By coolspot18, in X-Wing Rules Questions

Hi all,

I just started the game with my 6-year old kid ... he's having pretty good time playing with the basic tutorial rules. Generally the game seems OK for younger kids, except the spinner dials are hard for small hands.

I have a simple question - with generic pilots, how do you keep track of damage. If there are two non-unique pilots, how do you keep track of which ship is which on the board?

Sometimes after a maneuver or two, I kind of forget which ship is which so I don't know which ship has been damaged.

For larger battles I would assume this is a problem? Any suggestions?

Thanks!

It can be great fun playing with the kids. My 7yo doesn't like X-Wing (yet?) but my 12yo and I have a lot of fun, often going to our FLGS for monthly tournaments.

The number markers are designed for keeping track of similar (or identical!) ships. FF gives us two (or three?) copies of each number marker with each ship. I put one on the base — in the little groove at back of the plug for the post — and a matching number on the pilot card. Then just tuck the damage cards under the pilot card as your child doles out the pain :)

I hope that helps!

Yup. For identical generics, you use the number tokens, they're set up so that you can have the same numbers on each side even, with one side of each token being black and the other white, and there are enough so that you can use one front, one back, and one on the matching pilot's card.

Alternatively, you can do different numbers of pegs (but be careful if you have to remove ships to make things fit) or some people have been known to use LEGO minifigs, which conveniently have hands that clip neatly onto small ship pegs.

Number tokens are there to keep track of what ship is what. You put two on the base with the model and have the other by the card. They have two colors so one side uses one color and the other side can use the other color so you can tell them apart in a mirror match.

Damage is of course tracked with cards.

a nice option, and working with kids i know, is using coulored bases and sleeves.

second add would be to get the shield tokens and add hull tokens to it.... creativety...

that way you can give em counting basics :)

Edited by D34d guru

Officially, number your bases, place numbers on the corresponding ship cards, and use the damage cards.

However, I think at least one of the two core sets had little tokens with "1" or "2" in the middle of a damage explosion. If you weren't using damage cards for simplicity when playing with kids, it wouldn't be "the rules" but you could mark damage with these, and leave them by the ship bases.

I painted my number tokens. Finding 3 blues and 3 reds in a pile is a lot easier than finding a 1 and a 2. As Fig said, I have seen people use the damage tokens, or other things as well. You can use anything you want attached to the base so long as it gives a clear link to which pilot card the ship is attached to.