It's a revolution man, it just keeps coming back around! I know, here we go again. But I thought things were differently this time and I want to make my case.

So here's the situation. Legion has dropped and the core game design team is likely done with the first one or two waves of it. Which means they will soon pass it off to a new developer team. This is pretty common for any expanding game and FFG is no different with their product lines. So point one: Core design team is available to make the next product line.

Now with the upcoming combo box brings us the latest and greatest from the FFG modeling department in the form of the posable X-wing miniature. Awesome! Which means we have an *arguably* outdated (in its cards, upgrades, damage deck, even it's figures) core set, and GR-75, and blister pack. Also thanks to the Gozanti, we have a more true to color TIE fighter. So point two: models are newer and better and could be used as a new core set.

And then there's the time continuum. Or schedule of release more accurately. And here's what we got in SW minis: X-wing, Imperial Assault, Armada, Legion...

Space/small... Ground/small... Space/large... Ground/large...

Well... What next? All the major bases are covered. Even grand scale strategy is technically covered with Rebellion. And card games are locked down for awhile too thanks to destiny. So what do you do next then? I would argue, that a space based game is next, and small scale for it. Basically, I would say it should cycle back around to TADA! X-wing! Remember people, it's all about revolutions here. So that's point three: creation cycle.

To review/TLDR:

1. The design team for a whole new game, or in this case rewrite, is or will be soon available

2. The models are now on another level and can be made to show case a new game.

3. The time is right to do a Space Fighter game in the cycle of development.

Anyone who remembers me from this sub forum knows I've been a long time lover of the game even since after leaving it over a year ago. And a long time supporter of a second edition for it. Duly note that I've not bothered to reference the current state of the game, as since I've been away I only see it from afar as an observer. Hopefully a keen one. But not familiar with it's current meta state none the less. I dream of a day when I can play a game of X-wing in competition or even casual where I am confident that the game experience will be a hundred percent enjoyable without having to first make a series of concessions or changes. I hope one day I can be excited again, for me AND my friends when a new expansion is announced. Or when there's another awesome story about a game from the night before that revolves around the play, and not the cards. For now I stay your faithful Armada fleet admiral. Thanks for reading, and may the Force be with you, always. And y'know, fly casual.?

You do know the core design team from Legion is Alex Davy? You know the current lead designer in X-wing... sorry to burst your bubble ;D

Yes, I'm aware. I'm the weird guy who reads the credits for each pack I open and tracks the designers as they move from game to game. And now that AD is done designing Legion core, I'm making the argument that the company may task him with a redesign of the earlier game which is X-wing. And it's their oldest SW minis game too notably.

That would be a pretty hard sell. Pretty much EVERY player has sunk $100's(if not $1000's) into their collection. So we'd have one of 3 scenarios.

Either A) all X-wing 1.0 stuff is no longer legal at official events. I can hear the riots over this one already. Remember the fiasco over the new damage decks? And that was just a $40 core set THAT YOU COULD STILL USE WITH YOUR CURRENT COLLECTION! Telling people that their current stuff is out is a recipe for disaster.

Or B) Only some of the old stuff is still allowed, just the things that don't interfere with their new balance. Yeah, okay. Let's come up with a list of cards whose interactions have undesirable effects, cross those off with a permanent marker, then police every event for any of the banned cards from that list. That seems pretty ridiculous, and would go over almost as badly as option A.

Or finally C) Maintain separate events for 1.0 and 2.0(or separate functions at the same event). That would mean double the prizes, fewer entries in each... And I could only imagine how difficult that would be for TO's.

3 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Also thanks to the Gozanti, we have a more true to color TIE fighter.

True to the colour in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. TIE Fighters were grey in A New Hope.

@Lego Leonidas The general consensus in the community is that any second edition hinges upon the old product being usable. This was always the number one point. Other than that the concept of the product has been fantasized to a large degree. If FFG is wise, and Force knows many times they are not, they will keep the models the same and build a new version around them.

@Sasajak Details, shmetails lol ?

The way I see it, we are slowly shifting towards a reboot of Xwing with the line of newest releases.

To start with, the game leans more heavily on competent listbuilding than it did in its original form. Sure some things were better than others, but most lists had a standard level of viability with only obscenely terrible lists, being the exception. Now only a small number of lists are competitively viable, generally around 3 in each meta, with room for variance.

Secondly, older ships are being re-released to update them with to a newer level of balance in conjunction with more recent waves, aside from a few outstanding designs, being relatively decent in terms of their power curve. S/F's, FO's, T70's, Rey, Tie Agressors, Strikers, Silencers, Gunboats, Fang fighters, Lancers, Upsilons, BSF 17's and the like are all decent ships, most of which can have outstanding builds (Omega Leader, Assaj, Kannan/Rey, Kylo, Fenn) but all of which are indeed playable, serviceable and largely decent. This indicates that a new perception of what "balance" is exists in the eyes of the design team, hence they are operating upon different assumptions than OG Xwing which really hit the peak of its power curve with Palp, Dengaroo and Miranda. As such, the design space "feels" different, standard ties feel weak, because we've all had them nuked off the board in missile and alpha strike engagements, B-Wings aren't tough to kill anymore, they're slow and feeble. It's a different space from the one we fell in love with.

While this is merely a very casual analysis based largely on my own personal experience and these paragraphs are little more than anecdotal evidence. I find that, regardless of fact, I feel that the game I play now, isn't the X-Wing miniatures game I tore from that dusty core set so many moons ago.

I believe, that for better or for worse, we are in an X-Wing 2.0.

Some people prefer aspects of the original game and that's perfectly fine, but I find that the game as it is now is no less appealing to me. Different maybe, but no less appealing. Older ships are re-released to keep pace with the power curve, new ships introduce fascinating new facets of all aspects of the game from the manouverability of the Striker to the action coordination of the Upsilon to the reload of the Kimogila and the Gunboat.

I enjoy the game as it is and I'm willing to let certain gameplay elements fall by the wayside as others gain prominence.

TLDR:

The game of Xwing is no longer the fire game many of us came to love, but it is beloved by many that have found it. But I'm not sure that I believe it's time to reach for the "2.0" hammer quite yet, the game is in flux and is slowly shifting to something different anyhow. Replace all the pieces of an old car over time and eventually it's no longer the same car.

P.S the meta blows balls

I suspect they are going to design a different core for armada

Resistance-era stuff for armada would be interesting but so incredibly out of scale with anything from rebellion era as to essentially make the two model ranges incompatible - both the MC85 (Raddus) and Resurgant-class (Finalizer) are roughly twice the size of an Imperial II-class...

Very good point has been made above.

in the beginning you could just throw together a list fairly easily and do OK as the game at that point was based on skill and dogfighting.

Now the game seems to revolve around listbuilding with silly combos.

This is pretty awful as it really reduces the variety you see, increases the amount of ships you need to buy for the cards and leads to some toxic combos.

i miss the old days when I would have a list with some A-wings, B-wings and X-wings. Now it just gets blown out of the water and they rarely see play.

21 minutes ago, william1134 said:

i miss the old days when I would have a list with some A-wings, B-wings and X-wings. Now it just gets blown out of the water and they rarely see play.

I played a guy who used 4 T65 and a Z95 at system open; I was flying a " toxic combo" and he nuked me off the table.

He practiced the **** out of how to combat the "meta" builds; so he knew how to deal with them.

With practice; you can win. It's not gonna be easy.

They won't reboot X-Wing until there are any signs that anything is wrong with this version. They're selling bucketloads of it, tournaments are bigger than ever, new Star Wars film and shows are coming thick and fast to ensure future wave content, the metagame is in great shape...

Second edition is 4 or 5 years away, I'd reckon.

6 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

They won't reboot X-Wing until there are any signs that anything is wrong with this version. They're selling bucketloads of it, tournaments are bigger than ever, new Star Wars film and shows are coming thick and fast to ensure future wave content, the metagame is in great shape...

Second edition is 4 or 5 years away, I'd reckon.

That would possibly be the case if FFG was like Games Workshop, and Star Wars was their own license. It's not though; it's Disney's license. There's no guarantee that FFG will still have the rights to produce Star Wars games in 4-5 years time. Especially if their other Star Wars products and investments (looking at you, Legion), don't reach the same high numbers as X-Wing.

Make hay while the sun shines boys, for who knows what tomorrow may bring.

Just now, FTS Gecko said:

That would possibly be the case if FFG was like Games Workshop, and Star Wars was their own license. It's not though; it's Disney's license. There's no guarantee that FFG will still have the rights to produce Star Wars games in 4-5 years time. Especially if their other Star Wars products and investments (looking at you, Legion), don't reach the same high numbers as X-Wing.

Make hay while the sun shines boys, for who knows what tomorrow may bring.

True, but that's equally true of any Second Edition discussion anyway.

1 hour ago, the1hodgy said:

I played a guy who used 4 T65 and a Z95 at system open; I was flying a " toxic combo" and he nuked me off the table.

I flew 3 Rookies and Nera during Hangar Bay. I did better with them than I did with my main event list!

2 hours ago, Quadjumper King said:

I find that, regardless of fact, I feel that the game I play now, isn't the X-Wing miniatures game I tore from that dusty core set so many moons ago.

I believe, that for better or for worse, we are in an X-Wing 2.0.

Some people prefer aspects of the original game and that's perfectly fine, but I find that the game as it is now is no less appealing to me. Different maybe, but no less appealing. Older ships are re-released to keep pace with the power curve, new ships introduce fascinating new facets of all aspects of the game from the manouverability of the Striker to the action coordination of the Upsilon to the reload of the Kimogila and the Gunboat.

This is very perceptive, and is basically the bullet form of the second part of my blogs on X-Wing metagame development.

The period between Wave 7 and Wave 8 saw an almost complete change in the game. You could pretty convincingly argue that Wave 7 created X-Wing 2.0.

Star Wars: 1-on-1 hand combat scale fight system

takes a 8-seater table to fit it all in

The included components will put Twilight Imperium to SHAME and make it seem like babby's first board game.

2 hours ago, william1134 said:

Very good point has been made above.

in the beginning you could just throw together a list fairly easily and do OK as the game at that point was based on skill and dogfighting.

Now the game seems to revolve around listbuilding with silly combos.

This is pretty awful as it really reduces the variety you see, increases the amount of ships you need to buy for the cards and leads to some toxic combos.

i miss the old days when I would have a list with some A-wings, B-wings and X-wings. Now it just gets blown out of the water and they rarely see play.

Honestly, the generic jouster lists were not very interesting to play against one another. It's fun to play them against other archetypes like fat turrets, but against each other you just fling dice- the dial decisions are pretty simple when you're both jousters doing the exact same thing.

21 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

Honestly, the generic jouster lists were not very interesting to play against one another. It's fun to play them against other archetypes like fat turrets, but against each other you just fling dice- the dial decisions are pretty simple when you're both jousters doing the exact same thing.

To be fair, mirror matches aren't exactly notorious for their fun factor

this might be controversial but, maybe we don't need a 2.0 of the components of the game, maybe we need a 2.0 of how the game is played. I can't help but feel that alot of the issues come out of the 100/6 tournament format (as people have said above, some of the old stuff works just fine in the right environment).

so here is one of the possible other options (mostly taken from the OTHER flight path game, attack wing, which I also play) -

130/50 format - ok so this is a nice simple one, Attack Wing used a system of 130pt games, where each ship you bring can cost no more than 50pts including all of the cards assigned to the ship and the basic chassis - there was also a caveat that if the ship cost was 43pts or more, you could add 8pts of upgrades even if that exceeded the 50pt limit, but that will only really affect falcons and decimators.

The other thing that could shake things up a little in the format front is having a specific scenario for each tournament season (that stays the same for all official events, and is published before the season starts).

This would allow/force the competitive meta to adjust every year and allow victory conditions other than "kill all" to be used. Again, attack wing has always had scenario based organised play, and it does force you to look at your builds in a different way.

incidentally, in case anyone was wondering how the new release format is working for attack wing (card only and faction packs) it seems to have breathed life into the game again and made some of the less useful ships and upgrades relevant again - so maybe that is something else that could work for X-wing

(and before a bunch of attack wing/trek haters jump on me, I'm in no way suggesting that attack wing is in any way a better, or even more balanced, game than x-wing, or indeed vic versa, simply that as Attack Wing has learnt from X-wing in places over its 30+ waves of releases, maybe there is something that can come back the other way)

regards

Honestly if they were to do an honest to goodness Second Edition, they would have absolutely no choice but to do what they did when Descent moved to second edition: update packs. A pack with nothing but cards and ship tiles updated to the new rules (in whatever form they took) sufficient copies of each generic to field a 100 point list, 1 copy of each named pilot. There would have to be 5 of them, because putting everything in one pack would just not be feasible.

1: Rebels

2: Imperials

3: Scum

4: Upgrades (the faction specific ones would be included in their respective factions, this is for everything else)

5: Epic Ships

6 minutes ago, Surak said:

The other thing that could shake things up a little in the format front is having a specific scenario for each tournament season (that stays the same for all official events, and is published before the season starts).

This would allow/force the competitive meta to adjust every year and allow victory conditions other than "kill all" to be used. Again, attack wing has always had scenario based organised play, and it does force you to look at your builds in a different way.

Scenario driven play would immediately change X-Wing, and for the better IMHO.

23 minutes ago, Surak said:

incidentally, in case anyone was wondering how the new release format is working for attack wing (card only and faction packs) it seems to have breathed life into the game again and made some of the less useful ships and upgrades relevant again - so maybe that is something else that could work for X-wing

Well **** the bed; https://wizkids.com/attackwing/card-packs/ so they have. I would sooner we get this for x-wing than anything else; am not a fan of this X-Wing 2.0 hype. in fact if 2.0 came out; I think i would jump; seeing how FFG handled Game Of Thrones (which i played version 1) it left a bad taste in my mouth

For me the idea of a 2.0 would:

- clean up old ships that have fallen behind the power curve (b-wing, hwk, tie fighter)

- correct the small contingent of cards that are problematic (you know what they are )

- provide some fresh formats that aren’t 100 by 6 (campaign mode!) for the filthy casuals

Card packs, digital app, big hardcover book, anything but having to buy yet another b-wing to get yet another b-wing fix (the current “fix” mechanism, which imo isn’t customer friendly).

I am all for a well designed 2.0 AS LONG AS I can use my old stuff. I would buy replacement card packs etc for the purpose if reasonably priced. FFG should also post all those items in PDF and allow printouts at events for folks whose collections outpaced their incomes.