My first-ever tournament was a store championship in Jan 2015. I took Keyan, Jan, and Biggs to an 0-3 finish, losing to AdvSensors BBBB, double falcon (title, EI, Lando, 3PO, for up to 4 evades a turn!), and Lambda/Fel/TIE Swarm.

Then I bought a Decimator and a Phantom and won my first league.

Then I took Imperial Kath(!) and Whisper to my first Regional Bye three months after I started playing. Before the dark times; before the nerf. (and K-Wing and TLT and Jumpmaster and and and...)

3 hours ago, EvilEd209 said:

Phantoms beat TIE Swarms

Fat Han beats Phantoms

TLTs beat Fat Han

Autothrustered Palp Aces beat most

and so on...

To carry the trend on in both directions:

Non-4 ship Rebels < TIE Swarm <= 4 Ship Rebels < TIE Phantom <= Fat Han/Dash/RAC < Miranda+Co = Palp Aces < Triple JM5K > Dengaroo > Paratanni = Commonwealth Defenders >= Fairship Rebels 2.0 >= NyManda >= Ghost Fenn >= Stress Bunkar >= ?

That gets complicated though. There's a much better chart to show both FFG's design philosophy and the trend of the game:

My first tournament was also a few games after I ventured out in public. I finally started playing just after "Most Wanted" came out, whenever that was. My first list was Oicunn (forget the mods), Doom Shuttle and Palp Shuttle. I went 2/2.

9 hours ago, ForceM said:

I agree that maneuvering got less important when TLT came out, and the important part was getting mods.

Where i don't agree at all is that Rebels were very good back then. If so, it was for wave 7 only. Because when the Jumpmaster came out, nearly every Rebel list was useless overnight. Miranda was flown sometimes i guess, but she was far from good. Corran did not fare much better. 3 Large bases blocked him and he died, end of story. And that period lasted a long, long time. Basically until the big nerf of Jumpmasters, it was different lists of them dominating the meta. Palp Aces in different forms were present, but finding truly competitive rebel lists was kinda hard.

I think the recent absolute Rebel dominance has deleted some other chapters of X-Wing from our brains.

Speaking of the Very beginning, it was Tie Swarms that were good and really dominant basically until the Phantom came out. It was often accompanied by a Howl miniswarm, but honestly, Whisper could solo anything that had lower PS than it and was not a really hard hitting turret on its own.

Wave 1 it ruled undisputed, with 4X pretty far behind as second best.

Wave2 , 3 Firesprays was a lot of HP to kill so it could kinda compete, but thats it.

Wave 3, 4B lists and BBBBZ came and gave Ties a run for their money, but i think it was established that they still had the advantage in most situations, even in a joust.

Wave 4 brought the Phantom, the first ship to really break the meta imho. That brought Fat Han to the table (The YtT-1300 was largely overlooked before Whisper meta, really nobody played it since you stand no chance against a well flown Swarm) Fat han however was the only real counter to Whisper.

After that, Palp Aces made an appearance, and Soontir was the sauce for a time, while RAC Whisper also stayed playable. From then on, i believe you know the story...

good point about rebels being squeezed out of the meta there for a time. the exact timeline is hazy when uv been playing since wave1. Dash Corran lists were doing pretty well just prior to TLTs becoming rampant. but id say rebels were scrambling to find answers until the K-Wing really found its niche... was that wave9?

Large 360 turret ships and TLTs together really warped the meta and shelved so many ships/archetypes.

My first ever squad? Triple Bounty Hunters. Really good fun, at the time.

I subsequently switched to TIE fighters - going through several variations of the TIE fighter All-stars and later a squadron of 6 TIE/fo fighters (a bunch of force awakens core sets were going cheap in WH Smith). I do love them - statistically my best performance has been with 7 academy pilots and 'Youngster' - but ultimately I got hacked off with ships that are functionally immune to 2-dice attacks, even when blocked. (Scum) Boba Fett and Mindlinked Fenn Rau were the main culprits.

There is something aesthetically pleasing and very satisfying about a TIE fighter swarm.

About a year and a half ago I was trying to decide what to get from the latest wave - I decided to get a quintet of TIE strikers and have pretty much stuck with them ever since.

I started playing during wave 5, I literally went from not even knowing xwing existed and playing in a store championship in a day.

I flew 3 pre-autothruster interceptors, Soontir, Carnor and Tur Phennir.

The LGS owner borrowed me his ships and I went in with no expectations, it turned out that being able to do 2 repositioning with all you ships at ps 8, 9and 9+ was crazy good even in the hand of complete noob like me.

I lost in top 4: a patrol leader with Vader crew (and my lack of game knowledge, I hadn't even taken in hands a rulebook at that point) ended the dream.

In the following months, I kept getting smashed by Vader crew on decimators (my local game store meta was incredibly imperial heavy, with interceptors everywhere. Vader crew on a PWT had become the most obvious answer), to the point I switched to rebels because I felt like Dash ability was just cheating.

It turned out that arcdodging with Dash, in a Soontir infested meta, was incredibly fun since you had to keep interceptors out of your donut hole while moving before them, it was far different from the easy mode I expected and was actually harder than playing Soontir (again, as long as a Vader crew wasnt involved in a 360° arc)

Then I wanted to try BBBBZ because B wings looks great and while it was a very strong list, it involved a very boring playstyle. I beleive people who keep praising the "golden age of when arcs mattered" are forgetting how boring the generic spams of the like of BBBBZ and Tie Swarms were to play: you slow roll, take TL when possible, do as few barrell roll as possible and wait for your opponent to fall in the jaw of your superior number of red dice. Compared to the proactive playstyle of a Dash or an interceptors, it's really far from being a good thing.

Also, I won my first tournament ever by playing 2 Shadow squadron phantom with tactician, sensor jammer and stygian + a lambda with vader and mara jade (which was actually useless as everyone thought by the way). I had to stop playing it when aggressors came out because it was unwinnable matchup for me since they could just blast one of my ship and then run for the rest of the game. No half point was a sad time...

Quote

Anyone around who played way way back before Wave 4 when 1.0 was probably actually good?

...

What did good X-Wing play look like during Wave 1-3

Well, I speak as a player who has been playing competitively (and successfully, if that gives more credence to my account) since the very first game night kit.


X-Wing was, in all honesty, never actually good from a balance stand-point. It has always been plagued by overpowered meta-dominant squads that had an overwhelming advantage when two players of relatively even skill were flying. The difference, I suppose, is that back in the early waves most players had no idea what they were doing and the "WOW STAR WARS SPACESHIPS!" effect was still novel and fresh enough to keep people from looking too closely under the hood.


The early days were dominated, almost exclusively, by the Howlrunner Swarm. Rebels had no viable option against it, assuming the Swarm player was decent. Fortunately, back then very few players wanted to (or had yet) bought 7 TIE Fighters, especially in the very early days. So you found a lot of Imperial players rounding out lists with Vader or a Firespray, for instance. Also, very few players in the early days flew in formation. You'd be shocked how many players just spread their ships out at deployment, even Howl-Swarm players. It took a while for the broad community to all migrate to formation blocks. There were some players who did the formation block right out of the gate, but I'll never understand why so many players took so long to also start doing it.

TIE Swarms basically won everything of note in the early days. Most were Howlrunner 7-TIE swarms, but some where proper 8-TIE swarms too. To get a sense of how lopsided it was, look at the Gencon 2013 Finals (arguably the first "real" X-Wing tournament ... since the World Championship that Hothie won had something like... 14-20? people in attendance). In that final, the incredibly talented and patient Jacob Pichelmeyer's TIE Swarm wrecks Eric Naegle's X-Wings in about three rounds. That's pretty much how that match always went, generally speaking. While it was impressive an X-Wing list got to the finals at all, I and some other players at the time suspected FFG may have been pairing Rebels vs Rebels and Imps vs Imps in the elim rounds to try and get a Rebel vs Imp final table. I have no idea if this was true or what tournament software was being used by FFG at the time, but it was interesting that almost every single elim match of that event was Imp vs Imp and Reb vs Reb. It may have just been a sheer fluke, but I suspect it's the only reason we didn't see a TIE Swarm vs TIE Swarm final. Speaking of, TIE Swarm vs TIE Swarm games were super common and always went to time (60mins back then), with a lot of bumps and slowly dealt damage, where the PS of the swarm ships was very relevant. It was like a whole second game of X-Wing being played within X-Wing.


When the Falcon (and Firespray) initially came out, everyone was convinced it was utter trash and that you couldn't spend half of your points on a single attack per round. Players were begging FFG to make unique pilots (other than Biggs and Howl) and upgrades better, so that they'd be worth taking (Predator was, for instance, a direct response to this and was welcomed as a weapon in the war against TIE Swarms at the time).

When the Falcon did get cracked, it was in a Dual Falcon lists (typically Lando + Chewie). Jeff Berling, who has won his share of big events and is infamously best known for giving us Dengaroo, first flew a dual Falcon list with double Draw Their Fire, being one of the game's first "hyper defense" list. This was one of the first times Falcons (or significant amounts of upgrades generally) were successfully used, and that double-draw Falcon list won every semi-local Regional that year (more like Store Champs at the time, so there were more of them locally). I think this is when the broader community started to take "fat ships" (eg expensive ships and ships with upgrades) seriously. Bear in mind that many players back then also did stuff like deploy their Falcon right across from the enemy's TIE Swarm and then simply joust it, whereas the "good" Falcon players would run away from the swarm and take opportunistic pot-shots as able. This latter strategy drove a lot of players crazy (read: angry), and they felt the Dual Falcon lists were being cheesy and/or stalling by running away. I think the Swarm players were mostly salty that their opponents were finally doing something othe than just setting up across from them and suiciding into their 14-16 TIE dice. But this sort of strategy started some very interesting debates about strategy and sportsmanship on the Geek (BGG), which at the time was sort of the place to talk X-Wing. There were also some discussions about the possibility of fortressing with something like a dual Falcon list ("the Millennium Fortress"). This was largely academic at the time, at is was almost always better on table to keep the ships moving (away from the enemy swarm's approach), but it was the first time I think the community engaged with the possibility of fortressing in the game. As perspective, I just played in Worlds 2018 and 6 of my 9 opponents started at least the first couple rounds by fortressing (bumping their deployed ships so they didn't move). Two of those 6 did it indefinitely until I approached their fortress (they had a Final Salvo advantage, so why not?).


When B-Wings came onto the scene, they presented a problem for Dual Falcons. The Gunner load-out made the Falcons reliable at forcing 1-ish damage per attack, which was solid against TIEs. But against these 8HP B-Wings they were pretty much leaving 10 points on the table and would struggle to PS kill ships before they could hit back. The community was also a bit upset that the B-Wing had made the X-Wing obsolete, since 8HP + BR behind 1 Agility was generally better than 5HP behind 2 Agility, all for a tiny point increase. The man and legend himself, Paul Heaver, took two BBX + Biggs to victory at the next World Championship event against, you guessed it, the ever-present TIE Swarm. This was in some ways was the first "real" World Championship event since it had a much greater attendance than the ~20 at the first WC when the game was in its infancy and had only been on store shelves briefly. Paul's victory in that game was especially impressive, since generally speaking I think the TIE Swarm had an edge over the BBXX/BBBB sort of Rebel salad that existed at the time, so TIE Swarms still tended to be the dominant apex predator in most environments, until Wave 4...


Here's how I'd roughly describe the Rock-Paper-Scissors of Waves 1-3:

TIE Swarm > XXXX/BBXX > Dual Falcons > TIE Swarm


But sine the OP's Post has been amended to express curiosity about Waves 1-3, I'll end this little bit of X-Wing history here.

I started collecting as soon as the first core set came out, played my first games in late 2012, excited to indulge my X-wing/Tie Fighter Pc game nostalgia. Only played games with people who I introduced the game to. Purely casual affairs where we would look through the very limited available upgrade cards on the spot, threw together a list with iconic ships, put on OT Star Wars music, found a soundboard, and had at it. First games had a realllly limited selection of ships and upgrades. You were either flying X’s and Y’s (with ion turrets) or Vader and Tie/lns.

I was totally disconnected from forums or any larger X-Wing community and therefore ignorant about any new meta hotness and rarely ever flew the same thing twice for those trends to really become obvious. I do remember being amazed by Advanced sensor B-Wings (barrel roll then 1 turn wow!) Even I could tell though as stuff came out that there were plenty of pilots that would rarely or never see table time (looking at you Fel’s Wrath). It was a nice ‘pure’ experience though.

Remember that movie where Brendon Fraser is stuck in a basement with 1950’s culture and emerges in the 90’s, completely ignorant about all the changes that have happened in the meantime? That was kind of my X-Wing experience when I finally started playing at a local game store after wave 9 (!!). I showed up with Soontir and a Tie mini swarm and was flabbergasted by SLAM- bombing Miranda just decimating them. I felt like the guy who probably spent years practicing his sword play who picked a fight with a gun wielding Indiana Jones.

2 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

X-Wing was, in all honesty, never actually good from a balance stand-point.

Yep. X-Wing has had a constantly shifting meta featuring a handful of dominant lists. That's not balance, unless we talk about balance at a macro level where over time, every faction has had some kind of stupidly over-powered list, but even then, and I'm not willing to do the math, I can't imagine it's been a 33.3/33.3/33.4 split on the time each faction has dominated.

And a lot of it comes from the incomplete ruleset that was never amended. 1st and 2nd Wave ships literally just don't have maneuvers and upgrade types simply because those things didn't exist in the game when they came into being. Then there were limitations of the physical components. Why can't a 1.0 A-Wing Barrel Roll? The card's font sizes meant it only had physical space for four Actions to be printed on it. Why doesn't it Tallon Roll or have a System or Tech slot? Those things didn't exist when it was released. Why do so few early-Wave pilots have Elite upgrades? Because Elite meant something different, from a design philosophy standpoint, in early waves than it did in later waves.

X-Wing 2.0 was going to have to be inevitable for the game to survive. Anybody who didn't expect it was fairly naive. Anybody who railed against it knows nothing of game design. You can't release a game in an evolving ruleset and expect it to not go off the rails at some point. The nice thing about 2.0, assuming they don't completely botch it, is that now they can look at the entire catalog of ships and upgrade cards and see how they affect gameplay across the board, rather than releasing so many things piecemeal and inventing new card types that old ships can't use.

I was playing for a while already, but ended up taking my Nephew to his first tournament - an Imdaar Alpha event. These were supposed to be fun things, but some guy showed up with Paul Heaver's XXBB Biggs walks the dogs list (?). I was playing Carnor and a Howlrunner mini swarm (also not fun). Asteroids were key when you had a block of 4 guys, and this fella sent everyone after the Carnor bait. (Carnor was HORRIBLY BAD for rebels, almost couldn't beat it due to low action economy, then Carnor blocks all your defenses). I managed to arc dodge the BWings, then arcdodged them again the turn after. Meanwhile the miniswarm is tearing biggs apart. BWings were pretty nasty back then! My Nephew flew Chewie in a Falcon and probably an XWing. He and I got 3rd and 4th, he chose his Imdaar Alpha ship and I got the Z95. I'd say there was 15 or so people, but it was 4 rounds and no cut. I'm not even sure cuts were a thing for store kits back then.

Mostly everyone was flying highly efficient jousting lists and a couple arc dodger lists were in the mix. It was pretty neat, throwing red dice a ton. You rarely killed something first round of shooting.

A lot of rose-tinted glasses here. I remember watching a nationals final match (Gencon?) in the first year. For all the promises of a fun maneuvering game, it was like watching paint dry as two TIE swarms played Farkle

This game has slammed between extremes of imbalance repeatedly. There wasn’t really a good time for balance. Just people remembering the time when their list wasn’t screwed.

Which is why I’m very interested in 2E, but very cautious.

I started playing in Wave 1. I had a blast! What a fun game! My first tournament was a Vassal tournament hosted by the community at A Few Maneuvers. I ended up winning with TIE All-stars (the 6 named TIE fighters of Wave 1). But lots of people played Imperial, so I focused on Rebel for my in-store games. At the first Regional event (akin to a Store Championship) I lost to a TIE swarm pretty badly with Wedge, Horton and Rookie, but I outmaneuvered the opening joust so that only 4 out of 7 had shots, which was beautiful! ...I just ended up whiffing my Proton Torpedoes shots, which caused me to abandon ordnance basically for the rest of my time playing X-wing.

I then happened upon Wedge, Biggs and 2 Golds with Ion Cannon Turrets. It was a lot of fun, and the control aspect really helped keep my ships alive. I flew loosely so Biggs could swoop into range 1 to save a ship about to die, but wasn't predictable. I won a TIE interceptor at the Kessel Run Wave 2 pre-release event, which made me want to start flying Imperial. I flew a lot of Obsidian Squadron (7 TIEs) and a cool list with a Bounty Hunter and 5 Academies (usually the Firespray was equipped with Gunner and Seismic Charges to fight off opposing swarms).

I went back to that Wedge, Biggs, Golds squad for the next Regional event, where I was introduced to double YT-1300. It was challenging. But my ions put in work. At a critical moment, I knew I needed to not be blocked by a YT-1300, because if both Y-wings could shoot it, it would go off the board next round. Alas, in an effort to not overlap, I flew my Y-wing off the board, and it all fell apart. No half points for large ships yet, so I got 0 points that match. The only consolation was that my opponent said it was the closest he had ever been to defeat with that squad at that time.

Then I met Triple Bounty Hunters. That was my bane. Even at the Imdaar Alpha event, with Soontir, Royal Guard, Saber, and Backstabber, I couldn't seal the deal, bringing him down to one highly damaged Firespray before I was destroyed. It was a great game. I didn't end up beating Triple Bounty Hunters until Wave 5, when I picked up the Decimator. I flew a highly defensive Kenkirk, along with "Night Beast" and "Dark Curse" and an Academy Pilot. The defense of the list, along with the efficient turret for the empire, ended up being enough for a decisive victory over Triple Bounty Hunters. Finally! (That was our Wave 5 release tournament, and the Decimator I bought let me win an Outrider expansion pack).

8 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

My first ever squad? Triple Bounty Hunters. Really good fun, at the time.

Ugh. You're one of those guys. ? It's alright, I respect you too much for your TIE striker escapades to hold a grudge.

1 hour ago, JLank said:

Remember that movie where Brendon Fraser is stuck in a basement with 1950’s culture and emerges in the 90’s, completely ignorant about all the changes that have happened in the meantime?

Oh man, what a blast from the past! If only I could remember the name of that movie...

I collected since Wave 1; loving the look and idea of the game but having never really played much miniature wargaming (I collected WotC D&D figures for my RPG sessions and only ever tried the mini-centric ruleset a few times.)

Aside from a brief test with a GF at the time, I didn't really play until Wave 4. I didn't know anyone who played but a co-worker displayed interest so we used my collection (already bloated due to my purchase of someone else's collection who was getting out) and played only each other until a regular pilot group encouraged us to join them at our FLGS.

I've been playing ever since, usually once every other week, sometimes more or less, and my collection includes at least one of every ship. In some cases I have more than I can field in a 100 point game, but I would sometimes pick up an extra ship just for repaint/modding purposes.

I've never played a tourney and don't consider myself "good", but I'm looking forward to 2.0 and what shape the game will be in after that.

Nothing has changed. The vast majority of people still pick the list they think will win from already tested net lists. People for the most part joust, and still do. Basically making a good strategy game into a dice game. For example you had TIE swarms back then and now corran+lowrick+Ezra, Miranda+Fen+Lowrick, and ghost+fen all just glorified jousting lists that midigate dice and not much else. Each wave had it's NPE. Swarms for 1-3, Phantoms after, turrets after that, etc etc. Swarms were, and still are easy to play correctly. Things like reinforce though completely negates them, so regardless of how easy or not to fly them, it doesn't matter when you do no damage.

I remember in 2014 I ran 3 royal gaurds+Hull and backstabber in regionals. People thought I was crazy and during that time people flying han+BB thought they had easy wins against it. I got top 4 only losing against tiredness of 9+ rounds in a day. Then I had to fly against Dallas and his swarm. I just couldn't edge out the correct flying needed.

After that I realize people just joust regardless of the list they bring, so I swapped out to Echo and 5 ties then swapped to Fel and later 5 obsidians turned to 4 crack ties. The TIEs did their job and the ace cleaned up.

I will have to say though, the thing that kept my interest in this great game, was the local community. At times it dwindled but for the most part we all stayed away from the major meta lists. Most didn't bring their top tier lists to bare so going to local tournaments was always a surprise because you never knew what might come at you, unlike the bigger SC and regional scenes.

I'm hoping with 2.0 people will realize that if they joust they won't have the mods to just weather it and flying will come to play an important part of this great game. If not, I'll continue to play, but I just hope against all hope that it won't turn into just a dice game again.

A photo, for your viewing pleasure.

From my first ever full 100 point game. Back in early 2014. Built my first list, brimming with confidence, then turn two, I do this:

BIGGS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

6 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Well, I speak as a player who has been playing competitively (and successfully, if that gives more credence to my account) since the very first game night kit.


X-Wing was, in all honesty, never actually good from a balance stand-point. It has always been plagued by overpowered meta-dominant squads that had an overwhelming advantage when two players of relatively even skill were flying. The difference, I suppose, is that back in the early waves most players had no idea what they were doing and the "WOW STAR WARS SPACESHIPS!" effect was still novel and fresh enough to keep people from looking too closely under the hood.


The early days were dominated, almost exclusively, by the Howlrunner Swarm. Rebels had no viable option against it, assuming the Swarm player was decent. Fortunately, back then very few players wanted to (or had yet) bought 7 TIE Fighters, especially in the very early days. So you found a lot of Imperial players rounding out lists with Vader or a Firespray, for instance. Also, very few players in the early days flew in formation. You'd be shocked how many players just spread their ships out at deployment, even Howl-Swarm players. It took a while for the broad community to all migrate to formation blocks. There were some players who did the formation block right out of the gate, but I'll never understand why so many players took so long to also start doing it.

TIE Swarms basically won everything of note in the early days. Most were Howlrunner 7-TIE swarms, but some where proper 8-TIE swarms too. To get a sense of how lopsided it was, look at the Gencon 2013 Finals (arguably the first "real" X-Wing tournament ... since the World Championship that Hothie won had something like... 14-20? people in attendance). In that final, the incredibly talented and patient Jacob Pichelmeyer's TIE Swarm wrecks Eric Naegle's X-Wings in about three rounds. That's pretty much how that match always went, generally speaking. While it was impressive an X-Wing list got to the finals at all, I and some other players at the time suspected FFG may have been pairing Rebels vs Rebels and Imps vs Imps in the elim rounds to try and get a Rebel vs Imp final table. I have no idea if this was true or what tournament software was being used by FFG at the time, but it was interesting that almost every single elim match of that event was Imp vs Imp and Reb vs Reb. It may have just been a sheer fluke, but I suspect it's the only reason we didn't see a TIE Swarm vs TIE Swarm final. Speaking of, TIE Swarm vs TIE Swarm games were super common and always went to time (60mins back then), with a lot of bumps and slowly dealt damage, where the PS of the swarm ships was very relevant. It was like a whole second game of X-Wing being played within X-Wing.


When the Falcon (and Firespray) initially came out, everyone was convinced it was utter trash and that you couldn't spend half of your points on a single attack per round. Players were begging FFG to make unique pilots (other than Biggs and Howl) and upgrades better, so that they'd be worth taking (Predator was, for instance, a direct response to this and was welcomed as a weapon in the war against TIE Swarms at the time).

When the Falcon did get cracked, it was in a Dual Falcon lists (typically Lando + Chewie). Jeff Berling, who has won his share of big events and is infamously best known for giving us Dengaroo, first flew a dual Falcon list with double Draw Their Fire, being one of the game's first "hyper defense" list. This was one of the first times Falcons (or significant amounts of upgrades generally) were successfully used, and that double-draw Falcon list won every semi-local Regional that year (more like Store Champs at the time, so there were more of them locally). I think this is when the broader community started to take "fat ships" (eg expensive ships and ships with upgrades) seriously. Bear in mind that many players back then also did stuff like deploy their Falcon right across from the enemy's TIE Swarm and then simply joust it, whereas the "good" Falcon players would run away from the swarm and take opportunistic pot-shots as able. This latter strategy drove a lot of players crazy (read: angry), and they felt the Dual Falcon lists were being cheesy and/or stalling by running away. I think the Swarm players were mostly salty that their opponents were finally doing something othe than just setting up across from them and suiciding into their 14-16 TIE dice. But this sort of strategy started some very interesting debates about strategy and sportsmanship on the Geek (BGG), which at the time was sort of the place to talk X-Wing. There were also some discussions about the possibility of fortressing with something like a dual Falcon list ("the Millennium Fortress"). This was largely academic at the time, at is was almost always better on table to keep the ships moving (away from the enemy swarm's approach), but it was the first time I think the community engaged with the possibility of fortressing in the game. As perspective, I just played in Worlds 2018 and 6 of my 9 opponents started at least the first couple rounds by fortressing (bumping their deployed ships so they didn't move). Two of those 6 did it indefinitely until I approached their fortress (they had a Final Salvo advantage, so why not?).


When B-Wings came onto the scene, they presented a problem for Dual Falcons. The Gunner load-out made the Falcons reliable at forcing 1-ish damage per attack, which was solid against TIEs. But against these 8HP B-Wings they were pretty much leaving 10 points on the table and would struggle to PS kill ships before they could hit back. The community was also a bit upset that the B-Wing had made the X-Wing obsolete, since 8HP + BR behind 1 Agility was generally better than 5HP behind 2 Agility, all for a tiny point increase. The man and legend himself, Paul Heaver, took two BBX + Biggs to victory at the next World Championship event against, you guessed it, the ever-present TIE Swarm. This was in some ways was the first "real" World Championship event since it had a much greater attendance than the ~20 at the first WC when the game was in its infancy and had only been on store shelves briefly. Paul's victory in that game was especially impressive, since generally speaking I think the TIE Swarm had an edge over the BBXX/BBBB sort of Rebel salad that existed at the time, so TIE Swarms still tended to be the dominant apex predator in most environments, until Wave 4...


Here's how I'd roughly describe the Rock-Paper-Scissors of Waves 1-3:

TIE Swarm > XXXX/BBXX > Dual Falcons > TIE Swarm


But sine the OP's Post has been amended to express curiosity about Waves 1-3, I'll end this little bit of X-Wing history here.

Great post - Excellent insights into the early evolution of flying tactics and build strategy. Nailed it!

I came in with imdaar alpha. A tournament where the top 4 players got an early version of wave 4 months beforehand.

Kessel Run was awesome too

i miss the themed events and am really excited the designers have mentioned bringing those back.

Early xwing was not the great nirvana. It just had different problems. In those days named pilots were overpriced pilots. Reposition jousters ruled the day.

Biggs walks the dogs was a crazy good when flown correctly.

An occasional named Ames tie pilot like backstabber or dark curse were viable options.

16 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Well, I speak as a player who has been playing competitively (and successfully, if that gives more credence to my account) since the very first game night kit.


X-Wing was, in all honesty, never actually good from a balance stand-point. It has always been plagued by overpowered meta-dominant squads that had an overwhelming advantage when two players of relatively even skill were flying. The difference, I suppose, is that back in the early waves most players had no idea what they were doing and the "WOW STAR WARS SPACESHIPS!" effect was still novel and fresh enough to keep people from looking too closely under the hood.


The early days were dominated, almost exclusively, by the Howlrunner Swarm. Rebels had no viable option against it, assuming the Swarm player was decent. Fortunately, back then very few players wanted to (or had yet) bought 7 TIE Fighters, especially in the very early days. So you found a lot of Imperial players rounding out lists with Vader or a Firespray, for instance. Also, very few players in the early days flew in formation. You'd be shocked how many players just spread their ships out at deployment, even Howl-Swarm players. It took a while for the broad community to all migrate to formation blocks. There were some players who did the formation block right out of the gate, but I'll never understand why so many players took so long to also start doing it.

TIE Swarms basically won everything of note in the early days. Most were Howlrunner 7-TIE swarms, but some where proper 8-TIE swarms too. To get a sense of how lopsided it was, look at the Gencon 2013 Finals (arguably the first "real" X-Wing tournament ... since the World Championship that Hothie won had something like... 14-20? people in attendance). In that final, the incredibly talented and patient Jacob Pichelmeyer's TIE Swarm wrecks Eric Naegle's X-Wings in about three rounds. That's pretty much how that match always went, generally speaking. While it was impressive an X-Wing list got to the finals at all, I and some other players at the time suspected FFG may have been pairing Rebels vs Rebels and Imps vs Imps in the elim rounds to try and get a Rebel vs Imp final table. I have no idea if this was true or what tournament software was being used by FFG at the time, but it was interesting that almost every single elim match of that event was Imp vs Imp and Reb vs Reb. It may have just been a sheer fluke, but I suspect it's the only reason we didn't see a TIE Swarm vs TIE Swarm final. Speaking of, TIE Swarm vs TIE Swarm games were super common and always went to time (60mins back then), with a lot of bumps and slowly dealt damage, where the PS of the swarm ships was very relevant. It was like a whole second game of X-Wing being played within X-Wing.


When the Falcon (and Firespray) initially came out, everyone was convinced it was utter trash and that you couldn't spend half of your points on a single attack per round. Players were begging FFG to make unique pilots (other than Biggs and Howl) and upgrades better, so that they'd be worth taking (Predator was, for instance, a direct response to this and was welcomed as a weapon in the war against TIE Swarms at the time).

When the Falcon did get cracked, it was in a Dual Falcon lists (typically Lando + Chewie). Jeff Berling, who has won his share of big events and is infamously best known for giving us Dengaroo, first flew a dual Falcon list with double Draw Their Fire, being one of the game's first "hyper defense" list. This was one of the first times Falcons (or significant amounts of upgrades generally) were successfully used, and that double-draw Falcon list won every semi-local Regional that year (more like Store Champs at the time, so there were more of them locally). I think this is when the broader community started to take "fat ships" (eg expensive ships and ships with upgrades) seriously. Bear in mind that many players back then also did stuff like deploy their Falcon right across from the enemy's TIE Swarm and then simply joust it, whereas the "good" Falcon players would run away from the swarm and take opportunistic pot-shots as able. This latter strategy drove a lot of players crazy (read: angry), and they felt the Dual Falcon lists were being cheesy and/or stalling by running away. I think the Swarm players were mostly salty that their opponents were finally doing something othe than just setting up across from them and suiciding into their 14-16 TIE dice. But this sort of strategy started some very interesting debates about strategy and sportsmanship on the Geek (BGG), which at the time was sort of the place to talk X-Wing. There were also some discussions about the possibility of fortressing with something like a dual Falcon list ("the Millennium Fortress"). This was largely academic at the time, at is was almost always better on table to keep the ships moving (away from the enemy swarm's approach), but it was the first time I think the community engaged with the possibility of fortressing in the game. As perspective, I just played in Worlds 2018 and 6 of my 9 opponents started at least the first couple rounds by fortressing (bumping their deployed ships so they didn't move). Two of those 6 did it indefinitely until I approached their fortress (they had a Final Salvo advantage, so why not?).


When B-Wings came onto the scene, they presented a problem for Dual Falcons. The Gunner load-out made the Falcons reliable at forcing 1-ish damage per attack, which was solid against TIEs. But against these 8HP B-Wings they were pretty much leaving 10 points on the table and would struggle to PS kill ships before they could hit back. The community was also a bit upset that the B-Wing had made the X-Wing obsolete, since 8HP + BR behind 1 Agility was generally better than 5HP behind 2 Agility, all for a tiny point increase. The man and legend himself, Paul Heaver, took two BBX + Biggs to victory at the next World Championship event against, you guessed it, the ever-present TIE Swarm. This was in some ways was the first "real" World Championship event since it had a much greater attendance than the ~20 at the first WC when the game was in its infancy and had only been on store shelves briefly. Paul's victory in that game was especially impressive, since generally speaking I think the TIE Swarm had an edge over the BBXX/BBBB sort of Rebel salad that existed at the time, so TIE Swarms still tended to be the dominant apex predator in most environments, until Wave 4...


Here's how I'd roughly describe the Rock-Paper-Scissors of Waves 1-3:

TIE Swarm > XXXX/BBXX > Dual Falcons > TIE Swarm


But sine the OP's Post has been amended to express curiosity about Waves 1-3, I'll end this little bit of X-Wing history here.

Great reading. Best post in these forums for quite a while. Well said sir. Thanks for posting.

12 hours ago, Parakitor said:

Ugh. You're one of those guys. ? It's alright, I respect you too much for your TIE striker escapades to hold a grudge.

It's fair enough. I think I played it at two, maybe three events, before I shelved it in favour of stuff which could actually turn corners. I actually switched from them to the TIE Fighter All-Stars, which I was using until the Force Awakens core set came out.

I think one of the best games I had with the latter was against triple TIE phantoms - the two generics went down like punks against a squad with a minimum PS of 5, but Echo took quite some killing. Fortunately, Mauler Mithel and Howlrunner both had Veteran Instincts. Best two points I ever spent, during the pre-nerf TIE phantom era

Using the TIE All-Stars was why I never understood the whole Torpedo Jumpmaster thing, because whilst there weren't many rules changes between original core rules and Force Awakens core rules, I was pointedly aware of them because they used ships I was using to underline the differences - Night Beast getting to de-stress as part of the green move meaning his ability works when starting the turn stressed, for example.

Which meant that the whole 'spending the focus with deadeye and claiming a lock with R4' didn't make sense; given that you explicitely could use Deadeye to fling torpedoes at Dark Curse, who doesn't let you spend focus when he's defending.....surely R4, which has exactly the same trigger, couldn't also work?

I subsequently got multiple TIE/fo, and used Epsilon Squadron quite a bit (4 x Epsilon Squadron Pilot, Epsilon Ace, Epsilon Leader) and flip-flopped a bit back and forth from that to an academy pilot swarm with Youngster/Rage once the carrier came out - the only epic ship I own - before discovering the glory of adaptive ailerons.

.....really hoping they don't put the Striker into Legion as a snowspeeder equivalent as I will go bankrupt.