Recently I had a discussion with some of my friends and fellow x-wing players, that got me thinking. I myself, have only been playing since wave 4, while some of the others have been playing from the beginning. Among the things discussed was the evolution of the game, and how various cards and combination allowed for very strong, or "broken" combos, and the prevalence of powerful cards such as VI, Palp and PTL. One of the comments we all found funny, was when one friend stated that they originally thought that you were “only allowed to use the upgrades that came in expansion pack with the ship that came with that expansion pack”. So the more I thought about this over the next week, the more I thought, this might not be such a bad idea actually. So for the last couple of days I have been looking through the various ships on Yet Another X-wing Squad Builder, using the card browser to see what upgrades each ship came with. I came up with a set of additional rules to be used with standard squad building, to create an alternate squad building method. There are a few problems that I have identified but really not too much. This is probably due to me missing things. So now I have decided to post it on the forums here to see if people here can find what I am missing.

So the purpose of this thread is three fold. First, to identify any problems with the additional squad building rules that would break the game or make a ship unplayable (which is not the same as non-optimized). Second, to identify upgrade cards or upgrade slots that are “orphaned” by the restrictions put in place by these additional rules (see Problem Cards for examples). Third, to determine which builds are no longer possible, and what the new meta would look like using these rules.

Alternate Squad Building Rules

• You may only use the Elite, Bomb, Cannon, Astromech, Modifications, and Unique Crew upgrades that came with expansions of that ship type.
• Only the small based ship types that came with the Epic ship expansions may equip the non-epic cards in that expansion.
• The upgrade cards from the Rebellion core set may be used by the Rebel, Imperial and Scum and Villainy factions. The Resistance and First Order faction may use upgrade cards from the Resistance core set.
• Upgrade cards from Aces expansions can be used by either ship in the expansion.
• There are 5 Factions; Rebellion, Imperials, Scum, First Order, Resistance.
• The Most Wanted expansions upgrade cards can be used by any ship with a maneuver dial and a pilot that came with that expansion (Y-wing, Z-95, Firespray and Hawk-290). They may also use the upgrades that came with the Rebel / Imperial expansion of that ship, unless the upgrade is Rebel or Imperial only or otherwise not applicable.
• Generic crew upgrades can be used with any ship with a crew slot. Unique crew upgrades can only be used on the ships they came with. (This rule is due to the fact that the core set has no crew upgrades, and that some crew carriers came without any crew cards. Though I no longer remember which ones, and I could be wrong about this).

Problem Cards

• R5-P8 and Overclocked R4, come with the JM5K and that ship does not have an Astromech slot.
• Pulsed Ray Shield, comes with a Scum ship but is both Rebel and Scum.
• Bomb Loadout for the Y-wing in the Most Wanted expansion. Expansion does not come with any bombs, and there are no bombs in the core set.
• Darth Maul, a unique Scum crew upgrade that comes with a Rebel ship.

Interesting idea. I take it that for ships that had Aces/Veteran packs you can use any of the cards that came in those packs?

also, based on your other “problem cards” you might want to add Maul to that list, who came with the Sheathipede pack and is “Scum or Ezra Bridger only.”

alternatively, to solve some of the problems you’re running into, you could say your entire list is limited to upgrade cards from all expansion packs ships within that list. Ie: you could take a Scum Firespray and a Scum Y-Wing and equip bombs from the Firespray expansion on the Y-wing.

2 hours ago, Herowannabe said:

Interesting idea. I take it that for ships that had Aces/Veteran packs you can use any of the cards that came in those packs?

also, based on your other “problem cards” you might want to add Maul to that list, who came with the Sheathipede pack and is “Scum or Ezra Bridger only.”

alternatively, to solve some of the problems you’re running into, you could say your entire list is limited to upgrade cards from all expansion packs ships within that list. Ie: you could take a Scum Firespray and a Scum Y-Wing and equip bombs from the Firespray expansion on the Y-wing.

Yes the Aces packs would allow for either ship to use the upgrades. It was on my hand written notes, but it looks like I forgot it when I typed up the list. ? I will add it back in, and thanks for pointing it out.

Oh yeah, missed that. Maul is definitely an odd card, it violates the Unique Crew rules as it come on a Rebel ship and belongs to the Scum faction. I will add it to the list.

As for the Y-wing issue, your suggestion was one of my possible solutions, giving it access to bomb upgrades from the Firespray. The other was to let it equip any 2pt bomb upgrades as an add-on for the Title card. I'm still not sure which way I will go with this.