As the second edition is hitting stores everywhere, I'm betting that first edition is going to quickly dry up and go out of print. Since I only play casually with friends, I've been out of the X-Wing loop and I figured I'd better grab what ships I don't have before I'm spending huge prices on ebay. But I also don't really want to blow my entire paycheck on a game.

So I turn to you guys. What from the list would you consider absolutely essential, the "You fool! How can you not have THAT in your collection!"

(Spoilered for length)

This is just personal preference, and ignoring what cards come with the ships...

Tie phantom for the looks and the joy of flying it

StarViper, just for the same reason (1st edition fun comes with the guns for hire expansion: StarViper mkii title. 2nd edition is built-in)

Arc170, such a beautiful ship

Quadjumper for the sheer troll you can pull off with it

3 hours ago, flooze said:

This is just personal preference, and ignoring what cards come with the ships...

Tie phantom for the looks and the joy of flying it

StarViper, just for the same reason (1st edition fun comes with the guns for hire expansion: StarViper mkii title. 2nd edition is built-in)

Arc170, such a beautiful ship

Quadjumper for the sheer troll you can pull off with it

This.

Otherwise, depends on what ships you like to fly/ style to play.

A M12L e.g. is a really brut-ish heavy hitter, but melts if targeted by many.

Strikers are much fun to fly as well, but take a while to get used to their pre-move boost (i.e. really easy to fly off or park on asteroids by mistake).

Persinally I thought the "aces" style boxes eere all great buys. HotR was the single greatest expansion in v1 imo. With just that and the TFA core set you could make some solid, run to play lists.

I'd buy a Starviper and Guns for Hire as well to get some really fund Starviper builds going. Those bendy barrell rolls are fun to both play with and play against.

Decimator, Striker, Special Forces and the Silencer are all good buys for Imperials.

You need Mist Hunter!

Honestly I'd keep an eye on the buy/sell/trade pages on FB and look for a lot on Ebay. Really good deals to be had with people dropping factions going into 2.0.

4 hours ago, Managarmr said:

Otherwise, depends on what ships you like to fly/ style to play.

Really, my style of play consists of "Lets put a whole bunch of TIE fighters out and then have them bounce off each other!"

I tend to favor stuff like X-Wings and Y-Wings and TIE interceptors because that is Star Wars to me. I love the look of the TIE Defender - always have back to the old MS Dos game - so I'll play with those. That sort of thing. At the end of the day we just get ships together with no rhyme or reason other than they look cool and they're iconic.

2 hours ago, Jiron said:

You need Mist Hunter!

I gotta admit that I'm teetering on the edge of getting that one. I might prioritize the Bounty Hunter ships over weird and nameless ones like the Upsilon Shuttle and the like. Again, rule of cool.

25 minutes ago, Desslok said:

Really, my style of play consists of "Lets put a whole bunch of TIE fighters out and then have them bounce off each other!"

I tend to favor stuff like X-Wings and Y-Wings and TIE interceptors because that is Star Wars to me. I love the look of the TIE Defender - always have back to the old MS Dos game - so I'll play with those. That sort of thing. At the end of the day we just get ships together with no rhyme or reason other than they look cool and they're iconic.

I think you just answered your own question. Buy what you like. You’re going to have a lot more fun (especially in casual play) flying ships you know and love than flying some random unrecognizable ship just because the interwebs told you it was gud.

Based on what you like to play, I'd suggest the Tie Phantom and the Tie Striker. Both of these have different play styles and have good uniques so you only need to have one of them if you don't want to break the bank. (If you want something really meta good, go for the Special Forces TIE so you can get Quickdraw).

My favorite 1.0 ship was probably the Starviper, so I'd say get Guns for Hire (which comes with the Starviper and its upgrades that made it awesome and as a bonus the dreaded Harpoon Missiles). Maybe also pick up the regular Starviper so then you'd have two with different paint schemes. Throw them together with another scum ship or two and you'll have a really fun list to play.

Let me also just throw this out there - I was really teetering on the edge of not converting to 2.0. For the first several months, I was on the "no" side. I've dived in all the way, but it was worth it in terms of being able to be excited about X-wing again, involved with the current conversations, and able to continue on with all the new ships they have planned (clone wars!). For what you're thinking of investing in 1.0 ships, you might just want to consider a 2.0 core set and one or two conversion kits (depending on if your friends you play with are also converting). It did seem to me like I was spending a lot to essentially get nothing new when I ordered the stuff, but it feels different when you're on the other side of the fence. Again, completely up to you, what your group enjoys, and how much you're into moving forward with the game. Enjoy!

1 hour ago, dadocollin said:

For what you're thinking of investing in 1.0 ships, you might just want to consider a 2.0 core set and one or two conversion kits (depending on if your friends you play with are also converting).

Oh believe me, I'm seriously tempted.

The only problem is that if I did upgrade, I'd be playing with myself. Of the three people I play against, one is always super broke and unlikely to upgrade at all. The other two, they're not super broke, but will almost certainly use their discretionary spending on other fun things. So yes, I'm tempted - and maybe down the road I might pick up a bunch of conversion kits for Christmas for them. But for now, Version 1 is good enough.

1 hour ago, Herowannabe said:

I think you just answered your own question. Buy what you like. 

Heh, I kind of did, didnt I? Ah well, it's still worth the electrons I spent on this post for some other opinions anyway.

@Desslok if you’re more Imperial, TIE Strikers are pretty awesome and have the movable wings. I flew three last night (2e) with a TIE Reaper (which, sadly, is not on your list) as a Rogue One homage. They are a lot of fun to fly with their Adaptive Aileron skill. I flew them loads in 1e too. They have access to Lightweight Frame upgrade in 1e to help with survival and the named pilots are great. Reaper is also a good ship too, nice alternative to the Lambda, and flies well with 1e Strikers, less so in 2e as it is medium base.

On the First Order (they are a separate faction in 2e if that makes any difference to you) front the TIE/SF and Silencer are neat. Two SFs and a Silencer won me my last store league. The Silencer is a lot of fun (amazing dial) and SFs are nice and tanky (with LWF), have the nice rear firing arcs and Quickdraw ?.