A colleague and I are in the enviable position of getting to play at work once a week. We've been playing standard games but are looking to switch it up a bit. Our idea is to run through training exercises to help us improve our skills and I was hoping to draw ideas from the community for exercises we might try.

So far we have a couple of thoughts:

Exercise #1 - Range Control

One list (e.g. Boba / Fenn) wants range 1, one list (e.g. Barrage Rocket Bombers) wants anything but range 1. We play until the first round of combat with the win condition based on what ranges combat took place. If both Boba and Fenn get range 1 shots, the scum pilot won. If neither did, the imperial pilot won.

Exercise #2 - Getting Arc

One list (e.g. XXXX) has lower initiative than the other (e.g. Vader / Soontir / Whisper) but would win a joust. We play until the first round of combat and count how many arcs the lower initiative player has managed to get on the higher initiative player.

It's possible (likely) that some creative soul has already posted a whole range of these. If so, and someone can point me to it, I'd be very grateful.

Anyone else tried something like this?

What ideas do you have?

Interesting idea. Like a hyperfocused session of one aspect of the game. How about this one: Each of you gets X number of turns to move through the asteroid/space junk (as my son calls it) field. The winner is the one who gets closest to each asteroid without moving through or overlapping. Or maybe you get a point or something for each time you are within a 1-speed movement template of an asteroid.

Or maybe doing the above but you have to take ships that either barrel roll or boost or both and you have to barrel roll or boost as your action.

Could be a good training game with a few tweaks.

I like that. I also like to guess the maneuver once the dial are set, and discuss with the opponent why I think he would do X or Y maneuver, then see if my call is right. The same idea you probably be applied to your sessions.

Something I often do with my son to warm up while waiting to start a tourney... Not a game as such, but a simple exercise...

Place a ship, name a manoeuvre and reposition and place a 2nd ship in the end position. Then see who was closest. Can be quite tricky when using Echo with a decloak thrown in or a Reaper

We do tend to go for the crazy ones tbh.... boost into 5k....

We played three games of 'Getting Arc' at lunch today. The win condition was a little bit fuzzy but essentially, who had the most arcs on the initial engagement. The reason it was fuzzy was that in one instance Vader had range 1 fully modded shot on an x-wing versus a range 3 shot on Whisper (who had focus and evade) in return. We chalked that up as a win to empire.

One of the games was a genuine tie and we played another round to decide who had won.

It was a fun experience and we both felt like focusing on something so specific was helping our flying. Another idea we've had is as follows:

Exercise #3 - Treasure Hunt

The goal is to collect four pieces of 'treasure' (yet to be determined tokens from first edition missions) by landing ships on them. The treasure will be spread around the play area (rules on how this done tbd). Splitting your squad so that some look to block your opponent and some go get your treasure is encouraged but we'll need some rules to avoid someone parking permanently on someone else's target (tbd).

I think once we've done a few of these things and tried them out, I'll update the OP with a more formal version

As before, ideas welcome.

Your treasure hunt just reminded me of an intensely silly game we played at home. Our version was out and out insanity, but it did strike me at the time as being something that could be fine tuned into an actual thing.

We littered the play area with 'actions', focuses, evades, locks etc. You need a proxy token for repositions ofc. Then played a 3 player game with only a couple of small ships each. You could only perform an action if you overlapped one (or more) of the tokens, you would then perform the action, like it or not, immediately following your move.

My thought at the time was that, to make the most of it, you would have to plot your trajectory in order to overlap advantageously, rather than uselessly or catastrophically... such as boosting onto a rock, into someone's arc at R1, facing the wrong way, or cloaking after lining up a nice shot.

We had an absolute storm of tokens on the table, so you can imagine the lunacy, boosting into a barrel roll into another boost after a decloak.... It was nuts.

Still, the planning possibilities interested me.

1 hour ago, Cuz05 said:

We had an absolute storm of tokens on the table, so you can imagine the lunacy, boosting into a barrel roll into another boost after a decloak.... It was nuts.

Sounds fun!

2 hours ago, eljms said:

Sounds fun!

It was possibly the most fun ever

23 hours ago, Cuz05 said:

Something I often do with my son to warm up while waiting to start a tourney... Not a game as such, but a simple exercise...

Place a ship, name a manoeuvre and reposition and place a 2nd ship in the end position. Then see who was closest. Can be quite tricky when using Echo with a decloak thrown in or a Reaper

We do tend to go for the crazy ones tbh.... boost into 5k....

This is a good one. In addition after you guess the final position you can place as many obstacles as close as possible to where the template would be positioned and see if you are overlapping once you put the template down.

I also would recommend playing games with 12 obstacles (each player brings 6) just to force you to do some fancy flying.

I've shared those before and they are similar to some already noted, I've used them to train with my son a few years back:

• Get more obstacles. At least 10, potentially more. Same deployment rules except they can be range 1 from the edge. Dogfight in that and whoever clips a rock not on purpose should be shamed.
• Same obstacle deployment rules as above, but litter the whole **** space with rocks. The goal is to get from one corner to the other diagonally. Each move gets you a point, each obstacle clipped does too. Lowest score wins. We did it with a YV-666, but feel free to go more maneuverable if that's what you want to practice.
• Same as above, but you have to plan multiple turns ahead and pay the consequences if you called it out wrong.

Fair warning though, you'll soon stat feeling like 6 obstacles is basically an empty field. Great for not caring in competition, but it makes normal casual games way more boring.