My local group has been in a little bit of a slump for our weekly game nights, but that corresponds with the nights getting lighter and us not having anything structured on the go.

Our monthly tournaments are well attended, however. I dearly wish FFG could get the Organized Play situation sorted out. We've been waiting for previously announced kits for an age, and I've no idea about the event structure anymore (not that I particularly care about attending them myself, I'm a lazy git).

38 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

X-Wing seems to be doing fine. It always sort of goes through fluctuations based on people's work schedules and school or whatever but in general everyone who left due to the 2.0 switch has already left a while ago and communities are growing back.

This exactly, except I would add that a lot of those players are now coming around and getting back into 2.0.

My father-in-law and my wife's uncle are two of those. Prequel factions and new shiny things for Resistance and Scum have them intrigued (especially the N-1 for some reason), and they're now in the process of buying back in and reading up on the new stuff.

And the daily click bait award goes to...

6 minutes ago, Dr Moneypants said:

And the daily click bait award goes to...

I agree.

This forum would be better with reactions.

27 minutes ago, Dr Moneypants said:

And the daily click bait award goes to...

Sometimes click bait can spark interesting discussion when there is nothing else going on the forum.

Pretty much all miniature games go through cycles in areas. Up swings and down. As already mentioned, it's usually anecdotal as to what area is in what phase. If your area is in a down phase, play at home or travel. Could as be a matter of packing away for a break and playing something else for a while so it is new and fresh again when the upswing comes back.

we are teetering on 6-8 players at my LGS. There are a few republic players now, I think one of them is new to the group. The rest are pretty old school (scum, rebel, imperials). Pretty good diversity even between these 4 factions... even saw a Resistance 5 A wing swarm but this is least common faction along with FO (i guess due to the limited selection of ships).

Where I'm at, it seems like there are noticably fewer tournaments than previously. Never *that* big of a scene, but there were usually at least 2 stores regularly holding quarterly kit tournaments, maybe a few more happening now and again, with one or two more dipping their toes into Store Championships last season. Now, do store champs even exist? My area never really had regionals before and didn't have a Hyperspace Trial, but Store Champs were mostly a somewhat plus'd-up kit tourney.

It's dropped on the ICv2 list "Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniatures Games" published in March 2019 for Fall 2018 to 4th place from 1st place Fall 2017 (and 1st nearly every time prior). It fell off the list entirely in Spring 2018 so you could argue it is up but seasonality and conversion to 2.0 are at play in the spring numbers. Overall non-collectible miniatures games were up 7% from 2017 to 2018 implying growth in the segment overall while X-Wing dropped in ranking.

Someone called out that you don't need to buy every faction to have relevant cards, which would hurt sales. This would mean you could have higher overall participation in the game but less overall sales, which is what drives the ICv2 list. Personally I think there has been an increase in players where it was already popular but they have to buy less stuff.

Also note that people who don't play or live in areas where it died out don't likely read forums and reply to this question so it's somewhat biased.

X-wing is growing and getting more and more popular. The number of tournaments have been somewhat constant, but tournaments attendance are now gathering 50-100 players its crazy.

Just as important the Meta is WIDE-OPEN, for my last tournament, I dont think I saw the same list twice. As far as I remember, the closest was two Quad Phantom players, but even they did not have the exact same list, one was without the crack-shoot to get a bid.
This just makes the game SO much enjoyable, everyone have a blast, and is what is fueling the interest for the game in our local community. Interestingly, the two new factions are of to a very slow start, with only few players investing in them and almost none bringing them to tournaments.

13 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

Your face is on the decline...

Might have known fickle would beat me to it.

From a personal perspective, three of my friends dropped out of the game after the 2nd edition announcement, however we literally saw the the largest X-Wing organised play event in history only a month ago.

So I'm guessing people may be finding that some of the familiar faces from the last couple of years may no longer be around, but at the same time the game does appear to he healthy and growing.

As an aside, I'm currently sat in the airport waiting for a flight to Italy for this weekebd's SOS. 'sup?

Definitely. Only 560 people turned up to our System Open.

I think it's stagnant in my local area. I admit that I have my game store and I only go to that one. We haven't had too many new players in a while. I hear some of the other stores have fewer than they used to.

I think the game has been out for a bit and I think the burnout is real. It's hard to play the same game for so many years. I've been going at it since Wave 1 and only dropped off for Wave 4. I think that there are some people whom have stopped playing the game. I think there are some new ones, but I don't think the new ones are adding to the local scene. I think the player base has become a bit stagnant.

Personally, I think the game is fantastic as it is now. It's great and balanced. Lots of factions and such. I admit to some burn out. There are other games out there. I kind of want to try some of them at times. I'm not saying I'm quitting, but if something forced me to quit doing my podcast, I would probably quit X-wing on a regular basis.

The new Epic stuff that is going to come out (I mean the campaigns and missions, not the large ships) will probably boost interest for those of us for a bit. It should be pretty good to do that. We are also thinking of getting into the Imp HotAC campaign. That gets people involved.

We’ve had some drop outs in my local area, but moving to 2nd edition seems to be one factor rather than the leading cause.

But a store some towns over from me I go play tournaments at is booming, and I went to the Atlanta System Open, which had a good turn out.

9 hours ago, Sciencius said:

X-wing is growing and getting more and more popular. The number of tournaments have been somewhat constant, but tournaments attendance are now gathering 50-100 players its crazy.

Just as important the Meta is WIDE-OPEN, for my last tournament, I dont think I saw the same list twice. As far as I remember, the closest was two Quad Phantom players, but even they did not have the exact same list, one was without the crack-shoot to get a bid.
This just makes the game SO much enjoyable, everyone have a blast, and is what is fueling the interest for the game in our local community. Interestingly, the two new factions are of to a very slow start, with only few players investing in them and almost none bringing them to tournaments.

3 hours ago, heychadwick said:

I think it's stagnant in my local area. I admit that I have my game store and I only go to that one. We haven't had too many new players in a while. I hear some of the other stores have fewer than they used to.

I think the game has been out for a bit and I think the burnout is real. It's hard to play the same game for so many years. I've been going at it since Wave 1 and only dropped off for Wave 4. I think that there are some people whom have stopped playing the game. I think there are some new ones, but I don't think the new ones are adding to the local scene. I think the player base has become a bit stagnant.

Personally, I think the game is fantastic as it is now. It's great and balanced. Lots of factions and such. I admit to some burn out. There are other games out there. I kind of want to try some of them at times. I'm not saying I'm quitting, but if something forced me to quit doing my podcast, I would probably quit X-wing on a regular basis.

The new Epic stuff that is going to come out (I mean the campaigns and missions, not the large ships) will probably boost interest for those of us for a bit. It should be pretty good to do that. We are also thinking of getting into the Imp HotAC campaign. That gets people involved.

I wonder if the shift to making all tournament 2.0 only, did put some folk off..

feels like the game is trying to stabalize in numbers in my area. growth has flatlined. i dont think i know many epic players. the game needs something extra beyond epic that will bring in some new players.not sure what that is. 7 factions is a lot. brand new players to the game might need a nudge into one of the newer factions to get started. dunno. if i were starting out again it would be tricky to pick a faction to start with and id be thinking 'do i need to have more factions to get the most fun outta this game?'

Question for those of you that have been playing for longer: How many people do you know who quit because of 2.0, but then came around later and got back in and are now happy that the game got revised? I know a couple like this but not a representative sampling.

In my immediate area, interest fell off sharply when one of the local stores (and the main hub for X-Wing play) closed. The other immediately local store is going through a transition period and will soon have a lot less gaming, but at the same time a lot of folks are burned out from 40k and branching out to other games, particularly X-Wing, Adeptus Titanicus, and Shadespire.

A little further away (20-30 minute drive range), there are at least 2 shops with very healthy X-Wing player bases, and a bit further than that (about 45 minutes away) is a store/gaming studio in North Jersey that has VERY robust player bases for X-Wing, Armada, and Legion, expected to get only more popular when Clone Wars content hits the other two games. It’s a time investment, to be sure, but I know if I schlep down there I will be sure to get some games in, anything from casual up to tourney level play if I want it.

So ultimately, to make a short story long, no.

1 hour ago, LTuser said:

I wonder if the shift to making all tournament 2.0 only, did put some folk off..

I have no idea. I've only done 2 tournaments in the past 4 years. The game has not been a tournament game for me in 4 years. HotAC really pulled a lot of people in.

Our local groups are growing

Yes. It's summer, it always declines in the summer. Has for the last 4 years anyway.

4 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Question for those of you that have been playing for longer: How many people do you know who quit because of 2.0, but then came around later and got back in and are now happy that the game got revised? I know a couple like this but not a representative sampling.

This is literally me. I wasn’t offended by 2E and in fact welcomed the promised balance improvements. But for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I felt my fire for the game go out on the day I saw the 2E announcement. I’d enjoyed keeping up with new ships and combos but I didn’t feel the urge to buy the Saw’s or Reaper packs.

Fast forward to the Republic being announced, and my ears perked up. Then when the N1 was announced, I dove back in like Minsc leading a charge of miniature giant space hamsters.

Most of our local scene seems to have fallen away. A few have started taking back lately with first conversion kits, but the lack of anything new/interesting for Resistance and FO has been a hot topic of concern, and for Scum to an extent (more that there's nothing new over nothing interesting there). The store OP kits have been pretty poor too, giving little incentive to actually play over any other day. Seems like the chase for tokens and alt-arts has utterly died away to the point that anyone who actually wins anything immediately starts to ask if anyone else wants them. Those who are still playing are playing because they enjoy the game, the people, and the conversation, but that's a hard, intangible sell for a game of this type these days. We're all very much looking forward to a more casual format being encouraged, hopefully bolstering not just numbers, but experimentation.

9 hours ago, heychadwick said:

I have no idea. I've only done 2 tournaments in the past 4 years. The game has not been a tournament game for me in 4 years. HotAC really pulled a lot of people in.

Based on the fact, all 4 of my Four hour events at Origins have sold out, i say that is a sure bet!!

On ‎6‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 3:03 PM, Kieransi said:

X-Wing seems to be doing fine. It always sort of goes through fluctuations based on people's work schedules and school or whatever but in general everyone who left due to the 2.0 switch has already left a while ago and communities are growing back.

Our local area seems pretty good- Kieransi is in a different, though close, town from me and both have pretty active local groups. In my town we just recently got two new players for our local league who had been playing for a while at their home but never really played outside of it, so that was good. We've got roughly 8-14 who play in the league now, depending on work schedules and such.