So thinking about finally trying out 2.0

Played a ton of original X-wing and even got my son to play once in a while. Now he's 15 and recently asked me about it. I sold off my old collection. So if I was gonna dip a toe into the Xwing 2.0 pond, what would be a good start for two players on a budget?

What factions do you like? Also are there archetypes that appeal to you?

16 minutes ago, reqent said:

What factions do you like? Also are there archetypes that appeal to you?

Well I'm not looking to spend a fortune, so seeing as the core set comes with Rebels and Imperial...start there. Maybe spend about $100 initially to see how we like 2.0

You could do the Dice, damage decks, and templates, and then the Separatist and Republic squadron packs (the squadron packs are both "factions in a box" expansions), if you want to do not Rebels and Imps. They're good value for your price, and they're very fun factions.

If you want to do Imp and Rebels, one Y-Wing expansion and one X-Wing for rebels gives you a solid list with the core set. Tie Advanced, and then a TIE Brute, or TAP would work well for Imperials.

I would suggest, though, looking for someone selling their collection. You can get ships cheap, and then just buy either the 2.0 cardboard from the same seller, or a conversion kit, if you intend to stay in the faction.

If you want to do Resistance, you can get their squadron pack, too, which is a solid "faction in a box" expansion.

What do you want out of the game? Is it the star wars ships, or just fighting ships in space? Do you want to continue buying? Do you enjoy the combo building or more the flying?

just asking because there are lots of options, including other games with limited ships.

So I've been a Star Wars geek forever (just turned 47) and been in love since A New Hope came out. I enjoyed the original version a lot and played for years and even got my son to play once in a while. Not looking for tournament lists. Just stuff that will be somewhat balanced and he and I can have fun playing

1 hour ago, Daekjawa said:

Well I'm not looking to spend a fortune, so seeing as the core set comes with Rebels and Imperial...start there. Maybe spend about $100 initially to see how we like 2.0

So I would approach it one of two ways.

If your comfortable using the app and sharing the damage deck I would shop places like ebay.

If you want it to more official.

Rebels look for saws renegades you can get it cheap at least for what it is (it has an x wing an u wing). 2 x wing and a u wing is 150 points enough to play a decent game. You should be able to get it for 40 or less.

The empire is more expensive I would try for a tie advanced and a tie striker or tap. It should be a similar amount of points as long as it's all cheap stuff and vader or medium stuff and marek steele.

If you can find a reaper it would be excellent. The tie defender is probably too much ship in a smaller game.

But the 2 ships would be 40 and 40 for saws ( or 2 rebel ships) and you could get a good feel for the game.

Core set? Plus an A-Wing and a TIE Advanced maybe? $80 msrp total?

doesn't seem like this needs to be complicated

Yeah, get a core set and then one more ship for each side and you can't go wrong. It's a great way to start out and get a feel for it.

If you're very familiar with it from 1st edition and you want a full-size game, you'll probably want 2 more ships per side which will total out to around $120 depending what deals you find.

For maximum initial variety I would probably recommend:

Core set – $40

TIE Advanced x1 – $20.

Y-Wing – $20

TIE Defender – $20

A-Wing (make sure it's the Rebel one, not Resistance) – $20

Total – $120

This gives you kind of a variety of different squads you can make for 200 points, some much "better" than others but all arrangements should be pretty fun.

People keep telling this guy to get a “TAP.” I’ve been playing for the better part of a year, have every ship in every faction pretty well memorized, and deep Star Wars lore knowledge, and I don’t know WTF a “TAP” is.

Good rule of thumb: don’t use abbreviations when attempting to help new/returning players!

As to the OP’s question: 2.0 Core set, TIE Advanced x1 (Vader’s TIE), and an additional TIE Fighter (or really, ANY other small-based Imperial fighter, but probably not the TIE Defender at first, it’s really strong, and I’d probably recommend against the TIE Striker at first, as it’s pretty tricky) gives you a 200 point standard Imperial fleet. For the Rebels, the X-Wing from the Core Set can be combined with basically any two or three other small-based Rebel fighters (I’d probably recommend at least one individual X-Wing expansion, for the cards, and any mix of RZ-1 A-Wings and BTL-A4 Y-Wings to start; I’d skip the B-Wing at first because like the Defender, it’s a very strong ship)... that will allow you to play 200 point standard games. If you’re willing to play smaller games at first, just grab the TIE Advanced x1 and an additional X-Wing or Y-Wing, and with the Core Set you can pick a point total of 150 points or less, and get a feel for things.

That’s what I intended to do when I got into X-Wing, but ended up day one getting a Core Set, TIE Advanced x1, Rebel Falcon, Y-Wing, X-Wing, TIE Striker, and a TIE Fighter. Then I spent all of lockdown last spring collecting literally everything else.

I regret nothing!

8 hours ago, Daekjawa said:

So I've been a Star Wars geek forever (just turned 47) and been in love since A New Hope came out. I enjoyed the original version a lot and played for years and even got my son to play once in a while. Not looking for tournament lists. Just stuff that will be somewhat balanced and he and I can have fun playing

Ask yourself what star wars area are you most in love with (to use your own words) and go from there. In 2.0 you cant really go wrong with a faction choice.

Considering both you and your son are going to play (thumbs up btw) you should get two factions to get some thematic play going. Makes it imho so much more fun.

Welcome back, enjoy!

I keep seeing 200 point games. Is it still played on a 3'x3' area? I seem to remember the games were 100 points in 1.0

6 hours ago, Daekjawa said:

I keep seeing 200 point games. Is it still played on a 3'x3' area? I seem to remember the games were 100 points in 1.0

Part of the 1.0 -> 2.0 transition was that they doubled the points total, then (as far as I can tell) also just about doubled the cost of each ship and upgrade, which allowed for more granularity... basically, a generic X-Wing runs about 40 points in the 200 point 2.0 game, whereas I think it was closer to 20 points in the 100-point 1.0 world. This just allows for a greater amount of pricing flexibility. After all, a 1 point upgrade in the old game would be worth 2 points now... but there are some upgrades that just aren’t good enough to cost 2 points and see any play, so now they can cost them at 1 point, and they’re balanced, whereas in 1.0 they’d have needed to be 0.5 points, which wasn’t really possible.

And yes, the standard game is still 3‘ x 3’, with a minimum fleet size of two ships, and a maximum of 8. In my travels, I actually picked up an old 1.0 Core Set (on sale, just wanted the ships), and the basic components are all the same. The damage deck has been totally reworked, too. I don’t think the old one would work for 2.0 at all.

If you still have any of your old 1.0 ships, they have Conversion Kits for each faction which will give you updated cardboard bases, dials, and new ship and upgrade cards to use with them. Each Conversion Kit comes with a rather large number of components; half of the ships I now own were old 1.0 models that I bought on eBay and updated with Conversion Kit materials. The Kits aren’t cheap, costing between ~$25 (for the First Order Kit) and like ~$50 (Rebel Kit), but you can find a lot of cheap-ish models online, and the kit will convert 3-6 copies of most ships. It’s also the ONLY way to play some of the old 1.0 ships that haven’t yet been reprinted in 2.0, like, for example, the E-Wing, the K-Wing, and the TIE Bomber.

10 hours ago, Daekjawa said:

So I've been a Star Wars geek forever (just turned 47) and been in love since A New Hope came out. I enjoyed the original version a lot and played for years and even got my son to play once in a while. Not looking for tournament lists. Just stuff that will be somewhat balanced and he and I can have fun playing

One more note: I never played 1.0, but I’ve done a lot of question-asking in learning to play 2.0, and the sense I get is that this iteration of the game is FAR better balanced. There are still balance problems here and there, and people definitely have some complaints, but overall, 2.0 seems to be in a pretty good spot.

Which actually reminds me of something you should know: Part of the reason the game has been more balanced in 2.0 is that none of the points costs for upgrades or ships are static, and they are not printed on the cards, which means they ONLY appear online, so they can be adjusted every few months, if things get out of whack, or if they want to spice things up a bit by allowing a ship to get a price break and shine for a while, or maybe by making something that was pretty troublesome take a backseat. They also occasionally add or remove upgrade slots on ships, to control certain combos that prove to be too strong. So upgrade bars are also not printed on the ship cards.

This means that you will 100% NEED to consult an online fleet builder app to play the game, at least if you wanna know what anything costs or what upgrades it can carry. There is an official app, but I have been told since before I started that it’s buggy and terrible and to skip it. So I now consult two different programs, and I love them both.

Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0 (YASB2.0) is what I use on my computer. LaunchBayNext is what I use on my iPhone. They’re both pretty well maintained & very easy to use, and I love them.

This online-only business may sound scary and difficult (I came from Star Wars: Armada, and I hated the idea at first), but trust me: it’s a great system. It took me about a week to love it. Rather than having undercosted, broken ships and ships that cost far too much to be useful, and just be stuck with that until they released card errata, years later, the designers get to rebalance X-Wing every six months or so, so if they really screw up, it doesn’t break the game, and relatively few cards end up so overcosted that they just suck and never get played.

4 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

People keep telling this guy to get a “TAP.” I’ve been playing for the better part of a year, have every ship in every faction pretty well memorized, and deep Star Wars lore knowledge, and I don’t know WTF a “TAP” is.

TAP = TIE advanced prototype AKA TIE v1

Hope that helps 🍻

3 hours ago, ToiletPaper Fiend said:

TAP = TIE advanced prototype AKA TIE v1

Hope that helps 🍻

Thanks. I just don’t like abbreviations!

2 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Thanks. I just don’t like abbreviations!

You’re not alone.

5 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Thanks. I just don’t like abbreviations!

1. Acronyms

2. How can you be satisfied with that answer? It included two more acronyms.

3. I want to see you spell out Twin Ion Engine every time for maximum clarity.

4 minutes ago, Arschbombe said:

1. Acronyms

2. How can you be satisfied with that answer? It included two more acronyms.

3. I want to see you spell out Twin Ion Engine every time for maximum clarity.

IDK WTF ur talking about.

10 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

IDK WTF ur talking about.

😯 😮 🤔 🙄 😕 🙁 ☹️ 😨 🤢 🤮

12 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Thanks. I just don’t like abbreviations!

7 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

IDK WTF ur talking about.

Of course you don't, Cpt ObVus.

Or, should I say....

*rips off rubber face mask * 👺

CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!!!!!!!

🧐

Update on this topic.....I ordered a core set today!

What's with the faction damage decks? Do I need those too?

8 minutes ago, Daekjawa said:

Update on this topic.....I ordered a core set today!

What's with the faction damage decks? Do I need those too?

For two players I would get one as your collection grows. That way you each have a damage deck.

19 minutes ago, Daekjawa said:

Update on this topic.....I ordered a core set today!

What's with the faction damage decks? Do I need those too?

They're the same as the one in the core set content-wise. The faction ones just have larger cards and faction-specific artwork.

9 hours ago, Daekjawa said:

Update on this topic.....I ordered a core set today!

What's with the faction damage decks? Do I need those too?

Yeah, they’re cool-looking, but not necessary.

Basically, the critical hit side of the cards have little diagrams of which part of the ship is damaged. So like, the Loose Stabilizer card has a little red highlight on the “wing” section and stuff. The specific ship featured on the pictures varies by faction.