I haven't seen this addressed anywhere. Is there a rule that says you have to physically have an upgrade card for a ship to take that upgrade? For example, I have a Falcon and a Slave I, so I have two Engine Upgrade cards. Can I equip four X-wings with engine upgrade cards, as long as I pay the point cost and meet the normal upgrade requirements?

It seems to me that limiting the upgrades to only the cards you physically have places an unrealistic limitation on the game. Why should the squad in the game be limited to the upgrades I can afford to buy in the real world? Any thoughts?

In an official event, you need a real card for every ship using that card.

In an unofficial event, you are free to do whatever you like.

This is pretty standard for miniatures games.

Gullwind said:

According to tournament rules you have to have the cards. Depending on the TO, you may still be able to play a list that has say four engine upgrades even if you only own 2, but it's something you would have to look into before you show up. If you go to a any major tournament my guess is you will need the cards to be able to play.

I don't personally like that you have to own multiples of a card to go to a tournament. It feels a little heavy handed in forcing people to buy extra ships just for cards. At this time though I don't see any way around this, unless FF changes it's stance on this.

That all makes sense. I wasn't even thinking tournaments, but I can certainly see them requiring the card for that. I kind of thought it would come down to a house-rule sort of thing for general use. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a specific rule saying otherwise.

Thanks for the answers!

Beware the tie fighters with a boost action!

It's the main reason I bought two Firespray-31s, the Stealth cards

If its just for fun, and not a tournament, you can pretty much do anything you want. I'm currently running a X-wing League at my LGS and I use the cards a number of different ways other than those specified in the rule book. I allow my players to have multiple upgrade cards assigned to their character pilots. So a pilot could have multiple pilot upgrades like “Swarm Tactics” and “Marksmanship”. Could have Shield upgrade and Engine upgrade at the same time but if they lose the ship they lose all the upgrades attached. I've also created my own like “Ace” and “Ablative Armor”. I also stripped the named pilot abilities, assigned a value and allow my players to purchase them with experience points.