I've only played a few times, and only once have I played a 100 pt game to its conclusion. However, that game took 3.5 hours including set up (assembling minis, distributing tokens, building squads as we didn't have pre-made lists, I would say this took about 30 min). Does this seem typical? Both of us were new players, so I am sure we were going slower, and we wouldn't hesitate to pause to make sure we were playing something right, but that only happened a couple times. I know that with attacks in this game, lucky hits could make it very short, and cold streaks could make it very loooong.

What would you say your average home game length is, assuming you are playing until one side has no ships left?

The wife and I played our third game this past Saturday. It was about 160 point builds (all done before the game) and the game lasted 3 hours. We just used ships, no advanced rules or cards added to the ships. My dice rolls were crap so I'm sure that added to the length of time, lol.

I've only had the one game, which was 42 points (because it was first game for both of us it was Red Sq & Gr Squad pilot vs 2 Academy & 1 Alpha with no upgrades). Took us about an hour and a half, though we both were very lucky on the dice rolls so we were hardly ever hitting each other. Next time we get a chance will be playing probably 60 points so will see how it goes with upgrades and better pilots.

The average 100 pt game my group plays last anywhere from 1-1.5 hrs. Not including setup, but that time is negligible since you get faster at building squads.

Play more. The more you know your cards the faster set up is. I run a game night and you have to build your squad there. It takes ten min for both players to get set up. Our games take 45 min give or take 15. But play more. The game does have a lot of set up but on e you know what is in your box you know what you are looking for. Also game play speeds up. My cuz and I can play a game in 20 min but we've been playing since gen con.

A lot depends on if your playing missions or just a "destroy your opponents ships" game. My daughter complained that games took too long so we reduced the dimensions of the playing area and now our 100pt builds take about 45mins.

As we tend to use the same ships I bought a wooden box with compartments. 1 ship (not dismouunted) per compartment with its dial, its id number, its shields and a pair of focus tokens. That way set up is also takes less time

Hope that helps a bit

About 1-1.5 hours for a 100 point game, all depends on how diligent you are.

Most of our home games however are closer to about 3-4 hours but are well beyond 100 points.

The group I run is house-ruled to stop matches at 75 minutes (not including the initial set up time). it lets us get 2 matches in per night at the LGS without them needing to stay open super late.

At home, probably about 2 hours for a tournament-style game of 100pts and asteroids on a 3x3 setup. The time gets padded out a lot because we're usually having tangent conversations about other things while we're playing. Since we're not on a clock, it's not a big deal for us.

Now, if your concern is slashing your game time down so you can get more matches in play in the same timeframe, here are some tips;

-Cut the chatter, Red 2: keep the table talk strictly to the game at hand, and save the catching up chat for after the match

-Build your squad ahead of time: I typically build my lists well ahead of the game session. I would recommend that you keep index cards, or some other filing system handy and make a "greatest hits" collection of lists you like to play at that points level, so if a pick-up game happens on short notice, you don't need sit there and grind out a list. Just grab a favourite from the archives.

-Learn the cards/dials/ships: with time, you will start to memorize what all the different pilots do, and the text of all the upgrade cards. It may seem daunting at first, but through repetition, you should be able to get through a turn without having to review card abilities for you and your opponent. This point in particular is what slows down pick up games with new players for me. It doesn't bother me personally, because my attitude is to teach and cultivate that new player's experience, not grumble about the clock, but not everyone will be this patient.

With the dials and ships, I would expect that over time, you will understand what the ships can and can't do on their dials. An Y-Wing can't do a 1 Turn but it can do a 1 Bank. Those little distinctions are great to keep in mind when you're flying the ship, as it can help you make decisions to your flight plan a few turns out, and shake the stress tokens, and on the other side, you can better anticipate your opponent's likely moves on their turn in adverse situations.

-Be decisive: Setting your movement dials seems to be the biggest time sink I see for players, especially new, or unconfidant ones. The initial pass seems to be the worst for this, and I often hear new players thinking out loud about how "ugh…I have no idea what you're going to do!!!". Of course you don't, and you rarely will. That's the game. What you need to do is make your moves be as optimal as they can be. Part of this goes back to the above point about learning the cards/dials/ships.

On the first pass, it can be a huge blow-out if you don't try and account for the opponent's ships. As an example, I ran a 3x/1Y build against 7 TIE Fighters. The opponent set up in two groups; Howly and 3 TIE's, and another flank of 3 TIE's. On the turn that would have lead to our first shooting phase, i basically started the turn in a way that would lead my opponent to think I would go straight in, but instead i did 3 Banks to the left with my ships, and his TIE's zipped right past me. The only way he could have stopped that was to do a 1 Turn into the direction I was going. My Y-Wing zapped Howly and messed up his whole formation on that flank, causing him to spend a couple of turns getting them back into the action while my 4 ships tore into his 3 TIE flank.

I came to that decision easily, because of how we were both spaced out at the start of that turn. I knew that at the slowest, the TIE's can only go forward 2 and still have arc to that direction. I also knew that if he did that, my 3 Bank would have moved me to safety anyways, and the Y-Wing would have done what it did. I think he went Forward 3 or 4, I can't recall. Immediately when we all revealed dials and moved, he exclaimed how he didn't expect that, and should have done a K-Turn instead. The problem with that logic was that if he went all-in on that K-Turn and I only did Forward 1, he would have lost those TIE's to some serious damage, as I would be at Range 1 with my whole squad, and his TIE's would be Stressed (no actions to boost denfense) and facing the wrong way.

The Y-Wing allowed me to put him in a bad position where he'd only get one chance to "guess right" and have his TIE's hit me at close range, whereas I could do whatever I wanted and still get a shot off with the turret.

A lot of times in this game, and in the LCG's, there are just times where there's only one real optimal move to make, unless you really want to take a huge gamble. If you can calm down a little and see the forest for the trees, a lot of those "tough calls" are actually quite easy, because it's the only option you have if you want a shot at pulling off a win.

TL;DR : work on your decision making skills, keep the focus on the game, and get a better grasp on abilities so you're not constantly referencing rules and cards.

We often finish our 100pt games at the 50-60 minute mark, we've been playing 2-3 games per week for 3 months so we are fairly effective and help each other to get smooth games.

Usually 60-90 minutes. I try not to go much over 90 minutes if at all possible.

As for setup, I made an "everthing" bag and it's sped up my setup time greatly!

It's one of the big baggies from FFG and I stuck in a bunch of individual baggies, but it's pretty much only the stuff I know I'm going to use plus 1 or 2. I'm at work, so I'm talking off the top of my head a bit here, but the following are the contents-

5 pairs of Target Locks

8 Focus Tokens

5 Evade Tokens

6 Crits

8 or 9 Shield Tokens

1 Ion Token

… and so on. It's pretty much only the stuff I know I'm going to actually use in the game.

Another thing that saves me time is having gone through and used the same line of thinking on my cards. My God, at this point I must have like 10 copies of Proton Torpedoes, a ton of Marksmanships, Cluster Missiles, Concussion Missiles, etc. You're probably the same way. I may not always have time to sort through everything prior to my game and only bring specifically what I actually need to the match, but it's a pretty safe bet I don't need to bring all those copies of Proton Torpedoes, Marksmanships, etc. with me. I pared my upgrade deck down greatly and just left the extras in my 2nd Core box at home. Ditto for all the duplicates of the "dotted" pilots and droids too. What's the point in carrying around two Lukes, three Wedges, etc.? None, if you ask me. Again- throw 'em in the box and leave 'em!

May not sound like much, but it's saved me both time in setup and also cuts down on space!

Our games at our FLGS typically take around 60-75 minutes. We do call them at 75 minutes for 100 point match and figure out the W/L according to the tournament rules but that happens pretty rarely (usually only Imp vs Imp). Teaching someone new how to play and their first matches at 100 points can take longer. Most of us have lists already prepped for X-Wing Night so setup is minimal (I play several other miniatures games, and comparitively, X-Wing isn't even close on setup time to a typical miniatures game). Honestly it takes longer to set up most boardgames. We've been playing a lot of 150 point matches and we run 90 minute time slots for those and I've not seen many go over 90 minutes. I ran a 150 point tournament a couple weekends ago and I think out of three rounds, only 1 or 2 of the games actually went to the 90 minute time limit.

Jim

I should add, I am the only one in the play group that owns any game components and pieces. I already have the pieces organized into compartments in a plano case, and all the tokens a piece could need are in that compartment with them. Since I have the pieces and have time on my own to mess around with list building, I am the one setting everything up while my opponent is building his squad. I'm a nice guy and usually give them the first pass at any upgrades and modifications I have and then tweak my list accordingly if they use up what I planned to use.

Looking back at the game, the planning really was what took the longest. I only had 3 ships, but my opponent had Vader and 4 TIEs. Every round I found myself waiting for him to finish planning. I'm not complaining. It was literally his 3rd game ever (the first was 2 TIEs vs X-Wing setup from the core set, and we only got in 1 round of actual combat in the 2nd game before needing to stop). We play other games (mainly Heroclix), so we understand as time goes on we will learn what the cards and such do. We were making sure that on every activation, action, and attack that we were not missing anything, so I expect that to speed up.

I was more concerned with the actual game dragging out due to dice rolls. However, if most people are getting full 100 pt games in at under 90 min, then I don't expect poor rolling to keep us up in the 3 hour range if we continue with 100 pts. I'm gonna give it a few more games before we start playing around with other (bigger) pt totals.

rowdyoctopus said:

If you're the one holding all the gear, then you can always get yourself setup ahead of time. If it's a friendly game, then don't worry about modifying your list if your opponent uses up a scarce upgrade card. Just proxy it and carry on. While they're figuring stuff out, just get the table set up with the borders, get your cards and tokens organized, and put down the asteroids. Let your opponent pick which side to deploy on, then carry on from there.

Dice rolls, like I mentioned above, will go MUCH faster when everyone involved knows what's up. When I'm playing a game with an experienced player, and my Wedge is attacking his TIE Fighter at Range 1, I just roll 4 attack dice, do any modification to them, then tell my opponent to defend. They already know to roll 2 Defend dice and add in whatever they have, and we compare results. Takes 10 seconds.

To a new player, I would have to be narrating it, "so Wedge has a Primary Attack value of 3, so I roll 3 red dice, PLUS an additional one die because I'm at Range 1 of your TIE Fighter. *rolls* So I rolled 2 hits. I'm going to spend my Target Lock to reroll these two no-hitting dice. *rolls* Okay, 1 more hit, for a total of 3 hits, now you roll to Defend. Don't forget, Wedge drops your Agility by 1 so you only get 2 dice. *rolls* Ok, you rolled 2 hits. Are you going to use your evade token to cancel the last hit? etc

For two people that know what they're doing, it's more like;

"Wedge attacks your TIE at Range 1 *rolls 4 red dice* 2 hits, using Target Lock *rolls* ok, 3 hits total. Go for it"

"Ok *rolls 2 green dice* 2 evades, spending my Evade token, no hits score"

"Curse your foul luck!"

…and that's about all there is to it. If you're experienced in tabletop gaming, then really, you already know that speeding the game up comes down to experience and time for the most part. You'll need to specifically communicate less in the long run because everyone will know the various interactions taking place between pilot cards and upgrades.

Just move your final hit dice results to somewhere visible on the board for your opponent to see, have them do the same when they defend, and it should be rapid fire.

Last week I fired through 3 matches with a pretty new player and the whole thing took maybe 3 hours from start to finish, including setting up in between matches. He was new to the gameplay, but he was well versed in the card interactions and rules, so we didn't need to do a lot of explaining back and forth.

If you're the keeper of the materials, I would strongly recommend you get your friends to take some initiative and read the rulebook and such online between matches to getter a better understanding of what's going on. Whenever someone in my group is bringing out a new game, we all do our homework ahead of time and read the rules online so we're not learning it cold at the table. It's not the same as having it all in front of you, but preparation is definitely helpful. If your friends can't be bothered to spend a half hour reading a PDF online before coming out to play a game they aren't spending a cent on, then maybe you need new friends? Not to be harsh, but that shouldn't be a huge favour to ask of them.

cleardave said:

I didn't mean the actual rolling of dice. I meant the fact that it seems I could roll 3 attacks per round for 3 straight rounds and not land a single hit. I've still played less than 5 games, so my worry is that this game could be very susceptible to luck. If neither of us land any hits, the game keeps going and going.

As for your setting up comments, that is exactly what we did. I was "assembling" the minis after picking out the cards from my squad since I knew what I wanted. I looked at what my friend took and then if it was something I wanted, I found a substitute in about 2 seconds. I already have a dedicated X-Wing game board, but we never play at my place (its portable, but my point is nothing will be set up before game time "starts"). I'm not worried about the set up time. Taking 20-30 min to look over every thing and create a squad doesn't seem like a big deal, especially when we have no idea what the hell most of the stuff does anyway until we play more games.

We play other games. We understand there is a learning curve and that the actual speed of play will speed up as we play more often. My concern was that the way combat works in this game, it seems that luck could cause games to drag out. However after the responses here, that would appear to generally not be the case.

rowdyoctopus said:

This usually comes up most in TIE vs TIE matches where (excluding the Interceptor) you are rolling 2 Attack dice versus 3 Defense dice with an Evade token. If you want to see a match that never ends, run a 8 Academy Pilot mirror match. Or a 4 Y-Wing with Ion Turret mirror match.

Outside of some extreme cases like that, yes, sometimes the luck (or lack of luck) with the dice will create these situations where a whole shooting round happens and nobody does anything. If it does, you just laugh about it and carry on. As I said before, being decisive with your movement planning is critical to speeding up the game. Some players, even experienced ones, can get a bad case of "analysis paralysis" when they hit an ambiguous tactical situation.

If this describes anyone in your group, get them a coin to flip, Two-Face style if they need it, and move it along. In my larger gaming group, there's one such person, and it's agonizing sometimes watching him deliberate over a decision that has no clear "right" answer from his point of view. It could easily add 30-60 minutes to a game, depending on the game.

Using your opponent's turn to think and plan is crucial in games, especially if you're on a time limit, like in a tournament. As they play out their actions, start thinking about how you'll move to deal with that next turn, so when it's time to pick up your dials, you already know what to set it to.

For every game that seems to drag because nobody can hit anything, you'll statistically get another game where all it is is hits, and it's over in half the time. I think the most realistic way this can manifest is when a close match comes down to a 1v1 ship battle, and neither ship has a particular dice edge against the respective opponent. Even in that case, you only have one ship to move and plan for, so it shouldn't be terribly difficult to put your dial down quickly.

The game is definitely prone to luck, as it is driven, at its core by die rolls, and you and your opponent guessing on how to out-fly each other. A bad guess could be as crippliing as a bad die roll. The skill in a game with a heavy luck component is looking at what tools are at your disposal to manipulate the odds in your favour. Target Locks make your shots more likely to score hits. Evades guarantee you'll cancel at least one hit rolled against you that turn, and so on.

You can also offset the luck of guessing your opponent's moves by using Ion tokens to force a ship to move a Forward 1 next turn. A stressed ship is likely to take a green move on their next turn, as is a ship with missing shields and R2-D2 inside it. Use lower pilot skill ships to set up a collision with your opponent's higher-skilled ships to make them stop short and lose an action so you can pick them off with other ships.

When you get the tactical experience going after playing more games, a lot of these trappings of luck will become less of a barrier to game time moving along. You'll still get the odd game that just gets weird with the dice, but it'll be more rare, and you'll laugh about it.