Hi all,

New to the forums. I'm a Warhammer 40,000 player and anyone familiar with that will know the constant paying out that goes with expanding your army and experience. Which is why I've been attracted to the board/card game hobby of late in that there's less emphasis on expansion. Sure, you can buy an adventure pack for a card game etc, but there's no real need to if you're happy with the core set.

Which is why I've been holding off on X-Wing, as great as it looks. I'd like to get your opinions on the core set. How satisfying an experience is it? Will it keep me occupied for a while, or will I soon feel compelled to buy more stuff?

Thanks.

Dodd81 said:

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, it will keep you occupied for a while, but soon you will feel the need to buy more expansions. It is natural. The good thing about this though, is that X-Wing is not nearly as expensive as Warhammer. Even if you buy every expansion multiple times (which you certainly don't need to) X-Wing is still going to cost you significantly less money than any single(!) Warhammer army (even if you buy expansions for both the Imperial and Rebel sides).

So, in short: yeah, you need to invest in expansions on the long run, but it's not that big a deal. Money-wise, it certainly cannot be compared to Warhammer.

You are going to want a couple expansions, at least, pretty quick. The game is meant to be played with 100 pt squads. You can only make 31 pt squads out of the core set. Buying 2-4 expansions will greatly increase your options and squad building abilities. Or you can go all out like I did and buy 2 core sets, 12 small ship expansions and 1 of each large ship over the course of 2-3 weeks.

2 Core Sets is where I would start. It'll set you back $60-80, but since you're coming from GW gaming, this is going to be a drop in the bucket. I've been there myself, so I feel your pain.

2 Core Sets gives you 2 X-Wings and 4 TIE Fighters, as well as an extra set of templates and dice. The dice are key, because you only get 3 of each in the Core Set, which is pretty silly since you'll need a minimum of 4 of each to play the game smoothly. Why?

An X-Wing rolls 3 attack dice normally, unless you're at Range 1, then it needs to roll a 4th. A TIE Fighter rolls 3 dice to defend, unless it's at Range 3, then it rolls 4. It could be rolling 5 if an asteroid is in the way. So really, you don't want the added book keeping of remembering die results while you roll other dice again to add them up.

The extra templates also make playing with your opponent easier, as you don't have to pass things back and forth.

Now, on to the models; the single Core experience is great for a demo game, and that's about it. It's a pretty one-sided affair. If the X-Wing can take out one of the TIE's early, Rebels win, otherwise the Imperials will likely close it out because they can box your lone fight in a lot easier. You'll grow really tired of that matchup soon enough.

2 X-Wings vs 4 TIE Fighters gives you some room to play with, using the different pilots and upgrades, and match up the points values on both sides. As a GW player, this should all make sense and be familiar to you.

Beyond that, just expand the game to your personal tastes. If you've got some organized play happening near you, read strategy threads to inform your buying decisions, otherwise just buy what appeals to you, model-wise. The only caveat is that each ship pack has a specific set of upgrade cards that can be used by other ships. For example, the A-Wing comes with "Push the Limit" which melts faces when used by two of the TIE Interceptor pilots, but oddly does not come in their packs.

So if you wanted to do a popular and effective TIE Interceptor build, you would need to not only buy the TIE Interceptor packs, but a couple of A-Wing packs as well, for the cards. For casual play, just proxy it, but again, if you're playing in a league or a tournament, you'll need the official components. Cost-wise, I think a fully fleshed out X-Wing model collection, Consisting of 2 Cores, and 2 X-Wings/Firesprays/YT-1300's and 4 TIE Fighters/TIE Advanced/A-Wings/Y-Wings/TIE Interceptors will still come in way less than a single Warhammer army, BUT you don't have to invest in the painting/modelling, AND you have two fully playable "armies" to work with, including a lot of variety in your list building.

So back to my original point; buy 2 Cores, and if you really love it, just take your time expanding out from there. If you have a regular opponent, you can split the costs if you both want to claim a side. Even if the cost-splitting isn't happening, if you can play regularly, you'll have a blast and it'll pay for itself in terms of money vs time in entertainment dollars.

I bought in big. I bought 2 Core Sets, 4 Y-Wings, 2 X-Wings, 2 TIE, 4 TIE Advanced, 8 TIE Interceptors, 8 A-Wings, 2 Millenium Falcons, and 2 Slave-1s. I then auctioned off 4 each of the Interceptors and A-Wings on Ebay. Total out of pocket expense wound up being $180. Granted, selling off the ships helped a great deal but even so if you buy them on Coolstuff or have just a bit of patience the entire thing should come in at less than $350.

$350, to be able to field any combination of ships in the game. Coming from a guy who owns half a dozen 40k armies, including at least 15,000 points worth of Space Marines and Dark Eldar, this is such a bargain its ridiculous. I couldn't even begin to buy the Terminator section (4 squads) for my Space Marines for that price, never mind the 40+ bikes, tacticals, characters, vehicles and books for the Marines. And that is just one army, not even remotely every combination in that army, and that doesn't even consider buying paints/supplies/etc., and/or paying as much again to have someone paint them for me. My miniatures collection is insured at over $50k, just for perspective.

$350. Just saying.

I got into X-wing in an unusual way. I set up a gaming group with guys at work that met once a month. We would do boardgames in a pub and did this for over a year. I was buying games that I had researched first to make up for the little amount of games other people were able to bring for the afternoon.

I saw X-wing and thought about it initially as a cost saving game for me (50-60 buck for a good game is hard to do every month) and I pitched it to the guys like this: I would buy the core set and they would go out and each pick up a ship expansion and bring it to the game. If it sucked they would have 1 fully painted miniature that they could keep as a memento from that event. They liked the idea and so I went looking and found out that, where I live, was completely tapped out of core set stock back in January of this year (Christmas had depleted every core set in my city of 800,000). So I went online and ordered a core set to come in. While I was waiting for the core to come in I, found some shops had some expansions, and one good store had all four wave 1 expansions. So one guy bought a Y-wing, one bought the Tie Adv x1, and I picked up a Tie Adv x1 as we had 6 people show up and so each had a ship to fly.

I was such a great experience that I went online and ordered a whole bunch more. I have spent around $350 so far to get 4 X and Y wings, 2 A wings, 1 Falcon, 6 Tie fighters, 3 Tie intercepters, 2 Adv x 1 and 1 Slave 1 and 3 cases to carry it all in (I posted pics in the thread " Show off your fleets")

And where we used to play those boardgames once a month, we played X-wing every WEEK , for the whole month of March. And two people got core sets of their own with other expansion ships that they want to fly.

No other game has swept up our group like this one has and I appreciate the fact that I'm current on models and have only spent a couple hundred bucks (a significant portion was the shipping).

The point for or against a core set is finding out if you really want to play a fun, entertaining, and engrossing game and, as with everything in life, the choice is yours.

Thank you all for taking the time out to give your advice - and in such detail too. Much appreciated.

I hadn't even considered 2 core sets, but it makes sense. The dice situation I found interesting. Odd that they didn't really supply enough (or not surprising if I put my cynical hat on).

I think I'll end up buying the core set, get used to the mechanics and then buy another and then just build gradually from there.

Thanks again for all your help.

And….15,000 points of Space Marines?! Wow!

Jamie