Ok so I’m a casual player so I guess I’m still at newbie status. So why should I play in a tournament and how long should a new player wait before going in to tournament play? What are the pros and cons of tournament play? How much time, travel and expense does it require? And what if I’m no good?

The real question is: what do you want to get out of it?

Most folks that live in a major metropolitan area have a convention or FLGS that will have an X-Wing tourney.

Tourneys tend to have folks that really know the game - they like to play and they like to win in a competitive environment.

The odds are good that you'll loose more games than you win as a beginner. However, if you feel you can learn from watching skilled folks play and are out to enjoy yourself instead of "win," then I say go for it.

Tourneys can be great fun for beginners if they bring the right attitude.

I won my tournament with only a couple weeks of playing a night here and there. At the very least, you'll get a cool patch and some acrylic focus tokens. Hopefully you'll even get a good time out of it. I know I did.

I would like to echo what schoon said.

Yes, you should definitely go to a tournament. Some of the reasons include:

1. You'll meet new people and make new friends. And from what I've found, generally this community is exceedingly nicer than other gaming communities out there. And we tend to smell better, too… You'll make connections with these people, so that you can play more with them afterwards.

2. You'll learn new things about this game. And this one doesn't only apply to new players. This goes for everyone. You'll see new squad ideas that you hadn't thought of, see different play styles in action, and just in general be a better player afterwards.

3. You get to play this game and have fun. I mean, you dropped the money on this game. Why not play it? It's fun!

4. You'll get stuff. FFG has been good about their swag for these tournaments, and there is a distinct possibility you'll come home with SOMETHING, which is kinda cool.

Now, being a casual player, I wouldn't go in expecting to win a lot, but who knows, you may surprise yourself. At the Independence Regionals we had a few new players, and one of them came in 4th of 14 people. So play what you feel comfortable playing, make new friends, and have fun.

Edit: Ok, after re-reading you asked a lot of questions, so I'll try to answer some of those. Cons: there are some jerks in this community, as with every gaming community. You may run across one of those that "must win at all costs" and tries to bend the rules in their favor all of the time. From what I've seen, those players are the exception, not the rule. Don't let them discourage you from playing. Just laugh it off, and have a good time regardless of that person.

Another con is most Regional Tournaments cost to enter. The FFG Tournament kit cost almost $200 for the retailer, and they want to get their money back. So expect to pay $15-20.

The time required depends on a few factors:

1. Drive time. This is entirely situational. It depends on how far away you live, and how far you are willing to go to travel. If you want to make a day trip out of it, great. If you're willing to spend the night, cool. It all depends on you.

2. Number of players attending. Generally, matches take 75 minutes. Then when you factor in time between matches, and the fact that most tourneys (at least in my experience) never start on time, and you may have at least 4 rounds, you're looking at a long day of gaming. Figure on 6-9 hours, which kind of depends on how well you do. Obviously if you make it to the Final game it will make your day longer. And most tourneys will have a dinner break or somthing as well, so that will make the day longer, too.

Hope that helps.

Go have fun! I've been enjoying getting to meet great people and players from around the region, and it's very nice getting to see some of them also touring the circuit at multiple events.

You'll get to see far more different styles of play and learn more than you will playing with just your regular opponents.

I'd say the only thing a new player should wait for is just to have solid enough grasp of the rules that they don't slow a game down. It would be bad form to force a draw on time by pausing to ask basic rules questions. No need to wait any longer than that though!

I'd say go for it…tournaments can be fun and you can learn a lot. Just try to have a fundamental grasp of the rules and be prepared to play. Once you have created your build make sure you understand all the rules for it. Ask questions about anything you might not fully understand on Forums like this one. Make sure you have all the pieces , playing aids you'll need, prepared ahead of time and are ready to play when you arrive. That's not to say, don't bring all your stuff, because you may be able to play some pickup games before or after the event. I keep all my tournament preped stuff in one box for easy assembly at the beginning of the tournament and transporting it to different tables during the event.

Traveling to and from shows can be very time consuming. I personally will have to travel more than 2 hours to play in a regional event so I plan on staying the night. If you have an event near home you should still be prepared to spend 7 to 10 hours depending on the size of the event and how well you do. Even if I go out early I tend to stick around and try to get in some pickup games.

Most of all be friendly and try to have a good time, maybe learn some new tactics for the game and remember its supposed to be fun.

Thank you all and Hothie you thoroughly answered all my questions. I actually printed out what you said to keep as a reference.

Thanks. I hope this will help other players that are sitting on the fence. One more question, what’s a pickup game?

Boomer_J said:

You ask that as if it's inevitible that you must play in a tournament.

Truth of the matter is, I would estimate 50-75% of people who own X-Wing will never play in a tournament.

And, of the 25% who might, some will only do it once as they have such a poor experience at the tournament.

Remember, tournaments include a component of people who are there to "win at all costs" (otherwise they wouldn't bother being there), and who have min/maxed their squadrons and rehearsed all their set plays so that's it more of a statistical excercise to them, in order to stomp people, and move on.

By all means, try a tournament if you're curious, but don't expect it to always be a fun experience.

Boomer_J said:

I pickup game is just a friendly game between players well waiting for, or after, an event is scheduled. Its the same thing as picking up a girl, except your picking up another player for a game and if it is a girl. That's the best of both worlds.

Morrissey said:

I haven't attended any X-wing tournaments (so the local scene might be pretty cool, who knows), but that's why it only took one Magic tournament back in the day for me to decide that playing with friends was more than enough for me.

Skaak said:

Yup. Sorry to hear it happened to you, but thank you for reinforcing my words.

Tournaments can be really crappy experiences

Morrissey said:

I've played in well into the 100s of tournaments across at least a dozen different game systems from CCG, to LCG, to hexed based miniatures, to semi-free movement minis to, full fledged table-top minis; at all levels (local, regional, con, and championship) and I can only recall one bad tournament experience.

This was due to the TO annoucing after the second round that a tournament with 50 players was going to end after the next round, so with 6 undefeated players. Myself and another undefeated player dropped and chose to end our day early rather then finish out that farse. That is clearly an extreme case, so I'm really wondering what is going on for that it can be a regular thing for you to have a bad tournament experience?

I think good reasons have been given, and I whole hearedly support that reason number 1 is to have fun.

There is another reason to go to a tournament: supporting your local game shop. Events and active play groups are what keep local game shops alive and thriving. This in turn helps keep games alive and continuing releases. There is a strong symbiotic relationship between players and local shops.

Also, organized play is essential to the longevity of a game. I think this is one reason that FFG has been offering the support that it has for X-Wing and Netrunner for example.

ScottieATF said:

A bad organizer is certainly going to ruin a tournament for a bunch of people at once, but the problem I've run into the few times I tried to participate in a tournament were all individual-player related (and keep in mind that I've played in very few tournaments, all of them for MtG; my experience is completely anecdotal, and might not even apply to X-wing, which is a much different beast).

Anyway, disclaimers aside, I play games to have fun, and for me a big part of the fun is the social aspect. I went to a few tournaments because I wanted to play against people other than my small circle of friends, and to see how my deck stood up against others. But when my opponents were all stone-cold scruffy guys who pounding me into the ground without so much as a smile or an encouraging word, I decided it was a waste of time, money, and emotion. I don't mind losing (heck, I've only won two games of X-wing so far, and the first was because I forgot to explain K-turns to my opponent), but I absolutely have to have fun doing it (and preferably learn something so that I can do better next time). I spent weeks playing chess in junior high against an older player, and I never won once, but I kept going back because he was friendly and consistently would give me pointers as he mercilessly destroyed me.

For me the people who are only at tournaments to win and think that newbies are there to be slauthered as efficiently as possible (or should simply stay at home and let the "real" players duke it out) can very quickly kill any appeal for a social player like myself.

Sadly, the really extreme people like this might not even be all that prevalent (I have no way of knowing). But unfortunately bad experiences weigh more heavily than good ones, so it doesn't take much (curse you, psychology!).

X-wing is actually the first game I've started playing that made me think about trying tournaments again, mainly because the barrier to entry is so low (a couple hundred dollars for Magic is a drop in the bucket, whereas with X-wing it gets me all the ships I'm likely to need to be competitive, even if the skill to fly them takes a bit longer to obtain) and my wife isn't willing to play it quite often enough to satisfy my obsession. :-)

There is some skill involved in winning a game or match easily against a less experienced player politely and without seeming like a jerk. Unfortunately, not everyone has that skill or even cares about that skill. Of course, there's also a skill to losing graciously, which is something you should be prepared to do at a tournament no matter how good you think you are.

I've only played in one tournament ever (I just don't have the time away from work, and when I do I have to see my family some time!)

My experience was great fortunately. I managed to win the Kessel Run Tournament, and all my opponents (and the other guys I didn't get to play against) were uniformly great.

I won one game handily, lost one game badly, and won a second by the skin of my teeth, before the final round with the new ships, which I won but it wasn't a super serious game since we were playing with totally unknown elements.

If I had gone to a tournament with more cutthroat players determined to win by any means necessary and ungracious in losing, I'm sure I would never go again. But as it is I hope I can make a Regional tournament this summer and maybe play at the LGS in a non-tournament setting on a regular basis.

I've played in and/or organised quite a number of tournaments for over 3 decades now. BattleTech, BloodBowl, DBA historical ancients, probably some others…, and now X-Wing. These have largely been very positive experiences (and at worst had some weird glitches), but nothing horrible. I've made some lasting friendships from across the coutnry and even the globe, and always had a fun time enjoying games I like with large groups that all enjoy them too.

While it is possible that some could turn out to be bad affairs (and some people clearly have experienced bad ones), in my experience the odds are quite against that.

Here is my story to give you some hope. Its not x-wing, but its about going to regionals for Android Netrunner.

I got the Android Netrunner game on Wednesday, had to install laminate flooring in my house, so Thursday was out. Friday I took the kids to Chucky Cheeses and got home around 11:00pm. I then went to my moms. I took Netrunner there for my brother to help me learn the rules and play. We played about 5-6 games. I got the rules down quickly. I then built a runner deck, but I had no time to build a corp deck so I net decked one (got it online). I got home at 5am then got up at 12 took a shower and headed an hour and a half away to the store I played the regional at.

I ended up 2-3 which is not to bad all things considered. Everyone there was nice and helped me. I explained my situation to them. All the people that I played there were friendly and helpful. Some were competitive, but they were not unfriendly to me.

I ended up getting tokens for the game that I thought were basic store tokens. I came home and told my brother I won some generic tokens there, but had fun. He took a look at them and said, "You tard those are the click trackers for the game when he seen them lol". Then I was like ohh wow I did not even notice that. I have not played in any type of tournament in about 15-18 years and you never got things like that back then lol.