I've become obsessed with X-Wing over the last month or so after discovering it, and I've been trying to read about it and play as much as I can. I love it!

So far I am just about to dip my toes into playing with folks who know what they're doing, finding experienced players at local game shops here in Austin and so on. Most of my games have been either myself playing both sides, myself and my wife, or myself and my nephew.

My wife enjoys the game and she's a trooper about playing it with me, but I realized last night that I think I have been pushing a bit too far and too fast with adding extra ships and upgrades.

I've got the base set, 2 additional X-Wings, a TIE Advanced, a Y-Wing, a Falcon and a Firespray, so of course we've been wanting to use all of these ships and play with all the extra stuff because they're cool!

However I think I need to play with my wife a few really basic games using just the 2 TIEs and an X-Wing from the base set. I think this is how I'm going to introduce the game to my friends as well.

All the while I've been absorbing details and rule mechanics through obsessive readings on the forums, my wife has … not It gets a bit frustrating when she seems confused about why the Falcon rolls 1 defense die, or how to interpret Han Solo + Gunner versus Dark Curse with their various manipulations of the 'reroll' mechanic versus making 2 attacks, etc.

She's been a good sport about it, but I can tell it's a little much at this point and I don't want her to get so frustrated she doesn't enjoy the game. It's a lot of complicated details to keep in your head!

So now I think we'll switch to just playing 31-point games with the two TIEs and an X-Wing so if she enjoys it and wants to keep playing she can get the basic rules down much more clearly, to understand what a "hit" is, what cancelling dice means, when you can reroll, all that kind of stuff.

Also with just 3 ships the games will go much faster than the 2-3 hours they are taking now.

Then after a few of those games we'll add in asteroids, and get used to the mechanics about obstruction and obstacles. THEN later we can start adding in additional fighters and increasing the squad point size.

I have a good friend I want to introduce the game to so I'm going to go this route with him as well. I figure it will be much easier to learn on initial games if you don't even have to worry about putting a squad together and trying to figure out which upgrade is the best--if we can keep playing games from a basic 2 TIEs vs 1 X-Wing standpoint the mechanics will be easier to learn.

All told I have to say I feel grateful to have a wife who is so willing and enthusiastic to play all these games with me--we've played games of Civilization or Arkham Horror that took around a week to finish, just playing an hour or two each night. She enjoys it and I love her for it, but I have a very detail-oriented min-maxer side of my brain that loves all the mechanics of a game like X-Wing and I don't want to frighten her off

Go with the 31 point setup (core set) but do add asteroids! the game is soooo dull without them.

Firstly, you are a lucky man to have a partner who will play these games with you!

When I run early intro games, I don't worry about points values or upgrades - it's fine if I am hopelessly outmatched as I'm not really out to win (yet).

Also I'd generally take the Imperials and let the noob take the X-Wings. Partly because the shields make their ships very forgiving (nothing more dispiriting than having your new ship blow up). Also because to get the most out of TIE fighters, you need to be doing more advanced stuff like barrel rolls and out-manouvering for side shots.

Unless the person in question is a Star Wars nut and always wanted to play Boba Fett or whatever…

Definately don't use asteroids in the first couple of games (again it is very frustrating to keep beaching because you aren't familiar with the movement templates). After that, they add much more depth so I wouldn't play without them.

To get my Gal involved; I sat her down and let her pick from the different ship pilot Cards. She chose the Falcon with Chewy as pilot, she is not a rabid Star Wars fan as I am, but she knows Chewy, liked the idea of shooting 360 and having shields.
I chose Vader and a couple of TIEs to equal out the points but did not go into the upgades and action cards; I just set the play area up and we played the quick start rules. She beat me soundly after a few rounds of my screwy maneuvers and her shooting from every angle.

After a few games of that, and her wrecking me each time, I introduced the upgades and action cards, then played a couple more times with the simple rule of you pick what you want to pilot with and I'll equal out the points.
Once she got the hang choosing her loadouts we started playing the mission senarios and have been having a lot of fun. I have yet to play with anyone else so it sould be interesting coming this weekend when my game group gets together to play this as teams.

First of all, Austin huh? How's the X-Wing scene in Austin? I live in San Antonio, and absolutely love the game, but find it very difficult to arrange play time with opponents; there just aren't that many of them down here.

Secondly, I introduced my wife to X-Wing and she HATED it. Now, I will admit that she is not much of a "gamer" so there's a bit of bias from the start, but I also went around it the complete wrong way. At the time, I had about the same set up as you (minus the big ships) so I decided that a Luke vs. Vader battle would be a very recgonizable, fun game. Additionally, I omitted the asteroids because I thought they would add too much confusion. Most. Boring. Game. Ever. Admittedly, I still enjoyed it, but only because I was having fun teaching the game mechanics (as a teacher, I find stuff like that fun. I know…weird, right?). So my advice would be to up your points totals to around 50-60 or so. That will allow you to field a few more ships which will reduce the number of rounds that you spend with no combat (which to new players seems pointless because they aren't yet invested in the maneuvering and strategic components of the game) but also make your games take about half as long as they currently are. Second, I would absolutely add asteroids in as soon as possible. Without the asteroids the game quickly devolves into Fly straight -> Shoot -> K-Turn -> Fly straight -> Shoot ->K-Turn…repeat over and over and over. Good luck and keep us posted!

Thanks for all the replies!

I'm not too familiar with the local scene here in Austin yet--my wife and I are heading to the first X-Wing organized play night at a game shop that I've been to.

We've got a friend's wedding to attend on Saturday or we'd be hitting the tournament play here at one of the local shops.

The wife and I haven't played again yet, but I did show the game to my best friend last night using about as simple a game as I could make it, and it went PERFECTLY.

I used 2 X-Wings with (I think) Red Squadron pilots, skill 4, and one TIE Fighter with Black Squadron pilot, skill 4. No upgrades or droids or elite skills and no asteroids.

We played twice, swapping sides, while listening to the original '77 double album of the Star Wars soundtrack. We both had a lot of fun, the games lasted about 30 minutes each, and my friend wiped the floor with me both times!

I wanted to focus for these games on learning:

1. Getting familiar with the phases
2. Using maneuver dials
3. Overlapping ships
4. Moving, then taking action
5. What the actions are
6. Rolling attack/defense dice and modifying them
7. Cancelling dice to determine a hit
8. Doing damage

We had the same pilot skill so the 2 TIE fighters always went first and we were able to get familiar with the way the maneuver templates work, and what maneuvers are available to each ship. My friend picked up on this pretty well and was able to use the more maneuverable TIE fighters to their advantage and just generally get the hang of how the move around.

We were very deliberate with each combat, because I told him I wanted the exact steps to be clear because later on it gets more complicated and we want the basics down solid.

So we'd roll attack dice, then discuss our options for modifying dice with focus, evade or target lock. Then we'd roll defense dice and do the same. Then we'd cancel out attack dice (even if there were no hits we'd go through the procedure of cancelling dice, just with there being no dice to cancel) and then we'd see what was left and if there were any hits on the dice, that would be a "hit".

We discussed the options for rerolling dice and what it means to reroll dice in this game. We discussed what a "hit" means in this game versus "taking damage", so it can be clear later when we get into more advanced play.

We both had a great time and really enjoyed how quick the games went, glad we could play 2 games in one night. Next time we're going to play the same basic deal because I need to figure out if I can up my strategy and beat him!

Then we'll add in asteroids, and get familiar with the rules of passing over or through obstacles.

Then we'll add in named pilots and start learning about the different skills each pilot has.

Then we'll add in droids, upgrades, etc. I want to do it in layers so we can really get to understand each step in turn.

That way when we get up to something like Kath Scarlett's powers combined with an Ion Cannon we'll be able to understand what's going on a little better

Awesome! I'm glad that worked out for you! It makes me really want to repeat my attempt with something similar. I think that Austin has a pretty decent group of X-Wing players. Which game shop are you going to?

(Also, if you want to hit up a regional, there are actually 3 in Austin I believe! One passed earlier in the month, one is this weekend, but there is one mid-June at a different shop I think so you might look into that.)

Ibberben said:

We're going tonight to Mothership Comics, they have "Organized X-Wing Play" on their calendar. Just going to observe tonight, but hopefully in the future I can start playing.

I'll be checking out the next regional we can go to after this weekend for sure. And I work right across the street from Wonko's Comics in far North Austin, so they have a regular weekly game night as well.

progressions said:

Cool! Honestly, I'd highly suggest just taking your stuff and seeing what happens. It sounds like you have enough ships to run a Falcon + 2 X-Wings squad which would be competitive enough to be fun and also relatively easy to learn with. Either way, Wonko's is awesome as is Dragon's Lair (which I believe is the shop hosting the June 15 regional). I haven't been to Mothership before; I might have to check it out the next time I'm in Austin. Good luck!

Ibberben said:

I considered taking my stuff, but I was playing late last night and didn't feel like packing it up, deciding which bits I wanted to take.

I love Dragon's Lair, I've been going there since the mid 1980s when it was a tiny house with corgis running around. They just moved into their latest location, a massive floor with loads of gaming tables and great variety of comics and games! Great shop.

progressions said:

I definitely understand. Yeah the new Dragon's Lair store is absolutely amazing. It made me want to move to Austin. I often go to the Dragon's Lair in San Antonio though which is nice as well. But yeah…Dragon's Lair in Austin has absolutely the best collection of gaming/comic/other geek products that I've ever seen in one store.

Played two games tonight and learned a LOT about maneuvering! There's only so far that reading the forums and rulebook can take you

Packing up my stuff now to take to Wonko's for game night tomorrow night!