I'm a total Newbie player, but a habitual tweaker who just can't help tinkering with games. So I wanted to ask what, if any, house rules people had tried?

For example, has anyone tried a more Wings of War delayed orders system? Each pilot has two order discs, not one, and each turn you're laying down your orders for your next turn not your current turn.

For example, a pilot's skill has no impact on their ability to hit or be hit. You could allow a Pilot to reroll 1 die (attack or defence) in return for -1 Pilot Skill for the rest of the game (track using existing tracking counters). (i.e. a pilot with 5 skill could do this up to 5 times)

We've looked at a version where movement isn't planned. You don't pick your manouvre until it is your turn to move.

This has some interesting effects:

• High skill pilots are much more powerful, and Academy pilots/rookies much less so.
• You don't get the "furball" - unless you completely misread the movement template you have chosen, you already know where the other ships have landed and hence can take steps to avoid colliding with them.
• TIE swarms not as good (I know where you all went, so I won't crash into you unless you blocked every escape route)
• Some game effects no longer work since movement is open - Boba Fett, navigator, anti pursuit lasers etc.

In many ways this is less frustrating (no furball) and more more fluid and cinematic (Luke weaving a path between hapless TIE drones), although it does miss a chunk of the game (planning, bluffing and predicting).

There have been some neat rule additions / modifications I've seen pop up from time to time on this forum. Most are lost to the black hole of time. I suggest that we start a page somewhere that people can post their home brew rules on without being lost on a forum.. . Some one was working on a PDF for RPG rules or something. I was going to write mine up when i get a chance.

a few posts I've managed to dig out featuring a customizable pilot system with campaign setting

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/92026-custom-league-pilot-roster/

a post about secret missions and one that i made listing a few examples of Large scale play.

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/91015-secret-missions/?hl=oddeye#entry876053

Meanwhile, I decided to start a google community for x wing home brew rules. There is only 1 member (obviously me since i just made it) I have another google community I've made for my custom zombie war game and is becoming fairly popular with 110 members now (if you stick to it, people will join). Communities work well due to the fact people can post feedback directly to your rule posts easily unlike a blog or a website and allows users to post their own rules and ideas freely. Feel free to post up your homebrew rules here that way we can actually find them / update them easily. You can post PDF documents by putting them into google drive or scribd.com and linking it to the community. I usually use google docs to make my custom rules, make the doc public and link to the community for easy updating and access. Long story short I'll post up some of my rule ideas, then format em into a document and post it to get the community started.

x wing home brew rules community

https://plus.google.com/u/0/?tab=XX#communities/112584680229614389998

One that I think is needed is a 2-4 point reduction in cost for all Tie Advanced pilots. It's a fun ship, but prohibitively expensive.


Another option is to do an RPG PvP system, in which everyone starts out with 3 units of level 1 ships (Large-base ships = 2 units, Small-base ships = 1 unit, Tie Fighters = 1/2 unit), and earn upgrade points as you play (including getting named pilot abilities from OTHER SHIPS)


In this system:

Increase your pilot skill by 1 level by paying the number of points for the level to which you'd ascend. (It takes 2 points to go from level 1 to level 2, and 4 points to go from level 3 to level 4, et c.)

Unlock upgrades when you reach the lowest level pilot with that upgrade slot (e.g. A-wings get the Elite Pilot Talent slot at level 3, while X-Wings get it at level 8).

Fill upgrade-slots by paying for their point-cost once you have unlocked the slot.

You may switch what is in an upgrade-slot for two stress tokens. This includes re-loading ordnance, if you've purchased more than one.

You may purchase a single Unique Pilot Ability by 1) Achieving that pilot's level, and 2) paying the points equal to that pilot's level. You may only have one Unique Pilot Ability per ship, and no two ships in the same squad can have the same Unique Pilot Ability. Yes, this means you can have Captain Yorr in an A-Wing.

Upgrades that are Rebel Only or Empire Only can now be purchased by either faction.




Balancing the point-gain process is currently the hang-up of the development of this in my area.

1 more astroid each and range one from the edges instead of 2. Makes them matter more. We have also done "you can shoot the asteroids and blow them up with an action" and when you collide with an astroid it moves the rest of the maneuver you were performing.

Toyed with moving asteroids every round but that gets crazy.

One I was thinking of this morning is adjusting defence based on speed. I was thinking about how powerful the YT1300 360 degree gun is, and I was picturing Han and Luke firing the turrets in the original film where they struggled to track TIE fighters flying across their bows. It was a feature in the Star Warriors game, but in X-Wing the ship is assumed to be entirely static at the end of each turn when the attack is made.

Possible House Rule:

Relative speed = Absolute value (i.e. treat -1, -2 etc. as +1, +2 etc.)

a) Attacker Speed + Defender Speed, if flying towards each other

b) Attacker Speed - Defender Speed, if tailing

c) Greater of Attacker Speed or Defender Speed, if defender is flying across the attacker

If Relative Speed = 0, +1 Attack Die

If Relative Speed >3, +1 Defence Die

If Relative Speed >6, +2 Defence Dice

This makes tailing an opponent even more lethal, it makes head-on runs extremely challenging, and it means smaller ships should fly as fast as they can straight across vessels with 360 degree guns relying on pure speed and good fortune.

Definitions

Head-to-head: each ship is within the other ship's fire arc.

Tailing: rotate the defending ship 180 degrees. If the attacker is within the defender's firing arc, the defender is being tailed. Now rotate the defender back to the original facing. (marginal calls go in favour of the ship with highest Pilot skill)

My rule is pretty simple. I implemented it so I could get more games in on a given night.

Game ends when 50% of one faction has been destroyed (by points)

Mostly it just shortens games, but it also does not allow for the late in the game dramatic combacks. It does effect play style a little. Like if Han is 49 points they you can win the game by killing everything else.

My rule is pretty simple. I implemented it so I could get more games in on a given night.

Game ends when 50% of one faction has been destroyed (by points)

Mostly it just shortens games, but it also does not allow for the late in the game dramatic combacks. It does effect play style a little. Like if Han is 49 points they you can win the game by killing everything else.

The problem I see with this is it vastly improves alpha strike crews.. The main disadvantage with Bombers is after they fire off all their ordnance they have to dog fight. But I could see certain crews which load up on Ordnance and go for alpha strike wiping out enough in their initial salvo that all they have to do is pick off a weak model to win.

I personally don't see a need to redesign the game so dramatically, but to each his own :-)

I am more into designing interesting scenarios with special rules. It keeps the game interesting, and you get vastly more fun than dog-fighting the same lists over and over.

Recently we did a 3 person escape from Hoth game, which was insanely fun. I played a 200 pt. Rebel force against two 100 pt. Empire forces. We based the scenario on the senatorial escort mission from the rulebook, but played with two shuttles on a 6' x 3' table, running the shuttles the length of the table. To assist the rebels, they had the ion cannon on Hoth fire at the beginnng of each turn, before maneuvers were chosen. The rebel player chose one target and rolled a single attack die. On a hit or crit, the target was given an ion token. All in all it was great fun, with draw (one shuttle escaped, and one was destroyed at the last second).

Some post game musings was to let the ion cannon also deal damage, like the upgrade weapons. But we were debating if that would be too great an advantage. But then again, with empirial reinforcements, it was no easy task for the rebels.

I personally don't see a need to redesign the game so dramatically, but to each his own :-)

Oh, I've never played a game I haven't wanted to "improve" :-)

No real changes are necessary. House rules we use are pretty much restricted to scenario play. We have also played with random drawn squads and upgrades, those were surprisingly very fair.

Here's one: initiative goes to the side that has spent the fewest points. Is it worth dropping an upgrade so that once in a game, your pilot can shoot first?

Here's one: initiative goes to the side that has spent the fewest points. Is it worth dropping an upgrade so that once in a game, your pilot can shoot first?

Makes a huge difference in some games. Last game having Soontir and Vader shooting before Wedge really helped me win.

One house-rule that I really want to implement is to alter the points for various rarely-used ships and upgrades.

For instance: the Tie-Advanced is probably the least-used ship in the game, but it would be much more playable if all of them cost 3 points less.

...Here's an idea! Have everyone start with their fleets unbuilt. Shuffle a deck of pilot-cards (One card per named pilot, 3 per generic). Deal out 5 in a column, and every player of that faction takes a turn picking a pilot. However, only the pilot farthest from the deck can be picked for his or her points. For every pilot you pass as you go to collect your ship, you must pay 1 more point to the passed ship. Each time a ship gets passed, it costs 1 less point. (Yes, this is the race-picking system from Small-World, which is itself an excellent game).

Once all of the pilots have been picked, Titles are bid upon, auction style. Then, upgrade cards may be purchased as normal.

MIssiles and Torpedoes cost 2 points less.

Pricing adjustment to reduce effectiveness of swarms: points levy for every ship above the 3rd ship in a fleet: 4th ship is +1, the 5th ship is +2, the 6th ship is +3, etc.

A couple of friends tried out ship debris rules in their games yesterday. Basically, instead of placing asteroids at the beginning of the game, each ship is assigned an asteroid (large for large, small for small), and once the ship is destroyed, you place that ship's asteroid at the location of the ship as you remove the ship from play. This creates the asteroid field on the fly, and while the star wars movies don't support that (since the ships disintegrate on impact) but was very dynamic for playing the game.