I decided to preorder A Handful of Stars instead. Like the theme better and the rules were really clean. Plus, single run of 2.5k copies and the the company folds, so I don’t want to have another Study in Emerald first edition situation… (apparently FFG has bought the design, and they might do a good job with it, but I much preferred Study in Emerald first edition and finding a copy is impossible now).
Jeez…bought the kid Mechs and Minions for xmas and he still has not asked to bring it out to play…of course, he’s a video/computer gamer and never wants to play my boardgames…I might as well bring this out myself.
I assume I cannot play this on a regular square card table???
I have two that I set up for my regular solo boardgames, alternating between the two, but we do not have any other tables we can use…the dining room table is used constantly by my in-laws who live with us.
I might have to buy a 6 foot folding table or something to get this game moving!
You want one with the legs that tuck in really nice with locking tabs on the ends to keep it shut and a handle, like this:
I’m not suggesting you buy this particular table on Amazon. You might very well do better buying it locally from Walmart or Target, it just has the features. I’ve found this is the perfect thing for boardgaming on the go. You can easily bring it to someone else’s house for a boardgaming day if they don’t have enough tables too.
I use a very similar table from Menards for all my boardgaming and can vouch for it working nicely.
Yeah, those are excellent, highly portable tables. I have three, which I sometimes put side by side for a large wargame map.
Well @Syzygy and @SadleyBradley it seems there is some demand and interest in what starting a collection on a budget should look like, so (since I love X-wing and will take any excuse to talk about it) I will write up a general beginners buyers guide, or
#How I learned to stop Worrying, and Love the Business Model
So you find yourself hopelessly enamored with those gorgeous models of everyone’s favorite starships from a galaxy long long ago and far far away? Well this can be a daunting prospect. No longer are you getting in on the ground floor, no. This is a game with a full 9 waves on the market, the 10th wave on the boat for delivery now, and several aces/ Veterans/ Heroes packs released now, giving a full 42 ships (plus 4 epic ships). That is an intimidating starting point, so what is a wannabe pilot going to do?
Well one could buy one of each ship, but the reality is there are better options. Well cheaper ones at least. Fortunately this is not a journey you must do alone, for you will have many willing hands to help guide you! So let us start off by cutting fully 1/4 of all ships in one swoop.
Do not buy Scum.
There, 11 ships off the docket entirely for you, including 4 of the unique large ships. You’re welcome. This isn’t to say Scum isn’t fun, or worthwhile, but it is a few other things.
- It is more difficult to play, relying on tricks, dirty tactics, and generally being a right annoying bastard
- It requires ships from other factions, combined with the Most Wanted pack to flesh out its squads
- It, more than any other, will use upgrades found on ships outside of its faction packs
Basically Scum was designed assuming that anyone flying it already would have a decent range of ships from another faction. Given it came out halfway through the games lifecycle, a not unreasonable assumption.
But, Craig, I’m here for advice on what to get, not what not to. Well, you’re right. So enough dallying, and into it. Here are a few general pieces of advice:
- Get both core packs. For the ability to reliably get them for $25 or under you get 3 ships, plus a ton of unique upgrade cards. Some of the best, and most fun, cards in the game can be found in one core set or the other.
- Equally importantly you also get a second set of dice, templates, and obstacles. Trust me, you are going to want those 6 Attack and Evade dice. Having to constantly borrow from your opponent, or remember what you had rolled, when having to reroll dice to get the additional got old fast.
- Don’t get caught up in what you see in the tournament lists, and don’t assume that what won such and such tournament is the best, the best for you, or even the most fun to fly.
- Pick out one or two favorite ships and just get them. Ignore all other advice and get your favorite ship. After all the game is about putting models of your favorite ships on a board and pushing them around. If you want to fly Kyle Katarn around in the Moldy Crow, then just do that. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t the most ‘competitive’ ship out there if it is the one you want to fly. And if flying a slightly underpowered or overcosted ship is what makes you happy, then by god do that! (Note: the HWK-290 can be good, but it is hard to keep alive)
And I apparently can not stay focused here! This far in and no real buying advice other than ‘core sets’ and ‘one or two favorites’? What kind of advice giver am I
Ok so now to really get to the meat. What kind of play style do you want? This is a huge factor. There are 3 major archetypes in X-wing, roughly in a rock-paper-scissors standoff. you have
Jousters. Ships that come at you with an attitude. Mike Tyson before the face tattoo. They want to come and punch you right in the face. They hit like a truck, and can take a punch. Usually a strong 3 dice attack with decent health. Or, barring that, cheap and in numbers. The B-wing is the archetypical jouster, with the stock TIE fighter and Z-95 being others.
Arc Dodgers. Ships that are right slippery bastards to pin down. Fast, agile, and with repositioning abilities that make keeping them in arc dreadfully difficult. They will see that furball coming, then laugh as they sidestep your pincer move, and boost on through without taking a scratch. The TIE Interceptor, Defender, and A-wing laugh at your feeble attempts to hit them. Arc Dodgers generally beat Jousters.
Turrets. Big. Mean. And they don’t care where you try and hide, they can hit you there too. Usually a bundle of hitpoints too. Han Solo has no interest in letting that Interceptor get out of his arc, it is 360. In fact both YT ships are scary because of this, and the crew they pack. They are pricey though, which means that an equal point list of pure jousters can take one down, hard. But arc dodgers, with their tissue paper for hulls will run crying.
But these are fluid cases. Rey in the Falcon is both an arc dodger and a jouster. A Y-wing may look like a jouster at first glance, but slap a twin laser turret or ion turret, and it is a mean turret. Put BTL-A4 title and the stressbot? and it is the meanest ace killing jouster out there. The Lambda shuttle doesn’t really fit any, as that ship handles like a pregnant bantha, but it makes an amazing support craft for Imperial officers, Sith lords, or even Emperors. And Miranda Doni and her K-wing are technically a turret, but really are the most amazing munitions platform in the galaxy.
And any list can carry multiple types! Few lists are ‘pure’ in one style of play. In reality each list should be able to deal with threats as they come, which means mixed platforms are a common squad doctrine. Corran Horn and Poe Dameron make amazing friends to either a Miranda Doni or Dash Rendar. Darth Vader is more than happy to let a bunch of scrubs ride along and cause distractions while he goes for the kill. And a smart list builder can apply the right mix of upgrades and guile to allow many ships to mix roles, or even break the mold completely.
So for the Rebel player, here are some recommended starting points, in order of what I’d buy:
Heroes of the Resistance
Rebel Aces
K-wing
YT-2400
Ghost
Y-wing
YT-1300
A-wing
HWK-290
Z-95
With the core set, and the first two packs, you can field a decent number of builds. Going down just adds further variety. Heroes of the Resistance adds some of the most fun cards in the game, on two very solid and fun to play ships, the YT-1300 and the T-70. Rebel Aces adds an A-wing and B-wing. Right there you can do some decent generic builds, or go high cost two ship ace lists.
The K-wing is one of my favorite ships, and is something very different, being a bomb and missile platform. Hard to master, but oh so satisfying when you manage to perfectly land the killing blow on a slippery ace by SLAMing to drop a Proximity Mine right on top of them.
The Yt-2400 Outrider is a great ship, and has some of my favorite crew cards, and the same applies to the Ghost, which is a two ship pack. The Y-wing is a solid no frills grinder, the YT-1300 may be doubling up on falcons, but you say that like it’s a bad thing (plus it has a lot of still fun pilots and upgrades). The A-wing and HWK are super optional, as is the Headhunter. But they fill spaces in your collection, and are useful to have. But they could easily never be gotten, and you may not miss that. But one Z is nice, as there is no other Rebel ship you can get for under 15 points.
What of our Imperial Friends? I’ll get to you tomorrow, time for bed now.
Thanks so much…the square card table is having issues with Robinson Crusoe and I need to get M&M out soon…off to get a 6 footer tomorrow!
Sometimes they can feel a little narrow for a really big game. If M&M is super big, I’d recommend putting two side by side as Mike Oberly suggests.
This is super helpful!
That’s great. My wife and I played through scenario 1 with our two 9 year olds, and we realized about halfway through that relying on them to haul the bomb to the repair spot was a mistake. One of them spent a lot of time in the backfield doing very little trying to get the right cards and reach the right spot. He eventually did it, and pushed us to the win, but we had to give him a bit more guidance than we normally like to. He liked the game, but I think he would have been much happier running around smashing minions. Lesson learned for the future.
I don’t think this will be an issue. The 3rd mission was the biggest yet and it only requires a t shape with a line of 3 square boards and one board on the next line, a score board and the fairly thin player command cards. It’s not huge.
What does take a bit of space and time is putting reserves of minions on the side. They spawn quite fast. But I’d be really surprised if the table wasn’t big enough.
Looking forward to a play report when @TheRockSal gets to try it. I hope your son will enjoy it.
Wendelius
Is it really $1,000 per side to have decent flexibility for Warmachine? A friend has been pushing me to get into this as it is less spendy than Warhammer (but he likes the game better). However, my friend lives nowhere near me, so I would be buying it to play with me and my kid. That means I have to buy both sides. I’m not really keen to spend $2,000 to have a game to play with my kid.
Warmachine has substantially smaller numbers of figures in a standard force than 40K, so I can’t imagine it would be as expensive to get going. That doesn’t mean it’s cheap by any sane standard.
So continuing series for @SadleyBradley and @Syzygy
By now I’ve covered a rough outline of the Rebel Scum. An observant person may note that when listing a buy order I left several craft off completely. This was not on accident. The hardest omission is the ARC-170, which is a beautiful model. It is also a ‘large’ small ship, which costs $20 versus the normal 15 (others include the K-wing and TIE Punisher). The reason is that, as it is so new, it is a hard ship to come to grips with. Think of it like the Spy in Team Fortress 2. Very technical and difficult, hard to do right. It can be a ton of fun if you can create a build around it, but it is a support ship, not a feature fighter. A support ship that can go down quickly. So like the spy, a good one can elevate a team, while a bad one is useless at best, and drags down your team at worst. It also is all unique pilots, with some unusual abilities. By the time you want to get this ship, you’ll be deep enough into the game that you won’t really need to be looking at my advice anyhow. You’ll be building lists, playing with concepts, and looking at the expansion card and pilot lists on the wikis and plotting synergies. Basically what I do these days.
The E-wing isn’t in a great place right now. It has basically one viable pilot with a limited number of builds. Granted that one pilot is Corran Horn who is a fearsome foe, but the two hull, and reliance on stress generating moves and abilities, makes it very susceptible to the current Scum trends. As for the standalone T-65 and T-70 packs? There are some reasons to get them, particularly for the pilots, but if you follow my advice you would have two T-70s already, with an arguably better set of pilots. You also get two copies of Integrated Astromech in Heroes, which was one of the major points in favor of the T-70 expansion. If it turns out you really like the T-70 and want to fly 3-4 of them at once? Then by all means get one. But that’s because it is the ship you want to fly, which is the point, really.
T-65 has Wedge, and not much else. Generic X-wing pilots are generally not worth the points. Typically better to use a named A-wing, a Gold Y-wing with a turret, or a Blue Squadron B-wing for the same points. So the T-65 pack is a pass right now.
The U-wing, from Rogue One, is hard to measure. It has some really fun looking cards, but on a ship that is a support craft. It seems like the Rebel equivalent to the Lambda (which I’ll get to) and maybe it is. I’ll admit my omission is as much about me just not being sure about this ship. However, as someone who loves putting different crew on ships, and this is a decently cheap crew transport, I should love this. And maybe I will once I get one. You can make a pretty great 30 point support ship here, I think. Keep an eye on this, and if you love Rogue One I’d probably slot it in somewhere near the YT-2400.
http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/08/rogue-one-cast-photo-d23.jpg
Gah, focus. This was supposed to be the Imperial buyers guide.
So, at once, this is easier and harder than the Rebels. The reason is that Imperials are in an interesting place. They have some of the best pilots in the game, high skill aces that can take on all comers. Soontir Fel in the Interceptor, Darth Vader in his Advanced, the Inquisitor in his prototype, Omega Leader in the TIE/fo, Whisper in the Phantom, Countess Ryad in the Defender. These are some of the slipperiest, hardest to kill, death dealing machines in the game.
They also have 3,5,4,4, 4, and 6 health, making Ryad the only one pretty much immune to one hit kills (though Darth Vader is nearly so). Couple that with where Scum is today with Dengar, Zuckuss, 4Lom and Bossk and it is a hard place to be. Bossk or Dengar with Zuckuss as crew can make those aces reroll their defense dice, which has caused me to lose more than one of them in a single attack. It is one of the few true hard counters in the game.
http://kingofwallpapers.com/checkmate/checkmate-008.jpg
And make no mistake, this was a deliberate choice. For a long time Palp Aces (Lambda shuttle with Palpatine, and two high cost Aces) was the dominant ship in competitive. So dominant that, a year ago, Rebels and Scum were only lightly represented in tournament play. And while there wasn’t just one Imperial build, it was still largely variations on a theme. Palp + 2 Aces. Whether that was Whisper with the Inquisitor or Omega Leader, Soontir Fel and Carnor Jax, Darth Vader and stripped down Soontir, the occasional Defender before the Imperial Veterans ‘fix’. Though each was unique, and each flew differently, they still relied on Palpatine in the Lambda, the meanest 29 points money can by.
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So several different powers were introduced to try and break the dominance of Imp Aces, without having to FAQ a nerf in. Don’t power creep, and break the whole points system, don’t make a rules change when a new card can do the same trick. Always improve by adding options instead of subtracting is their general motto.
Except for the Deadeye FAQ change. But that’s a Scum story.
So they introduced some new cards, intending to add tools to break up the meta. Crack Shot, which is a one time use Elite Pilot Talent, can negate a defense dice. Good for making shots count against those hard to hit ships. 4Lom, who as a crew can lock down a defender token. There is Black Market Splicer Tools for the Scum Illicit slot, which is a dice roll to deal a damage card for ships with stress, like your Push the Limit Aces. But the real killer was Zuckuss. He, as a crew member, allows you to take stress to force the defender to reroll as many dice as you wish.
This is the Ace killer.
Suddenly an Aces build running into a Party Bus (Trandoshan Slaver YV-666 with Zuckuss, 4Lom and Dengar crew) or Dengaroo (Dengar and Manaroo piloting Jumpmaster 3000s with Dengar having Zuckuss crew) would find themselves having a bad day. A single attack could one shot most low health high agility aces. But these lists were weak to many common Rebel builds, and now the meta is wide open. Munitions, which had started making appearances (after having been largely ignored) after the K-wing and Extra Munitions, well thanks to Guidance Chips was now fully in its own. Breaking Ace dominance was a pincer move by giving Scum their first truly killer builds, and making the Rebel bomber and missile loadouts viable. Now Aces had real weaknesses. They were still strong, as competitive shows they still can win and make the cut, but they were one bad round from death now.
Which brings us here. The Imperial ships can be a ton of fun to fly. They can be really competitive. They can be everything from cheap swarms to triple Defenders. They can be a very exciting faction to play.
But they are in flux. When I first started playing I flew mostly Imperials, but of a contrarian type. I flew generic Phantoms when everyone else was Whisper or GTFO. I flew mid PS Ace swarms, when the prevailing thought was PS 9 uber alles. But the last half of the year I’ve gone hard in Rebels. That’s because Scum is very popular by me, and loosing matches in 20 minutes when my ships get one shotted by Dengar just was not fun. Aces are viable, but sometimes you get a matchup that you know things won’t be going your way. Thankfully Imperial Veterans is out, so Defenders are now a thing. They can survive a round or two of Zuckuss.
6 months ago this would have been easier. I could point to ships that were fun and varied and said ‘get these’. Now some of these fun ships are hard pressed. I will still recommend them, but understand that Imperial lists require a different approach. Also, understand, that if you are flying Interceptors that there are ships out there that can just end your day, so play accordingly. They also only have one turret ship, the VT-49 Decimator, and munitions platforms that don’t stack up to the Rebels. Basically they dominate at Arc Dodging and Jousting, can do ok at munitions, and have two ships that have secondary arcs (the Firespray-31 a.k.a. Slave One, and TIE/sf).
So this list is far less definative. It will be much more prone to preference and playstyle. It is one that, before you go in, is worth understanding more. It is also one where you are going to have more multiples. If you followed my first advice you’d already have two basic TIE’s, and two TIE/fo’s. You will, likely, wind up with 3 of each, as well as 3 Interceptors. The best Imperial mitigation from the Zucuss apocalypse is either a) lots and lots of ships b) be really really good.
Imperial Requisition Order Form
Imperial Aces
Imperial Veterans
Lambda Shuttle
TIE/fo stand alone pack
TIE Defender stand alone
TIE Phantom
Slave One
TIE Interceptor
TIE Advanced Prototype (Inquisitor’s TIE)
TIE Fighter
TIE/sf
TIE Advanced
TIE Punisher
TIE Striker
VT-49 Decimator
TIE Bomber
More TIE’s of your preferred type.
It is a longer list. And a longer list of ‘essentials’. There are reasons, good and bad, for this. The essentials list is longer because Imperial ships are points cheaper, so you typically need to field more of them, hence two per core set.
The essentials are Imp Aces, Veterans, Lambda Shuttle, and the TIE/fo. The Defender is very close, but just edges off ‘essential’ since you get one in Imperial Veterans. But right now it is one of the best positioned ships for the expensive Ace builds, since it has 3 shields on top of 3 hull. With what is prowling these days that is a huge aid. The Lambda is your support crew carrier, which you will appreciate the variability it can bring.
But why the TIE/fo so high? I already have two? Well, my friend, the answer is it is one of the most stand alone packs. Basically it is the Omega Leader kit in a box, and Omega Leader is great. But, really, it is a good ship, and flying 3 of them leaves you good flexibility in list building.
Next are two ships for differing reasons. The Phantom is one of my favorite ships, but also one of the hardest. But that 4 dice primary attack… It is one of the most fun and rewarding ships to fly, if you get your head around its cloaking.
Slave One has a ship that is generally considered ‘not great’, but has some amazing things with it. It is also your first missile and bomb carriers. Just, whatever you do, use Kath Scarlett instead of Boba Fett. It also has Veteran Instincts and Stealth Device, two essential cards for your Phantom and Interceptors respectively.
Speaking of another Interceptor… I fly 3 ace Interceptors on occasion, and this has one of the best pilots in the game, Soontir Fel. Nothing notable, just a third of a ship you will easily find yourself flying 3 of.
The Inquisitors TIE is a good arc dodger, and a fun and agile ship, one of the most agile. Also Proton Rockets to the face from this jerk of a ship.
More TIE Fighters, for Howlrunner and swarm building. A TIE/sf for another heavy hitter with a back arc. More health, less evade, and a mean attitude.
The TIE Advanced, Darth Vaders personal ship… and down so low because it is almost unflyable out of the box. This is where the really optional or later purchases start. It costs about 4 points too much, which is why they released a fix for this iconic ship. However it came in the Imperial Raider Huge ship expansion ($100 for the epic craft, and two TIE Advanced, plus 4x the fix cards). So getting this ship to a good state requires buying the $100 mini star destroyer, buying the title and systems upgrade cards as singles on e-bay, or printing out your own copies.
I chose the third option, for what its worth.
TIE Punisher is the Imperial munitions ship, its fine, but not where I’d put my first purchases. It’s good at what it does, but since it lacks a turret it still isn’t at the K-wing’s tier. The TIE Striker is a new ship, and it is a funky one. I’m not sure how good it is yet. It does, however, have potential, and the Lightweight Airframe that it comes with seems to be a good match with it, or the Punisher.
The VT-49 Decimator is a good ship, and the Imperials only turret. I just don’t consider it, or any of its upgrades, essential. It also doesn’t fit with most other imperial styles, since it really flies more like a Rebel ship.
Another TIE Bomber. Low, only included as a separate item because, by this time, you’ve got one. That said a fleet of 5 bombers is a thing these days, so maybe you move it higher?
Then just generally more TIEs of any stripe. You can fit 8 regular, 6 fo’s, 5 Interceptors, 5 bombers (with 1 bomb each), 6 Adv. Prototypes, 4 Advanced’s, 4 sf’s, and 3 Defenders on a list for a reason, and flying swarms of cheap fighters is one of the classic styles of play. So once you have a well rounded set, by all means load up on one particular ship.
So there you go, an in depth look at two of the 3 factions. One thing to note: for both Rebel and Imperial I have mentioned ships I do not have. For example I have no Z-95, TIE Punisher, TIE sf, or standalone TIE and TIE/fo. So take them for what they are, me giving my personal rankings on a menu. You don’t need to get everything I listed, and choosing to ignore some is perfectly valid.
The Aces/ Heroes/ Veterans packs are the only truly essential things I feel. They really do a lot for your dollar. Two ships and a ton of upgrades, and usually for a better price than separately.
EDIT: Added images because holy wall of text Batman!
Holy geez, nice work Craig! When will you be implementing tactical battles in our BSG games??
Man, don’t you think if I knew how I would have already?
I kid, of course, but only slightly ;)
We were playing Fabled Fruits (by Friedemann Friese) over the holidays… it is a very addicting card game due to its “legacy” style of play. It is basically a set collecion game, where you try to collect fruit cards and buy/make “juice” (VPs) out of the cards. At the start of the game there are 6 worker-placement action cards on display. They give you ways to collect fruit cards. Also the action cards can be bought by paying with sets of fruit cards. If you buy an action card, then you put it aside, they count for 1 victory point. Every time you buy a card, you put out a new card from a draw pile of 50+ types of different action cards. Each action cards is stacked (there are always 4 duplicates)
So the action market is shifting constantly during play, new actions become available, old actions are phased out (get bought). The legacy part is, that you might stop playing after a couple of games. Note down the current score for each player. All cards, that were bought, will be be put aside, they do not come back until all 50+ cards were played. The current action market will be put away in a bag and will be used as the starting point for your next gaming session. So that is the “legacy” or campaign part of the game. The good thing is, you do not need to tear up the cards ;)
The shifting action market makes this game so addicting and interesting. On your first games, pineapples might be very valuable, because one action card allows you to draw 5 fruit cards for 2 pineapples… a couple of games later they might not do the trick, because the action card is gone… so you switch strategy. The action cards are escalating and getting more expensive to buy as the game goes along. Suddnly the Draw 2 Fruits card is gone, which is an easy way to get fruits. Now you need a strawberry to exchange it for 3 fruits in the fruit market, which was introduced with some action card. There are sometimes synergies between the different cards. The thief is introduced with card #16, and will allow to steal from other players, the kangaroo card will punish the player with the most fruit cards on hand etc… at one point in the game bananas are great, because you can choose the action to give a player 1 banana and he has to pay you 2 different fruit cards from his hand.
If you take an action, you put your worker on the card. If the next player wants to play the same action he has to pay you 1 fruit card, so there is a bit of blocking of other players. Player with most VP wins, for a 2 Player game it is 5 VPs.
It is great with 2, 3, 4 players… and because of the theme it is kids friendly… we love it, and I can’t wait to get further into the game. We are currently at card #24 where special fruit tokens are introduced (they are in the game box with other tokens for later)…
I can strongly recommend this game.
My big problem with X-Wing is that, as it stands, it appears that the strategic overlay of the game has overmatched certain aspects of the tactical game. What I mean is, there are plenty of matchups that are more or less unwinnable between equal players. This is the same problem I have with Magic, really. If the “deckbuilding” phase decided the issue, why play? Sure, you might get lucky, or your opponent might make bad decisions, but I find neither of those possibilities appealing in terms of drawing me to play what is supposed to be a game of tactics.
Now, in any game with this kind of strategic list-making there are gonna be terrible choices, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. I am fully aware that there is no way to have every potential list be competitive against every other list. But when the meta shifts such that there is something of a rock-paper-scissors game going on at the strategic level, something is wrong, imo.
Another casualty of Fantasy Flight’s inevitable power creep. This is what happens when business models trump game design.
-Tom
Thanks for the description of Fabled Fruits! I hadn’t even heard there was a new Friedemann Friese game, much less one with that kind of legacy system.