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Back to basics with X-Wing and Armada

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13 Mar 2016 19:18 #224263 by Matt Thrower

My wardrobe is full of spaceships. So many spaceships that there's barely room for clothes. Most of them live in an enormous box which crushes my shirts out of all recognition when it's squeezed in and out for play. It's a good job I play with spaceships a lot more than I wear shirts.

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13 Mar 2016 19:22 - 13 Mar 2016 19:32 #224264 by boothwah
Frist.


Also, link is 404'd.
Last edit: 13 Mar 2016 19:32 by boothwah.

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13 Mar 2016 20:17 - 13 Mar 2016 20:17 #224265 by Sagrilarus
Matt's Monday morning articles always have ghosts on Sunday night. It will be available at midnight.
Last edit: 13 Mar 2016 20:17 by Sagrilarus.

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14 Mar 2016 09:27 #224284 by charlest
A good read Matt. We play X-Wing casually and I've never played a store or with people I don't know. We play competitive casually, meaning we don't take it too seriously but we do build lists. My buddy likes to spend tons of points outfitting larger ships with lots of secondaries and I tend to fly highly maneuverable stuff, even if it's not completely effective (such as A-Wings before Chardaan refit).

There's something to be said about playing the way you want to play rather than the way the optimized win-at-all-costs personality of the game wants you to.

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14 Mar 2016 12:14 #224294 by Michael Barnes
Part of the reason- and in fact probably the main reason- I love these games is because Star Wars. There is ONE YT-1300 in Star Wars. So I do not give a ruddy shit if the Internet fleet lists or the local "meta" say to run two of them. If you see that ship in my game, you better bet that it is the one and only Millennium Falcon and it is being piloted by Han Solo, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian and/or Nien Nunb.

I don't even follow all of the "meta" discussion...I just completely and flatly do not care. Is it "bad" to run a full squadron of prototype A-wings? I don't care. Does the TIE Advanced "suck"? I don't care. Should I run a particular type of ordnance with a certain astromech? Don't care. All of that stuff makes my eyes cross.

I play casually with a couple of friends who just use my stuff and will probably never buy their own, and fortunately they do not care about optimal builds either. They are more interested in putting Admiral Ackbar on Home One like Matt here. They always want Luke, Boba Fett, Vader and so forth on the table. I had to convince them that some of the other pilots like the Rogue Squadron guys were the real deal and not FFG made up stuff. When I do a random fleet build, I usually get it to optimize for ships. This reduces the upgrade cards. I like the upgrade cards and I think that's where a lot of the depth is, but I also prefer to limit them. I do not like running ships laden with cards at all.

But hey, like Charlie said, there's a lot to be said for playing how you want and I think these games support all of these approaches.
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14 Mar 2016 13:11 #224296 by Jackwraith
I don't have anything against list-building. I'm a competitive gamer. I played tournament Magic. I love wargames. I spent thousands on Games Workshop's various games and those all require lists and point values and upgrades and whatever. I got into X-Wing primarily to scratch that miniatures itch with a far smaller price point attached. I'm competitive enough that I'm currently trying to get a regular Heroes of the Storm team together.

However, I noticed that when I really got into the X-Wing scene last year, my fire for the game got snuffed out, to the point where I can't remember the last time I actually played. I've never been a huge Star Wars guy, even when I was fanatical about the movies as a kid in the 70s. I think my SF fandom got permanently diverted by things like Blade Runner and Neuromancer. Even so, I sympathize with the idea that there "should" be only one Millennium Falcon on the board, while I question why a nominal freighter (isn't that ship just way too tiny to be a "freighter" that would be able to transport any cargo of significant value?) is one of the most powerful fighters in the galaxy...

Maybe what I don't want to do anymore is the GW thing: I don't want to keep spending money in order to keep up with the meta. But, by the same token, it'd be really cool to play some of the Scum & Villainy faction. So, perhaps my response to not wanting to be that competitive gamer on the constant money train was just to stop playing? Dunno.

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14 Mar 2016 14:00 #224300 by Sagrilarus
I'll give an Amen to this as well. I think that X-Wing has a lot of emotional entry barrier for players that don't have a regular gang of guys, because you need to do homework in order to not look like a chump when you show up at the game store on X-Wing night. That's to their disservice. But, they get a few extra hundred dollars out of their loyal followers by releasing a card or two in kits that otherwise have pretty routine parts. That's the game FFG is playing.

One of the catch-phrases that caught on in my game group is "I'm Luke Fucking Skywalker" because we played the original intro pack one night and Luke got first initiative every turn no matter what. We'd all reveal and start to do our thing and Jeff would say "no, you all follow after me because I'm Luke Fucking Skywalker". If it had been anything other than the lead character from the films it wouldn't have mattered, and we wouldn't have found that common ground. To me that adds to the game.

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14 Mar 2016 16:21 #224325 by SuperflyPete
Fun to read, Matt, and as always, captivating.

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22 Mar 2016 10:18 #224675 by Gary Sax
I did not appreciate how good Matt's post was until I unboxed my Armada stuff yesterday and today (not done!). There are like 1000 upgrade cards that produce a billion combinations and part of me is like "fuck that shit, that is way too much."

I actually quite like that you can play the game either way, and I think it is a great move on their part to put in the hardcore upgrades system for tourney players to keep the game alive. But I don't know that I'll ever really play that way, hardcore min maxing. It seems like a lot of work.

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22 Mar 2016 10:24 #224677 by charlest

Gary Sax wrote: I did not appreciate how good Matt's post was until I unboxed my Armada stuff yesterday and today (not done!). There are like 1000 upgrade cards that produce a billion combinations and part of me is like "fuck that shit, that is way too much."

I actually quite like that you can play the game either way, and I think it is a great move on their part to put in the hardcore upgrades system for tourney players to keep the game alive. But I don't know that I'll ever really play that way, hardcore min maxing. It seems like a lot of work.


You can also choose to think of all those upgrades in a slightly different way. Think of them as expansion content to add variety. Instead of worrying about upgrades for min/maxing, include them to add variety and change up the flavor. Try a card you never have before or a combo that will make you fly differently.
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22 Mar 2016 10:28 #224678 by Sagrilarus

Gary Sax wrote: . . . and I think it is a great move on their part to put in the hardcore upgrades system for tourney players to keep the game alive.


That raises a question. Is the tournament scene necessary to keep a game like this alive? These are some really spankin' models, I'd be curious to know how much of sales (Armada in particular) are due to people buying components solely to be competitive in tournament play.

You guys all seem to be more in the "just too damn pretty to pass up" mold. Is anyone here in this for organized play?
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22 Mar 2016 10:30 #224679 by Gary Sax
^that is a good question, on its face X-wing seems like the big tourney hit because of its length.

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22 Mar 2016 10:39 - 22 Mar 2016 10:40 #224682 by Sagrilarus
By the way, Barnes gives me crap for flying airplanes instead, but I'm genuinely interested in the Armada stuff in particular. My buddy Sippi Stephen was supposed to be my X-Wing guy but he sold his stuff, and no one in my group has jumped into Armada yet. I'm hard-pressed to go after it since I have so much space tied up in planes already, and I may be picking up 24 more from a fellow FAt-ite at a price that will require me to pass on some love in order to ease my guilt.

I was three miles away from a game shop that held an Armada tournament this past Sunday, but my boys' robot made it all the way to the finals and came within a hair's width of winning all the marbles, so telling him halfway through that I was leaving to go see the Star Wars Armada tournament at the game store struck me as unfatherly. To date I haven't seen one of these critters out of the box.

S.
Last edit: 22 Mar 2016 10:40 by Sagrilarus.
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22 Mar 2016 10:42 #224683 by Columbob
The sacrifices a father must make.

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11 Dec 2016 16:34 #240341 by Gary Sax
Thread resurrection. I took the great advice over in the SW: Destiny section and got the nephew x wing on a lark. I thought I'd buy him a ship for each side in addition to the base ships. He likes new star wars better than old star wars. Recommendations for ships that would be fun to add to the base pack if you weren't going to use titles, cards, etc and just go base game brawl? Preferably that have new movie material, though this isn't necessary. I asked him what his favorite ship was and he said the x-wing so I'm covered there. I could just get him another x-wing and a tie fighter, I guess, but...

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