One of my favourite wandering internet search pathways tends to be old X-Wing bloggers.

Stay on the Leader, Such an X-Wing Hipster etc.

I was reading a post today dated March 2017, a time of powerful pre-nerf lists like Manaroo, Triple Jumps, Paratanni, Fangaroo etc.

Good times, but times I missed.

X-Wing was a glancing blow for me, something I noticed, but only had a few chances to play. To be honest, I was not keen on pre-painted minis games, still entrenched in my bare metals.

To me also, Star Wars is less appealing than Trek which is odd as I saw the first movie at the theatre and it help me entranced for years, but the prequels and dearth of other SW around for the next decade or two allowed Trek to takes this space back.

I don’t play favourites to any great degree, just tend to get more excited by Trek stuff and seem also to respond more to big ships with crew than fighters (I often think Armada would have scratched my Star Wars itch completely, but that is a relatively recent purchase).

Star Trek Attack Wing, a game I came to late as well, was my way of honouring this and avoid the dearer and seemingly more showy X-Wing.

I also liked the scenario based game style of AW, something XW avoided for a more stand-and-fight, tournament style of game. I think the main deterrent to me was that play style. I needed a story to tell, a scenario to complete, not just an enemy to crush.

I still jumped when 2e was released, enticed by ridiculously cheap 1e TFA starters (x5) and a plan that had little chance of succeeding in hindsight, but well, I tried.

Anyway, back to the point.

Some things are perfect for a while.

X-Wing from release to about wave 8 in 2016 seemed to be the undisputed table top miniatures tournament game around. There were others, indeed this is the high water mark for these games like Wings of Glory, Sails of Glory, Attack Wing, Armada etc, but X-Wing had a consistently huge following.

Clever Action chains were the key, card combos both tricky and varied, but within that competitive sphere there was a sense of fairness. Almost anything went at this point and the community was healthy, friendly, committed and massive. Some people were still flying X-Wings and winning!

From then on, the wheels started to wobble a bit. Nerfing pilots and ships, even nullifying the print on cards, enforced limits on card effects, applying fixes that felt tacked on, sometimes even desperate, caused a clear split between casual and tournament play.

Action economy became the currency of the later game, anything that could increase options being golden.

The fun of course was discovering those combinations others had not and being the first to try them out. Even more fun was breaking those parameters and winning with a less than perfect squad. It was a good enough system with a large player base, but as the base shrank, so did the options.

It got more serious for some, less fun for others. It was all about exploiting the rules to the limit, waiting for the inevitable nerf to curtail the build, then finding the next big thing, no matter how unlikely.

Never a tournament player, especially when gamesmanship overpowers adherence to story and canon accuracy, this had limited appeal to me. As a tournament game it was a hoot, as a simulation it was also, but they were very different beasts.

For me, a generic ship builder game would have worked, but when theme is involved, I need it to feel right.

By the end, after an impressive wave 14 release, even the later movie was touched on, most of the expanded universe explored, a new upgrade class added (Tech) and layer on layer of fixes applied, the game was sick in some people’s eyes, broken in others.

I guess the question was, did the game reach a point of balance again, measured on the performance of the iconic original ships compared to newcomers, or was it past fixing? Like life, a game based on assembling variables cannot be perfectly balanced, but it neeed to allow any ship to have a place.

Two things may have changed this landscape at the outset. The first is separating the pilots from the ships (like AW captains) and possibly absorbing EPT’s into pilot profiles or making them Squad or Scenario Tactic cards. 2e has gone some way to fixing these, absorbing a lot of EPT’s, Titles and generic Mods into the ships themselves, but separate pilots would have been cool (or possibly even a build your own pilot system for tournaments, named ones kept for casual games).

The other is using scenarios, which allow the original concept of the ship to fit it’s situation, rather than always being a 100pt toe-to-toe scrap in a 3’x3’ space. A Tie Bomber has a job it was designed for and it is not as a fighter.

Attack Wing has these elements and is more stable as game, even if it is less balanced overall.

Our various modified takes on X-Wing are an attempt to get back to the core of the 1st edition game, not by ignoring everything released after wave 8, but by extracting the upgrades that cause the most obvious abuses and problems, thus diluting the purity if the core game.

If you look at the most powerful builds in the mid and later meta, they are built around EPT’s, generic Titles and Mods. EPT’s are at odds with pilot talents, Mods make unique ships less unique and generic Titles are a level of fix that sometimes caused as many problems as fixes.

Is it possible to recapture some of the buzz of the early game, or is it lost forever?

All of the games below use the cards as printed, no errata, including the Jump Master and Palpatine, others like Attani Mindlink are naturally limited to two, because I only have 2.

Bare Bones has a certain simple charm. Seven iconic ship types per faction, controlled, faction representative and built with limited upgrades (the ones that work are straight forward and that people chose). It is about building a relatively simple squad, then flying it. It serves both as a salve to jaded players and a good introduction to the game and heroes the ships and pilots as they were designed-as the exceptions to the rules.

Action economy is still as relevant, but it is effectively capped at the base + 1, with rare exceptions. The abilities for example of Kyle or Jan Ors to effect Focus acquisition is relatively more powerful in this space, even without Moldy Crow Title and Vader is exceptional with two.

Legends adds more names (the Legends of Rebels and the expanded universe), a few more upgrades (Named Titles, Ordnance, Crew) and effects like Ion and Cloak expanding the game to the ships with the basic 5 Actions + Cloak.

Prime adds more again, especially generic droids and crew. This space gets considerably more flexible, but also more complicated. It is starting to feel like the full game pre wave 10.

Expanded adds the bulk of what is left including single card huge ships, with only a few upgrades (generic Titles, Mods-except on huge ships and EPT’s still held back), because this format is the most prone to fall apart. More Action types allows more upgrades, so apart from the above, everything goes.

Classic is a little different, allowing EPT’s, but only in pre-builds and is limited to the squadrons featured in the three original movies (Ep 4-6). This is the true introductory format, allowing people with a Star Wars awareness to scratch that itch, learning the game as they go.

There are a few head to head tournament formats like Aces High for well versed players keen to trick-out a ship to it’s full potential, limited in ship selection rather than upgrades. All upgrades are allowed, but only select ships like the X-Wing/Kihraxz/Tie Advanced or the top three or five fighters for each faction. This champions the late game developments in all their glory, without adding the complexity of the whole universe.

Full Noise is the whole game, warts and all. Nobody here plays that.

The beauty of this, like anything I guess, is relevance to the user. New players, vaguely aware of the game are as easily hooked as they were in 2015, but they have the benefit of a controlled and prescient pathway.

Of these, Classic feels most like Star Wars to outsiders, Bare Bones is the least intimidating for squad building and Legends sparks an awareness of the larger universe. Interestingly, as more ships and effects are added, most of our small play group gets less interested. It seems it is enough.

2e?

Little interest here.

I have most of it, but stopped collecting recently. The TFA period is the priority, something that was half completed in 1e and integrated into the earlier period (I hate that), so 2e for TFA and 1e for original made sense and it was well supported by conversion kit. Extracting TFA from 1e made even more sense.

To me 2e is the tournament players game, balancing out the ships and allowing the designers more nerf flexibility, but for a casual gamer, it is a “busier”, more polished space. Even the mechanical language is more involved.

I would probably only add more if the Tie Aggressor and Rebel ARC-170 are re-released, for use with 1st edition of course and the later period still gets a look.