Confessions Of An X Wing Tragic (Part 2)

Part two of my X Wing retrospective looks at the less pleasurable side of being a “completist” collector placed under time and financial constraints.

It occurred to me about mid March that I was not that far away from completing a full collection of X Wing ships and upgrades, from the original movies through to the latest (the prequels were not at that time covered). The problem was, they were quickly drying up.

Kicking into full scrounger mode, which I had to compromise a little with a couple of near full priced, hard to get ships, I started to fill out the missing ranks of rebel and Imperial fleets.

I was nearly completely successful, missing out on the “Ghost” expansion ironically and a couple of obscure Tie fighters. The Ghost is a big ship, not to my liking and the Tie fighters were just more of the same. The biggest miss for me was the Imperial Veterans set, that I could not seem to track down. It made the Tie Defender and Tie Bombers better, much as many of the later expansions did for B, X, A and Y wings, Scum ships and Tie interceptors. As luck would and often did go, I found a source locally, that I missed first time around due to their naff search engine (entering “X wing” apparently found little. You had to put in exactly “Star Wars X-Wing” to see all listings). This filled in most of the important gaps.

Next hurdle/windfall came in the form of a true bargain. I found a source of Scum C-Roc cruisers from the Huge ship range for $50 au, including an M3 Interceptor and plenty of upgrades effectively for free. I bought two. Oddly the supplier had few other cheap ships. In fact, the secret of my success really was shopping around. One place sold Tie/ln fighters for $9.99 locally, with free freight over $50 and time payment options, another wanted $29.99 for the same, but had the C Roc for little more! I think the average price of my fleet is about half RRP, even with a near full price Raider.

So, this opened up the Huge ship can of worms. What to do. The C Roc was a relatively points cheap, single card ship and a great table presence. The reality is I liked having the bigger ship option, it completed the X Wing story. There was also the enticement of lots of great upgrade cards in the packs that usually improved their included small craft options (Tie Advanced, M3, X Wing).

I missed a CR-90 by a day, the Imperial Gozanti was long gone and the GR-75 transport was very scarce (but luckily I found one). The only one that was readily available was the recently released Imperial Raider. The Raider appealed as the “Big Bad” I felt the Imperials needed (the Decimator pictured above is a notch above the Millenium Falcon, but not the mini Death Star I desired). Lets face it, most Star Wars stories boil down to the cobbled together few vs the mighty darkness. The Raider is also one of the two card ships.

One Raider, One GR-75 and 2 C-Roc ‘s later and the Huge ship thing was fixed. The missing upgrade cards such as the very popular C-3PO crew card were sourced through Big Orbit Cards in the UK, so no need to hunt down impossible to get Huge ships that I did not need. I have no desire for massed big ship battles (Attack Wing can do that), I just wanted scenario drivers (SD’s).

All done. All factions had comprehensive options, all upgrade cards were represented and a new Deep Cut Dunes Planet mat (in the pictures) finished the set.

So…..

Chasing up a second original “Red” core set, just for depth of some cards like R2-D2 and Luke, the distributor emailed to say they were out, but did I want the second edition one for the same price?

I promptly said no, but curiosity had me checking the full price, just to see if I was offered a bargain. Turned out, the core set was already cheap, as were the second edition conversion packs.

A day or two later, I put in an order for the First Order and Resistance ones. For less than $60au I had two factions effectively covered for the future. With free 2e rules online and most other accessories near enough for casual play I was set.

Why these two factions?

Same logic as the first time around, but more logical still. The 2e game is more balanced, the factions all stand up relatively evenly and upgrades do not rule all. The Resistance and First Order are even more robust than the early (and now prequel) ships and FFG has already added several new ships. This is exactly what these factions needed. More depth, more logical stats (Bombers with crew!) and more options. 2e seemed made for TFA period ships. Add a Resistance Transport/pod combo, 3 A Wings, 2 Interceptors.

Upgrading the older period ships is of course likely in the future, or maybe not.

Second edition is less about upgrade card hoarding and more about good piloting. Two factions can represent this well enough (each conversion set comes with over 100 cards), giving hundreds of games of balanced combinations without the need to collect all factions.

I actually don’t want to do a comprehensive change over. 2e has saved my first purchases from oblivion, keeping the two games/periods relevant and different.

Part of the fun of 1e is list building. It can break if not handled carefully, but points on upgrade cards and upgrades on ship cards makes it fun to do and a mini hobby in it’s own right. After all this game was the top dog for the better part of 10 years, warts and all.

Getting back to casual gaming, especially scenario drive friendly games, 1e is fine for the older period ships. It has a charm that suits these ships. Older game-older movies. It fits. How do I get around the meta gaming and broken list building? I stick to semi fixed lists designed as squads with suitable, cannon accurate and logical upgrades. That way “super” builds are avoided and the games feel right. Again, my players are not die-hard tourney gamers. They are friends and family, out for fun not to win at all costs, so if I tell them they can have Ion Turrets only on their Rebel Y Wings, not the recently popular and unstoppable Twin Laser Turret option, then they will not know or care.

2e does not offer points or upgrades on cards , but it does offer “Quick Builds” and an App for points based competitions. The QB option is perfect for fast pick up games (or my own simple system of dividing the ship’s pilot points by 5 and making all upgrades 1 point. It works for fun games of 30-50 points and allows more choices and subtlety than the quick builds without the math- I made a chart as the card have no upgrades on them).

The icing on the cake came from two upgrades purchased today. The Huge ship upgrade streamlines Huge ship* play and the Epic expansion allows massed ship combats. This again just adds to the relevance of the TFA period ships in 2e as it maximises my large numbers of identical ships. The Huge ship expansion provides upgrades specific to the later period (lacking in the 1e ship packs) and Epic allows me to field all 12 Tie/fo and 9 T-70 X wings in one game. The Epic set even accounts for ground defences, so Endor scenario here I come.

*In 1e huge ships are lumbering giants with donut defences and known weak spots, ideal for my mini Death Star scenario. In 2e they play more like smaller ships, allowing me to fatten up the still slightly thin FO and Resistance fleets (FO for example lacks ships with crew options). Perfect synergy and maximum bang from my most expensive ships.

There you have it. Four months from nothing to something - x2.

X Wing “Classic” focussing on the original ships, expanded universe and 1e rules and;

X Wing “New Age”, prioritising the new movies, with the new rules, including the improved Huge and Epic rules options.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Confessions Of An X Wing Tragic (Part 1)

“Pew Pew” games as my wife would say, have been a staple of mine for the last few years. I started with WW1 biplanes (Wings of War, then Canvas Eagles), then WW2 planes (Wings again then Check Your Six and others) and finally Star Trek Attack Wing, which I still feel is better value than my latest addiction, but not without it’s issues*.

Star Wars X Wing was always the one that got away.

A confirmed Star Trek tragic, I had lost the Star Wars magic that struck me after seeing the first movie first hand as a ten year old. I cannot over state my love of the early movies at the time, but the following three broke my waning interest, even without seeing them. Something changed, leaving a hole that Star Trek and other sci fi themes filled to some degree, but the worn looking droids, star ships and ridiculous, but ridiculously cool laser swords, fighters and barely disguised WW1 & 2 guns as blasters had a lasting effect.

Recently (January), at an opportune time it seems, I opened an email from a favoured distributor, revealing their Star Wars X Wing 1st edition specials. The new edition had been out for a year or so and was starting to divide the buying public as the tournament players, who had become increasingly unhappy with the state of the game after 10 years, started to switch. Too many rules, too many exceptions to those rules and far too much meta-gaming had created a friendly, but frustrated tournament circuit. This led to most playing a select handful of winning squads over and over until FFG released a “nerfing” update, which forced them to shift to the next big thing. Squads such as the “U boats” (3 Jump Master 5000’s) went from striking terror into their foes hearts, to being just a pain to use.

Second edition was/is a breath of fresh air for the serious players, who will travel continents to play for state of national titles, but for casual players, the choice is less straight forward.

In a moment of weakness I pounced.

Five “The Force Awakens” core sets (for $100 au total!), netted me 15 ships, and a near endless supply of the collateral needed for play. First edition secure for now and the future! The TFA sets are an improvement in rules and components over the original “Red” core set, but the ships are less popular.

In stage one, I was determined to stick to the two factions represented in the sets; The First Order and Resistance from episodes VII to IX. The logic was sound. These ships are more robust and forgiving than the earlier period ships and they are considered well balanced, if a little “soft” for the tournament circuit. After all, I was just a casual player with only a few opportunities to play. I also liked the new movie.

I fleshed out the two factions as I could making the most of some excellent specials, picking up some expansions of the same ships (different cards), getting lucky with 3 Tie/sf’s, the last three in captivity that I could find, an Upsilon shuttle (dead scary to look at, but a bit flat to play), the Silencer, Heroes of the Resistance and two Bombers. I had depth and enough variety to fill most roles, but I kept researching and looking for bargains.

To clarify my needs as I saw them at the time;

To be able to design often asymmetrical scenarios for casual play and simple head to head, pick up games with players that may not be familiar with the game, while representing the complete “X Wing” experience as the forces available allowed.

At some point, the even better specials available in Scum and Villainy, a faction that I could just justify time line wise, (mostly through ignorance of the Expanded Universe), became too good to resist. This faction is nothing if not varied, offering bounty hunters, cartels, pirates, villains and mercenaries. Scooping up as many cheap buys as I could, this faction soon outnumbered the other two. Even better, they can fight amongst themselves. I have even done some re-paints in this faction (Star Vipers).

Then I felt it was ok to add the odd Renegade ship (2x Saws sets), that allowed me to field older vessels with the latest upgrades, then some Imperials as logical older ships for the First Order (Lambda shuttles, some Interceptors etc) and even some later period Rebels as a New Republic “Rogue Squadron”.

Ok so far. The collection was growing, but there was a vague feeling of controlled chaos.

Then the panic set in.

*Attack Wing gives a good game with less. It offers more factions and variety and the ships are capitol ships, which are naturally more robust and versatile on the table, meaning a core set and a few expansions can make for a good and varied set (I probably should have taken my own advice there). The problems are; varied scale, with some very weird inconsistencies, such as a properly scaled Enterprise A, but over sized Klingon Bird of prey, all of the Dominion ships similarly scaled, when the actual ships are hugely different in size etc. The paint jobs also leave a bit to be desired. The standard is not terrible, but the colours are inconsistent within the same fleets with some identical ships sharing up to three different paint colours or finishes.

My major gripe with it though is the blatant swapping and sharing of non cannon periods and factions. It not unlikely at a tournament (something I would never attend, but..) to find a Borg cube captained by Kirk, crewed by later period Romulans with Klingon weapons. This is extreme but not uncommon. I can get around most of these issues by controlling the scenarios I put up and imposing realistic limits of period and faction adherence, but that is only when I provide all of the game. It is odd that the Star Wars game is pretty clean, where the Star Trek one is a free for all. Not playing Cannon Star wars is on the nose, while playing Star Trek to the faction or even time line makes you a stiff.

On Other Hobbies.

My photography is at a low point at the moment, both in inspiration and practical accessibility. I have not given up on it for the moment, but the spark is missing.

What is not floating languidly on the lake apathy are my other hobbies, nor my desire to write and share.

I feel sharing is important, because my own frustration at not finding what i need to know about something that is important to me must be shared by others.

Ironically, what little photography i am doing tends to be related to these other hobbies, so what goes around…

My other hobbies fall solidly into the mild but not unsalvageable “nerdy” end of the spectrum, but with more people stuck at home and the massive growth and acceptance of things that were, to be frank, pretty fringe when I was growing up in the 80’s (and still working on it), allows me to share my thoughts, with some sense of relevance.

Lets see how we go.