Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I have been playing a number of games with a set of house rules for force construction, to see if there is a way to make higher point games not devolve into spamming the most point efficient ships or builds that breakdown to naked ships with ptl.

So 150pts but a maximum of 5 ships and you have to take a large ship, I found that games like this took around the same amount of time to play but were a lot more fun with varied builds and even some munitions getting used .

One of my favourite games was Han in The Falcon, Luke and Wedge in x-wings going up against 4 imperial guard tie-i and a Lamda shuttle. Was a blast and a close run game with the rebs wining with only the falcon left on 2 hull.

So far when we have played this way games seem to play out ok and it makes a nice change to run ships with a full load out and not be at a disadvantage. Games often start out with an exchange of missile fire at long range before ships close for a short range knife fight or a ship my hang back at long range to snipe with a well timed ion torp.

I still struggle to find a practical use for bombs though.

So has anyone else looked at changing the squad building rules to try and shake there local meta up?

These are bad rules. Not everyone wants to take big ships, and you shouldn't rule out an entire style of play by forcing everyone to take a 5-ship list of elite pilots. Why not just use the standard FFG rules for games over 100 points and limit it to eight copies of a single ship, so that increasing the point level allows you to take more upgrades for your ships but doesn't allow you to bring more TIE fighters? Or you could even require that at least 50 of the 150 points be spent on upgrades (including upgrading the cheapest generic pilot to a unique) so that every list that's legal at 100 points is also legal at 150 but you can't just use the extra 50 points for more naked generics.

I'm in the middle of a five-week league campaign that started out allowing only non-unique cards and small-based ships. Over the course of those five weeks, players are picking up "facilities" that add a variety of squad-building options, including adding limited amounts of unique cards, large-based ships, discounts on certain kinds of upgrades, and a couple other benefits (such as a Forward Base that alters the number and placement of obstacles during setup).

We've got 12 players in the league, and currently they all have four facilities, so their squad-building options are pretty interesting. One player has two Munitions Factories that give him a 4-point discount on all bombs, torpedoes and missiles (to a minimum of 1 point each), for example.

Modifying the squad building rules really does create its own meta, which is totally fine -- except that it's store championship season and many of our league players are switching back and forth between the standard tournament meta on the weekends and our league meta (which is more flexible in some ways, and more restrictive in others) during the week. But it keeps things fresh, and lets us enjoy different aspects of the game.