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I played a fair amount of Xwing for the first couple of years but got a bit burnt out in chasing cards like Pokemon once the ships I wanted came out and I bought multiples of them. I heard some good first impressions of 2e during the previews but the cost of updating my existing collection turned me off since I wasn't actively playing anyways at the time. It looks like they've come out with clone wars era stuff since (in addition to the new Disney era stuff) so I figured I'd ask how the game is going on general.

From an outsider's perspective, locally the attention seems to have moved to Legion and I don't see it played much any more prepandemic. I genuinely liked the original ruleset as I thought it was a good example of a fun simplified yet paradoxically deep system. Now that it has been over a year, how has the 2nd edition fared mechanically? I'm not a fan of the move to being (partly?) app based; has the community "fixed" that with an OG style release of fan created components?

Sorry about the haphazard nature of the questions but I'm pecking away at the post as they come to mind.

I still play pretty regularly (casual all the way to SoS level), chasing the cards has pretty much ceased to exist from what I have seen. The game is pretty well balanced all in all, the two game modes (Hyperspace and Extended) create very different metas but both are good.
As for the app, as far as I am concerned it doesnt exist, I have never once logged into it and have never had an issue at any play level, all legalities are free to download as pdfs or are free at the various 3rd party squad builders.
Legion is a damn good game and worth playing though.

I had to look up some of those terms as I wasn't familiar with them. I'm surprised you can play without the app; isn't a bunch of the info moved from various cards only to the app? Or are there fan made pdf versions that are complete? Or possibly included in 3rd party builder. Back in the day, I bought some sort of android squadron builder that was pretty cool (the name escapes me at the moment) but I have no idea if it still works.

How has chasing the cards pretty much ceased? Are you not required to own the physical cards now that the app is around? Or do they no longer include new abilities on cards with subsequent releases that can be used on any ship?

Yeah, all of the upgrades a ship can take along with their points has been removed from the cards in 2e. However FFG releases a PDF whenever there is a balance update or new release that contains that information. There are quite a few 3rd party list builders as well (I tend to use Yet Another Squad Builder) which are updated quicker and more accurately than the official app is.

What I meant by chasing cards is that during first edition people would buy ships just for the cards that they contained (ie. the autothrusters expansion that came with a free Starviper!). This is no longer the case that I have seen/heard for a couple of reasons, FFG have released card packs that included most (if not all) of the cards which were released along with ships to that point (I think it wave 4 but would have to check) and secondly the game is no longer so imbalanced that "fixes" had to be included as cards (the various titles for ships, autothrusters, TLT etc.) as was the case in 1st ed. There has to date not been a single released card that is a "must have" and one can happily just buy ships because they want them not because they needed to get a card to make a different ship viable.

Sounds like some positive changes then in that case. I didn't have to worry about chasing cards myself for the first half dozen or more waves as I was pretty much buying at least two of everything from the OT. Once they were done with those though and moved on to more obscure EU ships, I was only interested in buying half of those and it was a pain when something would come out that was a must have in a ship that I had no interest in.

Any thoughts on the changes in game mechanics like the new phase where all the special abilities of unique ships go? I skimmed through the updated rulebook this weekend and saw that turrets changed for the better. I'm not sure if the basic actions or physical dice changed though.

I am not sure what you mean with the new phase "where all the special abilities of unique ships go", there is the system phase (after dials are set) where ships drop bombs and decloak which is a vast improvement over 1ed.

The basic actions are the same as 1ed though there are a few new ones and some now have costs. There are red actions (take a stress to perform) and purple (use a force token to perform), also some ships have the option to "link" actions where they perform one and have the choice of a second, generally at a cost.
Reinforce has been reworked to reduce damage by 1 to a minimum of one which is great.
Reload is now a standard thing for many ordnance reliant ships (take a weapons disabled token to regen a charge).
Turrets are now single or double arc and have a rotate action to change the facing.
Calculate is new action which some ships (mostly droids) get which acts like a focus but only changes a single eyeball result, not all of them.
Coordinate and Jam are now standard actions for a lot of ships.

Dice and templates have remained the same, the damage deck changed again and is now pretty even in its effects against both unique and generic pilots.

X Wing second edition has been fantastic thus far. My only major issue is that I can't get any new models for it...

Very interested in this topic. I bought EVERYTHING from 1e for all factions in good numbers so all the kids around had something to play from. When 2e rolled up, I just folded. Perhaps it just hit me like the potential start of a Dungeons and Dragons 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 series where you have to regularly re-invest all the time. So maybe I'm just waiting for Xwing "3.0" before I bother again. But really, the kids all have pretty good fun playing 1.0 anyway.

I'm still open to upgrade, but with all the ships we have, I'm not keen to keep buying all the cardboard again and again.

 RegularGuy wrote:
Very interested in this topic. I bought EVERYTHING from 1e for all factions in good numbers so all the kids around had something to play from. When 2e rolled up, I just folded. Perhaps it just hit me like the potential start of a Dungeons and Dragons 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 series where you have to regularly re-invest all the time. So maybe I'm just waiting for Xwing "3.0" before I bother again. But really, the kids all have pretty good fun playing 1.0 anyway.

I'm still open to upgrade, but with all the ships we have, I'm not keen to keep buying all the cardboard again and again.

I don't know that I'd compare Xwing 1->2 to an edition change in D&D; those are often borne of a new creative director taking over the project and deciding he wants to make a wildly different game for a wildly different audience than the last one. With Xwing 1.0 felt very much like a beta to me; they were experimenting with mechanics all the time (introducing the S-loop and Tallon Roll, bullseye arc, mobile arc, that kind of thing) and didn't always have a great handle on how the design worked (particularly the value of action-efficiency). 2.0 has homogenized a lot of mechanics across the whole pool of ships (so ships don't get left behind because the designers didn't really understand the game when writing them initially), the mobile arc has replaced the old all-round turret arc (so you can't just build an unkillable large ship with the full arc and ignore maneuver entirely), the compressed Initiative stat (1-6 down from 1-9) means lower-skill pilots see more play since it's harder to guarantee you'll go first all the time just by taking the best Initiative ships, ship abilities give non-unique pilots more tools, the introduction of double actions and the loss of Push the Limit have made a lot of ships feel more distinct rather than just looking for the most efficient platform for the card-stack you need, and the nerfs to the kind of upgrade stacks that defined 1.0 means you don't need to keep buying the latest stuff to keep up with the power creep the way you did and ships tend to run with 1-3 upgrades rather than the 5-7 upgrades you often saw in late 1.0.

I don't think waiting for 3.0 is a realistic consideration here; some games (Warhammer) do edition changes just to make everyone buy new stuff, some games (D&D) do edition changes because a different design team with a radically different view of what the game is and who it's for took the helm, but FFG's only done one full edition change across all three of their Star Wars games in their whole history and it was prompted by the need to update older parts of the game with newer mechanics, and they haven't fiddled around with the basic structure of the game in Xwing 2.0 (or ever, in Legion or Armada) anything like as much as they did in Xwing 1.0. I can't guarantee the move to Atomic Mass isn't going to prompt some kind of update, but I don't think you'll see anything like "buy this box of cardboard to update all your 2.0 ships to 3.0!" from X-wing again.

Thanks for the feedback.. Will have to check into 2.0's progress then.

Now that the game has transitioned over to Atomic Mass games it should be noted that they made a comment about edition changes. That being "we have no plans currently of a third edition".

It would be sensible at some point to see a 2.5, just like first ed had a 1.5. I'm not expecting that any time soon either though after the hand over. And likely that would have no or little cardboard change that would require a major set of purchase. They've already done card packs for a quick content boost in X-wing, and in Armada to accomplish that 1.5 edit for that game.

I would also like to add that when I sat down years ago and figured the cost to convert my whole collection(also a full all faction set at the time) it was remarkably affordable compared to literally any other game edition change. Especially considering it was able to PORT ALL it's content over at once. Add to that the ability to buy it in stages was awesome.

Are you referring to the revised rulebook and TFA starter set as the 1.5?

 warboss wrote:
Are you referring to the revised rulebook and TFA starter set as the 1.5?

Yes. The designers in interviews and several places declared that as 1.5. It was their first major revision to core mechanics after all. Had the new damage deck and everything. So technically, even it had a cardboard element that needed purchased to continue play

Is spamming tie fighters still a decent list?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And how many tie fighters do I need?


Just because I want one casual list just in case I play

 Sazzlefrats wrote:
Is spamming tie fighters still a decent list?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And how many tie fighters do I need?


Just because I want one casual list just in case I play

Tie swarm is pretty good these days as boys over toys is strong in scenario play. as a bit like 40k whoever had the most ship near objectives scores the points for "holding" an objective

Its usually the classic 6/7 ship swarm with Howlrunner and a few named pilots and a few ISB Jingoists (a new TIE pilot that can take Deadmans Switch for suicide goodness). splash in a Swarm Tactics or two along with a few Crackshots and its quite shooty

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

 Sazzlefrats wrote:
Is spamming tie fighters still a decent list?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And how many tie fighters do I need?


Just because I want one casual list just in case I play

Tie swarm is pretty good these days as boys over toys is strong in scenario play. as a bit like 40k whoever had the most ship near objectives scores the points for "holding" an objective

Its usually the classic 6/7 ship swarm with Howlrunner and a few named pilots and a few ISB Jingoists (a new TIE pilot that can take Deadmans Switch for suicide goodness). splash in a Swarm Tactics or two along with a few Crackshots and its quite shooty

How do the new order tie fighters compare to the originals? Should I run just the originals?

The "problem" the FO Ties have is they generally cost 3 or 4 points rather than 2 or 3, and likewise the good named pilots are usually more costly than the Empire ones so with only 20 points you end up 1-2 ships down, and having no Howlrunner doesn't help with the pewpew output (as its now 7 different factions rather than 1st eds 3, basically prequel films, OT films and sequel era with no mixing, with Scum being a mix of all 3)

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
The "problem" the FO Ties have is they generally cost 3 or 4 points rather than 2 or 3, and likewise the good named pilots are usually more costly than the Empire ones so with only 20 points you end up 1-2 ships down, and having no Howlrunner doesn't help with the pewpew output (as its now 7 different factions rather than 1st eds 3, basically prequel films, OT films and sequel era with no mixing, with Scum being a mix of all 3)

I kinda new that would be the case, wasnt sure if the superior ships warranted the price though. I'd rather run the classic list anyways.