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Just treated myself to the new core set with some birthday cash (turned 30 on Saturday, I'm officially an old man now) and had my first game. Really like how xwing plays, the speed of each turn and the simplicity of the gameplay, so I can definitely see myself getting more involved. I'll probably pick up tye original core set too, to flesh out both forces and lend a little more speed to the games at some point.

My question is though, when I come to entering a tournament or whatever, how will I decide which side to side with?! Does one play out differently to the other? I'm of the impression that the imperial ships are more maneuverable and better suited to swarm tactics, whereas the Rebellion is about fewer ships, whilst being more robust or skilled. Am I right? I guess there's more to it than that, and I probably have a little 40k mindset flowing over in to this. But is there such a thing as "play a if you want b, or play c if you want d" to this game? Or is it more balanced than that?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Follow up, I seem to remember reading that many of the top 10 world tournament lists were imperial, is this due to the imperial forces being in anyway better, or overpowered? Or is it just pure coincidence?

The game's balance is about as dead on as any, and actively monitored and managed via sanctioned events, so if one ship or faction is over or underperforming, counters and buffs will make their way into expansions.


Don't focus on one faction is the best advice, as often the most appropriate upgrade cards for any given ship are actually available in other expansions, so you may as well collect it all (it's not expensive to pick up a ship here and there after all) and then play what you like.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There's more tiers of ship than any clear distinction between factions, other than Scum having a couple of unique upgrade slots the other two can't use.

So all sides have aces, tanks, manoeuvrable ships, turrets etc etc.

Your typical Rebel ship will be a little better, head to head, than the equivalent Imperial, but then they cost more points typically.

Just go with what you like, have fun with it and you'll do ok, much of the game can be decided on the table, so practice with even a "sub par" ship can still make it effective.

Azreal is dead on the money. Both factions are quiet evenly matched.

I completely agree with the above posts. Coming to this game from playing 40k I thought for sure one side would be more favored, or only capable of select play styles. I have been very happy to see that it is not the case. From swarms to elite pilots to large ships with support. You can build any list with either faction and they are the best balanced factions I've ever come across in gaming

I disagree with the first sentence, though. 30 is not an old man.

Please.

Yeah, as Azreal has said, factionsim isn't a thing in X-wing, because each expansion plays right out of the box, and gives options for *all your other ships.* A friend of mine is trying hard only to buy Imperial ships and he realizes that he is missing out on combos he wants to try because X card is in a scum blister, say.

 kitch102 wrote:
Follow up, I seem to remember reading that many of the top 10 world tournament lists were imperial, is this due to the imperial forces being in anyway better, or overpowered? Or is it just pure coincidence?

At Worlds this year, the top sixteen was made up of eight Rebel lists, six Imperial lists, and two Scum lists.

 kitch102 wrote:
Does one play out differently to the other? I'm of the impression that the imperial ships are more maneuverable and better suited to swarm tactics, whereas the Rebellion is about fewer ships, whilst being more robust or skilled. Am I right?

Rebels tend to be the tankier of the factions. All but one of their ships have at least 2 shields, with most having three or more. However, their agility values are often a lot lower. They also have a lot of cards (Both R2-D2's, R5-P9, Miranda Doni) that allow you to recover shields. Lots of abilities to reduce damage/support allies. Everyone has target locks as well, allowing you to "store" actions for later turns when needed.

Imperials tend to be more mobile, and more focused on dodging. All but one small imperial ships have the barrel roll action. Most of them also have agility 3, and most have the evade action. Shields are a luxury, however.

Scum are the dirty trick faction. A lot of their ships play like Rebels, due to the large overlap between factions. Ships tend to be a little weaker than the core factions, but are slightly cheaper and have access to plenty of weird synergies and scum-only upgrades.

That said, all the factions can run different playstyles, including Swarm. For example, A-wing aces are much more fast, mobile fighters than an Imperial player playing Lambda spam.

I'm typically the kind of person who likes to pick a faction and stick with it. Horde in Wow. Necrons in 40k. Sith in SWTOR. And I usually make a character in a game and stick with that one character.

In this game, I can't seem to ever wanna play just one faction. I love them all, and they all have fun stuff they can do. They're also all very balanced against eachother.

So my advice is to pick which faction you like most and just play!

That's just it, I can't decide which I like most! They're both so iconic! I think I'm leaning towards the imperials (do have a fair bit of interest in scum and villainy though)

The way this game is sold, you basically have to invest in multiple factions. Especially if you want to play Scum.

 kitch102 wrote:
That's just it, I can't decide which I like most! They're both so iconic! I think I'm leaning towards the imperials (do have a fair bit of interest in scum and villainy though)

If you more in for it to get the iconic ships from the movies / canon, then just buy the ships you like the most first, you don't have to pick one faction, and frankly like everyone else has said its kind of pointless to focus on one faction in X-Wing.

If you want iconic ships from the original movies, the two aces packs are hard to beat. Rebel Aces gives you a B-Wing and a A-Wing with unique upgrades. The Imperial Aces gives you 2 Tie Interceptors with good upgrade cards.

 TheWaspinator wrote:
The way this game is sold, you basically have to invest in multiple factions. Especially if you want to play Scum.

That's about the gist of it. FFG will plunder your wallet, especially if you play tournaments where you need to bring all the upgrade cards you're using. If you're playing casual, just buy the ships you want and proxy the cards you don't have.

I'm thinking that this could be the very first game to tempt me in to tournament play, though for the time being ill probably just game with my dad and brother in law.

Kid in a sweet shop comes to mind, I keep looking at all the shiny new toys and just kinda want them all

 kitch102 wrote:
I'm thinking that this could be the very first game to tempt me in to tournament play, though for the time being ill probably just game with my dad and brother in law.

Do it, it's super fun. X-Wing is becoming more popular in the UK lately, so you can almost certainly find a tournament at a FLGS. Pretty much all you have to do is show up with a squadron.

 DanielBeaver wrote:

 kitch102 wrote:
I'm thinking that this could be the very first game to tempt me in to tournament play, though for the time being ill probably just game with my dad and brother in law.

Do it, it's super fun. X-Wing is becoming more popular in the UK lately, so you can almost certainly find a tournament at a FLGS. Pretty much all you have to do is show up with a squadron.

I can only concur here, X-Wing tournments are always fun and I've yet to meet 'TFG' (although worryingly it could mean I am TFG) as everyone appears to have embraced the fly casual mindset, unlike say Magic or 40k

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
although worryingly it could mean I am TFG

Do you fly 8 shuttles at 200 pts?

 TheWaspinator wrote:
The way this game is sold, you basically have to invest in multiple factions. Especially if you want to play Scum.

Only insofar as you have several scum ships duplicate rebel ships (and one that duplicates an Imperial ship).

As for upgrade cards, they've started spreading cards across multiple ships. Engine Upgrade being the most common example: previously it was only available via the Millennium Falcon but now available via the Hound's Tooth (I think it is).

The other option, if (like me) you really don't care to purchase every ship: eBay. Cards go for about a buck each depending. If you have a group of friends playing there's also the option of trading cards amongst yourselves.

The most sought after ones can sometimes range over 5$, though... so at that price you might as well get the clampack and all the goodies.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
The most sought after ones can sometimes range over 5$, though... so at that price you might as well get the clampack and all the goodies.

The good news is that the price on 3PO is going to drop in the new year.

Assume for a second that you're speaking to a complete moron... can you also tell me why?

They're literally giving them away at store championships.

Thank god, I've never wanted the Corvette, and 3P0 can go for £30 or so.

Yeah, one of the upcoming tournament kits has an alternate-art version of the 3P0 card. It's actually really nice of FFG to do that, they have to know how popular that card is and they could've easily continued to use that to push Corvette sales.

I hope they put Tactician in a kit next. I don't want to buy a bunch more Phantoms just for that.

Of course, in casual play, you can just use sites like this. Build your fleet and print out a sheet with all of the card text on it:
http://xwing-builder.co.uk/build
When playing in store-run tournaments, they're probably going to want real copies of cards, though, since they kind of have a financial stake there.

Heh. I was planning on getting a Corvette eventually. And my work schedule is so bad that I can't even think about attending a tournament.

But good to know. I can't ever access the FFG website from work, so I kinda rely on you guys to keep me up to date. This is 2009, right?