Editing Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game (section)

====AMG Transition and "2.5"====

When Atomic Mass Games took over the development of X-wing, they made some changes to the rules to better suit their vision for the game. Needless to say, this brought on much [[butthurt]], as the game was considered to be in a pretty good place at the time. The new changes have become known as "X-wing 2.5", as the AMG developers insist that this is not actually a new edition.
In summary, what they changed was:
*'''First player order''' was entirely changed. Instead of using points bids and having one player be first player throughout the entire game, it now uses Random Order After Dials, or ROAD. Each turn, after the players have set their dials, the first player is randomized. Bids are gone entirely, encouraging players to bring as much as they can to the table. This also reduces how easy it is to force bumps and forces duels between initiative 6 aces to not be decided from the start of the game.
*'''Listbuilding''' was revamped massively. Instead of pulling from a pool of 200 points to buy your pilots and upgrades, you have a pool of 20 points to pick your pilots, and these points cannot be spent on upgrades. Each pilot instead has an allotted loadout value that they can spend on their upgrades, without any additional cost to your list. Since you gain nothing by leaving these points unspent, this new listbuilding generally sees more cards on the table than before.
**In trying to make pilots feel more unique or lore-accurate, upgrade slots now vary much more between pilots. Extra talents or mod slots is one thing, but other pilots entirely transform their chassis. Sabine gets to bring torpedoes on her A-wing, while Iden Versio can bring heavy cannons on her TIE fighter, and Oddball brings a torpedo slot to every ship he flies. Keep an eye out for unique upgrade slots, since they can really facilitate some interesting ship and card combinations.
**The 20 points limit is a lot less granular. A 6 point ship will always be a 6 point ship now, and if you try to bring three ships at 6 points you better hope your faction is one of the few that can purchase some ship for 2 points to fill that remaining gap, or you're letting your opponent start with 2 victory points; yes, those are a thing even in standard play now, see below.
**Loadout variety is has also changed, but not strictly for the worse. If you want to get creative and fly unconventional stuff, you'll be more limited by the system. Efficient and bare-bones ships are out unless you want to actively nerf yourself, or if you want to bring a lot of upgrades you'll be stuck with just the handful of pilots that are allowed to have high loadout values. On the other hand, since the meta was tending towards bring just the essentials at the end of FFG's X-wing, you'll see more variety for the more competitive players.
**Generic pilots are practically dead. AMG wants you to fly the cool dudes from the movies, and you can't do that if the unnamed ones are more points-efficient. Well, now those are dead in the water. Just how dead varies; some generics eke out a niche by being a point cheaper than any named counterpart, and some still manage to stay just barely useable, but others are strictly worse than any named pilot for the same price, to a laughable degree. By bringing a named pilot, you can simultaneously get an increased loadout, additional slots, improved initiative, and a nifty pilot ability, at the same price as the generic. This means that the number of pilots you can actually fly is down by a third. Also means [[your dudes]] has to be done by proxying named characters, unless you want a massive challenge.
*'''Scenarios''' are a new feature for standard play. These are symmetrical missions to play, four at the time of writing, that are supposed to be the standard going forward. This is your standard fare with objectives, either to pick up, tag, or stay close to. A common complaint in the 2.0 competitive scene was that games would often start with half an hour of both forces dancing around the edge trying to get the perfect engagement, then clashing when the players no longer have a choice, and the overall winner of the initial fight often then running away to preserve their points lead. By forcing players to fight around objectives, these issues are adequately addressed. You can still ignore these if your games never had this issue, or if you enjoyed that kind of gameplay.
*The '''Ban List''' was substantially added to. AMG has a few mechanics that they think are unfit for a dogfight game, and so they've added basically any card that contains any of these to the ban list. Any upgrade that allows you to peek at dials, change your maneuver or positioning just before you move, or deploy outside the standard deployment zone is now gone. A few of the less fun upgrades are gone as well, such as autoblasters and the health-regenerative generic astromechs.
**This has caused some of the most iconic pilots for some ships to no longer be available. Hera can no longer fly the Ghost, and hilariously Han Solo is now banned from his own falcon in the resistance faction. This may be fixed in the future by changing their cards with errata or by releasing new ones, but not at the time of writing this.
*'''Obstacles''' are meaner and nastier. Asteroids cause 1 guaranteed damage in addition to the random damage, debris fields cause damage on a hit or a crit, and gas clouds guarantee a strain and may ionize you. You are also prevented from shooting while standing on top of any obstacle, instead of just asteroids. To help a bit, you now still get your action after fully moving through an obstacle - provided you can still take one, stress permitting - and you ignore the effects of moving through an obstacle that you start your move on, as long as you're careful not to still be on it when you stop moving.
*'''Collisions''' have a few more effects, causing you a damage if you collide with a friendly ship or letting you perform a red focus or calculate action after bumping up against an enemy. You can now also make [[choppy|'''attacks at range 0''']], though while making these you don't get the range 1 bonus and you can't modify your attack dice. Pilots that were able to make attacks at range 0 previously can now instead treat those attacks as being at range 1.
*After being '''ionized''', you can now choose to go slightly to the left or right instead of having to go straight forward. 
*'''Standard loadouts''' included in scenario packs, like the Battle of Yavin or Battle of Coruscant. Like the quickbuild cards that have been a part of X-wing since the start of 2.0, these are pilots with fixed upgrades, except some may not otherwise be available to that ship or be entirely new. They also have all of the text and other information you need to play the ship printed on their one big pilot card.
**These will also be standard legal, unlike the quickbuilds. While this could be a neat addition to the game for some players to enjoy, time will tell if it pans out to reduce build creativity even more than AMG already have done with their new listbuilding. If they turn out to be as strong as or stronger than the builds you can create with the standard system, they could cause even more controversy.

Comparisons have been made to [[Marvel Crisis Protocol]], another game run by the same developers. It includes similar listbuilding elements and giant cards with tons of abilities for the named heroes of that game, so it's easy to see where inspiration might have come from. A year in at the time of writing, at least the game is being kept alive with some new products, and balance updates have been improving the relative trainwreck that was the first iteration of the rules.