Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game

Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game is a miniatures-based tabletop space combat wargame made by Fantasy Flight Games and set in the Star Wars universe. The scale is focused on starfighter combat (which, in Star Wars, occurs at a scale more like WWII-era dogfights than the usual space-navy battles of other science fiction), although larger craft such as the Millennium Falcon, Slave I, and the Ghost are available, as well as small(Corvette/Light Cruiser size) capital ships.

An X-Wing is a starfighter from Star Wars. It is named because its wings (known in-universe as "strike foils" or "S-foils"), when deployed in attack position, look like an X when the fighter is viewed from the front. It is, along with the TIE Fighter and the Millennium Falcon, one of the most iconic ships from science fiction, so it has lent its name to several space combat games from 1990's flight simulators to tabletop games. Like this one.

If you want a tabletop wargame that's easy to get into, this game is a good choice. It doesn't require many models, and models come prepainted and only need to be mounted on bases with plastic pegs. There's also no need to pay for any army books, as the model sets contain cards that list all of the models' stats and abilities. Like a lot of FFG games, however, the game is dependent on overpriced custom d8s that are only useful for playing X-Wing; this can be annoying if you already have a ton of perfectly good d8s you could use instead. FFG released a second edition in September 2018, which at least paused the power creep as ships were rebalanced, but on the other hand you'll need to rebuy all your stat cards and maneuver dials. Points and upgrade slots are not printed on the cards, they are managed (poorly) by the official app and many quality third-party squad builders.

As of February 2022 and probably as a result of being handed to Atomic Mass Games, the game has been completely reworked into something resembling Marvel Crisis Protocol, with ships now costing in the order of 2 to 12 points out of 20, and each pilot having a set number of points to spend on upgrades. This means you can finally take that Luke Skywalker with proton torpedoes and R2-D2 without worrying those points would be better spend elsewhere, and it only took our ability to take lean lists without too many difficult to remember effects, our ability to put a lot of upgrades on pilots who didn't get a massive number of loadout points, generic pilots in general with scant exceptions, and 2 ship lists. On top of that, usual deathmach has been replaced with a mission system, as apparently "kill all enemy ships" was deemed "too complicated" to listbuild for, and instead the game centers around scenario play, where points can be earned by controlling objectives around the map. How this makes listbuilding "simpler" is anyone's guess. All in all, a very skub-tastic update, only time will tell whether this massive rework will pay off.

Gameplay

Fantasy Flight Games actually included a tutorial for the game on their Youtube channel which you can view here, but if you're reading this than you're probably expecting some instructions on playing the game and the tactics on winning. Pre-game is typical of wargames, you have a set number of points you can spend on ships, or upgrades for them, and we'll get to the types of those later. The game is divided into phases, the Planning Phase, Systems Phase, Activation Phase, Combat Phase, and End Phase.

During the Planning Phase, you use a small dial that comes with each type of ship that dictates what moves it can make. You rotate the dial to the maneuver you desire, set it in face-down position, and wait for opponent to do the same. Each ship has its own dial to correspond with its maneuvers, and you cannot pre-measure your maneuvers, so be sure to clearly think on what moves you want your ships to make as a wrong move can easily cost you the game.

This guy has the right idea.

The Systems Phase isn't used in every game, but it's when bombs are dropped, TIE Phantoms get decloaked, and punks with Informant and Sense can peek at enemy maneuver dials.

For the Activation Phase, each player reveals their dial and their ships make their moves. The order is determined by the ship's initiative, the lower initiative going first and then movement order works its way up to the pilots with higher initiative. That may not seem to make sense initially, but it represents how better pilots would be able to maneuver more quickly in response to what is happening around them while every ship is moving at the same time. During this phase, ships can also perform Actions, usually one per phase, which can affect later Combat and Activation Phases. The most common one, which will be brought up here to explain due to its corresponding sides on the dice, is the Focus action, which grants a Focus Token to the ship using that action.

The Combat Phase is determined by initiative, with the highest value going first. Hence why pilots with lower skill moved first in the previous phase, doing both would imbalance the stat. All ships have their own firing arcs which are shown as colored lines on their base, which is generally limited to the area in front of them unless they have some kind of side guns or rotating turret. Attacking ships roll a number of Attack Dice equal to the number indicated for its Primary Weapon, though may instead choose to use a Secondary Weapon if they have one. Range is determined using the ruler provided for the game in the starter sets that is divided into three range areas (five for the capital ships in the game), range 1 provides a bonus attack die, range 2 does nothing, and range 3 causes the defender to gain an extra Defense Die. Attack Dice have blank sides, hits, critical hits, and Focus, where if the ship that has a Focus Token can use to change all Focus results to Hit results. The player whose ship is being fired on rolls a number of Defense Dice equal to their ship's Agility rating. Defense Die have blank and Evade results, the latter which negates of a Hit of the controlling player's choosing, and Focus, which if they have a Focus Token they can use to turn into Evade results. Regular Hits have to be negated before critical hits. Any Hits that aren't negated lead to the player drawing a Damage Card, and once a ship has a number of Damage Cards equal to or exceeding its Hull rating, it's destroyed. Critical hits, in addition to dealing damage, have the Damage Card placed face up and its effect applied to the ship for the rest of the game starting the following turn. Shields prevent Damage Cards from being drawn and are removed as a result at a 1:1 ratio until the ship has no more Shields.

The End Phase, ends the turn. All Focus Tokens are removed and if a player still has ships or hasn't met mission requirements, the game continues to another turn.

Building A Squadron

The nice thing about X-Wing is that the upgrade cards that come with each ship can be mixed and matched as you see fit, so even if the meta shits all over your favorite pilot suddenly, new potential combos can arise that don't need you to suddenly buy eighty bajillion new models. Want to give some Tie fighters shield upgrades? Go right ahead! Remember though that you still need to actually be able to kill things, so don't go too crazy on kitting your squad out or you'll wind up sorely lacking in the firepower department, but conversely many ships don't really shine until geared up so it all becomes a very delicate balancing act. Or you can just go nuts and slap every single possible upgrade on two fighters and see how long it takes to get utterly wrecked.

Second Edition

Here's what's different:

General

• Points costs are missing from ship and upgrade cards; instead you have to rely on FFG's official squad builder app the app is dead, even before FFG left the development of the game, so you'll have to use fan-made builders instead. These feed you the points costs for your particular list, which can be updated like a vidya gayme as FFG sees fit. FFG claims that this will more easily allow for custom events, emergency balance patches at tournaments, etc., but it smells like an attempt to crack down on the online X-Wing community's use of fan-made squad builders that collate all the game rules to try out new ships without buying the models or borrowing from another player turns out the community apps outlived the official one actually, and they were never cracked down on. On the other hand, it will probably do a lot to curb the power creep issues that plagued much of the first edition.
  • The core set will include a set of "quick build" cards that are balanced against each other for casual play. Each build has an associated "threat level" indicating how cheese it is; FFG claims that a threat level of 8 is roughly equivalent to a 200-point list.
  • Points updates will be released as downloadable PDFs that you can print out instead of having to rely entirely on the squad builder.
  • Points costs and limits have been approximately doubled to allow for better granularity when balancing costs; the standard 1v1 scrum list is now 200 points.
• Disney has apparently leaned on FFG to make the game feel more "Star Wars"; this is expected to mean that things like promoting the use of named characters that Disney can sell toys of over taking lots of generic redshirts.
• Some models will be re-issued with upgraded molds; one example given is a T-65 X-Wing mini with movable S-foils.
  • FFG has moved production from China to the USA, so many models are substantially more expensive: Cheap Small ships like X-Wings and TIEs are up to $20 from $15, the new Solo Falcon is $40 when the regular 1e Falcon is $30.
• The Resistance and the First Order have been promoted to full faction status and will be receiving extra ships in the second wave.
• Existing ships will require a conversion kit to be playable in the second edition. Rebel, Imperial, and Scum & Villany will each get a $50 kit at launch with a dead forest of cards and tokens for most of the ships released to date, plus medium bases for the ships that have been retconned to Medium class.
  • Each ship in an conversion kit will get a number of copies of its maneuver dials proportional to its points cost; elite ships and Large ships like B-Wings and the Falcon come with two copies, while swarms get four. Regulars will be keen to notice that may not be enough for players who play large games (like, say, the FFG-approved Epic format) or have gone all-in with swarm lists, thus forcing them to buy more ships and change their builds or buy a second conversion kit for a cool $100 just to keep playing. Just as planned.
  • The conversion kit doesn't include the new damage deck, meaning unless FFG sells damage decks separately you have to buy a $40 core set on top of the $50 conversion kit just to use the shit you already bought. Fortunately they have since released independent decks. Since they come in each faction's colours with custom ship art on each, you can now spend 'even more' money on getting a deck to match each faction you play.
  • The Firespray/Slave I is no longer legal in Empire lists.
  • "Some" of the upgrade cards from the Aces series are included in the conversion kits, but the full expansions have been discontinued.
  • In the conversion kits, ships have at most three copies of the generic pilots, many of the cooler pilots (including Ahsoka Tano and a lot of X-Wing pilots) are missing. Supposedly, some of the missing pilots are going to be released in "Soft Expansions" that just have cards, and no model. These will largely be proxied.

Gameplay

• The Pilot Skill stat has been renamed Initiative, and is used for a ton of miscellaneous ordering steps beyond just shooting, including bomb explosions and deployment order. Initiative's soft cap is 6 as opposed to Pilot Skill's cap of 9, and ace pilots with high Initiative like Soontir Fel are substantially more expensive than they were before, though pilot abilities play a much more substantial role in cost than before.
• Cleanup steps like bomb explosions now have their own "system" phase instead of piggybacking on another phase.
• Medium ships have been introduced for ships like the K-Wing that are too small to be Large and too large to be Small.
• Ion cannons have been reworked; you now have to apply additional tokens to larger ships (2 for Medium, 3 for Large) to give them the ionized condition, and the first uncanceled hit deals one damage instead of applying a token. Leftover hits result in additional ion tokens.
  • Ionized ships can focus (you still can't declare any other actions) after their ion move.
• Force-sensitive pilots are a thing, and will have a supply of "Force charges" to activate abilities or convert a focus result into a hit or evade. Force abilities aren't limited by the action economy (unless the card says so) so you can blow your load and use them all in one turn, but they regenerate at a rate of one per turn so you'd better hope you won't need to do that again for a while. Unless you're Luke, who recovers a Force point each time an attack is declared against him.
  • Examples of Force upgrades include cheating your way up the initiative ladder, ignoring the token cost of special weapons, or just straight up cheating and looking at an enemy ship's maneuver dial for free.
  • There are Dark Side specific Force Powers like Hatred.
• Some upgrade cards begin play with a set number of energy counters that are spent to use their abilities; discard-on-use cards are a thing of the past.
  • Some upgrades (like R5-D8) let you spend charges to discard damage cards, effectively increasing your hull value.
  • There's a new "Gunner" slot separate from the Crew slot for attack-buff crew like Dengar and Bossk.
  • Modal abilities like the U-Wing's pivot and the X-Wing's S-foils now have their own Configuration slot instead of piggybacking on the Title or Modification slot.
• Every ship has all four 90-degree fire arcs on its base, plus a special "bullseye" arc in the middle of the front arc; upgrades can interact with this to give you bonuses when attacking a target in your bullseye arc.
• When you decloak with Small ships, your free barrel roll uses the 2-speed template.
• Ships can now have red actions, which work exactly like red maneuvers.
• Some ships have "linked" actions, which let the ship perform multiple actions in a turn if they're done in a specific order, like a Focus done immediately after a Barrel Roll. Almost all linked actions are red actions, but some exceptions exist, like with the Special Forces TIE.
• Some effects can temporarily remove a ship from the field, returning to play after the effect is resolved. This is a generalization of the docking mechanic used by the Ghost.
• Droids can have a "Calculate" action, which works exactly like focus except it changes one eye result instead of all of them. The tradeoff is that some droid fighters can share Calculate tokens. IG-88 can get two tokens at once, allowing him to split them between different results.
• Tokens are now segregated by their shape and color; round tokens always disappear at the end of the turn, while square tokens are persistent and get flipped when you use them instead of being discarded. Calculate, focus and evade tokens are all green, and cards like the new Vader crew upgrade directly interact with all green tokens instead of having to list all the token types.
• Barrel rolls now have strict rules for how you perform them based on the alignment of centerlines on the base and the maneuver template; this has been done explicitly to nerf arc dodging according to FFG staff.
• The Lancer/Shadow Caster's unique quadrant-based turret mechanics have been backported to all turrets, and there was much rejoicing.

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 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.

Upgrades

X-Wing has a wide variety of upgrades available for the various ships in your list. Depending on the type of list, upgrade selection can be more important than the ships you stick them on. At the very least, after you find a ship you want or like, and figure out how the fuck to fly that ship, you should try and find good upgrades for it - very few lists run anything "naked" (that is, with no upgrades). Upgrades are divided into two broad categories; ship upgrades and secondary weapons.

Ship Upgrades come in a wide variety, and the individual categories of them will be addressed below.

• Modifications: Miscellaneous upgrades that don't fit anywhere else. They used to have one slot on every ship, but some have more and a few like the A-Wing don't have any.
• Elite Pilot Talent: Elite slots are common, with most named pilots and higher skill generics able to take one. Elite slots are used to add extra abilities to your ship, and most often useful when they synchronize with a pilot ability.
• Crew Upgrades: Crew slots add people to your ship. Like elite slots, they usually add bonus abilities, but crew slots are usually exclusive to bigger ships. Your average little fighter can't take one. Lots of named characters appear here, so along with the shared pool of generics, each faction has its unique crew upgrades. Rebels have the most unique crew, which vary in cost and use wildly. Imperials have few crew limited to them, many of which have a higher cost, but are very potent. Scum crew tends to be very cheap and good, but Scum ships usually only feature 1 crew slot so you must pick very carefully.
• Gunner: This was a long time coming. Gunners offer buffs to weapons, particularly turrets and bombs.
• Astromech: Unique to a handful of Rebel, Scum, Resistance and Republic ships, astromech upgrades are for those lovely little tin cans and balls that help you navigate around, repair damage, and analyze battle situations. Many have been vastly improved since 1st Edition.
• Illicit: Almost unique to Scum, with a few rebel dabbles. Illicit upgrades are usually illegal and risky, including turning your ship into a bomb when you die, or grant a one-turn chance to perform actions and red maneuvers while stressed. Sadly lacking in variety since 1st Edition. The Lancer's double slots are basically pointless at the present.
• Titles: All titles are unique to their ships, and often add a unique ability, sometimes for free. Titles refer to signature, unique versions of that ship - like the Millenium Falcon, and as of AMG's takeover are restricted mostly to pilots that actually flew those unique ships in the lore.
• Sensor: System is an upgrade common on some large ships and on more "advanced" or sophisticated small ships - which in turn tend to be more expensive. Limited selection since 2nd Edition launched, but the options are pretty good, like Trajectory Simulator, which lets you lob bombs forward instead of dropping them an inch backward. Fire-Control System has had an interesting revamp that lets you reroll one die with a target lock without discarding the lock.
• Tech: Tech upgrades are almost exclusive to TFA-era ships, and represent 30+ years of R&D. They tend to circumvent the normal rules of the game, like allowing certain actions while stressed or spending Focus on blank results.
• Force Power: New to 2E, these are abilities that Force Points can be spent on.
• Configuration: Specific to ship classes much like titles, but not limited and more used to give a ship a more unique identity. This includes things like the X-wing and B-wings S-foils, which can be flipped between open and closed sides, and alternate versions of ships like the TIE defender elite which gets to double tap at the cost of some of its dodging capabilities. These are occasionally used to redesign ships that were released early.

Secondary Weapons

Secondary weapons are upgrades that add a new type of attack, usually with special abilities, to a ship. Unless stated otherwise, they're performed instead of a primary weapon attack. They have their own dice pool, range limitations, and ignore normal bonus dice for things like range. Unless otherwise specified, they must still be in your firing arc.

• Torpedoes: In general, torpedoes have more attack dice than a ship's standard attack, along with a different ability, but they almost always require a target lock to fire them and they have limited charges. Torpedoes are primarily used by Rebels, with only occasional Imperial and Scum ships mounting them. Since 2E, they no longer require you to spend a target lock to use them.
• Missiles: Missiles are similar to torpedoes, but with a greater variety of utility. When a Concussion Missile hits, it turns the damage cards on all nearby ships into crits. Use against TIE Swarms for lulz.
• Cannons: Unlike torpedoes and missiles, cannons can be used repeatedly without reloading, but they are focused on doling out effect tokens rather than damage.
• Turrets: Totally overhauled from 1E, which had a bajillion varieties of "Laser turret." Now we just a blaster turret and an ion turret. Goes great with Veteran Turret Gunner.
• BombsDevices Payloads: Like missiles and torpedoes, payloads are expendable. Unlike them, payloads are dropped out the back of your ship during the Systems Phase. The only defense is good maneuvering.

Epic Upgrades

There are a handful of regular upgrades (mostly Crew) which can only be equipped on "Huge Ships" used in epic play, and Huge ships can only take Modifications which are Huge Ship Only. There are also three kinds of upgrades which (so far) only appear on these epic ships - and have a lot to do with Epic's "energy" mechanic.

• Cargo: A bit like a big brother to System upgrades, Cargo upgrade represent big heavy-ass stuff you can haul on an Epic ship, and tend to give you new abilities to do with your energy, or enhance actions you can already take. Some of them also have similarities to the dirty tricks of Illicits.
• Command: Every ship in Epic has exactly one slot for Command upgrades. These can grant special designations to small ships (Like turning them into Wing Leaders for formation flying). There are also Command/Crew cards for special crew cards that only ride Huge ships.
• Hardpoints: The Epic version of secondary weapons like turrets and cannons, these are powerful attacks which require Energy to be stockpiled on them to use but pack a lot more punch than the stuff smaller ships have. Some of them are turreted.
• Teams: Teams are the big brother of crew (which Epic ships still usually have), a pack of people doing a task better. There are only four team upgrades currently, and they give you or an ally a bonus when doing something else (I/E "Sensor Team" lets you target lock up to Range 5 - a range normally only seen on Epic upgrades).

That's Great and All, but What Do I Actually Buy?

To start you want to go for a Core Set, like with any FFG drug habit. Once you get it into your system and decide you want more, you need to decide on a faction because that will decide on what you do next (although if you just want more to play two or all factions that will change. These expansion packs are good places to start with each faction. Remember that anytime a ship type is represented in multiple packs (The T-65 X-Wing is in the Core Set, Saw's Renegades, and the standalone T-65 pack), it comes with new pilots and upgrades, so don't be afraid of a shiny new expansion having "duplicates."

• Rebel Alliance: T-65 X-Wing, BTL-A4 Y-Wing, Millennium Falcon or Phoenix Cell Squadron Pack
• Galactic Empire: TIE/ln Fighter(Multiple copies can be good), TIE Advanced x1 or v1, VT-49 Decimator or Skystrike Academy Squadron Pack
• Scum & Villainy: Fang Fighter, Z-95-AF4 Headhunter, Slave I or Fugitives and Collaborators Squadron Pack
• Resistance: T-70 X-Wing, RZ-2 A-Wing, Republic Transport or Heralds of Hope
• First Order: TIE/fo (Get multiple), TIE/sf, TIE/vn Silencer
• Republic: Guardians of the Republic, Delta-7 Aethersprite, ARC-170 Starfighter, LAAT/i Gunship
• CIS: Servants of Strife, Vulture-class Droid Fighter (Cheapest fighter in the game, get a couple), Sith Infiltrator. In fact given that the vulture is the cheapest fighter in the game, you likely could not go wrong get TWO servant of strife boxes.

Shopping

Currently, buying new from stores tends to run pretty pricey for what is essentially a single Micro Machine ship (of better material and a better paint job, mind) on a stand with some cards. Buying from eBay is not much better, as (barring the very large ships that people buy for the powercreep upgrades that are required to stay competitive and then throw out) there's a trend towards it being just as expensive. Though even so compared to other wargames it's much more affordable. Depending on your faction a single ship could be upward as a third of a total not terrible fleet, compared to a 40k space marine army that require multiple 60 dollar boxes to run optimally, though of course with basically no 'your dudes' potential in exchange. A swarm faction and build of course does worse in this kind of cost examination, but still comes out favorably compared to many other wargames.

Currently, Miniature Market has the best prices at 25-50% off FLGS in many cases, more for pre-orders.

Or you could just suck it up and support your FLGS instead. Most have a decent discount on X-Wing anyway.

Neutral Expansions

There are a couple of neutral boxes that will be good to grab regardless of what faction(s) you play. With the advent of Second Edition, FFG promised that rereleases of 1E ships would not include any new cards that weren't in the appropriate Conversion Kit. The B-Wing Expansion doesn't even include Autoblasters, those are in the Resistance Transport Expansion. With that in mind, several of the neutral expansions are a compromise, bundling a bunch of new cards together so nobody feels like they have to buy a Nantex just for the Targeting Computer. But of course, you never really have to buy an expansion just for a single card.

• Epic Battles Multiplayer Expansion: Introduces 2-8 player Epic matches, which allow for Wings (Formations) and Huge Ships. Also has 11 objective-based scenarios.
• Never Tell Me The Odds Obstacle Pack: Contains oodles of obstacles, including the gas clouds initially exclusive to Guardians of the Republic and Servants of Strife. Also, scenarios.
• Fully Loaded Devices Pack: Has just about every payload, including the reintroduction of cluster mines and new scenarios.
• Hotshots and Aces Reinforcements Pack: This one is the must-own. The non-prequel factions get 3 new pilots for existing ships and the Rebels get a bonus 4th. It's much more encompassing than the others in terms of bundling upgrades from 2E expansions, including 0-0-0 and BT-1, who weren't in the Galactic Empire Conversion Kit. There's also an S-Foils config card for the B-Wing, which makes the thing actually worth flying.
• Pride of Mandalore Reinforcements Pack: Contains a slew of Mandalore-themed cards for the non-ST factions. The most significant is the Fang Fighter pilot cards for the Rebel Alliance. Moff Gideon and ISB Dudes join the Empire as TIE/ln pilots. The included Crew upgrade cards serve a wide variety of playstyles, but there's a tendency to reward aggressive daredevils.
• Hotshots and Aces II Reinforcements Pack: H&A2 has five new pilots for every single faction in the game, and all but First Order have at least one Force-user. Let's get the biggest selling point out of the way first: The triumphant return of Psycho Tycho Celchu in his A-Wing and Wes Janson in his X-Wing. Durge from the OG Clone Wars cartoon series makes a surprise appearance for both CIS and Scum, and he is appropriately beefy. CIS also gets Aurra Sing as a Force-using Firespray pilot along with some organic pilots in ships that are traditionally droid-only. The Republic finally gets Kit Fisto and Adi Gallia as pilots, Resistance catches up to Rise of Skywalker a full three years after anybody gave the slightest shit about that movie by putting Poe Dameron and Lando Calrissian in the Scavenged Millennium Falcon, the First Order has a strong focus on the TIE/fo, the Empire lets the Second Sister use the Force in a TIE Interceptor, and Scum finally gets Hondo Ohnaka and Doctor Aphra as pilots.
• Battle of Yavin Scenario Pack: Want to recreate the Battle of Yavin for the nine-billionth time? OF COURSE YOU DO. This has cardboard pieces to build the trench and thermal exhaust port as well as a bunch of pilot loadout cards for Rebel and Empire that are built with the scenario in mind. These cards are legal in Standard Play and give unique options to existing pilots, so there is a reason to buy the pack even if you never play the scenario itself. Listbuilding for the scenario has interesting instructions: You aren't prohibited from using pilots from outside this pack as long as both players agree to their inclusion. The written justification is that the scenario is balanced with the included cards in mind, but an arguably bigger reason is that a player who wants a straight re-enactment of the battle has an avenue to veto meme lists, which can ruin the atmosphere if both players aren't on the same wavelength.
• Siege of Coruscant Scenario Pack: Same deal as the Battle of Yavin Scenario Pack, but with Republic and CIS.

Organization

Speaking from experience, an X wing squad can be a surprisingly annoying pain to lug around. Since between the models, different types of token, bases and various upgrade cards you have a lot of small fiddly bits to transport and need to have ready. It's even worse if your not 100% sure what you will use when you reach your LGS and so bring everything. It's not as bad as a 40k army due to the smaller model count, but given the number of fiddly tokens for shields, focus, evade, charges, force and so on, it can take a disorganized player a long time to set up for a game. It's tolerable if you’re new but it can be annoying if you ask for game and your opponent is only ready a half hour later. Don't be that guy. As such, something a lot of X wing players invest in early on is some way to transport there collection and tokens around in a way the means they can access there tokens quickly.

A few options are:

• Tackle box. A general favorite option a tackle bock has lots of slots for various token types and larger areas for the models.

• Shoebox and baggies A more slapdash solution helped by the fact that most ships have a bag to hold the ship's card board tokens and punch out's together. With only a few bags you can have your tokens all sorted out for ready use, while your models can also live in there own bag.

• Card binder X wing's cards are the same size as standard cards, so any binder that can hold magic the gathering cards will do the trick. If it's a 3 ring binder you can even use dividers to split your cards up by ship type.

Factions

Presently, the game is divided among seven factions: Rebellion, Empire, Resistance, First Order, Scum & Villainy, Galactic Republic and Confederacy of Independent Systems. Any ship with a named character piloting it has a unique ability.

If you played the X-Wing and Rogue Squadron games, you should know what to expect here.

In both short and general: the Rebel fighters are more expensive, but also have stronger hulls, shields are a lot more common and they tend to have an edge in fire power, balanced by cost. The empire ships are typically faster and more maneuverable, and focus on avoiding damage as opposed to tanking it, are cheaper but more frail. Scum and Villainy features elements from both Rebel and Empire ships, along with a talent for dirty tricks and access to unique upgrade options that let them really fuck with opponent ships' stats. The Resistance is the Rebel's taken up a notch being more expensive but ship per ship are even better. The First Order meanwhile is sort of a blending of the Rebelion and old Empire, a middle ground in terms of suitability and firepower. The galactic republic and CIS though are both mirrors of each other, being reliant on internal synergy factions. The difference is that the Republic does it between fewer ships, while the CIS tends to rely on swarms.

Star Wars Miniature Games Tactical Guides
X-Wing:	Rebel Alliance, Galactic Empire, The Resistance, The First Order, Scum & Villainy, The Galactic Republic, Confederacy of Independent Systems
Armada:	Rebel Alliance, Galactic Empire, The Galactic Republic, Confederacy of Independent Systems
Legion:	Rebel Alliance, Galactic Empire, Grand Army of the Republic, Confederacy of Independent Systems,

Tactics

General Advice

• "Fly casual" has become the motto of the community and Fantasy Flight Games in regards to tournaments. There are discrepancies in the game and ships can easily be accidentally bumped here and there as moving. Sometimes the closeness of the ships and the distance between the two means a quarter centimeter difference between range 2 and range 3. As a result much of the game requires a casual attitude and willingness to approximate, shrug off an opponent's mistake that gives you an advantage in the name of fairness, or decide a dispute on a roll of the dice or a coin toss and move on. Win by virtue of skill, not if your opponent forgets they have a Focus Token.
• Everything you take should have a serious purpose in your list. If someone asks you "why is this on your ship" and you can't immediately come up with a good reason, then it's not a good choice.
• ASSUME NOTHING. Just because your pal Joe ALWAYS falls for your cutesy little combo with a couple of Interceptors scissoring in the center doesn't mean tourney players will. If your plan relies on the opponent making mistakes, you're fucked. You should be calling the shots and deciding how the game goes, not reacting. This rule holds true for real life dogfighting as well. If you aren't the one calling the shots, the odds are very much against you. NOTE: Just because some players have studied the game long enough they can learn how to play the opponent doesn't mean you can. That takes a lot of learning.
• Every ship has some sort of use in the game. People like to bitch that some ships are useless, but clever players will consistently figure out ways to bring something new to the table. For example, Rebel Operative HWK-290's (widely considered one of the most useless combos around) are now popping up with TLT's and Recon Operatives and are fucking terrifying. If you're at a tournament and someone plops some sort of odd choice like Mangler Scyks or a TIE Bomber swarm or something crazy like 6 Z95's all packing missiles, DO NOT assume the guy is a moron. If he's bringing something to a tourney, odds are he has a reason.
• The Maneuvering Phase is the most important step in the game. You can take one of Paul Heaver's world winning lists and then someone with more experience can take nothing but the named TIE pilots, and the more skilled player will still absolutely crush the other. They will know what you're doing before you even do it, and abuse the fuck out of it as much as possible. They'll chuck a cheap blocker into the best places for you to move to screw up your positioning and deny actions. They'll set up their TIE's so you have to shoot at them through rocks and at range 3 while they move into range 1 when they're ready to make their kill shots. Some more skilled players will purposefully take sub-par lists for casual gaming since a good list in a master player's hands would mean absolutely CRUSHING people who are still new to the game.
• Fly everything at least once. Nothing teaches you the game like running a wide variety of builds and ships. Movement dials and ship stats can be found online, allowing you to try out the TIE Phantom using an ordinary TIE Fighter miniature if you feel like it and none of your friends have one you can borrow. Swarms have a steep learning curve, but go a long way towards teaching you the importance of formation flying and thinking ahead. Playing arc dodging aces like Soontir Fel teach you the importance of action economy and being flexible, as well as showing just how punishing a well-planned block is and how predictable the aces can be once you learn their habits (Soontier will almost always pull speed 2 turns to clear Stress, Corran Horn will usually do a double tap pass then blast off to a corner to regain Shields, etc). Play big ships and you'll learn how insanely good Engine Upgrade is on them, and the importance they place on crew and other upgrades. Learning how to shut down these abilities is also key, as well as tricking them into flying through asteroid fields or too close to the edge.
• Learn placement and how ships can turn. If you keep at least the range of a horizontal template in between your ships you can bank with them and have them not bump. It'll go from being a square formation to a diamond if you've done it right. A good guide on this can be found here.
• In current "high-level" X-Wing, Efficiency and Economy are the most powerful factors. You want to spend the least amount of points to achieve the effect you desire, and want to try and get lists which allow you to get more out of your limited action pool, either in tokens, repositioning or other dice modifications. Just rolling the dice and seeing how they land can be fun in casual play but is not a place you want to be in a serious game.
• Epic play (that is, using Huge Ships, higher points and larger play area) is almost a completely different game in balance terms. While they take much longer to set up and play - the larger point pool and play area means ships which do not do well in a 100 pt scrum can flourish, like taking enough generic Interceptors to matter, or using X-Wings to Torpedo Volley an enemy huge ship. This means Epic is often go-to for more "thematic" players.

See also

• Star Wars: Armada, another game by FFG featuring larger-scale battles and capital ships

External Links

• X-Wing Miniatures Game on Fantasy Flight Games' webpage.
• Documents and PDFs on AMG's website, since FFG no longer takes care of X-wing.
• The X-Wing wiki page. Very useful for previewing what comes in an option before you buy it, see updated FAQ and tourney rules, and see what the community is saying about specific cards.
• (Yet another) X-Wing Miniatures Squad builder, a useful tool to create lists and look at cards. Straightforward enough and lists what upgrades and cards come from what expansions.
• BoardGameGeek's Collection of User Created Material's actually comes packed with helpful tips and missions.
• Another Squadron builder.
• Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0, which stays updated with the latest releases (including 2.5)
• Yet Another Squad Builder's old build, when it was last updated for 2.0. Useful if you want to keep playing with the pre-AMG rules.

Star Wars
About:	The Franchise, The Setting, The Movies, The Video Games
Television Shows:	The Clone Wars, Rebels, Resistance, The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch, Disney + Originals
Star Wars Games
Miniature:	X-Wing, Armada, Legion
Tabletop:	Rebellion
Roleplaying:	FFG, WotC (d20), WEG (d6)