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Welcome back ladies and gentle-folk to another tactics article on the X-Wing Miniatures Game. As the World Championships has just gone by, I'm sure many of you are thinking 'I could do that!' Or alternatively, 'How the hell would I do that?!' Well wonder no more pilots, here are some top tips for improving your flying skills.

Practice Makes Perfect

There's no shying away form it, the best way of getting better is to practise. The more you play, the better you get at predicting the most likely moves that your opponent will perform. This is key to winning a game of X-Wing.

Players such as Tom Duncan and Andrew Pattison who fly Tie Fighter swarms on a regular basis are often referred to as psychic. They seem to have a paranormal ability to guess where your ships are going to be and put their many tonnes of Imperial might in the way, foiling your carefully laid plans. In reality, it's nothing of the sort. Just a large amount of practice and a good eye for reading a person's affinity for risk.

Know Your Ships

Linking in to practice, you have to know the capabilities of your ships and just what they can take. When do you take risks? Is it appropriate to put a Fang at range one in front of an enemy? Why can't you do the same thing with Soontir Fel and remain unscathed?

All of these questions can be answered with experience and testing out the ships that you are flying in different situations. There is no substitute for this experience, especially against different lists. Many people play against one or two practice partners and it's good to get some variation in your opposition.

Sure Plays a Mean Pinball!

Many people who are new to the game often tell me that they find asteroids a challenge. I certainly remember the terror of flying through an asteroid field when I picked up my first dial. And the feeling of doing it all again when I started using large ship bases.

A good way of improving your flying skills, and your spatial awareness, is to set up a dense asteroid field on the kitchen table. Then, take a ship and try to fly it through the asteroid field. After a few minutes of doing this, you will have a better idea of the distance your ship will go when it performs different maneuvers. It will also help your ability to block and predict your opponent as you become a much better judge of 'eyeballing' exactly where a maneuver will place you.

If you want a much better explanation of exactly where each maneuver will end up. Check out The Metal Bikini which is where I first learned how to nail down my first turns.

Know Your Enemy

Something that Alex Birthas said numerous times on the 186th Squadron Podcast is that to truly understand a list you should fly it yourself. Admittedly, this has ended on a couple of occasions with Alex using the list that he just wanted to 'try' but that's not the point!

Flying a list yourself tends to expose it's weaknesses. You will find which areas to exploit and exactly how your opponent beats you. I've often found that I am suddenly struggling to beat anything with alist that once seemed insurmountable. Once you know exactly how you lose with the list, you can understand how to beat it.

Losing is Not an Option

Something that I stick by in the game of X-Wing was put into very simple words by Tom Reed in his most recent interview on the 186th Squadron Podcast.

"You win or you learn"

If you lose a game, there is most likely a reason. There is always something you could have done differently to change the outcome. It's your task to identify that point and make sure you improve on it in the next game.

Some of the best games I've played are the ones I've lost and and the best players never leave a game at just that. Talking to your opponent about the game and what you think went well or badly is a great way to improve. Maybe they spotted something that you didn't. Or maybe you hold the key to why they keep on getting beaten by your list. Use your practice partner to your advantage and you can help each other get to the next level.

It's Not Me, It's You...

When I lose a game, I've found that it's very easy to look for something to blame. That damn dice roll that went against you. Just got unlucky right? There's nothing I could have done differently...

Now sometimes that is true. As shown by my good friend Phil in one of his recent articles, sometimes the dice do genuinely hate you!

But most of the time it's probably going to be down in part to how you decided to fly your ships. Which risks you took and the decisions that you made. It's worth using the Mynock Squadron term

"Fly Even Better"

Because that's how you win things!

You're Only as Good as Your Opponent

My final piece of advice is to get out there! You cannot achieve your potential if you are playing the same people and the same lists. Go to different stores, play in a tournament, expand your horizons. Different people have different styles and can teach you different things.

The reason I'm a better player than I started is because of the experience I have gained from my friends, squad mates and people I've only met on the day of the tournament. They still give me opportunities to improve and become a better player even after two years playing with tiny toy space ships.

So there you are, I hope I've given you some tools to improve your own game. I look forward to getting smashed into space dust the next time I meet you. Then the student can become the master and you can show me where it all went wrong!

Fly Casual

Oli

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Only Then, A Jedi Will You Be: How to Improve Your X-Wing Skills

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Welcome back ladies and gentle-folk to another tactics article on the X-Wing Miniatures Game. As the World Championships has just gone by, I'm sure many of you are thinking 'I could do that!' Or alternatively, 'How the hell would I do that?!' Well wonder no more pilots, here are some top tips for improving your flying skills.

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(Yet Another) X-Wing Miniatures Squad Builder

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This is a simple, fast, no-frills squad builder for X-Wing Miniatures by Fantasy Flight Games. It is pure HTML, JavaScript, and CSS and requires no backend, and can be dropped into place on any website (with maybe a few CSS tweaks).

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r/XWingTMG: A place to discuss the [Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game](http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=174&esem=1) new expansions, expansion ideas, tactics, balance issues, Alternate rules.

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Squadron Builder · X-Wing Squadron Builder

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A squadron builder for Star Wars X-Wing: The Miniatures Game. Build squads, save squads, share squads online, print squads.

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Here's a list of common slang names for x-wing Cards: AC - Accuracy Corrector ACD - Advanced Cloaking Device APL - Anti-Pursuit Lasers APT - Advanced Prot...

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X-Wing on Vassal: Hands-on Guide to Playing

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That's it. Really. That's the only mandatory file. It contains a few 3x3 starfield maps (classic, light and deep), a teal nebula map (formerly known as blue nebula) and then a bunch of standard black maps (3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 3x6 and 6x3).

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When you first dive into a new collectible game, especially one with as many years and expansions under it's belt as X-Wing has, it can be very daunting... not to mention expensive!

As such there's always a market for a good guide to how important each set is and which you should buy first. I'm going to break my guide down by faction, and then for each faction give you an overview of the highlights in each pack before giving you a bit more of a flavour of whether it's going to be a good pick for you or not. Sometimes it might be that you need the ship to play with, but sometimes it will just be a particular upgrade or pilot that you desperately need from the expansion.

As well as the best bits in the pack I'm going to signpost some of the most common upgrades for those ships that you might need to hunt down from other expansions, even from other factions!

Lastly I'm going to give a quick a rundown of how I think those packs really come again and a couple of potential 'routes' through building and expanding your collection.

IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION

Most of what I'm going to talk about is regarding rating ships by how popular they are in strong lists that have proven themselves popular in the X-Wing game, particularly those getting used frequently in competiive squads. The bar for entry in my mentioning a pilot/upgrade is set pretty high, therefore.

Many ships/pilots/upgrades can be played with and had fun with and done well with that I'm not going to mention, just because if you don't set the bar quite high you wind up talking about almost everything and it stops being a guide, just a list of contents. If you want to explore a ship despite what I say, then please do! If you think I've ignored a great card you love to play with then please continue to play with and enjoy that card!

Remember: a guide is not a set of strict commandment, it's exactly what it claims to be... purely a guide.

The iconic T-65 X-Wings might be the workhorse of the Rebel fleet in the films but in the X-Wing Miniatures Game they're showing their age - understandable as they're one of the first ships ever created. Biggs Darklighter's pilot ability makes him one of the best in the game but you rarely see the other legendary X-Wing pilots played competitively. Even if you're sticking to casual games and are dedicated to running X-Wings then this expansion pack has little to offer - your first X-Wing should come from the Core Set (with Biggs and R2-D2) and your second X-Wing should probably come from the Rebel Transport expansion (with Wes Janson and a host of good astromechs).

Also of interest: Integrated Astromech (T-70 & Heroes of the Resistance)

Much like the X-Wing the venerable Y-Wing is pretty limited, but the Twin Laser Turret upgrade (K-Wing expansion) gave the Y-Wing a second lease of life, either in the 'Stresshog' configuration with R3-A2 or just in a swarm of four Y-Wings. If you go that route you'll probably want to stock up multiple Y-Wings but other than with Twin Laser Turret this classic ship struggles to find a role as the dial is very limited.

Also of interest: Twin Laser Turret ( K-Wing), BTL-A4 Title ( Most Wanted), R3-A2 ( Rebel Transport)

The Falcon has been around since Wave 2 but still finds it's way into strong squads as a testament to it's enduring appeal. It's a great expansion that comes with most of the cards you're going to want to use on it and and even with the Heroes of the Resistance expansion bringing the updated Force Awakens pilots like Rey there is a lot to be said for the original Millenium Falcon in the hands of Han Solo or Chewbacca. The classic Falcon plays very differently to the new one and comes with enough excellent upgrades (particularly Engine Upgrade) that it's still a solid purchase even if you've already got Heroes of the Resistance.

Also of interest: Predator ( Ghost), C-3PO ( Tantive IV)

The major problem with the A-Wing expansion is that all the best reasons to play A-Wings are in Rebel Aces along with another A-Wing model. If you're only going to play one A-Wing then I'd recommend Rebel Aces but if you're looking for multiple then the right thing to do is alternate between Rebel Aces and the A-Wing expansion as you get 2x Chardaan Refit and 2x A-Wing Test Pilot in Rebel Aces.

Also of Interest: Jake Farrell ( Rebel Aces), Chardaan Refit ( Rebel Aces), A-Wing Test Pilot ( Rebel Aces), Proton Rockets ( Rebel Aces), Crack Shot ( Kihraxz Fighter), Autothrusters ( StarViper)

NOTE: The A-Wing expansion does have Push The Limit, though, which is arguably the best Elite Pilot Talent in the game and only otherwise available in Imperial Aces.

A slow and rarely-played support ship, the HWK-290 is the butt of a lot of jokes and only occasionally sees play, and the best pilot is probably Palob Godalhi for the Scum faction. If you are playing casually it's a fun ship to add because it does things other ships can't but it hasn't found a competitive Rebel home.

Also of Interest: Twin Laser Turret ( K-Wing), Palob Godalhi ( Most Wanted)

The B-Wing is a brawling hog of a ship that trades on it's relatively high Hull/Shields and tight turning circle in a dogfight. It's at a low ebb at the moment but B-Wing swarms have been very strong in the past and could easily come back. If you're already getting A-Wings then you'll pick up B-Wings in Rebel Aces, but the B-Wing expansion is one of only two places to find a Fire Control System, which is an excellent System upgrade.

You remember that butt-ugly slug-shaped ship that briefly flew past an ionised Star Destroyer in Empire Strikes Back? Now you too can own this Rebel icon! Excited? Although on paper the Rebel Transport should be a rubbish expansion it's almost a compulsory purchase for Rebel players trying to be competitive in tournaments because it comes with a suite of fantastic Astromechs that unlock a lot of the best builds for the best Rebel pilots. R3-A2 (the 'stressbot' in several builds including Wes Janson), R5-P9 (the ideal partner for Poe Dameron) and R4-D6 (for Biggs Darklighter) make the Rebel Transport a 'luxury' purchase that you're going to get A LOT of use out of.

Also of interest: Integrated Astromech ( T-70, Heroes of the Resistance), Poe Dameron ( Heroes of the Resistance), Biggs Darklighter ( Core Set)

The opposite of the Rebel Transport, the Tantive IV is an iconic Rebel ship that, unfortunately, has very little to offer if you're not playing Epic games. Primarily this is the source of C-3PO, who is excellent crew for the Millenium Falcon, but since FFG made C-3PO available as a promo card for playing in tournaments it's been possible to track him down without having to blow a huge wad of cash on the Tantive.

Also of interest: Ebay, to get you a C-3PO without paying for this!

Once a common sighting on the table as a cheap annoyance the Z-95 has become a more rarified sight. Wave 10 brought Sabine's TIE Fighter as a better cheap option for Rebel squads but having at least one Z-95 in your collection is probably a good call for those times when you've got 12 points dangling at the end of your squad, and the 'aces' like Airen Cracken do have moments when their pilot abilities can really help.

Also of interest: Guidance Chips ( Punishing One, Inquisitor's TIE)

At the moment Corran Horn is the only reason play an E-Wing as they're potentially very good ships but far too expensive. The expectation is that at some point there will be a 'Rebel Veterans' expansion that will give the E-Wing a boost but until then it's one to avoid unless you want to play Corran, who is an excellent Rebel ace.

Also of interest: R2-D2 ( Core Set), Push The Limit ( A-Wing, Imperial Aces), Fire Control System ( B-Wing, TIE Phantom)

This 'patch' expansion was intended to help out the A-Wing and B-Wing. The A-Wings really benefited from it but the B-Wings not so much. It's pretty much essential for using A-Wings, especially as it contains the best A-Wing pilot in the game: Jake Farrell. If you're not in it for A-Wings there's a couple of new crew for big ships, with Jan Ors maybe the one who gets played most often.

Also of interest: More A-Wings! ( A-Wing), Autothrusters ( StarViper)

A lot like the E-Wing the YT-2400 is a ship that basically only ever gets seen in one pretty specific configuration - 'Super Dash'. Dash Rendar makes for one of the most powerful and annoying Rebel pilots in the game once you assemble all the necessary pieces from other expansions, but you pretty much never see anything else from the YT-2400.

Also of interest: Push The Limit ( A-Wing, Imperial Aces), Kanan Jarrus ( Ghost), Engine Upgrade ( Millenium Falcon, Hound's Tooth)

At time of writing (April 2017) K-Wings are almost certainly the strongest ship in the Rebel arsenal, so much so that if you can actually find a K-Wing expansion pack in a store you should snap it up as there seems to be a worldwide shortage! 2016 finally made ordnance like Bombs, Torpedoes and Missiles playable and the K-Wings took that and ran with it, to the extent that Miranda Doni is arguably the single best pilot in the game regardless of whether she's loaded up with turrets, torpedoes or bombs. The cheaper Warden Squadron Pilot has also become a terror of the skies when loaded up with bombs or missiles, although flying a bomber is a very different way of playing X-Wing that's not everybody's cup of tea.

K-Wings: their time is now.

Also of Interest: Sabine Wren (Ghost), C-3PO (Tantive IV), Cluster Mines (Ghost, TIE Punisher, Imperial Veterans), Guidance Chips (Punishing One, TIE Advanced Prototype)

Note: The other big reason to buy the K-Wing is that they are the only way to get of the fantastic Twin Laser Turrets, and one of only two sources of Extra Munitions for your missile boats.

When it first landed the T-70 X-Wing made a real splash. Poe Dameron and Red Ace proved two of the most durable pilots around thanks to their shield regenerating shenanigans, although they quickly disappeared when bigger torpedo and missile attacks which could overwhelm their defenses become more common. No longer a competitive ship the T-70 remains a fantastic all-rounder that can do a bit of everything and is a great starter ship for new players to learn the game. Much like the original X-Wing Expansion, though, the T-70 X-Wings you most want to play don't actually come in this pack and you'll probably want to pick up the Force Awakens Core Set (for Poe Dameron and BB-8) and Heroes of the Resistance (for a bunch of great pilots like Nien Nunb and Jess Pava).

Also of Interest: Poe Dameron ( Force Awakens Core Set, Heroes of the Resistance), Autothrusters ( StarViper)

The Ghost is a fantastic purchase for both competitive and casual play. The basic Lothal Rebel is one of the most cost-effective ways to spend 40-ish points because you buy a lot of raw power for not a lot of points, and you see it paired frequently alongside either 'Super Dash' or the Millenium Falcon. With interesting pilots like Hera Syndulla and Kanan Jarrus there's options for casual play as well, and that's even before we get to all the ways of using the Attack Shuttle as well.

Also of Interest: Fire Control System ( B-Wing, TIE Phantom), Autoblaster Turret ( Most Wanted), Recon Specialist ( HWK-290, TIE Phantom, ARC-170)

Bringing us all the best bits of The Force Awakens movie to you game, the Heroes of the Resistance expansion is a great way to start expanding your Rebel fleet. Although they didn't quite manage to transform the competitive metagame Rey & Finn make a great partnership in the new Millenium Falcon and there are several interesting new pilots for the T-70 X-Wing. If you're being hardcore competitive then this pack falls just a tiny bit short of the mark, but if you're in the mood for a whole bunch of cool stuff to play with then this has to be one of the best value expansions in the game.

Rey, Finn, Nien Nunb, Snap Wexley, Jess Pava, Smuggling Compartment, Pattern Analyser, Snap Shot... there are A LOT of good reasons to buy this expansion.

Also of Interest: Kanan Jarrus (Ghost), Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon, Hound's Tooth)

The ARC-170 sits somewhere between the X-Wing and the Y-Wing - tougher and slower than an X-Wing and with a rear gunner where the Y-Wing has its turret slot. What really makes the ARC-170 worth playing is the combination of upgrade slots available (it's the only ship with an astromech slot AND a crew slot) and this has allowed it to find a niche as bit of a rugged brawler, especially when Norra Wexley is the pilot. Filling out all those upgrade slots with the right bits and pieces means the ARC-170 works best when you've already got a few expansion packs under your belt, but even if it's not quite optimised a new player will usually find the ARC to be a solid pick.

Also of Interest: Push The Limit (A-Wing, Imperial Aces), R2-D2 (Core Set), R3-A2 (Rebel Transport), Gunner (Slave I, YT-2400)

Assuming you're going to start with a Core Set... which Core Set is best? Well until Heroes of the Resistance came along I might have pointed you in the direction of the original Core Set but I think that T-70 X-Wings are going to be so good that you'll probably want to have a couple and that means the Force Awakens Core Se t is the place to start.

From there I think it's going to be hard to justify having anything other than Heroes of the Resistance as your second purchase. It's a biggie but with both the Millenium Falcon and Black One in the pack it brings you a whole slew of iconic characters who are going to be both powerful on the table and amazing fun to play with. I genuinely think FFG have done a great job in making Heroes of the Resistance the perfect first step into expanding your Rebel collection.

At that point you've probably already got the building blocks for some pretty good squads just by fielding the Millenium Falcon and a couple of T-70 X-Wings. Your next choice is probably whether you want to continue improving your X-Wing strike force or expand to new ships.

If X-Wings are your thing then probably the next key purchase is actually the Rebel Transport - it will give you a classic T-65 X-Wing to fly and most of the best astromechs in the game to slot into your T-70s. Rounding out your collection of small ships with Rebel Aces and an A-Wing expansion will leave you in a pretty nice place - you'll still have the Millenium Falcon, some great X-Wings, a pair of A-Wings that can be played either cheaply or specced up as aces, and a brawling B-Wing comes as a little extra in Rebel Aces for a change of pace if you need it. If you can afford a little extra then your T-70s and A-Wings would appreciate it if you head over to the Scum side long enough to acquire some Autothrusters from the StarViper expansion.

However, if after buying Heroes of the Resistance you want to head in a different direction than X-Wings then you might prefer to add a second large ship in the shape of the Ghost, which is practically a flying fortress on it's own and could either replace the Millenium Falcon in your squad or sit alongside it. It's always going to be a good move to add A-Wings by picking up Rebel Aces and an A-Wing expansion, but if you want something a bit different then a K-Wing andan ARC-170 would be a good start on building lists using turrets and rear firing arcs, which is a very different way of flying. A good supplement to these ships would actually be to pick up a TIE Phantom - you might not be able to fly the Phantom in your Rebel squad but in Fire Control System and Tactician it has some good upgrades for your Ghost, K-Wing and ARC-170.

COMMON BUILDS

"Stresshog" Y-Wing
Gold Squadron Y-Wing (Y-Wing)
Twin Laser Turret (K-Wing), R3-A2 (Rebel Transport), BTL-A4 Y-Wing (Most Wanted)

Poe Dameron (Core Set)
Poe Dameron (Force Awakens Core Set)
Veteran Instincts (Millenium Falcon, Slave I, Shadow Caster), R5-P9 (Rebel Transport), Autothrusters (StarViper)

Corran Horn w/Veteran Instincts
Corran Horn (E-Wing)
Veteran Instincts (Millenium Falcon, Slave I, Shadow Caster), Fire Control System (B-Wing, TIE Phantom), R2-D2 (Core Set), Hull Upgrade (Imperial Aces, StarViper)

Corran Horn w/Advanced Sensors
Corran Horn (E-Wing)
Push The Limit (A-Wing, Imperial Aces), Advanced Sensors (E-Wing), R2-D2 (Core Set), Hull Upgrade (Imperial Aces, StarViper)

Fat Chewie/Fat Han
Chewbacca (Millenium Falcon) or Han Solo (Millenium Falcon)
Predator (TIE Defender, Kihraxz Fighter, Ghost), Luke Skywalker (Millenium Falcon), C-3PO (Rebel Transport), Millenium Falcon (Millenium Falcon), Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon)

"Super Dash"
Dash Rendar (YT-2400)
Push The Limit (A-Wing, Imperial Aces), Heavy Laser Cannon (YT-2400), Outrider (YT-2400), Kanan Jarrus (Ghost), Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon, Hound's Tooth)

Jake Farrell
Jake Farrell (Rebel Aces)
Push The Limit (A-Wing, Imperial Aces), Chardaan Refit (Rebel Aces), A-Wing Test Pilot (Rebel Aces), Proton Rockets (Rebel Aces), Veteran Instincts (Millenium Falcon, Slave I, Shadow Caster), Autothrusters (StarViper)

Lothal Rebel
Lothal Rebel (Ghost)
Hera Syndulla (Ghost), Autoblaster Turret (Most Wanted), Fire Control System (B-Wing, TIE Phantom)

Anyway, I hope you find this guide useful. If you come across anything that you think is a glaring error or omission then please let me know so I can correct it.

Up next I'll be looking at something closer to my own heart - the glorious might of the Imperial Fleet!

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X-Wing Miniatures Buying Guide - Part I:- Rebels

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When you first dive into a new collectible game, especially one with as many years and expansions under it's belt as X-Wing has, it can be very daunting... not to mention expensive! As such there's always a market for a good guide to how important each set is and which you should buy first.

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Module:Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game - VASSAL

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IMPORTANT - since v5.0.0, only the main module file is needed to play. In addition, you may get the map pack (Universal map pack v1.0) if you are tired of seeing black backgrounds and the basic 3x3 starfield map. Getting the single ship module extensions (e.g. X-Wing, TIE Interceptor, etc.)

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Handy all-ships-in-one maneuver reference card. Ready for print!

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The gaming area gets cluttered easily, and the solutions I've seen for referencing ship maneuvers, are less than optimal. I've made these double-sided...

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Earning Your Wings! A Guide For Understanding Movment.

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Part 1: Small Ship Movement Hitting an astroid can be one of the most frustrating things in X-Wing, especially if you could have just gone a little faster a...

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Hello again all!!

After some further consideration, I actually decided to turn this into a four-part series. In my first entry, we talked about real-world problems relating to X-Wing. Today, we're going to talk about some "Rookie" mistakes made on the game board, and how to avoid them. The next two entries will be about List Building, and how best to further improve your gameplay. For now, let's talk about gameplay mistakes!

Common Gameplay Errors

Moving too quickly

Everyone is guilty of this at some point in their X-Wing career. I'm not talking about dialing in fast maneuvers that get you into trouble, I'm talking about not fully thinking everything through and paying the price for it. The most common instance of this problem is completing a ship's maneuver, and then moving on to the next, while forgetting to take that ship's action. The other mistakes made here are making decisions on movement or actions too quickly, without thinking through what the rest of your ships are doing (or where your opponent might go), and putting yourself in a horrible position. There are two steps to fixing this issue:

1. Keep track of EVERY step. This might feel a little tedious at first, but it's a great way to train yourself not to forget actions. If it helps, make yourself a little checklist, mental or physical, for a few games, and run through it every turn to make sure you don't forget anything.

2. Take time to consider each decision. I'm not saying take a minute on each movement dial, just think before you put the dial back down, or decide what action you're taking. If you need to, take a breath in and out, and then look at your choice again. Does it still make sense? If not, you probably made a hasty decision. Always remember that each ship isn't just functioning on it's own too; an easy mistake is to forget what maneuvers your other ships are making and end up playing bumper cars with your own squadron.

Running away isn't always a bad choice

Often we tend to think of running away as giving up, but "advancing to the rear", as some might call it, can be a much better move than trying to hang in a firefight that isn't looking well. Position is incredibly key in X-Wing, and getting the heck out of dodge gives you a chance to re-enter the fight in a better position. Don't be afraid to get your guys out if things get hairy. If you've got a ship on it's last legs, get it out while your other guys stay in the fight. Your opponent will either chase the guy (opening up an opportunity for you to go after him with your other ships), or ignore him (allowing him to swing back in to contribute attack dice once again). There's no reason to stick in a fight you're not winning - Get out and come back!

Splitting Fire

Splitting fire is almost never a good idea. Why, you ask? Actions. A ship with an evade or focus token can only use that token once. Further attacks against it will have much higher chances of doing damage, whereas if you split fire among several ships that have tokens available, each one gets that nice extra defense boost. Furthermore, getting rid of attack dice that could be thrown at you is always better than hoping to kill multiple ships a few turns down the road. Why keep taking 10 attack dice rolled against you for a few turns when you could take 8 next turn, 6 the next, etc etc...

There are two subissues here. The first is positioning. VERY RARELY will all your ships have a shot on the one you want to take out, and you're forced to split fire. Always be sure to focus as much fire as you can on any targets you shoot at, even if you have to split your squad's fire up due to placement. The second issue is a little trickier, and that's choosing the right target to focus down. This is an incredibly easy mistake to make (I still wrestle with this one), and even after you've made the choice and dice were rolled, there's always room for debate on all sides of these choices. So to help out, here's a short threat priority list of my own. You shouldn't use this as a bible for how to pick targets (it's not meant to be), but you can use it as a set of guidelines to help you make your target selection decisions!

1. Ships with One or Two Hits Left. Quickly eliminating an almost-dead target can ease the number of attacks you're receiving.

2. Non-Tanky Buffing Ships. Examples could include a vanilla Howlrunner or Etahn A'Baht, or any HWK pilot.

3. Ships With no Defense Tokens on them/Ships at Range 1. These can also take first priority depending on the situation, and where things get a little fuzzy. Be careful about not putting these first, but be aware that Buffing ships can make your day miserable if left alive.

4. Powerful Named Pilots. Think big threats like Corran Horn, Keyan Farlander, Whisper, Echo, Soontir Fel.

5. Grunts. Run-of-the-mill pilots, like Rookie Pilot, Academy Pilot, Bandit Squadron Pilot, etc., are problematic when left alone. This is also a great catch-all category for anything not otherwise mentioned here.

6. Tanky Buffing Ships. Think Howlrunner with Stealth Device, or Etahn A'Baht with Sensor Jammer. As much as these guys will make everything more difficult, it'll be easier to kill their minions than it will be to kill them, and without minions these kinds of ships lose their teeth.

7. Tanky Ships. There are, of course, exceptions, but be careful of taking on Tanky ships without enough firepower. If you think you can destroy or severely damage them, these suddenly go up massively in priority. Tanky ships are also excellent candidates for your ships that can't contribute to the main focus, if they tank via health and shields. The best ways to go after these targets are to either whittle them down until they're manageable as a focus fire target, or bring everything you have to bear on them and hope for the best.

Keep in mind, these are just guidelines based on my own personal opinion, and what matters the most is your own assessment of the situation!

Bumping and Crashing

When you're still new to the game, flying several ships around other ships and a bunch of asteroids takes a lot of blind guessing. It's easy to guess wrong and lose actions via bumping into other ships (yes, especially your own!), or flying over or on top of asteroids. The best ways to improve your flying are to educate yourself as to the shape of each move, and to then Practice, Practice, PRACTICE.

This Forum post on the FFG website helped me learn the shape of each maneuver and how to fly better. It's an excellent guide and I highly recommend it to any new players, especially anyone looking to improve their flight skills!

Next Time...

One of the most intimidating parts of X-Wing can be building your squadron list. Next time around, I'll talk about things to avoid when making your squadrons, and how to get the most out of your ships. I'll see you all in the next post!

Related Articles

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Leaving Drydock - How to avoid "Rookie" Mistakes in X-Wing - In-Game Mistakes

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Hello again all!! After some further consideration, I actually decided to turn this into a four-part series. In my first entry, we talked about real-world problems relating to X-Wing. Today, we're going to talk about some "Rookie" mistakes made on the game board, and how to avoid them.

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What is a MicroHangar?

That's easy, it's the most cheap and space efficient way to store your ships. No need to invest in plano cases, battle foam or other fancy but expensive storage solutions, all you need is a printer and some cardstock. The MicroHangars are basically cardboard tuckboxes, measured to give the ships a tight fit to protect them. You can print as many as you like without wasting too much ink. After some cutting and glueing I promise that you'll be amazed how well your ships are protected and organized by nothing more than a piece of paper. And the best part is that you save a lot of money and are able to buy more awesome games instead of investing into unsexy storage solutions.

The original idea for the MicroHangars came from BGG-User DarkPadawan in 2013 for X-Wing: Miniatures Game. When he left I checked with him and he allowed me to take his work and continue it for the sake of the community. I decided to keep his reduced visual style, mainly because I think he's done a very good job. There's only one problem, there are no fancy specs graphics out there for the lesser known ships, therefore I tried to make something similar on my own by taking photos of each ship and converting them to something that hopefully looks somewhat like a design sketch.

Building is very straight forward, after all the hangars are standard tuckboxes. The bigger hangars feature additional reinforcement sheets, those aren't mandatory, but they greatly increase the strength of the bigger boxes. If you run into problems, feel free to contact me. Some general tips on building, paper and other things can be found in my FAQ at the top, some hangar specific hints and more pictures can be found by clicking the tabs above.

Here you can find some preview pictures with open hangars because maybe it's not that obvious how to fit the ships inside (sometimes they fit in different positions). I vouch for each hangars, the ships fit, I don't release them without testing (though I might make a mistake on the way). If you're hangar happens to be too small, check my FAQ, it's very likely that you did something wrong when printing. Some ships must be placed inside their hangar at a more or less awkward angle, this had to be done to prevent them from rattling around in the box.

The hangars for wave 8 are pretty much straightforward. The Ghost hangar features a print sheet with two reinforcement pieces that gives enough stability to the box, so you don't have to build any weird stuff (looking at you, Armada ISD...), besides the size of the Ghost the MicroHangar is a plain tuckbox.

I'm sure that some people think it's unnecessary to have a separate hangar for the Ghost's Attack Shuttle, therefore you can simply cut the lid and flaps from its hangar and glue it into the Ghost hangar as shown below. The hangar even has enough room to host the awkward peg, that's simply too big to fit into a standard GearBox.

There's really nothing special in terms of handling about the wave 9 hangars, they are pretty straight forward. The Lancer-Class can be put into the hangar in two orientations, the box is practically square sized.

I've updated the main MicroHangar files to v9.0, they now include everything up to wave 9. Additionally, I've added a "v9.0add" version which only contains the new hangars. This way you don't have to download everything else again.

PNG archives are available, as well, and of course even though the preview picture shows german hangars, there's an english version, too.

The wave 10 hangars are pretty straight forward. The reinforcement sheets for the Upsilon Class Shuttle are optional, as always. Nothing more to say, really. Move along...

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That's easy, it's the most cheap and space efficient way to store your ships. No need to invest in plano cases, battle foam or other fancy but expensive storage solutions, all you need is a printer and some cardstock. The MicroHangars are basically cardboard tuckboxes, measured to give the ships a tight fit to protect them.

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x-wing miniatures game token organization

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How to Organize Tokens from the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game? Token Storage

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How do you organize your Star Wars X-wing Miniature game tokens? I do my best to answer that question with this video today. I offer 4 storage solutions for you X-Wing Tokens.

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For Christmas, I was given the miniatures wargame, Star Wars X-Wing. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's a fairly straight-forward tabletop spaceship dogfight game where you field these gorgeously detailed and pre-painted models of the ships from the Star Wars universe. You can choose different pilots, with different flying skill, and select from various weapons and other upgrades. The game is amazingly well-designed and plays very cinematically. And with all of the potential ships you can collect and the various pilot, upgrade, and modification cards, the game can quickly get very involved and seductive. I'm completely hooked (and I am not even a huge Star Wars geek).

Papercraft laser turrets from YouTuber "Crusin' Central."

This article is about my research into the "maker" side of X-Wing, but it was inspired by a revelation I had while doing this research. I've been a devout gamer (wargames, RPGs, miniatures) since I was a teen. But given the fact that I suck at math, that I'm dyslexic, and that I have a hard time with memorization and logic, these kinds of very eggheaded games have always seemed like a strange fit for me. It's taken me until now to realize that it's always been the maker side of gaming that's been its unwavering draw. I've always loved building the armies, painting and customizing the models, building my own terrain, fleshing out parts of the game universe that don't yet exist as products (known as "gaming in the gaps"). It seems completely obvious now, but it'd never occurred to me that this is the fundamental reason why I game. I'm not drawn to a game for what's there as much as I am for what I'm going to put there, that I'm going to add to that fantasy world.

One of the amazing re-paints from Alternative Wargamer.

So, that brings me to my new obsession, X-Wing. One of the first things I did after I'd played my first few games was to start looking up what gamers were doing to add to and improve the game. I found a ton of stuff, an active maker community within this gaming community, who were re-painting and scratch-building models, building their own starfield playmats and asteroid fields, 3D printing gaming accessories and storage boxes, and much more. Here are just a few of the things I've found that I plan on exploring more of as I travel deeper into the busy and dangerous spacelanes of the Star Wars X-Wing universe.

Making Your Own Asteroids and Other Terrain

3DP Accessories

The X-Wing starter game and upgrade packs come with a lot of stat cards, damage cards, upgrade cards, tokens, and cool little navigation dials for plotting the course of your squadron. All of this stuff quickly becomes unruly and begs for some system of organization. 3D printing to the rescue! Thingiverse has a bunch of boxes, holders, trays, and stands to organize all of your game components, both for storage and for easy access during gameplay. The above boxes are for storing all of the various cards used in the game. The files are located here.

This token holder is the first thing I plan to print for my games. Right now, all of the tokens get scattered around the edges of gaming area during play (and end up on the floor).

Model, Card, and Gear Boxes

To store all of the models as well as the cards and model stands, players have taken to making their own Styrofoam-padded model cases, some of them quite elaborate. One easy and cheap solution is to use custom "tuckboxes." At Sir Willi's Workshop you can download a lovely set of box templates for storing your ships, ship accessories, and the various game cards. I've been making some of these, and while cutting, folding, and gluing them is rather time consuming, I couldn't be happier with the results.

Repainting the Minis

X-Wing is repainting the ships. All miniature painting can be a real challenge, but these spaceships are tiny. It's amazing to see people painting panel lines, insignia, and outfitting their models in completely different color schemes. Personally, I'm in awe of how well-painted the models are right out of the box and I see few repaint jobs that I think have improved on the original, but to each his or her own. The above video features one of the better X-Wing painters creating a really cool effect of a TIE ship in the midst of de-cloaking.

Adding Lights to Models

For those of us too lazy to wire up lights, one player created stickers of engine burns for the various ships in the game that you can print out and apply.

While I know this game is rather niche and might only appeal to a segment of the Make: readership, I think there's a larger point here about such deep niche making. It seems as though, these days, any game, hobby, craft, or workshop activity, house project, nearly anything you can think of, has a community of makers within the larger community of that activity. It's really inspiring to me to get a commercial product like this and to quickly find an extensive community of enthusiasts who are creating all sorts of documented projects and non-commercial products to expand, improve, and hack that product. Go ahead and try it out yourself. Put "DIY" in front of a Google search for whatever new game, pastime, product, tool, or activity you're currently enamored with and see what you get.

[Thanks to Ken Cho and the folks at DMV Squad Leaders, one of my local X-Wing groups, for their input on this article.]

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DIY Star Wars X-Wing and the Joys of Niche Making | Make:

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For Christmas, I was given the miniatures wargame, Star Wars X-Wing. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's a fairly straight-forward tabletop spaceship dogfight game where you field these gorgeously detailed and pre-painted models of the ships from the Star Wars universe.

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Her Universe is a groundbreaking fangirl fashion company and lifestyle brand founded by actress and entrepreneur Ashley Eckstein, whose mission is to create stylish, fashion-forward merchandise for female sci-fi fans.

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Copyright © 2017 . Todos os direitos reservados. Tema: ColorMag por ThemeGrill . Powered by .

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MathWing: Comprehensive ship jousting values and more

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IntroductionThis is a mathematical approach to determine the brute force "jousting value" and total fair point value of every pilot in the game, and is an e...

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Good day, pilots. I wish to express thanks for your patience. These last few weeks have been busy as I've been getting ready for school. I am also dedicating more writing towards editing as I am working on possibly making a Poor Grey Pilot book. So we'll see how that goes, wish me luck.

In today's article, I want to cover the game stages of X-wing Miniatures. I am not referring to phases of each round, but rather the stages a game of X-wing goes through, start to finish. While I'm not the sole proprietor of X-wing terminology, I have yet to find an FFG guide that states official stage names. So please allow me creative license to explain this topic. I do not wish for my terminology to become canon, only for my thoughts to be properly understood.
There are five main stages of an X-wing match: Pre, Early, Mid, Late, and Post. In this analysis we will break down the stages, find out what they contain, and look at which upgrades are strong in each.

While not part of the actual match, the pregame stage is nonetheless important. X-wing Miniatures isn't a game of pickup basketball. Before you break out the playmat, I hope you've taken the time to find or create a squad based on your likes. Squad creation is the first part of every game. When playing competitively, research the meta game and plan appropriate counters to what most people fly.

Then comes the (not so) secret of the Pregame: practice! It can be an alluring to think you know your squad well enough, but if there is one thing I've seen the top level players do, it's beat their squads to death with practice! Know your ships inside and out. That way, you won't forget ability time windows and won't self-bump.

The final parts of the pregame are when you meet your opponent and see their list. You want to understand the cards your opponent brings and hopefully glean their overall strategy. The pregame finishes when you roll for initiative. Remember to fly causal.

Early game - Set Up & Jockeying

A mistake newer players make is misinterpreting when an X-wing game has truly "started". It's easy to think that it begins when you enter combat. After all, that is where the excitement resides! However, this mindset places no value on all the things before that moment. The game has truly started the moment the first asteroid is placed. If you haven't put thought into this part of the game, then you're already at a disadvantage. Instead, have a plan for game set up and make adjustments as needed, giving you the chance for better board positioning.

We start with obstacle placement. Part of your pregame was picking your obstacles and obstacle deployment plan. Learn which obstacle deployments favor you and hurt your opponent. Then you set up ships. Here, you construct ship formations and mentally plot out initial vectors across the board.

However, initial placement isn't as important as the next part of the early game: jockeying for position. Select your maneuvers and the mental battle is on! You must walk a fine line of guessing correctly what your opponent will do while not giving away hints of your strategy. It is common in the first few rounds for squads to move out cautiously, allowing more time to get an idea of enemy movement. Remember to keep your formations tight and don't self-bump.

There are also several strategies for the early game. The first is stalling. Ships with 1 forward maneuvers and barrel rolls excel at this. Stalling helps you keep good positions, forcing enemies to come to you. Another tactic is Fortressing, where run ships headfirst into each other to prevent movement. This sacrifices your action economy but there is good chance you won't need it that early.

Stalling also allowing you to charge upgrade batteries. A battery is an ability that stockpiles actions for later use. This can be Kyle in the Moldy Crow or Dengar with his Gonk Droid. It can even be Keyan Farlander with the Hera crew. The longer you can stall in the early game, the bigger your battery can get. Once things get crazy in combat, you won't have as many chances to charge.

Another strong early game upgrade is mines. Bomber ships like K-wings and Punishers are mobile enough to traverse the map before combat, allowing you to lay mines and optimize board position for your squad. A well-placed mine forces enemies into less-favorable positions.

Midgame - The Alpha Strike & The Joust

The early game immediately ends when you enter combat range, the point of no return. Jockeying is over and now action economy and dice take control of the game. The first part of the midgame is the alpha strike, defined as the initial pass the sides will make.

There are 3 main things that determine alpha strike strength: positioning, formation, and action economy. The first two are determined by the early game. If you out-guessed your opponent movement, then you will be in good firing position. If you didn't bump your own ships, or asteroids, then you will still have good formation, allowing you to reduce your squad's size while centralizing its firepower. (Exceptions are large-based and Scum ships, which dislike flying in formation). Enough of the alpha strike is affected by the early game that it can cause a snowballing effect. If your opponent lost the early game, then they can easily lose the midgame and spiral quickly to defeat.

However, one aspect of the alpha strike that is determined right then: action economy. The ability to modify dice removes some bad luck from the game and makes ship performance more consistent, hence why midgame action-economy upgrades are powerful. Cards like Push the Limit and Experimental Interface give you the dice modification needed to keep ships alive. Certain pilots, like Howlrunner and Biggs, are influential because of their ability to shape the alpha strike.

The next part of the midgame is the joust stage. When the alpha strike ends, all good planning goes to mush. Your starships dance in circles, continuously closing in for the kill. However, don't think that the joust is only for jousting-class ships. These ships are called Jousters because they excel during this stage, but all ship classes take part in the joust. Arc-Dodgers and Bombers cut tight circles and rely heavily on movement actions for positioning. Jousters love K-turns, S-loops, and T-rolls to keep enemies in sight. Turrets fly on wide, sweeping vectors to remain evasive while firing outside of arc. Support ships fly on easily-predicted patterns based off the parameters of their abilities. Concentrated firepower is much harder to achieve during the joust and players must coordinate what's left of their squad.

One more aspect of jousting that requires attention: blocking. Positioning and dice modification are crucial at this stage of the game, meaning it is devastating to have a ship blocked and action-less. Here, low-skilled pilots shine if you can get them in the correct places to block enemy ships.

There are many upgrades to chose for the midgame. I've already mentioned action economy, but other strong abilities include ones that shirk damage, such as Determination, the R7 Astromech, and the Sensor Jammer. Or, perhaps you like guaranteed results with Palpatine, Feedback Array, and Autothrusters. There are plenty of others, so be sure to explore!

Late Game - Mop Up & Chases

It is best to look at the early, mid, and late games as best 2 out of 3. If you beat your opponent in the early and mid then you shouldn't have trouble cleaning the board in the late game. Vice versa, if you lost the first two stages. But the late stage can also be a tie breaker if neither player has gained the advantage.

Here is where we find another mistake that new players make: how long a game of X-wing will last. Players sometimes think that games will have epic dogfights over large sections of the map. While this happens in some games, most games have jousts that burn out quickly and occur over one small spot of the map. This shortness makes set up and the alpha strike that much more important.

I call the late game the mop up stage because one of two things happen: either the joust finishes with one player eliminated, or else the losing side breaks off and flees. Either way the winner is clearly established.

The length of the late game depends on whether the match is casual or competitive. When I play casually, I try to be considerate of my opponent's time. If a winner is clearly established, I am fine finishing. That way time is saved, meaning time for additional games!

But it is different for competitive. The chase stage is actually crucial because of the Margin of Victory. Put simply, the MoV is how many more squad points you destroyed than lost in all your games combined. While a win is a win in a tournament, there is a good chance players will tie in number of wins. Who breaks the tie is determined by the MoV, therefore each point matters. If you're in the joust stage and know you'll lose, it is wise to break. While you may not win the match, you can save some MoV points overall.

In regards to upgrades, I would advice that you double check yourself before investing in late game squad points. It's usually more beneficial to pick early or midgame upgrades and defeat your opponent there. That being said, there are some good late gmae upgrades that are worth looking at.

Health regeneration upgrades are very powerful in the late game. Cards like R2-D2, Salvaged Astromech, and the R5 Astromech reverse ship damage, giving you better squad strength while your enemy is crippled. However, this has the liability of drawing enemy attention. If your opponent can destory your ship in the midgame, then your squad points are wasted. Overcome this weakness by complementing your squad with a strong midgame ship, giving your opponent the tough choice of which ship to focus fire on during the midgame.

Another strong late game investment is pilot skill. When in formation during the early game, pilot skill only helps you kill enemies without return fire. But during the joust and chase stages, high PS lets you slip behind enemies and stay there. Arc-dodging ships excel at this and terrorize low PS ships with bad dials.

Postgame - Pack up and Analyze

No matter the outcome, its good sportsmanship to thank your opponent. Then, remember to determine the Margin of Victory.

These things should be obvious, but there is one part of the postgame that many people forget. After a match or tournament is over, it is beneficial to introspectively analyze your performance. Perhaps you like to discuss games with family and friends. For me, I love writing about my games. That way I capture the exciting memories and have a chance to reflect. (And, of course, I can share them online with you!)

No matter how its done, this analysis is where you grow the most. What went right or wrong with your squad build? With your action economy? With your ability to outmaneuver your opponent? Find answers to these questions and prepare better for the next match.

These are the five main stages of an X-wing game. I hope you learned a thing or two about the structure of X-wing Miniatures. With that knowledge, you can improve yourself, your gameplay, and your overall X-wing experience. Which stage of the game do you excel at? And are there any stages that I missed? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you for reading and best of luck fighting for the galaxy! Poor Grey Pilot out.

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The Poor Grey Pilot - An X-Wing Miniatures Commentary

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Good day, pilots. I wish to express thanks for your patience. These last few weeks have been busy as I've been getting ready for school. I am also dedicating more writing towards editing as I am working on possibly making a Poor Grey Pilot book. So we'll see how that goes, wish me luck.

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Welcome to the X-Wing Miniatures Wiki This wiki is a resource for the X-Wing Miniatures Game published by Fantasy Flight Games, devoted to discussion of builds and strategies with minimal lore. Featuring stunningly detailed and painted miniatures, X-Wing recreates exciting Star Wars space battles from small engagements of only a couple of crafts, to large conflicts where multiple squadrons clash.

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A couple friends recently started playing X-Wing miniatures, so I've put together here some links I've found useful and a few of my ideas toward constructing your first full squads beyond the introductory scenarios and ships in the core sets. This post is not a comprehensive guide to getting started in the game. As you might guess for a well designed Star Wars game featuring cool little models, there is A TON of blogs, forums, etc., out there. Searching around will quickly yield lots of good stuff, including many detailed beginner's tutorials. My intent here is just to provide links to a few tools and some ideas to keep in mind putting together your first standard 100pt dogfight squad, including an introduction to some very simple quantitative analysis supporting them.

Along the way I also develop a solid, quantitatively supported argument that my Bey's Bees squadron is very similar to but might work better for many fellow B-Wing aficionados than the frequently suggested BBBB and BBBBZ formulas.

Research

Many resources exist for looking up cards, but the X-Wing Wikia is my go-to. It has too many ads on mobile or without an ad blocker, but is otherwise very good. If you want to know what a card does, Google "x-wing [card name]," go to the Wikia link, and you'll get the details. It has info on every ship & card in the game, and many pages have extensive threads discussing how cards work as well as strategies for their use.

Fab's Squadron Generator has a page that I personally find unfortunately hard to read for the details (hover over the card names for info), but it is a good visual overview of every product in the game.

For every expansion that comes out, Fantasy Flight publishes a preview article that generally does a good job explaining the main features of that ship or set, the new capabilities it brings, and why they're interesting. So looking back through these archives can help understand what role particular ships are supposed to have. You can find these linked from the product pages on their site. If you search for "Fantasy Flight Turn Zero," they've also published several good articles by a 3-time world champion covering some fundamental ideas of basic tactics and strategies in the game.

Building

There are a whole bunch of online X-Wing squad building tools, making it faster & less error prone to construct and think about lists. I personally prefer Voidstate's app. It has a nice & attractive user interface, presents all the ship & card details nicely, and includes useful tools to track your collection and highlight the ships & upgrades you already own when making choices. One clear downside though is that it's not usable on phones; the mobile-compatible version only supports browsing previously made lists. If that matters to you, many other options can be found by Googling around. I'm not personally a huge fan of it-though it's certainly functional-but the app by geordanr is the squad builder I probably see linked most often in discussions on Reddit.

Design

My battle report from my local shop's tournament this past August talks a bunch about my usual personal approach to designing and evaluating squadrons that I intend to be somewhat more competition-oriented (though my focus even then is flying what I will enjoy rather than purely what I think will win the most). The battle report from my first tournament, last holiday season, also talks a bit about list design for beginners as well as being a bit of an introduction to what a tournament is like.

I place a lot of emphasis in squad design on simplicity and robustness, which I argue is a good mindset for many beginners, following a simple 4 point rubric:

Durability: Does the squad have a bunch of shields & hull points so you don't have to fly perfect and never get tagged? High agility (green numbers/dice) can take the place of that to a large extent, but is of course more of a gamble on the dice rolls. In contrast to both, a different paradigm is to simply not get attacked in the first place. Beyond just good flying, squads can be built to offer more maneuvering options and emphasize tactics like "arc dodging" out of the way of incoming fire. This approach is very viable, but takes more practice & flying skill. Another common style is regenerating damage, e.g., using R2-D2. This also though can require effectively using various abilities and flying in certain styles. Especially for beginner flying, sometimes it's just nice to have a lot of hull points that you can count on without requiring specific actions or maneuvering.

Firepower: Does the squad have a bucketful of straightforward shooting from high attack stats (red numbers/dice)? Many effective squads use upgrades and special actions to add attack dice. Another approach is to maximize the reliability of your shots, as opposed to simply taking more shots-two guaranteed hits is better than three possible hits. But both of those approaches tend to eat into your squad points and usually require more skill to enact the appropriate actions at the best times or steer the game toward optimal conditions for your effects. There's something to be said for just having a bunch of baseline attacks.

Ships: Does the squad have enough ships to have options and robustness, but not so many as to need fancy precision flying in formation? This basically means having 3 or 4 ships. There are many very powerful 2-ship squads out there, and some I would consider possibly appropriate for beginners by their simplicity. But generally speaking, more ships gives you more options, and provides some tolerance to not getting them all on target at once or even losing a ship or two. More ships also generally means simpler ships, whereas 2-ship builds are often kitted out with suites of complex capabilities and effects. That said, at the opposite end of the spectrum, at six ships or more you're usually looking at a swarm of relatively weak ships that need to fly in a coordinated fashion and often must hit the same target all at once to be successful. That requires more skill, and successful flying in tight formation takes substantial practice. Stepping down from that, five ships might be workable if they don't all need to fly very closely. With three or four though they can definitely fly reasonably close enough to support each other, but loose enough to not require skills like judging template distances and angles with high precision, and lots of formation flying experience.

One Trick: Does the squad have a single, simple special ability to augment the squadron's basic durability and firepower? If your squad relies on utilizing a whole bunch of different actions and special effects, then there will be a lot simply to remember to use, let alone be able to use well and synergistically. So minimizing the number of tricks needed to make your squad work well reduces the opportunities to make basic mistakes or play suboptimally. Note that this is not as straightforward as just having one special attack or something like that. The core goal here is minimizing the conscious decisions you need to make, and especially the activation actions you need to take. Purely reactive effects or always-on buffs entail less cognitive load and fewer special trigger conditions, so you can discount them a little bit in terms of gauging the complexity of your list. A good example is my August list: The "one trick" is simply that the HWK-290 flies around near the B-Wing formation handing out a focus token at the start of each combat. But that one very simple idea is constructed via a loadout of 4 specific cards to build a focus pool, share it, and let the HWK itself draw on that pool to shoot better (as opposed to, say, also needing target locks to use its secondary).

Clearly this rubric is just one way to think about squad design, and it tends to encourage specific kinds of builds (more on one of those archetypes follows below). Many other approaches are certainly viable and perhaps even better. But I think this is a good, simple framework for beginners setting about constructing their first lists. Too many people get hooked too early on developing overly elaborate lists leveraging many special rules that ultimately wind up being overwhelming for them to actually execute well, prove too brittle once actual enemy contact is made, and so on.

Acquisition

For whatever they're worth, the following are thoughts on growing from a Force Awakens (blue) core set to some very initial 100pt standard dogfighting lists. They follow the squad design philosophy above and keep the monetary investment low until you know what faction, tactical style, etc. you want to focus on. I don't assert that these are super "competitive" lists, but I think they'll perform credibly enough for casual gaming, and should be fun to fly while you learn various mechanics and figure out which aspects of the game you like most and are your strengths & weaknesses.

Rebels

To fly for the treacherous Resistance/Rebellion, again starting from a Force Awakens (blue) core set, I would grab a Heroes of the Resistance expansion first. That is, if you can find one. It just came out recently, sold out almost immediately in most locations, and may not be restocked by many retailers for some time. Don't buy any of the offerings on eBay, Amazon, etc., marked up to $55 or even $60+; it's a $40 set. If you can grab one though, in it is a YT-1300 (the Millenium Falcon), a T-70 X-Wing (in Poe Dameron's colors), and a slew of pilots and upgrades so that you can play around with various special rules. Two X-Wings and a YT-1300 are a reasonable starting squad with solid durability, firepower, and simplicity, so this is a good cost effective option.

If you can't wait until the Heroes set becomes more easily available again, it would not be crazy to instead buy a second Force Awakens core set. Frequently on sale for $24 or less, that's pretty reasonable for another X-Wing and additional dice (it will be frequently convenient to have more than 3). Separately those alone cost $23, but the core set also gets you two more TIE/fo Fighters and a spare set of templates and cards. To the two X-Wings you can then add an original trilogy YT-1300/Millenium Falcon, which is now discounted in many places because of the Heroes box and its new trilogy update. The pilots and upgrades in the older expansion though are still useful and have their place in the game alongside the Force Awakens stars. A starter list I'd consider is:

The "one trick" here is that Chewbacca takes critical hits merely as facedown damage and has a good amount of shields and hull, so he can relatively safely use Draw Their Fire to absorb critical hits on the X-Wings that might otherwise kill or cripple them. Alternatively, if you find yourself not using that ability much, you can go even simpler by swapping out Draw Their Fire for Veteran Instincts, which will enable Chewie to shoot before mid-skill pilots, though still not before any true aces.

Either way, the real core element of this list is simply that all 3 ships are fairly fast & maneuverable due to their solid dials combined with boost actions. The YT-1300 especially is super maneuverable with its 1-hard turns and very fast due to being a large ship (the larger base means they necessarily move faster for any given template length). It has a strong weapon mounted as a turret so you don't have to chase targets into arc, and then Gunner makes it fairly reliable. Gunner is not included in the core or YT-1300 box, but earlier in 2016 a version of it with alternate artwork was featured as a top half/participation prize in FFG's official tournament packs, as well as coming in two popular sets (Slave-1/Firespray 31 and YT-2400), so many people have multiples of it and will be more than happy to just give a new player one of their copies.

An alternative would be two X-Wings and a Y T-2400, which is similar to the Falcon but has some unique, strong pilots, such as Dash Rendar who is quite popular for his ability to ignore obstacles (asteroids and debris fields) during his activation (moving & action).

Imperials

On the honorable First Order/Imperial side, I would pick up another TIE/fo Fighter from the blister pack or, more efficiently, a second core set on sale, and then a VT-49 Decimator. Then you could run a starter list like:

You might notice a pattern at this point. Large ships like the YT-1300 (the Falcon) and VT-49 Decimator tend to be durable, pack some firepower, often have a built-in turret so you don't have to worry about your firing arc, and productively consume a fair amount of squad points such that the list stays simple. One large ship anchoring the squad in either an aggressive or a support role and several small ships escorting it is thus a primary squad archetype entailed by the durability & simplicity rubric above.

In this specific list, the Kenkirk pilot and Isard crew are both attempting to mitigate the major vulnerability of the Decimator: It has no baseline agility, every hit does damage.

The "one trick" though is that the TIE/fo Fighters can make their K-turn and S-loop red moves with relative impunity, provided they stick in reasonably close but not too tight proximity and the Decimator supports them nearby. Its turret weapon makes that easier by obviating the large ship's need to fly in perfect lockstep.

The trick works as follows. The Epsilon Squadron Pilots activate first, making red moves and thus taking stress and losing their actions. Kenkirk and Epsilon Leader are both pilot skill 6 so it's your choice which order they activate; it doesn't matter in general for this trick so it's up to tactical contingencies like making ranges work or having a clear path. Say Epsilon Leader goes first and also makes a red move and thus takes a stress and loses its action. Now Kenkirk activates. The Decimator moves and then uses the Fleet Officer's action to give two of the TIE/fo Fighters a focus token in return for taking a stress itself. Those focus tokens though will go a long way to negating the TIEs' penalty for having made a red move and losing their own actions.

Then, at the start of combat, Epsilon Leader clears the stress of every nearby friendly ship. Note that this includes itself, as the card doesn't restrict the effect to "other" ships at Range 1 (this is a well understood and FAQ'd card text convention). So, if each ship has stayed in reasonable proximity then all of the TIEs made a red maneuver, two of them still have focus tokens anyway, and nobody has stress that would limit their maneuvers next turn. Interactions among a couple cards have created a useful support buff for the whole squad that doesn't require a ton of skill to apply, just flying in loose proximity and using Fleet Officer, enabling the attack ships to K-turn and S-loop back and forth strafing a hapless opponent. At least, so goes the theory!

Instead of the Decimator, a more traditional and nostalgic ship filling a similar large ship role would be the Slave-1/Firespray 31. That's a valid option, but I think the Decimator is a better bet for beginners. The Firespray doesn't have a primary turret, just front+rear arcs, so it takes a little more skill to bring to bear. More importantly though, the box set doesn't include a way for it to buff other ships and thus fill a support role amplifying the entire squad like the Fleet Officer that comes in the Decimator box does (N.B. that cards aren't limited to the ship they came with, so this is just a concern about efficient purchasing rather than an inability to put the F.O or other cards on the Slave-1 at all). Buffing several ships is usually a better bet than simple attacks in terms of efficiency in effect versus points.

Somewhat similarly, the Lambda Shuttle is a classic Star Wars ship, beautiful model, and there are many powerful squads built around it. But its very limited maneuver dial tends to require more skill to fly well, and most popular lists using it are built around other more exotic ships and cards, most notably Emperor Palpatine, who only comes in the Imperial Raider huge ship for "epic," an official X-Wing variant for large battles.

Alternatively, and perhaps cheapest given that they're often on sale, you could pick up a second Force Awakens core set and fly four TIE/fo Fighters with various pilots and upgrades. The big downside as a new pilot is that to be effective it would place even more emphasis on coordinated flying, and on utilizing several different special abilities. Not insurmountably complex, but more so than a "big ship turret" squad.

Another possibility would be to pick up another TIE/fo Fighter from either the blister or core set and then the new-ish Imperial Veterans box. You could then run a group of three or four TIE/fo Fighters supported by either a TIE Defender or TIE Bomber. Note that the Imperial Veterans box contains several cards for the latter ships that make them more powerful or efficient than those ships are in their individual blisters. If you kept the TIE/fo group fairly simple then this might still be a manageable level of complexity for a new pilot, with the "one trick" being the Defender's maneuvering tricks or the Bomber's munitions. I'm not convinced this would be a particularly durable list, but the Imperial Veterans set and especially the Defender pilots and titles therein are the basis of a number of competitive Imperial lists you could consider later on.

Analysis

After writing all of the above, I started to think about simple concrete measures of durability and firepower to quantify those aspects of my rubric and make them more objective. Off the cuff, the measure and metric I settled on was that a combined total of 22 hull points and shields across a squad probably reflected a threshold for what I would consider "durable," and 10 total attacks the threshold for high baseline firepower. Total agility is more complicated to factor into durability, but also worth keeping in mind in evaluating the expected basic longevity of a squadron.

So then I calculated the numbers for the lists here and a couple others:

This sampling lines up with and confirms my off-the-cuff threshold estimates: At 22 hull+shields a squad is about halfway between durable lists able to just absorb a lot of damage, and squads that rely on other techniques such as avoiding or regenerating damage. Meanwhile, 10 attacks is just above where many squads fall and thus could be considered the start of heavy baseline firepower.

At first glance the data also seems to yield a threshold number for high defense, which is a kind of durability, at 6 agility. That's useful, however, as agility is about individual ships being attacked rather than how much damage the squad as a whole can absorb or put out, I think it's important to normalize for the number of ships. That gives us a simple computed measure, agility divided by ship count, i.e., average agility. Those numbers are naturally much closer, but there's a clear metric that confirms intuition: Having 3 agility per ship is good, 2 is average, and 1 is inferior for built-in defense.

Overall I think these are some very simple but useful quantitative measures and metrics to consider in evaluating potential lists. The table also supports the squad design rubric above as a guide to building a kind of list that I think is beginner friendly and should be credible, though not necessarily super powerful.

Net Lists

For example, these simple measures and metrics make it obvious that the widely dominant Dengaroo list variations (2x Jumpmasters) are not succeeding on their baseline stats: They're at or near the bottom in each stat. Clearly the roughly dozen cards building common versions of that 2-ship squad and the emergent effects between them are what makes it powerful. Between the presumably more advanced flying required to execute those combos and synergies well, and the basic fact that the squad only has two ships, I'd be inclined to believe that it is not beginner friendly. Similar but less extreme goes for the Omicron+Soontir+Inquisitor setup that won this year's US Nationals; simple baseline stats aren't what carried the day there.

Next we see some quantification of why TIE swarms have traditionally been so strong, they're at or near the top across all stats. Notably, with 6x ships they're meeting or near my durability criteria on pure hull points, and then also have high agility. The number of baseline shots that could be theoretically applied is also very good. However, that's the rub: With so many ships it's difficult to bring them all to bear and in general to fly effectively, so these are not ideal first lists despite their innate strengths.

On the flip side, we see quantified evidence here of one reason why 3x X-Wings of either generation or of the closely similar E-Wing and Z-95 are not super popular: They're lacking across the board on these baseline stats. So for the squad to work the pilots or upgrades must be pretty good, and that's what we see on the tabletop. Comparatively few X-Wing pilots from the large pool of them see much serious play, and usually combined with other ship types, such as Biggs flying escort. Again, we're focused here on beginner lists that are comparatively simple to design and fly effectively. So this is not to say that the several kinds of common Rebel regeneration lists are not strong. But their middling baseline stats, visible here as the white band across the table, indicates that they may be more challenging for less experienced pilots as they put more emphasis on special effects and flying skill.

Looking at a final pair of existing popular lists, it's clear why the BBBB and BBBBZ squads work: They have great durability with very high hull point+shield counts, and they pack a wallop to match through very high native firepower. The big red flag from these stats though is that the BBBBZ list might be a bit unwieldy for less experienced players who might find it tough to use all five ships optimally and recoup their points. That said, both are fairly simple lists that use few (BBBB) or no (BBBBZ) special effects. They're well in line with the durability, firepower, and simplicity rubric proposed here.

Evaluation

These simple measures and threshold metrics seem to match up well against this sampling of squads and intuitions about what makes them work. We can therefore use them to help evaluate in a simple but quantified way how well my personal lists and the initial beginner lists I recommend above meet my squad design rubric.

Chewie

As expected, my early YT-1300 + 2x Y-Wings list shows a strong focus on basic durability. Attacks are a bit low, but that belies the upgrades: Each Y-Wing has a Twin Laser Turret secondary, giving them reliably better expected damage than the baseline.

Bees

My later 3x B-Wings formation + HWK-290 support shows similar durability (and a hull upgrade is not included here) as well as solid raw firepower.

More recently I've swapped focus passing from the HWK-290 for shared target locks and stress removal from an ARC-170 flight leader in Bey's Bees, my current main list:

That list is very durabile, 33 hull points & shields is a lot to chew through even though agility is inferior. Baseline firepower is also very good, especially once you factor in that the 0pt Alliance Overhaul title upgrades the ARC-170 to 3 attack dice in the front arc, raising the squadron to 12. Both measures are thus well above the target numbers.

In fact, those stats are very similar to or in some places better than the popular BBBB and BBBBZ lists, which are ubiquitously cited online as the go-to squads for effective B-Wings. That says the Bey's Bees list is essentially a drop-in replacement in terms of basic durability and firepower. From there you get into a more complicated discussion. The Bey's Beys formulation brings one pilot with 3 red dice at a much higher pilot skill, 2x target locks sharing, some squad stress removal, an extra hull point versus BBBB, an astromech shielding one ship from high damage, and some auxiliary rear arc protection and flexibility. Is that better than Fire Control Systems, Advanced Sensors, and variations of one 2pt upgrade in the BBBB setup? I think it's at least comparable.

In comparing to BBBBZ the tradeoffs are more clear. The latter has a good bit more hull points+shields. But a primary limitation of the B-Wings is that they can make really good initial contact runs, but then their red 1-hards and Ks make it tough for them to leverage their high firepower and shoot effectively as a close fought dogfight continues. BBBBZ doesn't have any mechanism mitigating that, whereas the supporting ARC-170 brings some measure of that plus similar firepower. The latter's rear arc shooting also supplies some of the capabilities that extra Z-95 brings, somewhat protecting the rear of the formation as it maneuvers. Further, that extra Z-95 is a relatively easy giveaway in tournament settings where every point lost matters. Most importantly though, I think many players will have more trouble flying the five ships optimally, so packing similar capabilities into four ships is a good idea.

Long story short, I'm not saying that my Bey's Bees list is definitely "better" than BBBB and BBBBZ. But there is a solid argument following the rubric and supported by the metrics presented here that it's at least very comparable and might work better for many people. That's an exciting outcome for a squad that started by just saying "I want to fly my favorite Star Wars ships, how can I make them work?" It also matches up with my local experience, where among a reasonable number of opponents it's only been defeated by experienced players fielding triple Defenders and Manaroo HLC Scyk Mindlink. If you like B-Wings and ARC-170s, you should give it a try.

Beginners

Finally, we can use the metrics to look objectively at my two beginner recommendations. First of all, both are within the squad size band. Durability at 25 hull points and shields is good on the Rebel YT-1300 list, and very good on the Imperial Decimator list at 28. The latter as a bonus also has above average agility, and the YT-1300 list is also just a bit better than inferior on defense. Firepower on both at 9 dice is just below my heavy firepower target but not unreasonably so, especially when you account for a third of that shooting being from turrets.

Combined with having comparatively straightforward but useful special effects, these numbers support my suggestion that these lists meet my durability, firepower, and simplicity rubric and are credible squads for beginners to start off with. They're not necessarily competitive, certainly not "net lists" with which to go auto-win a tournament. But they're robust enough to keep you in the game against more experienced opponents and to put out some damage of your own. They're dollars-efficient ways to field solid 100pt lists that will perform well in casual play, are fun to fly, and include several mechanics and game aspects that will be good to learn.

Conclusion

Beyond the particular list recommendations, I hope beginners take away from this discussion a specific, reasonable guide to constructing some initial lists for yourself. I also want to emphasize that thinking about such frameworks is itself a useful meta-strategy skill. Good squadrons aren't just random collections of neat abilities. They work toward a specific purpose and implement particular strategic design goals. My goals are usually based around basic durability, firepower, and simplicity. There are innumerable other viable overarching approaches, but as you learn you should try to explicitly identify which ones interest you and seem powerful, and consciously work toward executing them. In addition, I hope other B-Wing fans give the Bey's Bees squadron a try and let me know how it goes. Good luck to all!

Addendum

Update: Just saw a post about a squad that won the recent Austin regionals. It's notable in this discussion because it's like a Scum melding of Bey's Bees, BBBB, and BBBBZ, and seems very powerful:

For those unfamiliar, the G-1A Starfighter ( Mist Hunter) is essentially a Scum B-Wing. They have extremely similar stats and dials. So this squad is clocking in at 4 ships, 28 hull points + shields, 5 agility/1.2 average agility, 11 firepower. Stat-wise this is firmly in line with the kinds of lists I've been talking about here. The special effects are also similar to the B-Wing lists discussed. Of course the two Fire Control Systems is the core of BBBB, and the Z-95 echoes BBBBZ but although really only superficially.

The "one trick" though is generating and sharing focus and evade tokens, similar to my HWK-290 and ARC-170 supported lists. When any ship with Attanni Mindlink receives a focus or stress token, all the mindlinked ships also get a token if they don't have one. Leeachos can steal focus and evade tokens from friendly ships. He does not himself have an evade action, but the G-1As do. So, e.g., the Findsmans can all evade and get those tokens for themselves while Leeachos focuses and through the Mindlink generates those tokens as well for all of the G-1As. If necessary he can then also steal an evade from one of them. Alternatively, one ship can generate focus for everybody with an action through the mindlink, and then they all also take focus actions and thus wind up with two focus tokens. Leeachos could even wind up with 3 focus tokens if he additionally stole one, though that seems only very situationally useful. Meanwhile the two G-1As with Fire Control Systems are also automatically maintaining target locks for free every time they make an attack. So this is a durable, high firepower squad with a fairly straightforward "trick" and couple simple buffs that wind up continually refreshing the squad with a slew of tokens to modify their shots and amplify that durability and firepower with a lot of reliable shooting and bolstered defense.

A little while ago I considered working on a Scum version of my B-Wing lists because I like the G-1A model, but I did not and this list has beaten me to the punch. Neat stuff!

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X-Wing Squad Building for Beginners, and Better B-Wings

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A couple friends recently started playing X-Wing miniatures, so I've put together here some links I've found useful and a few of my ideas toward constructing your first full squads beyond the introductory scenarios and ships in the core sets. This post is not a comprehensive guide to getting started in the game.

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Wargaming Blog focusing on X-wing and Age of Sigmar.

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This blog is meant to be a resource for players of the X-Wing miniatures game, one that is regularly updated with articles about how to improve your technical and strategic X-Wing play. News about the...

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TheMetalBikini.com- X-Wing Miniatures and more

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Strategies, analysis, and more for Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures straight from the hippest pilot bar in the galaxy, TheMetalBikini.com.

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Usual links X-Wing guide to installing and playing: http://s93768914.onlinehome.us/xwing/ Module download page: http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Star_Wars:_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game Tip jar: http://s93768914.onlinehome.us/pub2/500release/index.html Cliffsnotes- the patch notes say it all @Mu0n: New cards: IG-RM Thug Droids (team) C-ROC aft and fore decks are now included as spawnable decks C-ROC maneuver reference card New graphics: Assembled the C-ROC ship graphic and defined its actions C-ROC dial mask [...]

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Well, that was a hell of a weekend, wasn't it? As everyone digests just what the hell happened at the World Championships of X-Wing 2017 I wanted to chip in my two cents, with something good, something bad, and something ugly...

Tel Trevura, Autoblaster Turret on Miranda, Braylen Stramm, a HWK-290... there's a lot to like in the squads that made it to the Top 4 of Worlds this past weekend (even if that HWK was equipped with Attani Mindlink and Twin Laser Turret). Huge props to all four of those guys for making it to the sharp end of the World Championships with squads that weren't established tournament staples, in particular Nand Torf's bonkers Autoblaster Turret version of Miranda Doni when everybody KNOWS you have to put Twin Laser Turret on Miranda.

In particular, though, I want to talk about the winning list in a bit more detail.

Dengar (Jumpmaster 5000) - Expertise, Punishing One, K4 Security Droid, Unhinged Astromech, Plasma Torpedoes, Extra Munitions, Guidance Chips (58)

Tel Trevura (Jumpmaster 5000) - Veteran Instincts, K4 Security Droid, Unhinged Astromech, Plasma Torpedoes, Extra Munitions, Guidance Chips (40)

Congratulations to Justin Phua on his win, and on playing a pretty much flawless Final match against Nand Torf's apparently immortal Biggs and Jess! There's a few things I want to say about this list, and the way Justin played it, so let's get started.

Dengar Wins Worlds Again??? I'm fine with that.

Jumpmasters are too good for their cost. You'll find almost nobody arguing against that statement these days. This list definitely works because of that fundamental cost-efficiency on the chassis, and I know that a lot of people in the community are extremely frustrated to see double Jumpmasters sitting on top of the pile for a second Worlds in a row (after Dengar/Manaroo won Worlds at the end of last year).

But if I can take a pause for thought for a second, I have to say that I don't actually mind this winning list at all, and it's certainly no Dengaroo. The actual plastic ships on the table may look the same but last year Nand Torfs won Worlds 2016 with a Dengar that was abusing two broken mechanics (that FFG fixed with the recent FAQ) as it had both Zuckuss and Manaroo's focus-passing as fundamental mechanics driving the list. Pairing Dengar and Manaroo may have been flavourful if you know the background of the two characters, but on the table Dengaroo was abusive and unpleasant.

Justin Phua's winning list has no such abusive mechanics, it just features Dengar getting right up in your face and giving you a mauling with pure offense, which to my mind is exactly what Dengar should be doing.

Is it probably better than it should be due to the fact they're Jumpmasters? Yes, probably, but without Deadeye, Zuckuss or Mindlink this is probably the closest we've had to a level playing field against Jumpmasters up to now.

Tel Trevura = Better Bossk

So I enjoyed a funny coincidence on Sunday. I had spent the day playing in my first proper tournament of the year, in which I lost the Final of our GNK tournament to local squadbuilding master Dan Sellen. Dan was flying Dengar/Bossk and the Dengar build he had was precisely the same as the one that Justin Phua used in Worlds (and tbh it wrecked me about as hard as it wrecked Nand Torfs, so I feel a bit better about losing to it).

When I got home from that tournament to watch the last games of Worlds and to see that same Dengar in action alongside Trevura I realised that although a lot of other internet commentators were dumbfounded by Tel Trevura's appearance I was perfectly placed to analyse why he was there.

Basically, Tel Trevura is simply Bossk 2.0, especially when that greedy Dengar build is sucking in 58pts of your list. A direct comparison between the Bossk build that Dan Sellen played against me and the Tel Trevura that Justin Phua had is really revealing.

Bossk (YV-666)- Adaptability, K4 Security Droid, Concussion Missiles*, Guidance Chips (42)

Tel Trevura (Jumpmaster 5000) - Veteran Instincts, K4 Security Droid, Unhinged Astromech, Plasma Torpedoes, Extra Munitions, Guidance Chips (40)

*Dan used Cluster Missiles, but for a cleaner comparison to Justin's Tel Trevura I've switched them for Concussion Missiles at the same cost.

It's certainly possible to build a version of Bossk that has a better comparison to Tel Trevura if you've got the points to really utilise those three crew slots, but that Bossk doesn't fit in alongside that superb Dengar build. If you've got close to 50pts to spend then Bossk is a decent call, but in the low 40s range Tel Trevura comfortably outperforms him for the simple reason that Tel Trevura is on a Jumpmaster and Bossk isn't.

The least popular Jumpmaster pilot is better than the best YV-666 pilot, point for point.

TBH what's most unusual is that nobody had this Tel Trevura build until now, because 40pts for a PS9 Jumpmaster with two torpedo shots seems crazy good value! I think you can expect to see this Tel Trevura build exported into other lists.

When I watched the Final the first time I was caught up in trying to work out who was going to win and who had the advantage, as it seemed to swing back and forth over the first couple of turns of firing. Watching it back a second time I was struck by just how powerful K4 Security Droid was, and how well Justin Phua used it by strategically bumping Dengar whenever possible.

We've recently had a nerf on an upgrade that worked whether you were stressed or bumped (the /x7 title for TIE Defenders) and I think the way Justin played his list illustrates once again just how powerful it is to be able to guarantee getting action economy regardless of where you put your ship. With K4 Security Droid and Expertise on board Dengar doesn't need any actions at all because his damage output is fully modified anyway so long as he made a green maneuver (and like 70% of his dial is green). Yes, Dengar loses his focus token on defense but by bumping he actually ensured that one of Nand's ships couldn't shoot at all, which is much better defense than a focus token!

I think I'm right in saying Jess Pava only fired twice all game, and so for large chunks of the Final Justin was effectively only playing against 70pts of ships!

That huge strategic edge from good play allowed him to succeed even though the dice were favouring his opponent. When I rewatched the Final it was because of a discussion I'd had about whether Nand's dice had been particularly hot or not, so I was watching it to compare how he performed against the expected result for each roll he got to make.

It turns out that the perception was correct and that by the second round of firing Nand was approximately 6 damage points ahead of where he should be given the dice that were exchanged. Primarily that had come from Tel Trevura taking a beating in the initial round of shooting, while his ships continually performed just ahead of average in damage taken. Nand's offense dice cooled a little in later turns but you can see just how much Biggs defied the green dice odds to hang on to be the last Rebel alive!

That Justin won the Final so comfortably despite the dice being weighted against him is primarily due to his good flying.

Bumping Jess with Dengar removed Jess as a factor in 50% of combat turns, which gave Justin the time to wear down Nand's better green dice.

Protecting Tel Trevura ensured that the additional damage Nand got from his red dice did not get converted into an advantage on the table.

That's how you win Worlds, and isn't it nice to have a winner where we can so clearly point to how player skill overcame bad variance?

I've spent a long time talking about what was Good from Worlds and I'm going to try and stay positive by saying relatively little about what was Bad.

The Top 4 lists were fantastic. The rest of the Top-16 cut looked very unhealthy, though, with virtually wall-to-wall Attani Mindlink scum - Jumpmasters, Shadow Casters and Protectorate Fighters in various combinations, all Mindlinked.

Jumpmasters are too good, but Mindlink is too good as well. When the FAQ nerfed Zuckuss, Palpatine, TIE/x7 and Manaroo my immediate response 'that's good, but it's not enough' and after Worlds I still hold that opinion.

Attani Mindlink needs something to pin it back, though it's not clear what that should be.

Twin Laser Turret needs a nerf that means it can't be the sole source of damage in your squad. Right now TLT is being held down by Attani Mindlinked Jumpmasters, but if that ever changed TLT would become a problem very rapidly. I'm concerned about the TIE Aggressor being an even more potent way of playing TLT.

Ordnance is very suppressive of smaller ships who can't withstand either a torpedo shot or set of Cluster Mines. It might just be Sabine Wren who needs a change. An argument I've read was that the agile arc-dodgers who should be able to beat super-jousters like Dengar aren't being played because they get murdered by bombs, and I think there's something to that theory.

The old way of thinking was that X-Wing had jousters, arc-dodgers and turrets, and that those three styles of play held each other in balance. But when you can't really play arc-dodgers and the best jousters also have turrets then it's hard to argue there's a great deal of diversity in the game experience.

Game balance is a difficult thing. The recent FAQ made things a lot better, but there's still work to do.

It's a good job I sped through 'The Bad' because this is going to take some time. 'Dialgate' in bullet points...

In round 3 of Day 1B of Worlds a player (Player A) was playing a game on stream when he was seen to be changing his dial (which is cheating) to avoid bumping into his own ships. As he was playing an Attani Mindlink list and needed to focus for his team this one incidence of cheating had major repercussions through the whole game, which Player A won.

The internet had already swung into action and word had reached the TOs at Worlds, who looked at the evidence and gave Player A a warning.

The internet went nuts that cheating in a manner that gave you such a big advantage would only be punished with a warning. It was pointed out that other players had been banned from the game for precisely this cheat.

The TOs released a statement that the ruling was based on the fact that Player A had not been 'maliciously' changing his dial.

The internet exploded that changing your dial to focus your team to get target locks to win the game was not 'malicious'.

After the game had ended and Player A had won the game, FFG reviewed their ruling and decided to punish him with a Game Loss which would be applied in the next round. The game loss that Player B had suffered when Player A had cheated would stand, while Player C would win the MOV lottery and get a 100-0 win in the next round.

The internet went thermo-nuclear. In amongst the majority of players expressing their unhappiness with this situation a minority decided to say some embarassingly stupid and offensive things with regards to Player A that are best left unrepeated. The situation reached boiling point when it became clear that Player A had made the cut into Day Two, and that Player B had not made the cut and was very unhappy with what had happened. This casserole of unpleasantness was left to simmer on the hob overnight.

The next morning FFG released a statement that they were talking to Player B to ensure that they could compensate him for how their handling of the original incident had affected his experience of Worlds.

Neither Player A nor Player C won Worlds, Player B is presumably happy with his weekend, and we had a great Top 16 and a fantastic final to crown Justin Phua the winner of Worlds 2017.

A lot of things went wrong in this chain of events, so what should have happened?

Player A shouldn't have cheated. The whole thing stops dead right at the moment where he realises he's screwed up and accepts his mistake. Winners don't use drugs.

The TO making the original ruling probably bungled the decision to hand out a warning. I wasn't there, I'm not that TO, I don't know for sure what information he had available. But what I struggle to see is a scenario where he was presented with enough evidence to be sure that Player A had changed his dial (so the TO had to intervene and give a ruling) that wasn't also enough evidence to convince him that this wasn't an accidental change of the dial and was 'malicious'.

There should have been no confusion about either what the penalty that Player A received was (a warning upgraded an hour later to a game loss), or what the penalty that he should receive was. If FFG's policy is that the 'standard' punishment for cheating in this way is a Game Loss then that should have been communicated, along with the ethos of why. The internet's reaction was due to a shock disconnect between what they expected to have happen and what did happen, which could have been avoided by adequate pre-communication.

Although the review to upgrade the warning to a Game Loss occurred too late to affect the pairings for the next round there needed to be way to ensure that Player B was given his win and a fair chance of making the cut. I don't know the ins and outs of how their tournament software works, but even if it just comes down to making a paper correction at the end of the day and manually adjusting his wins/MOV would have been better - far from perfect, but better.

The internet turned into a rabid hate mob of idiots egging each other on to worse and worse excesses. It got extremely ugly, and was probably by far the worst element of any of this. Shameful.

What went right? Well, actually quite a few things.

FFG reviewed their original warning. Whether this was their intention all along, or came under pressure from internet outrage I don't know, but they were prepared to review it. There's a reason we have video reviews in football, and it's because instant rulings aren't always right.

Player B was compensated for being the unwitting victim of both Player A's cheat and the inadequacies of FFG's tournament software. Hopefully Player B goes home feeling that his Worlds trip was worthwhile, even if it was tarnished somewhat by events.

Player A made the cut to Day Two. If the ruling against Player A was a Game Loss then he is still in the tournament, and if he can take that 0-100 MOV loss and still make the cut then he deserves to make the cut. We have no evidence that he cheated to win any of his other games before or after the incident seen in stream, and I'm not prepared to make the leap to assume that he can't win a game of X-Wing fairly. If you're still in the tournament you're still in the tournament, and that includes being able to progress to Day Two.

"SO WAIT, YOU THINK A GAME LOSS WAS RIGHT?"
I think that in the absence of penalty guidelines that tell us the correct level of punishment is disqualification then we are duty bound to respect the response of the TOs. They are the ones who best understand the mission statement of FFG Organised Play and how to implement it. Personally I am leaning 70/30 in favour of a Game Loss being a sufficient punishment, and I certainly don't feel that it's an unconscionably terrible decision.

FFG talked to us. Community relations are not a strong point for FFG but at least they recognised the PR disaster that was unfolding on the internet and tried to address it. They communicated the original ruling, and they communicated at the start of Day Two that they were dealing with the customer service issue around Player B's tournament experience.

So what should happen next?

Player A's cheating should be reviewed to see if it is worth of a ban for a period of time. You don't ban people on the spur of the moment, that always comes after a period of reflection and review. I don't know if he will be banned or not, but it should at least be reviewed.

All the players who indulged in the worst excesses of the internet's hate mob antics should be given a one month ban. Changing a dial to cheat at Worlds is bad but what was threatened was far worse and paints the X-Wing community in a far worse light. It's in FFG's interests to ensure that's dealt with firmly.

FFG gets clear guidelines in place for what the penalties for various infractions are. There's no published guidelines for what penalties should be for various offences, which affects both the confidence of TOs that they're applying the correct ruling and the understanding of players as to what they can expect from their TOs. Should it be a game loss, should it be a DQ? Without published guidelines it's left at the discretion of TOs which not only makes rulings inconsistent from one event to another but it makes the TO's job that much harder by introducing their personal discretion. Tackling cheaters is tough and it takes a certain mindset and confidence for a TO to willingly create a potentially confrontational scenario by ruling against them rather than just handing out a meaningless warning then walking away. I don't know if that's what originally happened in this case, but I'm sure that exactly that scenario has played out in local tournaments many times, and if TOs aren't able to point to the procedures that they're following then you make it that much harder for them to do their jobs effectively.

FFG TO procedures are streamlined to ensure that rulings are given in an appropriate way with the appropriate review to minimise disruption to players and the tournament. TOs need to have the confidence to give a ruling and understand the systems that are in place to minimise their exposure should they make on the spot decisions that are not perfect. I can only really speak from my experience of Magic The Gathering, where the judge making the initial ruling would probably have been dealt with it by pausing the game for an immediate review so that they could take the time to confer with other judges and come to the right decision. FFG made two rulings at different points, one too late to be properly applied as the next round was underway, while Magic would take longer over the initial ruling to be confident it was correct then stand by it.

Player A hopefully finds a way of owning up to his actions and plays clean X-Wing in future.

Everyone forgets about it and remembers Justin Phua's tactical excellence in the Final instead.
Which is what I'm going to do now, as I bring this blog to a close...

CONGRATULATIONS JUSTIN!!!

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Well, that was a hell of a weekend, wasn't it? As everyone digests just what the hell happened at the World Championships of X-Wing 2017 I wanted to chip in my two cents, with something good, something bad, and something ugly... Tel Trevura, Autoblaster Turret on Miranda, Braylen Stramm, a HWK-290...

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The 4.3.0 errata nerfed several of the top tier lists. I personally think this was a nice change because the meta was getting a bit stale and this shakes things up.

I've seen some people overreacting to some of the nerfs, so I thought I'd bring my experience into this. I've played and followed League of Legends, a computer game which frequently gets patched. Many years ago, they nerfed a character in League of Legends. People played the character less, and its win rate dropped several percentage points. It turns out they actually forgot to make the changes nerfing that character. It wasn't changed at all. The changes in play rate and win percentage were entirely due to a placebo effect.

It's easy to overreact to changes. We got used to how things were before the nerfs, and now they look much worse. That doesn't mean they're weak. Let's take a closer look and see how bad the changes actually were.

Let's start with Zuckuss. I actually think this nerf is minor. You can use him for 1 every turn until you're about to die, and it contributes significantly to your offense. When I ran the numbers a while back, Zuckuss for 1 is roughly equivalent to Push the Limit for Focus + Target Lock. Think of him as a 1-point K4 Security Droid.

I think the TIE/x7 nerf looks small but is larger than it looks. My TIE Defenders tended to survive a long time on 1 HP, and I've often used the option to stay stressed or go over asteroids. Losing even 1 health can swing a game. It also makes them a lot more vulnerable to stress control and blocking.

That said, this is still a fairly minor nerf and it can be circumvented by good play. I think Defenders are still strong, and the TIE/x7 title is still better than the TIE/D title.

Emperor Palpatine

I think the Emperor Palpatine nerf is minor and very significant at the same time. On one hand, it's rare you'll waste his effect entirely. I forgot the exact numbers, but he'll let you save a token on defense over 75% of the time.

However, it's a significant nerf because you can no longer use him on offense for free at the end of the turn if your defense rolls worked out. That's pretty significant when you consider how often 1 damage or a crit from Palpatine swung the game.

At the end of the day, I think Palpatine as he was originally printed was a ~12-point card. This change makes him worth it at 8 points, but now he's not exceptionally strong at this price point.

EDIT: I've since learned that Palpatine triggers immediately after the roll, before any modifications are applied. This makes it worse against Zuckuss on defense (even though that one Palp'd die can't be rerolled) and much worse on offense with Target Lock.

I saved the best for last! This is a huge nerf, and I think Manaroo will be much less common. My article on Support Theory suggests supports have to make their allies a lot better in order to be worth it. A Range 1 restriction not only makes Manaroo more unreliable especially in asteroid fields, it also gives opponents a soft target to go after.

On its own, Manaroo's ability lets you pass actions to another ship for ~1.5 points (I value +1 pilot skill at 0.5 points). That's pretty expensive for not gaining extra actions. However, with Attanni Mindlink, Manaroo gives any of your other ships an extra Focus token for 1.5 points while keeping her own Focus. That's fantastic value compared to other action economy upgrades which usually cost 3 points.

I think the "problem" with this is Attanni Mindlink, not Manaroo. If Manaroo were removed from the game, Attanni Mindlink will still be a very strong card. If Attanni Mindlink were removed from the game, I think Manaroo would be a very niche pilot. That said, Attanni Mindlink is hard to nerf. A range restriction on Attanni Mindlink feels even worse than a range restriction on Manaroo, and raising Attanni Mindlink's cost to 2 is too much. I can see FFG treating Attanni Mindlink as Scum's format-defining card like R2-D2 for Rebels.

With this nerf, I don't think Manaroo will see nearly as much play. In Paratanni, a Contracted Scout and 2 points is a strong alternative. In other lists, Kaa'to and Palob are much cheaper options.

Paratanni is still a strong list. Attanni Mindlink is still strong and Fenn Rau and Asajj Ventress are strong ships. They can keep Manaroo and accept her ability won't be as consistent, or swap her for cheaper options. The biggest challenge is in order to use Manaroo's ability, they have to present her as a target. Unfortunately, Manaroo is often the easiest ship to kill in the Paratanni list, and losing even one ship makes Mindlink much less effective.

I think these changes make swarms a lot more attractive. Besides nerfing some of their biggest weaknesses, the remaining top meta lists often use low-agility big ships which can be vulnerable to swarms. I think non-swarm Rebels are still in a rough spot thanks to Rear Admiral Chiraneau with Kylo Ren crew.

I think Kylo Ren will eventually get errata'd, because like Zuckuss, it's not very fun to play against. We'll see if I'm right!

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The 4.3.0 errata nerfed several of the top tier lists. I personally think this was a nice change because the meta was getting a bit stale and this shakes things up. I've seen some people overreacting to some of the nerfs, so I thought I'd bring my experience into this.

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r/XWingTMG: A place to discuss the [Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game](http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=174&esem=1) new expansions, expansion ideas, tactics, balance issues, Alternate rules.

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After previous blogs about how to get better at X-Wing and how to get into X-Wing, I took a look back to see how taking my own advice was working out. Last weekend I attended the Scottish Regional, hosted by the delightful guys at Common Ground Games with the gigantic Yavin Open the weekend before.

I'd been to the equivalent events last year, so there was a useful comparison point:
2016 Yavin Open 2-3 dropped; Scottish Regional 4-1-1 - Triple Jump Torp boats
2017 Yavin Open 8-2; Scottish Regional 5-1 - Parattani, with no title

Final Standings Day 2 Swiss
1 Faan Langelaan SCUM 9 1643 0.63...
18 Bob Dee SCUM 8 1220 0.57
I would totally have taken 18th at the start of day 1
Yavin, in particular, was a big improvement not least because I was able to finish ahead of the majority of Fenn/ Manaroo +1 builds. Scotland was a less extreme step up, but the 2017 opposition was a little tougher and I didn't have access to a scumbag's intentional draw. The limited data available shows an improvement, but it's far from a world class performance overall. I hope I'm in a position to share a little about what has changed for me in tournaments.
Manage your expectations
Depending on what kind of personality type you are, and how seriously you're taking the game, you may go into every event looking to win. But repeated wins at big events in XWing are relatively rare. Only a handful of players worldwide have managed multiple victories in events at Regional level and above. I'm not going to attempt to count them - and Tom Reed's head is already big enough (sorry, T).
That has two consequences. First, it means that anyone can take any event. Although the winners are, almost always, building on a foundation of experience gained by qualifying for multiple cuts. If you're starting out as a competitive player, you might want to aim for a better than evens record, or making the cut. Second, it means that even if you have a National Championship under your belt, you cannot assume success. One of the shocks at Yavin this year was seeing a volume of well known players fail to make the tiny 8 player cut or even day 2.
What you can control is whether you have a good time. If you play the game in front of you and let the score take care of itself you can - in my experience - have an excellent weekend at every event you enter. And for those readers who fear their lack of finely honed sharpshooting uberness will make them look a fool at an event - the lower tables really are where the fun XWing is being played. No-one's going to point and laugh.Your opponents have come to meet you and move some little plastic spaceships around.

Look after yourself and your kit
It's advice that is oft offered and oft taken, but it's still useful. Stay hydrated and take along a mix of short and long acting carbs to munch during the day. I'm no dietician, but a base of long acting carbs in the morning with a sprinkling of sugar for the later parts of a long day can keep your blood sugar stable and your mind focussed. This matters. Entrants to Regional events and beyond can expect a gruelling day's play of 7 hours and more of tough XWing. If you make the cut, you need to be certain that your XWing isn't going to become ZzzzzzzWing.
Take breaks during the day. The social side of the game is legendary but if you need to take the weight off for 20 mins or have a breath of fresh air grab it.
Minimise the impact of "playing away". Most big events are venues that you won't be playing at regularly. Getting there on time in a good state to play the game is a marginal gain that you should not dismiss. If your budget will allow for a nearby - or better yet, on site - hotel the night before, go for it. At the very least, have a reliable travel plan for arriving and getting home. You've better things to worry about.
Theft at tournaments is, happily, exceptionally rare. But if you have valuable generic items like templates, acrylic tokens or dice, you're probably better off slipping them into a pocket rather than leaving them on the table. Check your components after each game - there's nothing worse than finding that at some point during round 6 your damage deck is a card short.
And bring a tray.

If nothing else, bring a damn tray.

Go with a plan
The lists I've used this year and last are classic "meta" builds. Yes, I'm an unabashed filthy netlister. And that's because my primary aim at a tourny is to get up amongst the better players and learn from them what I can. Shiny dice and glossy templates are lovely to have in your case but ours is a game of subtlety and strategy and the guys at the top have most to teach.
Bob Dee - netlisting swamp dweller in action
But if you're a meta snob - and I entirely get where you're coming from - you can take advantage of netlisting chumps like me to go in with a method to beat Paratanni, Palp Defenders, Kanan/ Biggs, Dengaroo and so on. There's two ways to do this. The first is to build something specific to counter the meta. That might be an upgrade ( 4-LOM really, really loves removing the benefit of the lovely title that makes Defenders playable) or it might be a list.
Sith Taker Colm Browne is trialling a trio of PS 10 imperials designed to tackle Paratanni head on
But even better if it's a strategy. If you have a plan to beat the meta lists, then you just need to execute it. Because designing an upgrade or list to beat a specific foe requires that Cryodex (or Tome if the TO really feels she has to) draws you against that foe. If it doesn't you've wasted points or even spent the whole day flying a list you don't truly have confidence in.
The purpose of this post isn't to tell you what your plan should be. But if you go in there expecting to lose because "Dengaroo is OP" and "FFG should nerf it because it's a NPE" then I wish you much luck, because you'll need it. It is a remote possibility, at best, that the nerf will happen during the event.
There's a converse to running a unique or unusual list. The netlisting chumps like me won't have had a chance to prep for you. And that's a plus for you and leaves them looking to follow the next tip:

Understand what you're playing against
Wave 10 brought with it a fantastic load of new rules and upgrades. Condition cards made a splash. Quad Jumpers have seen competitive play in appreciable numbers, as have TIE Strikers. And the ARC-170s and Heroes of the Resistance packs came with a host of new pilots and upgrades that combine in unusual ways.
In my first game at Yavin I faced Jamie Hewitt's trio of T-70's. I underestimated the power of the T-70s, misjudged the pace of my approach and handed him what may have been his easiest win of the day. Ooops.

Key to his victory (and Jamie's flying was very tight indeed) was my failure to understand how the list worked and the level of rerolling, action efficient jankery that it presented which made every XWing way more effective offensively and defensively. If I'd taken a little more time to understand the list and been just a little more respectful of a man brave enough to run it at Yavin, I might have made more of a game of it.

Don't interfere and don't be interfered with
At big events there's every chance that you'll be attending with a mate and every chance that one of you will finish before the game and wander over to offer your buddy some support. It is illegal for spectators to say or do anything that may influence a game. Forgotten to cloak after attacking? Failed to apply a stress after a red manoeuvre? Counted a hit as a crit? Rolled too many dice? Or too few? All of those are the players' problems.

If you have a concern, you should raise it with a TO and not interfere with the game. The tourny rules are crystal clear about this. If you decide to interfere, you run the risk of having a TO forfeit your friend's game. And if you find yourself facing a crowd of club shirts, a polite, "None-players off the green please, lads!" will usually communicate the fact that you've not entered a team event and you don't expect the tournament to evolve into one during a game. Team events are brilliant but there's a time and a place.

Play the game in front of you
"I feel now that we are so strong, but we think only one game at a time. Step by step, that is our philosophy. I want to fight every match." Claudio Ranieri, Leicester City manager 2016

Whilst what was Claudio's team has performed less impressively in the 2016-17 season, his approach is solid and it's one that you need to follow.
At 0-1 at Yavin, my head dipped. I could afford only a single defeat over the next 6 games. In the toughest room that Europe has ever seen. But I had no control over the pairings and little room for mistakes. All I could do was focus on one game at a time. Through a long tiring day that's what I did, playing some excellent opposition in some tough games. One game at a time. Thinking about whether I "must win" doesn't help me develop or execute a plan and neither does thinking that I can "afford" a loss. It's an overwhelmingly difficult temptation to resist but it's a distraction and never a helpful one.

A-game, all day
You're in a tournament. System Open or sparsely attended store kit, the best competitors will be the ones on top at the end, almost by definition (but see the last tip below...) You need to bring your best game, all day long. You may find yourself with an easy game against an inexperienced newbie at the start of the day, but the MoV from that game will be with you all day. 100-0s are a big achievement in any round of a competitive event and there's no disrespect in showing your best game to a new player. (But make sure you're not a dick about it.)
Likewise, be cautious about asking for or forgiving missed opportunities. If you do allow a take back of some description, there is no mechanic in the game that compels the favour to be returned - and I say that as a player prone to daft errors.
Fail to stay alert, and your opponents will take ruthless advantage
By game 7 at Yavin, there were a lot of tired players, with a lot on the line. Plenty of practice with Paratanni beforehand meant that I could fall back on my prep to tackle a difficult mirror match. If you execute your gameplan the score will look after itself.

Be a little bit lucky
There are a lot of dice rolling around and the standard of competition is so high that if some of your dice are a little on the wrong side of the bell curve, you're at a big disadvantage. An initiative roll in a mirror match can be crucial.
"To those that hath shall be given more" Matthew 13:12. I suspect he wasn't thinking of Regionals dice.

I came out the right side of a final salvo with Xwing legend and all round hair god Rasta Maice in game 3 at Yavin - if the results had been reversed, I doubt I would have played my way back up quite as handsomely as he did.
In Stirling, I needed Manaroo's focussed final shot of the game to do 2 or more damage to Dale Bennion's Tie S/F. A hit and a crit... which was the Direct Hit I needed for the win. In truth, there was a 22% chance of that card emerging from the deck, but the real luck was in Manaroo surviving QuickDraw's own attack and in the Tie having a poor green dice roll. Dale was entirely gracious about it, characteristic of the room as a whole.
Finally, play more XWing
If you want to do well at tournament level enter as many as you can. If the chances of winning a Regional are low at 80/1, they look considerably improved at 80/5.

Thanks for reading,

Bob Dee.

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After previous blogs about how to get better at X-Wing and how to get into X-Wing, I took a look back to see how taking my own advice was working out. Last weekend I attended the Scottish Regional, hosted by the delightful guys at Common Ground Games with the gigantic Yavin Open the weekend before.

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Moses never had this problem. Staggering down from Mount Sinai, chiseled stone tablets clutched to his chest and the voice of the Almighty ringing in his ears, Charlton Heston didn't stop and wonder what order to read The Commandments in. The same cannot be said of the Star Wars saga, however. With a grand total of eight films now in circulation and at least four more on the way - not to mention the numerous editions of the original trilogy in existence - the best way to experience the saga has become a rather tricky path to navigate. For stalwart fans looking for the optimum viewing order, newcomers in search of the ideal introduction and parents about to instruct their children in the ways of The Force, we present the principal schools of thought on the subject. And, dare we say it, the definitive answer you're looking for.

Episode Order

I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX

Ask George Lucas what sequence you should watch the Star Wars films in and this is the answer you'll get. Episode order is consistent with his original vision (or so he now claims), it tells a single story in chronological order and the currently available versions of all movies are presented to directly support this narrative. This is Anakin's story - the rise, fall and subsequent redemption of the boy who became Darth Vader.

It also has the benefit of easing in younger viewers as, in spite of its preoccupation with the taxation of trade routes and galactic industrial action, The Phantom Menace is the most child-friendly Episode in the series. Where else can you find slapstick, fart jokes and characters stepping in bantha poodoo?

Episode order is the simplest solution, the canonical one and a terrible solution to the problem.

Cons:

The biggest setback to Lucas' preferred sequence comes 110 minutes into The Empire Strikes Back. Arguably the biggest and most influential twist in movie history is rendered entirely meaningless when Luke's parentage has been clumsily revealed two films earlier. Luke and Leia's relationship is similarly telegraphed, and while that Return Of The Jedi bombshell is nowhere near as seismic, knowing the pair are actually twins while Luke moons after her in Episodes IV and V, adds a creepy, incestual subtext that we could happily live without.

What's more, the prequels' many nods to the the original films now have no relevance, while big payoff moments like Yoda pulling out a lightsaber or Chewbacca's appearance have severely diminished impact. There's also the fact that computer technology (the Death Star schematics, for example) go from holographic 3D to Acorn Electron in the span of a single movie.

Production Order

IV, V, VI, I, II, III, VII, VIII, IX

Cons:

Who the hell is that? The replacement of Sebastian Shaw (now consigned to the same ignoble abyss as his eyebrows during the unmasking scene) with Hayden Christensen means the penultimate shot of the original trilogy now makes no sense whatsoever. Not ideal. You also see gungans having some kind of rave with no idea who or what they are, but that's a very minor quibble next to the Christensen conundrum.

Ernst Rister Order

IV, V, I, II, III, VI, VII, VIII, IX

Cons:

This actually works surprisingly well. The biggest drawback is that it makes the overarching narrative rather muddled and, to the uninitiated, quite confusing. There's also the minor issue that going from the series' high point ( Empire) straight into the low point ( Menace) is rather jarring from a quality control perspective. Quibbles aside, this sequence does address the principle issues with both Numbered and Episode orders, which is progress, but we can't recommend it as 'definitive'.

Machete Order

IV, V, II, III, VI, VII, VIII, IX

Many might see this as the 'trolling Lucas' order (it's not, that one omits the prequels altogether) but Rob Hilton's Machete Order is certainly a sequence that would cause George some deep regret. Essentially, it's the Rister order with The Phantom Menace omitted as narratively irrelevant. When you think about it, Episode I contains very little plot progression. Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul are both dead and largely forgotten by the film's finale (TV spin-off series notwithstanding) and all of the other characters - Anakin especially - are far more effectively introduced in Attack Of The Clones. The fact that a grown-up Padme no longer meets her husband-to-be when he's nine also has the benefit of making that whole relationship a little less Operation Yewtree.

So no Jake Lloyd ("Yippee!"), precious little Jar Jar ("How wude."), no weird Amidala/Padme identity confusion and, crucially, no discussion of midichlorians, the introduction of which is without doubt the most egregious example of Lucas' tampering. It also makes the 'flashback' shorter and less intrusive, improving the Rister model's flow significantly.

Cons:

Without Phantom, the prophecy that Anakin will bring balance to The Force is mentioned but never explained, and Anakin's return to Tatooine in Attack Of The Clones is rendered baffling as we have no knowledge of him being a slave, who Watto is or why his mother has 'been sold'. C-3PO's origins also become murky but that's hardly a major drawback.

Finally, the excision of Episode I derails Anakin's prequel character arc entirely. Never seen as an innocent, we are introduced to him as a surly, sulking teenager with more than a touch of the Dark Side about him. Without the altruistic (if infinitely irritating) boy of we first meet in Watto's junk shop, Anakin's rise to the mantle of Sith Lord is as unsurprising as it is undramatic. For a true redemption of the character, he needs to come full circle, so The Phantom Menace, however flawed, must remain on the menu.

Time Machine Order

IV*, V*, VI*, I, II, III, (IV, V, VI,) VII, VIII, IX

Written out, it may resemble algebraic nonsense but this is, in our humble opinion, the definitive viewing order for the Star Wars saga. The Time Machine Order requires metaphorically travelling back to May 25 1977 when Star Wars was first released and watching the original cut of the film, followed by theatrical cuts of both Empire and Jedi. No Hayden Christensen, no Jedi Rocks, No redundant Jabba sequence in IV, no Greedo shooting first and no gungans. Sebastian Shaw no longer looks permanently surprised, Clive Revill is restored, Yub Nub is played in all its glory and Vader doesn't let out a squirm-inducing "Nooooooooo!" as he lunges for the emperor. Perfection. We then shift gear for the prequels, allowing the younger generation to experience their highs and lows as we first did. After that we have the option (hence parentheses) of returning to the current, 'enhanced' original trilogy to witness the tweaks, changes and additions just as (most) of them were first unveiled in 1997. That step can be skipped but it shouldn't be. To truly know Star Wars is to live through every iteration and appreciate each on its own merits.

Of course, few of us have easy access to a Tardis, but there is a more practical approach to the Time Machine order. Disney hasn't seen fit to re-release the original cuts (yet), but the 2006 DVD release can be picked up on eBay and contains the closest thing to official theatrical edits of the movies (they're actually taken from the 1993 LaserDisc release), albeit grainy, non-anamorphic and presented in stereo. Compared to the crystal clear HD and THX sound of the Special Editions, it's a lesser experience in terms of quality if not content.

For HD elitists, there are higher quality alternatives, but it's here that we wander into legally dubious areas. The Silver Screen Edition is a lovingly cleaned up scan of the original 35mm Star Wars print, presented in full 1080p, exactly as audiences saw it 40 year ago. Each individual frame has been worked on to remove scratches and dirt, presenting as faithful a Star Wars experience as even the most traditionalist fan could hope for.

Similarly, the Despecialized Editions are painstaking reconstructions of all three original films, built from a variety of sources including the 2011 blu-ray release, both 2004 and 2006 DVD versions, DTV captures of the 1997 Special Editions, the 1993 LaserDisc and the original 35mm print, to name but a few. The result is remastered, high definition versions of Episodes IV, V and VI, complete with HD surround sound and none of Lucas' subsequent changes.

Unfortunately, as fan edits, both Silver Screen and Despecialized Editions are a breach of copyright and thus only available through less than legal channels. The two projects justify said flouting of the law by insisting that the versions are not sold for money and are aimed at an audience who have bought numerous editions of the films over the years. To date (and to the studios' credit) no copyright complaint has been brought against the projects by Lucasfilm or Disney, implying that, while they certainly don't condone the practice, they might recognise such restorations as an act of love by some of the saga's biggest fans. That said, it is still piracy and should be regarded accordingly.

Cons:

Very few. The difficulty in acquiring the official theatrical versions (the 2006 DVD has been out of print for some time) is the biggest hurdle and the legal ambiguity of going the Despecialized route will rightfully give pause. Furthermore, a great many of the effects in the original films - so polished in the Special Editions - have not aged at all well. The compositing in particular looks very ropey to 21st century eyes.

But weighed against the alternatives, this remains the most authentic, historically accurate and time-tested way to watch the saga. Whether you're sitting through the films for the very first time, revisiting them for the thousandth, or helping your child take their first step into a larger world, this is the best way to experience Star Wars. Accept no substitute.

A Note On New Episodes And Anthologies

You will notice that the points of difference in all these solutions has focused on the first six films. We should all be able to agree that Episode VII(and VIII and IX) should be watched last, with Rogue One, Han Solo and subsequent anthologies seen either last of all or dropped in as palate cleansers at any point after Return Of The Jedi.

While Rogue One is indeed a prequel to A New Hope (as the Han Solo movie will be), there is little to recommend watching it beforehand as none of the callbacks or references would make sense. By the same token, the film's dramatic impact is drastically reduced without a broader context or the weight of knowing what is to come. So watch it afterwards, okay?

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Moses never had this problem. Staggering down from Mount Sinai, chiseled stone tablets clutched to his chest and the voice of the Almighty ringing in his ears, Charlton Heston didn't stop and wonder what order to read The Commandments in. The same cannot be said of the Star Wars saga, however.

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A Sith holocron, a depository of knowledge. Image: Lucasfilm

There are a number of fan wikis out there, but none of them have probably ever undergone as big a change as Fandom's Wookieepedia did when years of careful archiving of Star Wars lore was suddenly declared to no longer be canon. io9 talked to two Wookieepedia editors about that radical change, the challenge of maintaining a coherent encyclopedia for Star Wars, and, of course, Jizz music.

Specifically, we spoke with Mike Delaney, who is the community development team and is a Wookieepedia admin who focuses on Legends (what the old Expanded Universe is now called), and Brandon Rhea, who is the manager of content production, and an admin who focuses a bit more on the new canon.
io9: When all of our precious Expanded Universe was decanonized, how did you decide what to do with all that information on Wookieepedia?
Mike Delaney: Basically the decision was made, fairly early on, that the information wouldn't be lost, that it wouldn't be removed. Some advocated that if it was going to be decanonized, it wouldn't have a place on the wiki. That was a minority opinion. The majority of us on the site always felt that no matter what, the information should be retained in some way. It was just figuring out how that information would be displayed and kept on the site alongside the new canon information that would be brought out by Lucasfilm.

Brandon Rhea: And that was something that tracked exactly with what Lucasfilm was doing anyway. They called it "Legends" for a reason. They said these stories are still around and could still be pulled from. So Wookieepedia kind of adopted the same approach.
How is Wookieepedia run and organized? That is, when you debated what to do with Legends, how was that decision actually made?
Delaney: Wookieepedia is edited by a large community of users from all around the world. We have administrators based in England, Finland, Australia. When it comes to a decision like that, usually the more active editors and administrators will discuss it in a big forum and come up with potential ideas. And then those ideas are voted on by the community to see which one the community wants to adopt. It's very much a community-run endeavor. While the administrators are the ones who have the power in the terms of being able to delete certain pages and block malicious users, when it comes to enacting that kind of decision, it's very much a consensus-driven decision that the community is very involved in.
I have been shocked at the speed by which things start appearing on Wookieepedia once new Star Wars material comes out. Does it surprise you at all, or is it about what you'd expect from those who edit the site?
Delaney: It doesn't surprise me at all. For example, when The Force Awakens trailer came out, there were screenshots and information from the trailer literally on the site within five to 10 minutes of [it] being released at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim.

Rhea: There are people who are so into the idea of chronicling all this lore that they read the books specifically to do that. Every [Wiki] page for a novel has a giant list of appearances saying who appears in what book. There are people who will read a book and as they're going through it, take notes about what they just read so they can update as they go and create pages as they go. There's a lot of enjoyment that people get out of connecting to Star Wars in that way.

Delaney: So, obviously with the Thrawn novel, the publishing house had several excerpts from the novel published before the book was released. And we had users making articles just based off of those excerpts.
Why do you think so many people enjoy cataloging all of this information?
Rhea: There's a term I came across at one point: emotional continuity. It's basically that people relate to their fandom by knowing everything. And the more they know, whether it's what this character did or how this engine from a comic 30 years ago works, the real those things are to them, the more real Star Wars is and the more they can connect to it.

Delaney: For me, I think it's more about the world-building aspect to it. Star Wars for over 40 years now has been publishing material. And the idea is that most people would never have had access to a lot of the old material, which might be old newspaper strips or RPG sourcebooks which are now out of print. And the idea is that there is so much information that one person cannot know it all. So we look to put it all together so you don't have to remember it all. But we have the information if you want.
You mentioned the idea of relating to something by knowing it. The internet brings a component of sharing information that is a whole other level.
Rhea: I think they're all bonded by the fact that they all like knowing these things and sharing is just-we're social creatures, and anything we like doing, we like doing with other people. And this is just a way to do that.

Delaney: You can come together with other like-minded people that you may not even be able to meet in real life. So the idea is that if you can meet these people online that you can kind of share stories with, you can find friendships and community you may not be able to find anywhere else.

Rhea: Fans end up bonding with the material through these things, too. Like Felicity Jones for Rogue One said she turned to Wookieepedia for research. There's an element of pride that goes into this, too.
On occasion, we've been asked by some of our sister sites if Wookieepedia is reliable and we always say yes.
Rhea: It's funny, the other day on Twitter, because Wookieepedia has interactions with other Star Wars authors and creators, and somebody kind of questioned if Wookieepedia would be an accurate source and the guy at Lucasfilm, Leland Chee, who runs their internal database, said he would caution anyone against questioning whether Wookieepedia was a legitimate source or not.
One of the things that's most interesting about Wookieepedia is that it's the best-sourced fan wiki out there because everything is cited so thoroughly and accurately. Is there a reason why Wookieepedia is so meticulous?
Delaney: It's a personal stylistic choice that was made when it was set up simply because this information is scattered over so many different sources and there had to be a way to check it to make sure that no false information was being included. Being a wiki that was open to anyone to edit, false information could be edited and sometimes could slip through. By having it sourced it can be independently fact-checked, you can mark it for deletion or tell if the source doesn't exist or doesn't cover what that kind of information. It also legitimized how accurate we are and made us a place where Star Wars fan can go and know that we are correct.
Has there been something that has caused consternation about what Wookieepedia should do with it?
Delaney: Off the top of my head, Captain Phasma's image. Captain Phasma was obviously on the front page of Vanity Fair, unmasked for a photo shoot. And that got sourced as what she looks like in the film. And someone found a tweet about something Pablo Hidalgo might have said at a convention that hinted that it might not be a true representation of who she was. And there was a lot of back and forth about what he meant by that and should we include the information or not. And whenever something like that comes up, we encourage people to talk about it and try to contact the parties involved and reach the best solution we can.

Rhea: Images in general can cause that sometimes. For Kylo Ren, do you use his face or his mask, which one do people respond to more? Should Obi-Wan be Alec Guinness or Ewan McGregor? Those kinds of things come up sometimes.
Do you have a favorite bit of Star Wars trivia?
Delaney: Actually no. Brandon, do you have any?

Rhea: Yes, I think it's hilarious that George Lucas named Obi-Wan's home planet Stewjon after Jon Stewart. Like that's for real.

Delaney: And Conan Antonio Motti after Conan O'Brien.
We were talking at io9 about the Cantina Band song and I brought up that the genre of music is called "Jizz music" and dumped the Wookieepedia article as my backup.
Delaney: You'll find that that has been dropped from the new canon, they have a new name for it now.

Rhea: I don't know that there's a specific new name for it, but I do know that once they made the decision to get rid of Legends, they made the decision to get rid of a lot of names like that. There's no reason to call the bathroom the "refresher." They felt it was gatekeeping and they wanted everyone to be able to understand those things rather than go look it up.
But then you lose one of the best jokes in Star Wars Legends!
Delaney: The refresher course. From Starfighters of Adumar, one of my favorite books.
Do you feel that getting rid of the old EU canon has made the universe smaller or larger?
Delaney: For me, it's made it smaller. For the simple fact that I don't have an interest in the new canon anymore, the way I did for the Legends continuity. Basically, when the Legends stuff was coming out, I had a sense that I had to have it as soon as possible and I had to devour the text to find out what was going on in the story. I don't have that urgency anymore. I still read it and watch the shows, like Rebels and the new films. But there doesn't seem to be, for me, that urgency anymore. To discover where the story's going beyond the main stuff, whereas with Legends I was interested in all the side stories.

Rhea: For me, I don't think of it in terms of bigger or smaller. I was never much of an EU fan. I thought most of it was weird and didn't feel like Star Wars to me. And the reset feels more authentic, in the sense that it's consistent and there's one overall vision, rather than, "Here are the movies and here are 20 other people's interpretations of what Star Wars is." Like we kind of know tonally, stylistically what we're gonna get. And I like that, and it feels like Star Wars to me.
That is exactly the split I've seen with other fans.
Delaney: Me and Brandon, our differing views are very indicative of the views across the site. We do have contributors who are into canon, we have those who are into the Legends stuff and will work on Legends, where I work. And we have those who have come to the site since the new canon has started. Because they know they don't have to sort through 35 years of back issues of comics and magazines to complete an article.
There's no wrong way to be Star Wars fan, don't you agree?
Delaney: Absolutely. We have people on the site, for instance, who've read the books but not the comics. Or they played the games and not read the books. And it doesn't make them any less of a fan in anyone's mind. That's what they're interested in, so let them be. They're all Star Wars fans at the end of the day.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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How Wookieepedia Tackles the Insanely Difficult Task of Chronicling the Entire Star Wars Universe

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There are a number of fan wikis out there, but none of them have probably ever undergone as big a change as Fandom's Wookieepedia did when years of careful archiving of Star Wars lore was suddenly declared to no longer be canon.

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The original Star Wars trilogy isn't really known for having a lot of roles for women - but it turns out that the third film, Return of the Jedi, featured some female pilots in the Battle of Endor. Two of these fighter pilots are featured among the deleted scenes and extras on the recent Blu-ray release, but not the two female X-Wing pilots.

And curiously, we still haven't seen the deleted scene featuring Vivienne Chandler (left) as a X-Wing pilot, who had a full page and a half of dialogue in a cockpit set. Apparently, Chandler actually went to a screening of the film that included her scenes, and then when it was actually released, they were gone.

You can glimpse the female pilots in the briefing scene before the battle. One of them was actually included for a split second, but her one line of dialogue, "Got it," was replaced by a male voice in post-production.

Did George Lucas decide that showing female pilots getting blown up was too intense? Or was there some other reason why he wanted an all-male fighter squad? We'll probably never know - but it's weird that Chandler's footage has never turned up, in any form, after being in an early cut of the film. More details at the link. [ Star Wars Afficionado and Star Wars Afficionado via BuzzFeed]

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George Lucas cut female X-wing pilots out of Return of the Jedi at the last minute

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The original Star Wars trilogy isn't really known for having a lot of roles for women - but it turns out that the third film, Return of the Jedi, featured some female pilots in the Battle of Endor.

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Quick! Name three female characters from the original Star Wars! Well, there was Princess Leia. And Luke's aunt Beru (Shelagh Fraser). And ... um. Well ... there was, uh, Ashoka? No, that was Clone Wars. Were any of the Jawas female?

Clearly George Lucas wasn't going out of his way to be politically correct back in 1977 when he took audiences to a galaxy far, far away for the initial Star Wars. In fact, according to a story on Buzzfeed, Lucas went out of his way to cut three female Rebel pilots who were shot on camera during the climatic attack against the Death Star, then clipped from the final cut before it reached theaters.

Kudos actually go out to Lucas for coming up with female fighter pilots, and using actresses of varying ages. As you can see in the second photo, one woman was nearly a senior citizen, suggesting that the Rebel Alliance was going to rely in grizzled veteran fighter pilots to take down Darth Vader and the Empire.

The site speculates that Lucas decided against showing these women because watching females die on screen when their ships blew up might have been too traumatic. I'm not sure how accurate that is. Its' not like women were being treated like Disney Princesses on screen in the late 1970s. Just ask Faye Dunaway how Bonnie fared at the end of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.

I'm more amazed that in the age of DVD special editions and Blu-ray releases that we're just now hearing about deleted female actresses in a Star Wars movie. Maybe Leia should have sent a hologram message to these tough ladies instead of bothering old Obi Wan.

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Revealed: Star Wars Originally Had Female X-Wing Pilots

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Kudos actually go out to Lucas for coming up with female fighter pilots, and using actresses of varying ages. As you can see in the second photo, one woman was nearly a senior citizen, suggesting that the Rebel Alliance was going to rely in grizzled veteran fighter pilots to take down Darth Vader and the Empire.

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For decades, Princess Leia has operated in the Star Wars universe under the Smurfette Principle. As the only female in the main cast until Mon Mothma came around (Mara Jade notwithstanding), she was the only role model in the series for girls to emulate. Or so we thought.

Meet the three unnamed female fighter pilots from Return of the Jedi. Two of these ladies were released with the avalanche of extras on the Star Wars Blu-ray and were originally part of the Rebel Squadrons fighting in the Battle of Endor. Both of them were A-Wing pilots.

The younger pilot, pictured above, even had a bit of dialogue. According to Star Wars Aficionado, her line "got it" was overdubbed with a male voice in post-production.

Most interestingly, the second lady fighter pilot is elderly, leading one to wonder if she was a hardened lifelong rebel or a late joiner. Either way, it's one of the great untold stories of the series.

The third Rebel fighter pilot was played by Vivienne Chandler, pictured below, and she and one other female X-Wing pilot were filmed. Not only did they never make it past the cutting-room floor, they didn't even make it into the Blu-ray release. While Ms. Chandler had more than a page of dialogue, none of it made it into the final release.

There is no solid evidence as to why all of these women were ultimately cut, but fan theory holds it was because watching female pilots die would have been too disturbing for moviegoing audiences at the time. Instead, they were regulated to the background as officers... You can find them if you look hard and fast enough.

But for the most part, the Star Wars galaxy appears to have been struck with a strange affliction where women are either a) targeted by a deadly gender-specific illness or b) human sperm counts widely skewed male.

Damn you, Midichlorians!

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"Star Wars" Female Fighter Pilots Cut From Final Films

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For decades, Princess Leia has operated in the Star Wars universe under the Smurfette Principle. As the only female in the main cast until Mon Mothma came around (Mara Jade notwithstanding), she was the only role model in the series for girls to emulate. Or so we thought.

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The exploits of the X-wing pilots in the EU are made for the big screen.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was unique in that it was the first standalone Star Wars movie and the first film without Jedi. The Force was present (it's an energy field created by all living things, after all), but it wasn't central to the story. Instead, Rogue One centered on everyday heroes. The rebels who stole the Death Star plans had skills, to be sure, but they didn't have the advantages the Jedi possess.

A pilot, an intelligence operative, former Guardians of the Whills, a reprogrammed droid, and a scrappy fighter -- that's the group at the heart of Rogue One. The story showed life as a Rebel Alliance soldier isn't a walk in the park fueled by righteousness. It's a dirty business that fails as often as it succeeds, and hope is the thin fuel keeping the tank running --- and sometimes the tank goes dry. After getting that glimpse of the additional layers and roles within the Rebellion, we're ready for more and we can start by diving into the world of X-wing pilots.

Several stories in the Expanded Universe (EU) focused on the missions and roles of characters such as Wedge Antilles. The dashing tales expounded upon the role of the squadrons of X-wing pilots in the beginning of the New Republic, after the events in Return of the Jedi. The 10 X-wing books written by Michael A. Stackpole and also by Aaron Allston featured daring operations, intense dogfights, romance, and conspiracies. The characters couldn't save themselves with the Force, only with their skills, their wit, and their fellow pilots. It's a corner of the Star Wars universe suited to be the subject of the next spinoff film.

You know bacta. The gelatinous substance has powerful healing properties, to the point of helping a body regrow tissue. We saw Luke use a bacta tank in The Empire Strikes Back, and we recently glimpsed Vader emerge from the liquid in his home on Mustafar in Rogue One. It's a valuable material to have on hand. So, consider what would happen if the bad guys manipulated the bacta supply to destroy the New Republic.

The remnants of the Empire did just that in the fourth book of the X-wing series. X-Wing: The Bacta War by Stackpole is a prime candidate for the big screen. Ysanne Isard, former Director of Imperial Intelligence and current leader of the Empire, unleashed a plague affecting non-human species (the Krytos virus) in the book prior to The Bacta War, intending to make the burgeoning government go bankrupt from having to purchase bacta to heal those affected. Now, she's trying to hold the bacta supply in her grip and the Rogue Squadron is having none of it. One issue: the New Republic won't allow them to pursue action because they have bigger problems to solve.

In some ways, the story's like Rogue One. The Rogue Squadron pursue what they think is right and resign their commissions in order to go after Isard. Action, feints within feints, carefully planned and also haphazard raids to hit bacta convoys -- it offers constant excitement. With the Krytos virus wreaking havoc, there's the particular brand of suspense you only get with outbreak movies. Will the brave and risky Rogue Squadron be able stop Isard and get enough bacta in time? Will they be busted by the New Republic? Combine that tension with memorable characters such as Isard and the ridiculously likeable Wedge (who would have to be recast), and you have a story that would play out beautifully on the big screen.

The X-wing fighters have a reputation in the galaxy, particularly the Rogue Squadron. The first book of the X-wing books, X-Wing: Rogue Squadron by Stackpole, leverages the fear and glamour associated with the Rogue Squadron name. It's soon after the formation of the New Republic, and the Imperials haven't relaxed their tight grip on certain areas of the galaxy yet. To help defend the new government, Wedge, a hero of the Galactic Civil War, sets out to reform the elite Rogue Squadron. He chooses his pilots, then a training montage of sorts ensues.

This title sets the stage for the series, which has a decidedly Top Gun-in-space vibe. Things take a dramatic turn when Rogue Squadron has to go into battle long before their training is done. Being launched into action against Imperials before they're fully ready pushes relationships to straining points and tests the group's mettle and teamwork skills. You're invested in their success and failure. An adaptation of this (with changes to match canon, obviously) could stand alone or launch a trilogy or even a television series.

Rogue Squadron makes Wedge come to life as a character, giving him much more personality than the films had time to exhibit. It also brings Corran Horn, a Han Solo-esque character, into the story. He and Wedge have different personalities that bounce off each other nicely, but on the screen, it would be interesting to see Corran gender-swapped.

It's going to be an enjoyable ride to watch a squadron of pilots with Poe Dameron-level flying skills zip around the galaxy, but Wraith Squadron by Aaron Allston turns the volume up to 11, as they say. This is the fifth book in the overall series, but the first in Allston's trilogy. After seeing the success his pilots had during the Bacta War, Wedge proposes the creation of a covert group of X-wing fighters called Wraith Squadron. Pilots who are also spy commando types? It's a no-brainer.

The group is comprised of the dregs of the New Republic. Wedge is the Goodwill of commanders, taking in pilots who don't necessarily have the most exemplary records. The resulting squadron is a hodgepodge combination of characters including Admiral Ackbar's niece Jesmin, a Gamorrean pilot, a former actor who used to recruit for the Empire -- you get the idea. Ragtag doesn't begin to cover it. The make-up of the squadron means potentially hilarious casting opportunities and jokes. Think Guardians of the Galaxy.

The books in the X-wing series are very much of a piece, with each book building on characters and relationships you learned about in previous installments. You can pull them apart as we've done here, but of all the titles, Starfighters of Adumar by Allston is perhaps the most like a standalone. It's the penultimate title in the series and rather than follow a large squadron, it focuses on a group of four: Wedge, Tycho Celchu, Hobbie Klivian, and Wes Janson. Though their skills certainly do come in handy, the pilots are put to the test as diplomats on Adumar. They're sent to the planet -- the Adumari have a thing for pilots -- to try to sell them on the allure of joining the New Republic.

You get to spend time with characters you know (well, saw for a few beats) from the original trilogy and, above all, it's a blast. The group isn't exactly experienced when it comes to the art of making friends on a planetary scale, and they don't have an easy task ahead. Watching them stumble, regroup, and dodge the politics and boundaries placed upon them is completely entertaining. A plot similar to this could be set before The Force Awakens and would be another option for a more lighthearted spinoff.
Are there any stories from the EU you'd like to see turned into a standalone movie? Tell us in the comments. Amy Ratcliffe is a writer for IGN. She likes Star Wars a little. You can follow her on Twitter at @amy_geek.

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A Star Wars Story We Want: X-Wing Pilots - IGN

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The exploits of the X-wing pilots in the EU are made for the big screen. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was unique in that it was the first standalone Star Wars movie and the first film without Jedi. The Force was present (it's an energy field created by all living things, after all), but it wasn't central to the story.

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There are a number of pilots who have flown X-Wings in the Star Wars galaxy. Some, like John D. Branon or Grizz Frix, were merely fodder for Imperial TIE fighters to destroy (RIP); others, like Wedge Antilles or Poe Dameron, became seasoned war heroes who saw action across the galaxy.

The pilots that make up this list are all X-Wing pilots from the Star Wars canon. Their piloting abilities of other ships are mentioned and discussed, but are not integrated into their ranking. Star Wars Legends pilots, including the impressive pilot Corran Horn, are not included in the list, and stories from Star Wars Legends do not count for canon characters, such as Wedge Antilles or Luke Skywalker. Canonical sources outside of the films, however, including books, comics, and television shows, were considered when ranking pilots. Upcoming pilots in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story were also not included, but Rebel pilots are almost certainly going to play a role in stealing the Death Star schematics from the Empire.

In ranked order, here are the 15 Best X-Wing Pilots In Star Wars Canon.

15. Jek "Piggy" Porkins

Oh, Porkins, we hardly knew ye. Jek Tono Porkins, who was called "Piggy" by his fellow Rebel pilots, flew as "Red Six" against the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin IV. He was killed alongside Rebel pilots John D. Branon and Theron Nett. What gives Porkins the upper hand over these pilots is that Porkins' T-65B X-Wing malfunctioned during the battle, and due to this malfunction, he was not able to save himself, despite his expert piloting skills. He was shot down by a turbolaser in the trench of the Death Star, which killed him instantly.

Even in death, Porkins could not seem to shake the "pig" jokes made at his expense. Resistance pilots named a flight technique after him- the Porkins Belly Run, which they taught to new recruits in training. It's unclear if the name is an honor, but Porkins' memory lives on with the next generation of X-Wing pilots.

14. Biggs Darklighter

Biggs Darklighter was a childhood friend of Luke Skywalker's on Tatooine. Darkligher grew up flying T-16 skyhoppers with Luke Skywalker through canyons on the desert planet. Unlike Luke, however, Biggs signed up for the Imperial Academy in order to learn how to fly. After graduating, Biggs defected and joined the Rebel Alliance. At Tosche Station (in a deleted scene from A New Hope), Biggs reveals to Luke that he is defecting and encourages Luke to do the same. Luke looks up to Biggs and takes his advice, eventually joining the Rebels and reuniting with Biggs on Yavin IV before the Death Star arrives.

Darth Vader killed Biggs at the Battle of Yavin IV. Biggs greatly affected Luke Skywalker's development as a pilot, and Luke continued to remember his friend after the battle. Biggs had more formalized training than many other pilots, and if Vader hadn't taken him down, he may have continued to fly for the Rebel Alliance for some time.

13. Wes Janson

Wes Janson is a member of Rogue Squadron who flew as Wedge Antilles's gunner in a T-47 airspeeder (or "snowspeeder") at the Battle of Hoth. Together, they used a harpoon and tow cable to trip an AT-AT walker that was attacking Echo Base- the first victory of such a kind against the Imperial forces at Hoth. Janson is an excellent shot, but, as Antilles is in the cockpit, Janson's piloting skills are not on display during the battle.

Janson, alongside fellow pilots Antilles and Derek Klivian, later flew an X-Wing as he helped to escort the Rebel forces escaping from Hoth. He successfully protected the Bright Hope, the final Rebel transport ship to leave the Echo Base, from an Imperial attack. After the Battle of Hoth, Janson's fate is unknown- he does not reappear at the Battle of Endor- but he survived and succeeded in his mission keeping the Bright Hope out of harm's way.

12. R2-D2

Astromech units are not usually considered pilots themselves, but R2-D2 does pilot Luke Skywalker's X-Wing solo at the Battle of Hoth. When Luke changes course to go to Dagobah following Hoth, R2-D2 also offers to pilot as well. It is possible for R2-D2 to fly an X-Wing by himself.

While R2-D2 seems to be a wholly good pilo- - and has definitely seen his fair share of flying over the films- he does not have the same solo pilot credentials as some of the other pilots on this list. Given that astromechs do not regularly fly their own X-Wings and human pilots are a more expensive option, it is safe to assume that droid's abilities are not equivalent to human pilots in combat situations. Perhaps in the future, R2-D2 (or another droid) could prove us wrong, but for the time being, R2-D2's piloting abilities are more of a fail-safe if the human pilot is unavailable.

11. Ello Asty

Ello Asty is a Abednedo pilot who served as a Resistance pilot under General Leia. Asty was originally a member of the Republic's precision air team, whose duties included performing in air shows and leading patrols. Asty was a skilled pilot, capable of impressive acrobatics and flying solo missions. Asty later chose to fly with the Resistance, where he piloted a T-70 X-wing fighter. He was a member of Blue Squadron when he flew alongside Poe Dameron on the assault on Starkiller Base. During the attack, however, Ello Asty was shot down and killed.

Ello Asty's name is a possible reference to director J. J. Abrams' television series LOST (his name being a phonetic pronunciation of each letter). Abrams has also connected the name as a reference to the Beastie Boys album "Hello Nasty". On Asty's helmet, written in Aurebesh, it reads, "Born to Ill", a reference to another Beastie Boys album, "Licensed to Ill".

10. Garven Dreis

Garven "Dave" Dreis was chosen from all of the pilots in the Rebel Alliance to lead Red Squadron as "Red Leader" when they flew on the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin IV. If the mission against the Death Star failed, then the Rebel Alliance would cease to be, and all the individuals on Yavin IV would die. Given the grave nature of the mission and the importance of victory for the Rebel Alliance, Dreis must have been a senior and experienced pilot to have been selected to lead the assault on the Death Star as "Red Leader".

In A New Hope (1977), Dreis is shown to be an excellent pilot, and like Biggs Darklighter, he survives numerous attacks until he is ultimately killed by Darth Vader. It is impossible to know if Dreis would have been able to survive the mission if he had not been flying against Vader.

9. Nien Nunb

Nien Nunb is a Sullustan smuggler and pilot who first joined the Rebel Alliance during the Galactic Civil War. He helped Evaan Verlaine in an effort to smuggle Alderaanians off his homeworld and later helped Lando Calrissian as the co-pilot of the Millenium Falcon at the Battle of Endor. It was not until The Force Awakens (2015), however, that Nien Nunb flew as an X-Wing pilot. As a Lieutenant Commander in the Starfighter Corps under General Leia, Nien Nunb flew alongside Poe Dameron as part of the successful assault against Starkiller Base. A seasoned veteran among the so-called "victory kids" (who were conceived around the Battle of Endor), Nien Nunb held his own as a pilot.

Nien Nunb is not known primarily as an X-Wing pilot, but he is one of the seven surviving pilots after the attack on Starkiller Base. He may continue to fly against the First Order in the upcoming Star Wars films.

8. Derek "Hobbie" Klivian

Derek Klivian- known as Hobbie to his fellow pilots- is a human X-Wing pilot who was originally trained as an Imperial pilot. Klivian, along with Wedge Antilles and their friend Rake Gahree, trained at the Skystrike Academy. After meeting the Rebel Sabine Wren, the three friends decided to defect and join the Rebel Alliance. Rake, unfortunately, was killed in the process, but Derek and Wedge escaped and joined the Rebels. Klivian would later return to the Imperial Academy and help to recruit Biggs Darklighter to join the Rebel Alliance.

At the Battle of Hoth, Hobbie shared a snowspeeder with Luke Skywalker, but he was forced to eject from the ship. He flew an X-Wing as one of the escorts for the Rebel ships escaping from the planet Hoth. Hobbie has had extensive training as a pilot, and that training has served him well in combat scenarios; he is clearly an experienced pilot who went on to help the Rebel cause against the Empire.

7. Snap Wexley

Temmin "Snap" Wexley is the son of a Rebel pilot, His mother, Norra Wexley, was a skilled pilot in her own right and flew a Y-Wing at the Battle of Endor. As a teenager, Snap flew in the Battle of Jakku with the Rebel Alliance, and later became a pilot in the Starfighter Corps of the Resistance. A renowned recon pilot, Snap investigated the First Order as a threat and helped to discover vital information about the covert and deadly Starkiller Base.

Snap Wexley first appeared in the novel Aftermath, but later appeared in The Force Awakens (played by Greg Grunberg, who previously worked with Abrams in Lost). At the time of the assault and destruction of Starkiller Base, Snap Wexley was a captain in Blue Squadron. He helped to carry out an effective attack on the First Order superweapon, alongside fellow pilots Ello Asty, Nien Nunb, Jessika Pava, and Poe Dameron.

6. Joph Seastriker

Joph Seastriker was a lieutenant on the precision air team member who flew in air shows for the New Republic. He later joined the Resistance as an X-Wing pilot, escorting General Leia in her ship Mirrorbright and accompanying her on dangerous missions throughout the galaxy. Seastriker was known for flying his X-Wing into tight spaces and doing risky maneuvers.

While his lack of regard for flight safety regulations caused the General distress, his expert piloting meant that he rescued her and saved the day on multiple occasions. Joph Seastriker was fiercely loyal to General Leia and to the Resistance's cause. He was also a self-reliant pilot who was capable of taking care of and repairing his own ship with limited time and supplies. Seastriker's adventures have only been discussed in Bloodline, but the novel demonstrates his exceptional experience and abilities. Hopefully Seastriker will return to the Resistance in further books and movies.

5. Jessika Pava

Jessika Pava is a Resistance pilot who flew a T-70 X-Wing against the forces of the First Order. As a member of the Starfighter Corps, Pava flew with Poe Dameron on a number of missions, including the assault on Starkiller Base. During the assault, she used the call sign Blue Three. Pava was also known as "Jess" and "Testor" by her pilot peers.

She was inspired to become a starship pilot after growing up hearing stories about the brave and talented Rebel pilots Wedge Antilles and Luke Skywalker. After joining the Resistance, she spoke to Threepio about Luke and he told her personal stories about his past adventures with Luke Skywalker and victories against the Galactic Empire.

Pava is an incredibly skilled pilot, both in the Poe Dameron comics and in the film The Force Awakens. In the latter, she covers Poe in the final attack on the Starkiller Base, ensuring its destruction.

4. Thane Kyrell

Thane Kyrell, one of the main characters from the canonical novel Lost Stars, left his family and went to the Royal Imperial Academy at a young age. He was on the elite track to fly TIE Fighters for the Galactic Empire, but after learning about the slave trade that the Empire supported and the destruction of the planet Alderaan by the Death Star, he began to doubt the motives of the Empire.

Much like Biggs Darklighter, Thane Kyrell chose to defect and become a member of the Rebel Alliance, joining the ranks of famous pilots like Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles. Trading in his TIE Fighter for an X-Wing, he flew against his former friends and his former lover Ciena Ree as a member of Corona Squadron in the Battle of Hoth, the Battle of Endor, and the Battle of Jakku. Antilles was impressed with Kyrell's piloting skills, and Kyrell's longevity as a pilot speaks to his ability to out-fly other pilots.

3. Wedge Antilles

Wedge Antilles is a Correllian pilot who flew with the Rebel Alliance against the Galactic Empire. Antilles is the only pilot who flew against both Death Stars, surviving the first Death Star's deadly slaughter and helping to destroy (along with the Millennium Falcon) the second Death Star. Wedge was originally trained by the Imperial forces to fly TIE fighters as a cadet at Skystrike Academy. He chose to defect to the Rebel Alliance after meeting Sabine Wren.

Antilles is one of only two pilots, along with Luke Skywalker, from the original Red Squadron to survive the attack on the first Death Star. He also flew in the Battle of Hoth, led a recon mission against Imperial forces at the planet of Akiva, and helped in the liberation of the Wookiee planet Kashyyyk as the leader of Phantom Squadron. His service record to the Rebel Alliance is unmatched, and he helped to inspire the next generation of Resistance pilots.

2. Poe Dameron

Poe Dameron was born on the planet of Endor, the son of a Rebel Alliance soldier and a pilot. As early as the age of six, Poe learned was taught by his mother to fly an A-Wing. He served as a pilot as part of the Resistance, flying a specialized T-70 X-Wing with a dark hull called Black One. In a dogfight above Maz's Castle on Takodana, Dameron illustrated how he could combine acrobatic maneuveurs with precision to deadly effect. He also led the assault on Starkiller base, successfully firing the finishing blow against the First Order superweapon. A talented and effortless pilot with decades of experience, Dameron is sure to be an asset to the Resistance in the years to come.

In Wedge Antilles's defense, Poe Dameron captures many qualities of Antilles and his fellow pilots from the Star Wars Legends X-Wing series, and it seems that Dameron is Antilles's spiritual successor.

1. Luke Skywalker

Luke Skywalker grew up flying T-16 skyhoppers on the desert planet of Tatooine. While he wanted to follow his friend Biggs Darklighter to the Imperial Academy in order to learn how to fly TIE Fighters and see the galaxy, Luke took a different path. Even as a young and relatively inexperienced pilot, Luke was confident about the mission against the first Death Star. Luke's uncanny ability with the Force helped him to not only successfully survive the assault on the first Death Star- one of only two pilots to do so- but also allowed him to destroy the Death Star by successfully maneuveuring the trench and shooting into the exhaust vent.

Of course, Luke's connection to the Force means that he is capable of feats that other pilots would not be able to accomplish, but as of now, he is the only canonical Force user to fly an X-Wing. While this may give him an unfair advantage over Wedge Antilles and Poe Dameron, it is an advantage nonetheless.

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Who do you think is the best X-Wing pilot to fly in the Star Wars canon? Tell us in the comments!

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Star Wars: The 15 Best X-Wing Pilots In Canon, Ranked

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There are a number of pilots who have flown X-Wings in the Star Wars galaxy. Some, like John D. Branon or Grizz Frix, were merely fodder for Imperial TIE fighters to destroy (RIP); others, like Wedge Antilles or Poe Dameron, became seasoned war heroes who saw action across the galaxy.

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Sure, Star Wars fans might dream of igniting a lightsaber and calling on the force like a Jedi. But honestly, if we were in a galaxy far far away, we'd want to lock our S-Foils in attack position like the dashing X-Wing pilots of the Alliance and Republic. But who's the best of them all? We ranked them to find out.

Warning: There are some incredibly mild spoilers for The Force Awakens below. View at your own discretion!

1) Wedge Antilles

Sure, in the movies, at first Wedge might have been seen as an almost-sidekick to Luke's superior piloting talent-but while Luke wandered off to be the hero and a Jedi, it was Wedge who transformed into the ultimate X-Wing pilot. There is, after all, only one pilot who survived two Death Star runs. And it's Wedge.

From helping to found Rogue Squadron, to commanding Red squadron at Endor,-and then further exploits in the Expanded Universe as he lead the Rogues and founded a second elite pilot team in the Wraiths-Wedge is undoubtedly the most influential X-Wing commander. There was no one who could fly an X-Wing like Wedge to the point he was drawn out of retirement about three or four times, just to get him back commanding troops and flying ships whenever the galaxy was under threat.

2) Poe Dameron

Sure, Poe might be new on the scene, but he really does deserve to be this high up-and his turn in The Force Awakens reignited our love of insanely charming X-Wing pilots all over again.

Not only is Poe the best pilot in the Resistance, he displays something rarely seen in the starfighter battles of the Star Wars movies-a genuine joy for piloting. Most of the film's pilots spend their time in a cockpit tense or relieved that they survived in victory. Poe hoots and hollers with joy as he takes down enemy fighters and blows up Starkiller base, and we can't help but root for him because of it.

3) Luke Skywalker

Luke might have gone on to become much more than an X-Wing pilot-but even if he's more famed as a Jedi, he's still one of the finest pilots in Star Wars. A natural before he even knew he could tap into the Force, Luke's years of training with the hopes of entering the Imperial Academy made him a keen shot behind the controls of a ship-and with the Force as his ally, he could do impossible things like blow up the Death Star with a one-in-a-million shot.

Even though he went on to become a Jedi Master, Luke's piloting legacy lived on thanks to his role in founding Rogue Squadron, the best of the best when it came to X-Wing pilots.

4) Tycho Celchu

Like many of Star Wars ' best pilots, Tycho started his pilot career for the Empire-but witnessing the destruction of his home planet of Alderaan swayed him to the Rebellion's cause. Tycho's skill was so great that Luke immediately recruited him into Rogue Squadron upon his defection, quickly becoming one of the most iconic members behind Luke and Wedge.

Although a brief stint in an A-Wing tarnishes his X-Wing piloting record-he only used it because his X-Wing was damaged before the Battle of Endor-Tycho was considered by the Rogues, the Rebellion at large, and even his former allies in the Empire, as one of the greatest pilots in living history.

5) Corran Horn

Corran Horn's a triple threat: detective (he used to be a police officer), pilot, and Jedi. When Rogue Squadron was being reformed, Corran was at the top of an already elite group of rookies. As a member of Rogue Squadron, Corran flew into the middle of a storm to take down the shields around Coruscant and, for his trouble, was captured by the Empire. He broke out in time to lead the Rogues in resigning from the New Republic so they could take down the current leader of the Empire, Ysane Isard.

Although Horn became a Jedi Master later in life, he should always be best known for his exploits in the cockpit.

6) Derek "Hobbie" Klivian

Infamously pessimistic and with a penchant for injuries, Hobbie was one of the original members of Rogue Squadron. Recruited for the squadron under Luke and Wedge, Hobbie flew in both the Battles of Hoth and Endor. Hobbie spent some time training other pilots, before being briefly put in charge of the official Rogue Squadron after Wedge's reconstituted one resigned. As good as he might have been at training, Hobbie demanded to rejoin the Rogues, where he became one of the most famous X-Wing pilots in the galaxy.

Wedge, Tycho, Hobbie, and Wes from the cover of Starfighters of Adumar

7) Wes Janson

Of "Good shot, Janson," fame, Wes was likewise an original Rogue-turned-trainer-turned-back-to-Rogue. In addition to flying at Hoth and Endor, Wes is famous for his crack shot abilities and his irrepressible sense of humor. In addition to being a Rogue, Wedge made Wes his executive officer when he founded the Wraiths. Wes tried to retire twice, but was pulled back into service twice. The first time, he turned a group of volunteers into an elite piloting unit. The second time was in support of Luke Skywalker's fight against Jacen Solo.

8) Gavin Darklighter

Despite starting out his career in the shadow of his cousin, Biggs, Gavin's long period of service ranks him higher. Gavin joined the New Republic where his skill in an X-Wing landed him in Wedge's reformed Rogue Squadron. His leadership and flying skill were so good that he assumed command of the elite squadron when Wedge and Tycho retired.

9) Jaina Solo

Jaina in her Rogue flightsuit with her brothers Jacen and Anakin, on the cover of The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide II: Ruin.

Another Jedi and pilot, Jaina's Force skills always tended to the mechanical and piloting. Although it was her mother's, Leia, insistence that got her into Rogue Squadron, it was her own skill that kept her there and eventually led to her being in charge (along with her brother, but since he was turning evil at the time, he doesn't get to be on this list).

10) Kasan Moor

Another Imperial Alderaanian who defected after the Death Star destroyed the planet, Kasan was already one of the most elite TIE pilots in the Imperial Navy-but her skills flourished when Luke placed her into Rogue Squadron.

Over a series of months, Moor used her knowledge of Imperial plans to plot a campaign against her former superiors, even handing her TIE Interceptor over to the Rogues so they could learn more about the Imperial's best starfighters.

11) Myn Donos

Myn Donos: trained by Hobbie and Wes, put in charge of his own squadron right out of training, member of both the Wraiths and the Rogues. If he doesn't represent one of the best X-Wing pilots out there, no one does.

12) Bror Jace

Bror was Corran's competition for best new Rogue when Wedge rebuilt the squadron. A skilled flyer, Bror left the Rogues to help found his home planet's aerospace defense force.

13) Kell Tainer

Kell was a skilled X-Wing pilot recruited and trained by Wedge for Wraith Squadron, ending up with the highest scores of his training group. He performed a series of terrifying and dangerous manuevers to try to save a fellow Wraith, earning him a commendation. Five kills in one fight made him an instant ace pilot, but Kell had to overcome his third panic attack while flying to do it.

14) Pash Cracken

Son of General Airen Cracken, Pash led a whole wing of TIE fighter pilots to defect to the New Republic. He became a mythical pilot in his own time, eventually requesting a transfer to Rogue Squadron to make sure he was as good as everyone kept saying he was. He's only this low on the list because he spent most his career in an A-Wing. Traitor.

15) Asyr Sei'lar

Corran Horn and Asyr Sei'lar, by Frank-Joseph Frelier for Lucasfilm/Suvudu.com

A Bothan who trained in the Bothan Martial Academy, where her skill was equal to that of pilots older than her. Asyr stumbled into the Rogues while they were undercover on Coruscant, ending up a member. She spent years with the Rogues before faking her own death.

16) Ooryl Qrygg

Corran's wingman, Ooryl was a distinguished member of Rogue Squadron. His deeds gained him enough notice that his homeworld of Gand granted him the status of "Janwuine-jika," which recognizes the most famous and successful Gands as folk-heroes and allows them to use the first person.

17) Inyri Forge

Even though she started out loyal to her lover, a member of the Black Sun organized crime syndicate, Inyri eventually proved her loyalty to the Rogues by saving Corran's life. Instead of being a member of the New Republic's fighting force, Inyri was made a member by the Rogues themselves after her help when the New Republic took over Coruscant. Since then, she was a constant and skilled member of Rogue Squadron.

18) Aril Nunb

Sister to Nien Nunb, Aril was a member of Rogue Squadron who was captured and experimented on by Imperials. She escaped and rejoined her squadron, helping them defeat Ysane Isard. Aril rose through the ranks, eventually becoming an admiral.

19) Plourr Ilo

You know how secret princesses are also brilliant pilots who quickly rise through the ranks in the most famous X-Wing squadron there is? Yeah, that's Plourr, who continued to serve with the Rogues whenever she could. Even though she was technically ruling a planet at the same time.

20) Biggs Darklighter

Oh, Biggs. Out of the live action pilots except for Luke and Wedge, he's probably the one we get to see the most actual flying of in A New Hope, and that was probably enough to make him one of the best. But even with his untimely demise, before the Death Star assault Biggs was a poster boy for the Alliance starfighter corps.

Like many others he was a defecting Imperial, but even Wedge was impressed by Bigg's innate skill and knowledge of Imperial tactics, speedily propelling him to the position of one of the Alliance's best pilots. He became an Ace-a pilot with five confirmed kills-in his first ever mission with the Rebels, and was a hero ever since.

21) Thane Kyrell

The hero of Lost Stars, Claudia Gray's excellent novel, Thane lead Corona Squadron, in many space battles during the Galactic Civil War. Although he never joined the Rogues, his X-Wing skills gave him a high estimation among his fellow pilots.

But, Thane gets points knocked off because Lost Stars tries to claim that it was his decision to attack the engines of Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer Executor during the Battle of Endor that sent the ship crashing down into the second Death Star, not an A-Wing pilot luckily (and hilariously) exploding into the ship's bridge. You don't get to deny that, Thane!

22) Garvin Dreis

The original leader of Red Squadron at the Battle of Yavin, Dreis was beloved by the pilots under his command for his fatherly nature and his keen eye for training Alliance pilots in the art of X-Wing flying. Although he met his end at Vader's hands at Yavin, Dreis' skill was undeniable-after all, he nearly made the shot to destroy the Death Star, and that was without the Force to help him.

23) Riv Shiel

Gavin's original wingman in Rogue Squadron and a talented pilot, who was instrumental in the taking of Coruscant by the New Republic and fought with Rogue Squadron against Ysane Isard. It was in that fight that he died, during an ambush.

24) Falynn Sandskimmer

Another brilliant pilot from Tantooine, Falynn's career stalled for her tendency to insubordination. She once ended up in a piloting contest against Wedge, which her pure skill brought her close to winning. Wedge's tactical mind-AKA "cheating"-was what allowed him to win.

25) Voort "Piggy" saBinring

Voort saBinring, by Brian Rood for The Essential Readers Companion, via Wookieepedia.

Another member of Wraith Squadron, Piggy was a Gammorean subject of horrifying Imperial experimentation, which resulted in a genius-level mathematical IQ. In addition to being a skilled pilot on his own, Piggy's math abilities meant he acted as a sort of tactical computer for the rest of his squadron.

26) Ibtisam

Ibtisam's a weird one. A B-Wing pilot at Endor who miraculously survived the destruction of her ship, upon returning to service she was assigned to Rogue Squadron, an X-Wing group. And she hated it, frequently disparaging the little ship in comparison to what else the Alliance, and then Republic, fleet had to offer.

But the Mon Calamari grew to be one of the Rogue's finest trainees, with dozens of simulated kills in her training already putting her up with the best of the Squadron even before she got her hands/flippers on an actual X-Wing.

27) Garik "Face" Loran

Face Loran was a member of the original Wraith Squadron, eventually becoming its commander. While a semi-skilled pilot with a tendency towards getting ships destroyed, Face's real skill was in lateral thinking and commanding an Intelligence group.

28) Jek "Piggy" Porkins

Originally a bomber pilot, Porkins achieved sixteen kills in under forty hours of combat time. He eventually joined the precursor to the Rogues, Red Squadron, flying with them against the first Death Star, where he unfortunately perished. Yes, there were multiple X-Wing pilots nicknamed "Piggy!"

29) Shalla Nelprin

Like so many of the Wraiths, Shalla eventually ended up working for New Republic Intelligence and shedding her X-Wing pilot status. However, Shalla's skill is undeniable. For her part as a member of a Wraith operation against Warlord Zsinj, Shalla was allowed to paint half a Super Star Destroyer on her X-Wing as recognition that half of that kill was hers.

Wraith Squadron, on the cover of X-Wing: Wraith Squadron

30) Snap Wexley

Aside from having an incredibly Star-Wars-ian name, Temmins "Snap" Wexley was one of the Resistance's most valued pilots next to Poe Dameron: he single-handedly scouted out Starkiller Base undetected, allowing the Resistance to discover the planet-destroyer's weaknesses. He was even one of the handful of X-Wing pilots to survive the attack on the Base, too.

31) Lujayne Forge

A skilled pilot who joined Rogue Squadron when Wedge rebuilt it, Lujayne's piloting abilities were the result of learning how to fix and fly landspeeders back home on Kessel. She had some of the lower scores in her unit and died in an Imperial raid of their base.

32) Jesmin Ackbar

Niece of the famous Admiral Gial Ackbar, Jesmin joined the Wraiths as other commanders feared putting her in harm's way because of her uncle. Although she died in the Wraiths, she was an exemplary pilot during that time.

33) Elassar Targon

A superstitious pilot, Targon transferred to the Wraiths right after he graduated the New Republic's Fleet Command Academy. Whereas the first round of Wraiths were washouts and screwups, Elassar chose to join the unit for its elite reputation and fit in almost immediately.

34) Dia Passik

Dia became a pilot out of necessity, getting anyone she could find to teach her so that she could escape her life as a slave. Finally getting free and shooting down the ship of her "owner," Dia joined Wraith Squadron. She served them well there, saving Kell, Face, and Shalla's lives by recognizing a trick that was being played on them.

35) Gara Petothel/Lara Notsil

Gara changed identities and sides a lot in her career, but she eventually proved to be totally loyal to the Wraiths. The Empire had turned her into a spy, even though her desire was to be a pilot and she had the skills to back it up. She proved that it was where she belonged when the Wraiths and Rogues broke her indoctrinated loyalty to the Empire.

36) Jessika Pava

Pava talks to C-3PO in art from The Weapon of a Jedi, by Phil Noto.

A member of the Resistance's Blue Squadron, Jess Pava grew up on tales of Luke's piloting prowess, which inspired her to join the group in fighting the First Order. Alongside Nien Nunb, Snap Wexley and Poe Dameron, she was one of the handful of X-Wing pilots to survive the battle at Starkiller Base.

37) Hohass "Runt" Ekwesh

Runt was pilot in Wraith Squadron and a member of the Thakwaash, a race which has several personalities for different tasks. His "pilot mind" had a tendency to charge heedlessly into battle screaming war cries. With help from his wingman, Kell, Runt eventually became a stable pilot.

38) Tyria Sarkin-Tainer

Tyria eventually became a Jedi Knight, but was a pilot and Antarian Ranger before that. Her skills in intrusion and escape-gained as an Antarian Ranger-won her a place in Wraith Squadron. While well-rounded, Tyria's piloting skills were nowhere near as high as her other ones.

39) Nien Nunb

NIEN NUNB TOTALLY COUNTS. Thanks The Force Awakens! 30 years after he co-piloted the Millennium Falcon at Endor, Nien Nunb signed on with the Resistance as part of their starfighter corps, taking flight in an X-Wing in the Battle of Starkiller Base. It might be a downgrade from the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, but Nunb's survival at least shows he was a pretty capable X-Wing pilot.

40) Nawara Ven

Nawara Ven was a lawyer-turned-pilot who joined Rogue Squadron. While he must have been a skilled pilot to get there, he was in the bottom of the squadron and received an injury while flying which took him out of combat. He stayed on to manage Rogue Squadron as its executive officer, as a recognition of his brilliant mind.

41) Eurrsk "Grinder" Thri'ag

An original member of Wraith Squadron, Grinder was an able pilot. But his virtuosity was in "code slicing," the Star Wars name for hacking.

42) Zev Senesca

Zev may have met his end in a Snowspeeder on Hoth, but before that, Zev was major player in the first incarnation of Rogue Squadron, following its formation after the Battle of Yavin. He had a dodgy experience with the Alliance-he quit shortly after joining thinking they'd been responsible for his parent's death, but rejoined after discovering it was Imperials pinning the blame on the Rebellion-but that didn't stop him from being one of the Alliance's brightest pilot recruits.

He was best known early on for single-handedly engaging (and destroying) three TIE fighters to defend an unarmed transport's escape, an act which lead to him being recruited into the Rogues.

43) John D. Branon

A member of Red Squadron at Yavin, Branon was an able pilot, but holds an infamous record: he's the only one of two pilots in the battle to have been taken out by TIE pilots, rather than Vader or the Death Star's turbolasers. Not the best record to keep.

44) Theron Nett

The other pilot was poor Theron, who died taking a shot to protect Red Leader in the Death Star trench.

45) Ton Phanan

Another original Wraith, Phanan was a unit leader in lateral thinking and humor. Allergic to bacta and being shot down twice in five missions, he was considered a liability in his first squadron. As a Wraith, he got to be a member of an elite squadron.

46) Castin Donn

Another code-slicer who joined the elite Wraith unit, Castin's impulsivity led to his death.

47) Grizz Frix

One of the rare named X-Wing pilots to appear in Return of the Jedi (which was pretty much an A-Wing-palooza), Frix was actually a promising potential Rogue before an accident left him mentally scarred. Retired to the support services, Frix was put into an X-Wing at Endor simply because the Alliance was desperate for pilots.

He didn't help much-he ended up crashing into a Star Destroyer.

48) Ello Asty

Poor Ello Asty was meant to be a brash and reckless pilot in the Resistance (or at least that's what his action figure said), but he manages to be the only X-Wing pilot who gets taken out not during the battle for Starkiller Base, but the final trench run in The Force Awakens, seconds after it begins.

Cool action figure or not, he was a bit of a chump.

49) Soontir Fel

Probably one of the best pilots in history, Fel's so low on this list because he got that title mostly from his time as TIE pilot for the Empire. And because, while he joined Rogue Squadron after being captured by the Republic, Fel had a nasty habit of joining whoever captured him.

50) Erisi Dlarit

Erisi Dlarit was a good enough pilot to make it into the ranks of the Rogues, but since she ended up being an Imperial spy, she hits the bottom of the list.

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James Whitbrook and Katharine Trendacosta

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Sure, Star Wars fans might dream of igniting a lightsaber and calling on the force like a Jedi. But honestly, if we were in a galaxy far far away, we'd want to lock our S-Foils in attack position like the dashing X-Wing pilots of the Alliance and Republic.

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Wave two of X-Wing has recently been released and with it came the model I have anticipated the most: the A-Wing. I reckon the reason I love this ship so much is because of its mystique in Return of the Jedi. Everyone knew what an X-Wing or a Y-Wing looked like. Even the new B-Wing had a great sequence showing its S-Foils moving into locked position.

But then there was that little one, whose only claim to the viewer's attention involved crashing into the control bridge of the Executor. From then on I've wanted to know more about the A-Wing and luckily so did others. There's actually quite a bit of 'history' associated with this little snub fighter, and I've absorbed as much as I could. Find out more about General Dodonna's A-Wing here...

When I found out that the A-Wing was in wave two, I was pretty damn excited. I managed to score one before the first run was sold out. I wish I could have bought a few more, but finances are a bit tight and it took a bit of doing to grab this one. Still, nothing will stop my ambition of getting a whole squadron (five) of these little bastards!

The A-Wing model itself is pretty damn cool. It's got a lot of detail, and it would a simple task to repaint these in Green Squadron colors, if you are looking for a 'historical' force. I am tempted, but in the end I'll likely leave them as is (Green Leader Crynyd's was in red colors). Compared to the other models its so dinky, but that's to be expected for the A-Wing.

The cards are interesting. They include two named pilots, one Green Squadron pilot, and one prototype pilot. The named pilots are Tycho Celchu (Green 3) and Arvel Crynyd (Green Squadron Leader).

Tycho is the highest rated pilot in the set at 8, which makes sense as he was an accomplished pilot before the Battle of Endor. Originally an X-Wing pilot (Rogue 9), Tycho volunteered as an A-Wing pilot went he call went out. Tycho provided top cover for Lando Calrissian (Gold 1) in the final assault on the Death Star.

Arvel Crynyd was Green Squadron Leader, but is better known as the guy that flew into the bridge of the Executor. He is a mid-level pilot, strangely, with a rating of 6.

The generic Green Squadron Pilot has me a bit confused with its low level Pilot Rating of 3. Green Squadron was not a new squadron, and all of its members were volunteers chosen from the best X-Wing pilots available. I would have expected the Pilot rating to be 4 like Grey and Red Squadron Pilots.

The Prototype Pilot has the worst rating in the Rebel fleet at 1. Again, I would have expected slightly better of the pilot. This A-Wing clearly represents the older R-22 'Spearhead' A-Wing model used in the Battle of Yavin. Two of these ships were used on the assault of the Death Star, and like Green Squadron, the pilots were volunteer veteran pilots. I can understand penalizing their rating for having a new starfighter to master, but I wouldn't think that would take a veteran pilot back to square one in terms of being able to function in combat.
In terms of the pilots, I was a little disappointed. I want to field the entire Green Squadron, but in terms of skill (which were second only to Rogue/Red Squadron at Endor) Green squadron is bested by every other rebel squadron except for Gold. This is remarkable as Green Squadron was, for all intents and purposes, a spin-off of Rogue/Red Squadron.

The A-Wing's stats and abilities are pretty straight forward. There was no ship at Endor faster than an A-Wing, and the only fighter more agile was the TIE Interceptor. This is preserved in the game with the A-Wing's Boost Action. This gives A-Wings the ability to move a free 1-maneuver for free. That is a great ability for damned sure! The A-Wing can also Focus, Target Lock, and most importantly Evade.

The raw stats on the ship make some sense, attack is 2 owing to the light weapon load-out the ship had to keep its speed and maneuvering up. The ship's Agility is 3, matching a TIE/LN. This makes sense as the ship was designed to match the maneuverable TIE.

An A-Wing's hull is 2, which reflects the compact design of the ship. When it was designed, the ship had a lot of things packed into its hull, from sensor jamming tech, to a shield generator, a cockpit, and weapons. Other than that rest of the ship was all engine. The biggest complaint was that if the A-wing took a hit that didn't kill it outright, it would certainly loose one of its systems, even with the shields at full power. The A-Wing has shields too, which I am a little skeptical of its rating of 2 for the reason stated above. I think 2 is a bit generous and should probably be only 1.

Upgrades available are pretty slim, once again making perfect sense given the A-Wing's tiny frame. Somehow the designers managed to squeeze in a concussion missile launcher system into the A-Wing, giving them the option to take missiles aboard (missiles being something unique to Rebel ships). Green Squadron Pilots also have ability upgrades available, which goes some way toward fixing my angst over how this squadron has been roughly handled.

Conspicuously missing compared to all other current Rebel ships is an astromech upgrade option. Simply put, the A-wing had no room for an astromech, so it didn't have one. So, no spamming with R2 here!

A-Wings are perhaps a bit expensive. The prototype is available at 17 points, only the TIE Advanced models and one named TIE/ln are more expensive. I'm not sure if you get the same sort of value from A-Wings as you would other ships, but I'll need to sink my teeth into the ship a bit more before I can really confirm or deny that claim. Sounds like I've got some games to play!

Finally, the new upgrade cards include Deadeye which allows you to spend Focus in place of a Target Lock. I can see this being used on Y-Wings a lot. Push The Limit allows you to perform a bonus action (think Vader's ability on any ship). The down side is that you get a stress token. I think this will be seen on TIEs and A-Wings to get that last boost or barrel roll maneuver to get into a favorable shooting position. The last upgrade card is Homing Missiles. These are pretty straight forward, but the target cannot use Evade tokens in the attack, which would be handy for killing those dodgy X-Wing and TIE named pilots.

So, my overall impression for the A-Wing is a tempered 8/10 destroyed Executor bridges. I think Green Squadron's poor showing and the generous shields shave a few points off in this man's opinion. That said, I'm extremely excited about this release and will still be going to complete my squadron with another four models. Then it's on to Interceptors and 181 Squadron!

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Wave two of X-Wing has recently been released and with it came the model I have anticipated the most: the A-Wing. I reckon the reason I love this ship so much is because of its mystique in Return of the Jedi. Everyone knew what an X-Wing or a Y-Wing looked like.

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Welcome to the X-Wing Miniatures Wiki This wiki is a resource for the X-Wing Miniatures Game published by Fantasy Flight Games, devoted to discussion of builds and strategies with minimal lore. Featuring stunningly detailed and painted miniatures, X-Wing recreates exciting Star Wars space battles from small engagements of only a couple of crafts, to large conflicts where multiple squadrons clash.

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Squadron Builder · X-Wing Squadron Builder

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A squadron builder for Star Wars X-Wing: The Miniatures Game. Build squads, save squads, share squads online, print squads.

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Here's a list of common slang names for x-wing Cards: AC - Accuracy Corrector ACD - Advanced Cloaking Device APL - Anti-Pursuit Lasers APT - Advanced Prot...