Almost the first thing out of a new player’s mouth is “Can you look at my list?” if they are looking for assistance in playing. I know I did (and still do) ask more seasoned players to look at lists I have put together to get their take on something. It is natural to want reinforcement that you are doing things correctly, or to want a better opinion on what might give a better advantage when playing, be it casually or in a tournament. Take my first tournament as discussed here A Dive into X-Wing. Before my first match my opponent was gracious enough to help a newb out and pointed out how Autothrusters would be useful on my Guri instead of having 2 spare points.

The first place I start when building a list is to pull up a handy List builder and I have two mainstays that I use almost exclusively: (Yet Another) X-Wing Miniatures Squad Builder when at my computer and Aurora Squad Builder when I am on my phone. I have never made an account at Yet Another X-Wing Builder so I have not saved any squads there, but it does do a good job of having even spoiled content from unreleased Waves and also where upgrades can be found. Aurora allows you to save squads on your phone and keep an updated collection so you can tell if you have that upgrade or not when building a squad. If you have a different preference for what you use when building a list I would love to hear about it and feel free to promote yours in comments.

So back to building a list. You must first choose which Faction you want to play as. As you might have guessed, I prefer Scum & Villainy. It probably hearkens back to my days in Star Wars Galaxies playing a Bounty Hunter and enjoying the anti-hero rogue archetype. If you prefer the forces of Law and Order feel free to play Empire or if you want to be a terrorist and upset the normal rule of things, feel free to play Rebels.

Some people you ask to help you build a list might try and give you a “Golden Rule” to List Building. The only one I have found is to fly something you find fun. If you are having fun, you are going to pay more attention to the game and enjoy yourself more than if you are only playing as a slave to efficiency. Can a skilled player take a boring, dry, efficient list and do well with it? Absolutely, and they could possibly enjoy playing a list that is all about calculating the odds and squeezing the absolute most out of every point in the list. I have a friend who frequently places well and wins tournaments playing such a list. However, take a new player who is just out to move plastic spaceships around a table and make “Pew-Pew” noises and they almost always will do better with a fun list.

This is not to say that a “fun” list cannot be competitive. It definitely can and often can do well in pickup games or a league night or even a small weekly tournament or even a Store Championship. However, once you get into more competitive venues (Regionals, Worlds, X-Wing Series Open), the raw efficiency starts to win out. That is why it is efficient because you need to minimize the variability in a list over a tournament since things do go wrong and you cannot control everything when dice are involved. Efficient lists are made to mitigate that randomness and to make the slight changes not as hurtful.

So if you are reading this to learn how to build a list for a local league night and it is your first time building a squad to fly, the TLDR of this post is:

Pick a Theme you enjoy

Choose 2-4 ships that look interesting

Put upgrades on them

Fly Casual

However, if you are looking for a little bit more in your list and the ability to take a squad far in a tournament read on. Now take all of this advice with a grain of salt as I actually have not won an X-Wing Tournament before. However, I have won when I used to play Magic: The Gathering competitively. The games are different, but the mindset to make something is a lot of the same except X-Wing has more variance and less reliance on combos.

Step 1 is again choosing a faction: Currently I would have to say that Rebels will give you the most options of building a superior list with its ability to run a Stresshog, Regen Aces, SuperDash, TLTs, regular Aces, or even a swarm to good effect. Imperial might probably comes in next with being able to swarm, run PalpAces, Ace with a miniswarm, and just Aces. All can be and have done well. Scum unfortunately until Wave 8, is pretty much stuck on running TLT or BroBots. Granted, there can always be outliers in that a single list can win any tournament. However, as we discussed earlier, in a bigger tournament, efficiency will win out almost always. Step 2 is choosing a style: Do you like to joust? Arc-dodge? Kite? A little of all 3? Some of the best lists can do two of these very well to excellent with limitedness on the third. For instance Fat Han plays like an arc-dodger to help preserve his HP, but does not particularly care where his opponent winds up since he has his Primary Weapon Turret. Alternatively, he can joust with his opponent but then is leaving himself wide open to return fire since he can only fire at one ship and the opponents ships probably all have shots on him with limited survivability. So choose a style. Step 3 is to pick your ships and upgrades: I like to use a rule of thumb that I do not spend over 22-23 points on upgrades in a list. Loading up more than that in upgrades tends to make your ships way too expensive (with an exception for fat ship dual lists). Step 4 is to PLAYTEST: This is probably the most important. If you are serious about winning your tournament or league or whatever you want to do with your list, you must practice with it. Jumping from list to list while playing can be fun and gives you a wide area of knowledge, but to really hone down on the best that your list can do, you need to practice with it. Repetition is essence of mastery and there is a reason that you will see athletes doing the same thing day after day after day. In game 7 (Championship round) of your tournament when you have been playing almost 12 hours already and your legs are tired and brain is mush, you do not want to have to think about what you should do, you want to have it be instinctive about what maneuver to choose and what your opponent’s most likely attack avenues are.

So there were not a lot of pictures in today’s post, but I hope it was informative for you. I know I still have a long way to go before I can compete adequately at World’s, but I know I can get there with the right mindset and enough practice. With Regional’s coming up, I hope to put some of these same philosophies into practice and make a good showing. As always, make sure to Fly Casual and have fun with your plastic spaceships.