This article will be one of a series of articles geared toward helping newer players get ready for their first large tournament. The topics we cover will include: general tournament preparation, the pros and cons of net listing vs. taking a home-brewed list, how to stress test a home-brewed list to see if it’s tournament ready, a guide to community resources, and a guide to turn zero considerations.

Tournament Preparation

So, you’ve decided what squad you are going to take to your first major tournament. Your hotel is booked, entry fees are paid, you’ve put in your practice time, and you’re hyped to go meet some new X-Wing players and (hopefully) win some games. But what other practical considerations do you need to take into account before you actually walk out the door and begin your journey?

Sleep

First off, try your best to be well rested. I can’t stress enough how tiring these events can be. A day that consists of six rounds of Swiss will often take 9-10 hours of virtually non-stop play to complete. Even if you are accustomed to spending long periods of time on your feet, it is taxing to say the least. Then add on top of that the mental effort needed to remember your triggers, strategize, and remember what your opponent’s list does as well… it’s exhausting. Help yourself as best as you can by getting an appropriate amount of rest leading up to the event.

Eat, Drink, and Rest

To go along with that, another consideration should be that throughout the long day, your body will tire out and will require hydration and fuel. Depending on the tournament organizers, there may or may not be a lunch break in the midst of the day. And even if there is a break, some events are held in the midst of a convention, and the security procedures can often prevent you from making a timely reentry, and could result in being forced to drop after missing the start of the round. With that in mind, sitting down when you can, and bringing something to drink and a few snacks is always a solid idea – it can make the difference between finishing out the day or needing to drop early.

Clean Yourself

I would like to think that this next point should just go without saying, but experience has taught us otherwise. Make sure you shower and put on some deodorant before going to a tournament. Put a couple hundred sweaty nerds into cramped quarters for 9-10 intense hours and things can get pretty ripe. We all owe it to each other to take simple precautions to negate the worst of it.

Double Check Your Supplies

Double and triple check your cards, ships, tokens, templates, and range rulers the night before you leave. Bring even the tokens that you think you won’t need. Be aware that in the tournament regulations (found under “Support” and then the “Tournament Resources” tab), there are guidelines for what components are essential to make your list tournament legal, which components are allowed to be made by a third party, etc. The X-Wing community is largely a very forgiving and generous one, and I have many times seen people helping out fellow tournament goers by lending them some component they need to make their list tournament legal at the last minute. And that is amazing. But do everything within your power to not be that unprepared person. I’ve had ships get broken while moving from one table to the next because someone accidentally bumped into me and sent my things flying. It would be extremely poor repayment to this generous community if a borrowed item was accidentally lost or damaged during the day.

Be As Table Ready As Possible

Do as much prep beforehand as you can. Get your list as close to being table ready before you head to the tournament as you can. Then plan on arriving early. Generally speaking most places open their doors an hour or more before the first pairings are up. That time is there for a purpose, and you would be wise to make use of it. Take that time to finish getting your list tabletop ready, to get a drink or use the bathroom, and most certainly to meet some new people.

Know The Rules

It’s fairly easy for players, even ones who play a lot, to get some misconceptions about game rules and interactions. The more you are familiar with the rules and tournament regulations for X-Wing Second Edition, the better off you’ll be. Generally speaking, the X-Wing community is full of friendly, helpful people. But even the best intentioned can be misinformed, so the better informed you are, the less you’ll have to rely on other people’s knowledge and honesty. And, when in doubt…

Call For A Judge

Make use of the judges. Most judges at events you go to are X-Wing players who love the game, and would probably rather be playing than judging. But they choose to judge events not least because they would rather ensure the event runs smoothly and relationships are fostered through the event, than simply take part themselves. They have a vested interest in making the event the best experience possible for the community. If a disagreement arises between you and your opponent, don’t argue your point, just call a judge and be ready to accept whatever their ruling is. If an arc is really close and there’s danger of ships getting bumped as you check it, call a judge. They are happy to help.

Bring A Pen

Have something to write with. At many tournaments, a judge will walk through every round, handing a results slip to each table. After the game is over, it is you and your opponent’s responsibility to correctly fill out the results slip and return it to the judge’s table. Experienced players will always try to have a pen in their squad box for just such an occasion, but if both you and your opponent don’t have one, you’ll be forced to wander the event hall asking for a pen. Make your day less stressful and work toward not interrupting other players by packing a pen in your squad box.

Invest In A Squad Box

Speaking of squad boxes: invest in a good way to transport your list. The investment could be in monetary form, or it could be in a little time and ingenuity. I’ve seen people use tournament trays from shops on Etsy to carry all their tournament goods in. I’ve also seen fishing tackle boxes, a core set box re-purposed, or even (somewhat famously by Marcel Manzano) zip lock bags. The important thing isn’t to spend lots of money that you don’t have for something you aren’t sure you really need, but to have a plan for how you are going to move from table to table smoothly and easily. If your game goes to time, you typically only have 5-10 minutes to get to your new table and set up. Having an easy way to move all your components will alleviate some of the stress of running between your matches and leave you less rushed for your next match.

Manage Your Space

When you are considering various ways to organize your squad, some consideration should be taken for the restricted space available at most tournaments. Sometimes you have space in between your mat and those of your neighbors; sometimes you do not. At times all you have for your templates, ship cards, upgrade cards, range rulers, damage deck, and tokens is the 5 or 6 inches in front of you along your board edge. It can get very cramped. Ensure that you have enough space for yourself, but also be considerate of other players’ need for space, as well.

If you do decide that X-Wing tournaments and you are going to be a thing for a while, I would suggest that you invest the money into getting a tournament tray to securely carry all your stuff around. I currently use one from Highbridge Design that is fantastic. Mark Myers, one of our Arch Alliance members, recently got his hands on the newest design of the “Lunch Box Tray” from District Foundry that I think I’m going to have to pick up, if nothing else than for the space considerations. And because it will let me “rep” Arch Alliance.

I was able to talk recently with the owner of District Foundry, Mr. Ken Cho, about his history with X-Wing, his new tournament tray, and a few other things, and I thought I would share that conversation. Below are a few images of his handiwork and my interview with Ken.

How long have you been playing X-Wing?

I started playing this game when it first came out in late 2013 as a filthy casual. I didn’t even want to buy the game but my good buddy Andrew who no longer plays X-Wing convinced me to buy in with a core set. I figured at the worst, I stop playing and I have a couple nice toys for my office desk. Six years later… I played super casual for the first couple of years. Would do a lot of scenarios, team 2 v 2 games with really basic ships and line ups. I was also strictly an Imperial player. Andrew tended to be a Rebel player so I figured to stick with thematic play, I’d go all in with Imperials. I also thought, like a n00b, that sticking with one faction would limit the amount of money I’d have to sink into the game. I own two Starvipers that I never fielded until 2.0 came out simply because I needed the Autothrusters cards for my TIE Interceptors. I did some tournaments, mostly at Games and Stuff in Glen Burnie, MD where a lot of the top Nova Squadron guys play. I’d show up with my core box and some Tie Fighter swarm and absolutely got my lunch eaten. I remember going to a Regionals up in Pennsylvania and there were SIX players: myself, Andrew, Ron Brannan, his daughter, this guy Troy who I became friends with, and the guy who ran the tournaments at Games and Stuff. That is the only time I placed in the top 8 in a Regional. I started taking the game seriously in 2016. I had gone to the Stele Open in 2016, probably my first big tournament outside of Regionals and was like “Wow, there’s a ton of cool guys around the country here. And I suck.” So I started to put away my janky Imperial only lists and discovered this thing called “the meta.”

What made you decide to start creating accessories for the game?

I had wanted a 3D printer for at least six years. The price point on them had finally come down to around $400 for a decent home model that I took the plunge in the summer of 2016. I printed a lot of personal fanboy projects for myself: a DL-44 blaster being right at the top. I also printed a bunch of X-Wing accessories using designs off of Thingiverse: token caddies, etc. At the time, the Y-Wing Stressbot was big in the meta and guys were using like 20 sided dice to keep track of how much stress they had. So I thought having a little R3 unit with a swivel dome to keep track of how much stress (or any thing up to the digit 10) would be kind of neat to have… keep it thematic and you can’t accidentally roll over a d20 and lose track. So that was my first X-Wing related original product. I started up an Etsy page to sell it and proceeded to put zero effort into the shop for like a year. Any sales that came in would just be beer money. It pretty much stayed that way until early 2017 when an X-Wing buddy of mine who was a bit more serious about tournaments asked I design a template tray for him that would fit into this little Star Wars lunch box he used to tote his tournament line up in. None of the other tray makers made anything that small. So I figured why not and went thru about four revisions/prototypes before I got to one I thought was pretty dandy. Enough so that I started using them myself as I was going to a lot of large tournaments and found you don’t often get a lot of space to lay out your stuff so set-up space was really at a premium. Also at the time, bomb ordinance was becoming big with Genius, Trajectory Simulator, and that jerk Captain Nym. Laying bombs was a pain because getting the 1 straight template out after laying everything down without moving either the base and/or the bomb was an exercise in the board game Operation. So I ginned up a little bomb template with a handle that made it easy to pop the template out. I’m not the original creator of a bomb template but I did create mine from scratch with some details that most don’t have: notches so you can also use the template as a ship placement marker; the little hole in the handle is the shape of a Seismic Bomb, etc. So now I had 3 products on my Etsy page and I started taking it more seriously. Really, everything I create is designed to help you make your X-Wing life a little easier, and hopefully has a bit of coolness factor to it. Things really took off when my wife and I moved to Denver for her career last summer. I did some remote work for my day job in DC but transitioned out after about 2 months. Second Edition had also been announced by this time and X-Wing in general was in a lull while people waited for that to come out in September. The biggest takeaway, for me, with Second Edition is that all the Pilot and Upgrade cards would now be the same full size. To me, that meant no more binders and thus, how the hell am I going to store and organize all these cards? I have never played Magic nor any other TCG/LCG games so I was really unfamiliar with the card storage those players used. But I learned real quick. Then listening to a Krayt podcast, I heard Chris Allen lamenting the same fact: how am I going to store and organize all this crap? And he was looking into to see if some outfit in China would make dividers for the game. So I hit him up on Facebook and chatted a bit about it. I came up with the full set of dividers with horizontal tabs with the upgrade logos on them for easier organization. Second Edition came out, was a huge success, and my Etsy shop absolutely blew up. So many people wanted the dividers. So I formalized District Foundry as an actual LLC with the state of Colorado and the IRS and got to work. I think for all of September and October, I was getting like 4 hours of sleep, constantly feeding my printers with plastic and setting them up to run off mostly divider sets. And so here we are. I am constantly trying to dream up new products. I go through a lot of good and bad ideas. I have about ten product ideas that I binned because they seemed good in theory, but the reality is much different.

Tell me about the new tournament tray you’ve recently come out with.

So our new tournament tray set is really the product of a lot of hard work by several folks. These days, I go to a ton of big tournaments. I’m not quite to Richard Hsu levels of travel but I go to my fair share of big events around the country. Being in Denver also affords me the convenience of getting to most of the country for pretty cheap airfare. So the question comes up: how can I carry my tournament line up around that holds most if not all my stuff and yet stays compact so I’m not taking up space? Personally, I like to bring as little as possible to a tournament: my line up and only my line up, a big water bottle, and some healthy snacks to eat throughout the day. That is it. So I created two new trays to go with the original template trays: a storage tray that holds your cards, dice, tokens and dials; and a top tray that you can put your ships on bases into and have space for your damage deck as well. So everything is right there in a small footprint and there’s a slot in the storage tray to hold your range 3 ruler. I had to re-engineer the template trays too to be more stable with more weight/trays to deal with. Basically I had to put bigger magnets into them so the whole package stays together without coming apart and spilling your stuff all over. That is the one nightmare tournament players have. And it’s all modular so you don’t have to have/use all the trays if you don’t want. And the really popular point to the whole tray system is the custom lids. That more than anything seems to be the most popular part of the new tray system: you can have any logo you want (within design reason) in a two tone colored lid. X-Wing players are a social lot, we like our clubs and affiliations and we love sporting them at big events. That’s why you have team t-shirts and stickers to trade, and whatnot. Because the X-Wing community is awesome. My favorite thing when going to big events is trading alt art cards and getting team stickers. So having a tournament tray where your club’s logo is on it and it really pops with the colors? Super popular and I really love talking with customers about their color choices and coordinating it all. Big shout out to the Labyrinth Squadron guys in DC for helping me play test this system through several prototypes. I am not a mechanical engineer or industrial design guy at all. I went to school for journalism and have been in sales as a career for like the last 15 years. But I love making stuff. I love the whole makerspace movement that has been taking over the world the last several years. If you can dream it, the technology and community is out there for you to make it. But that said, you’ll fail a lot. Stuff you thought would work just might not. People go to college to avoid that stuff and still fail. So having a group of avid players really put stuff through the paces helps immensely.

Any spoilers about what might be coming from District Foundry in the future?

Tokens. It’s an established market out there with a lot of great producers like Curled Paw Creatives and Highbridge Designs. And I just really like acrylic tokens. So support those guys who have been supporting the community for years now. Token Trays/Caddies. They’re neat but I really don’t want to put the effort into designing one for the simple reason that FFG will probably come out with some new action/upgrade token that renders your old design moot. And token caddies take a LONG time to print. I also don’t like them as I had a bad experience with one. There’s a popular square token caddy that also holds your templates vertically. I was using one at a Regional in 2016 at Your Hobby Place in West Virginia and a judge was coming around my corner of the table, his elbow caught on of my templates and knocked the entire contents out onto the floor. NIGHTMARES. So yeah, no token caddies at all from District Foundry. Ship boxes. Great for holding ships but let’s be honest: managing and organizing and storing your collection has become a major pain. Having a little box for each and every ship will get crazy expensive for the end user. And you are locked into that form factor. So while they protect your ship great, they also take up a lot of room. I have a couple spoilers and a couple declarations. We get a lot of request for certain things and I’ll just say this: There’s really three things District Foundry will never produce and here’s the reasons why: But what’s coming out from District Foundry in the near future? Here’s a few spoilers: A new large scale storage tray for the tournament system that can hold your ships, damage deck, more dice, whatever. We’re talking Millennium Falcon sized storage here. More customized options. From a production standpoint, you really don’t want to offer too much customization because it can be disruptive. But we’ve gotten our production down where it’s no big deal, production-wise. At this point, customization is all front-loaded effort: making sure the design will print out nicely ,etc. But people love customization. There’s this group out in St Louis that bugged me to have custom damage deck holders with their logo on it for an upcoming event. So I’m sure more groups out there would love that kind of stuff. Loopin’ Chewy Mods. Since this has become the de facto way for podcasters to kill time on stream, we’ve decided to up that game a bit. Our new Loopin’ Chewy kit will force players to really put some skin into the game. The mods will add spikes and other bodily harm-causing effects to the Chewy Falcon, and the new controllers will add even more force and dynamic energy to its movement. We really think this will be a best seller for years to come.

Many thanks Ken for taking the time to talk, and for the work you do for the community.

If you are in the St. Louis area or coming to visit, reach out to Arch Alliance X-Wing on Facebook to find out where we are playing on any given night.

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