This is a guest post by Patrick Hardy. Patrick had posted this article on Reddit a few weeks ago, and we thought it was worth promoting his words as they are useful for anyone getting into the game.

Let’s be honest: getting started with the X-Wing Miniatures Game can be intimidating. If you’re a new player searching the Internet for “how to play X-Wing Miniatures Game,” chances are you will find a lot of high-quality tutorial content about the game’s first edition, of which the core concepts are still relevant, but many of the finer details of movement, turn structure, list building, and more have either been tweaked or undergone significant changes. Furthermore, virtually all current players of the game are playing the second edition, but retailers are still selling first edition expansions, which have incompatible cards and dials. On top of that, despite the achievements of superstar content creators producing video streams, recording podcasts, and writing blogs to create a vibrant worldwide X-Wing community online, the local X-Wing scene is more often a jumbled patchwork of game store employees, competitive players, and casual players working out a time and place to play. So if you’re a new player searching for information about how, where, and when to play, it’s totally reasonable to be at a loss to know where to start.

The good news is that there are a ton of tools available to new players to ease the transition.

As a former first edition player, I can confidently say that all the changes introduced in the second edition are positive, both for the short- and long-term health of the game. Turrets are fixed, many oppressive combos have been nixed, and point costs are variable, meaning they can now be adjusted in order to weed out abusive combos or fix things post-production. New players have never had it so good!

How to Play

To learn the game, Fantasy Flight includes both a quick-start guide and a longer rule book inside the Core Set box. Several X-Wing content creators have also produced video tutorials, which match or exceed the quality of the official written guides. For third-party resources, I would recommend the following:

Hairy Nick’s How to Play Series: Succinct, clear, and appropriate pacing. The way that Nick demonstrates the essential gameplay elements with the physical components and integrates digital overlays is excellent. This really is the gold standard for an X-Wing tutorial. Run time: 28 minutes.

Harsh Rules’ Learn to Play X-Wing: Another good tutorial video. This one does not show any of the physical components, but it can be helpful for some new players to see blocks of relevant information, such as multiple turn phases or a complete view of the play space, all on the screen at the same time. Run time: 29 minutes.

Team Covenant’s How to Play X-Wing 2E: The Team Covenant crew are longtime X-Wing content creators and the quality of their work reflects that. If you have time, this tutorial video features one of the game’s designers, Alex Davy, playing and explaining the rules himself. Most impressive! Run time: 1 hour 5 minutes. See also: the written guide on their website.

Beyond the basics of flying and shooting, check out the Mynocks Fly Better podcast’s Flight Academy Series. They discuss deeper strategies that will help new players bridge the gap between casual and competitive play.

What To Buy

One of the first things that new players will quickly realize about X-Wing is the cost, and while it’s not as bad as collectible card games or some other miniatures games, the hobby isn’t exactly conducive to people on a budget. As someone who started playing X-Wing in college, I’m keenly aware of this challenge. The good news is that there are a number of options for players with budgetary restrictions.

The most important thing when it comes to buying X-Wing stuff, used or new, is knowing whether it is second edition-ready or not. There’s an easy way to tell: second edition products come in black packaging and first edition products come in gray packaging. See the following pictures of the Rebel T-65 X-Wing expansion pack for comparison.

None of the cards, cardboard chits, or maneuver dials from first edition products work for second edition. On the other hand, all of the models from first edition ships are compatible with second edition. This is exactly why longtime players buy the conversion kits, which allow them to keep using their old models while bringing the rest of the components up to date. If you plan to buy a used first edition collection and convert it, keep in mind that the conversion kits only convert a certain number of each type of ship, so refer to the wiki for the complete list. However, if you’re playing only standard 200-point games, one conversion kit per faction will be plenty for the vast majority of squads.

Whether you’re buying a first edition collection or starting fresh with second edition, you will need a new Core Set. Even if you don’t plan to play Rebels or Imperials, you will still need a new Core Set. The main reason is that the Core Set contains all the tokens, templates, obstacles, dice, and damage deck you will need in order to play. In particular, the second edition core set’s damage deck is different and the maneuver templates now have center lines printed on them, which are important for executing barrel rolls and tallon rolls.

If you intend to play Rebels or Imperials, the Core Set becomes even more necessary since it’s easily the cheapest way to get two TIE fighters and an X-Wing. As a bonus, the new Core Set contains a few pilots and upgrades that aren’t available anywhere else. Some of the Core Set-only upgrades (looking at you, Sense) are even available for other factions outside of Rebels and Imperials.

Outside of the Core Set, it’s really up to your faction preferences on how to best buy into the game. Each of the game’s seven factions–Rebels, Empire, Scum, Resistance, First Order, Galactic Republic, and CIS–have unique ships and playstyles. I started with Rebels and Imperials since they’re the easiest factions to expand, due to the jumpstart you get with the Core Set ships and the huge savings you can find in the secondary market.

Before buying anything beyond the core set, I highly, highly recommend showing up to a local casual play event. Not only will you be able to gauge how healthy the player base is in your area, but if you explain that you’re new to the game, someone may allow you to try out a new faction or ship(s) from their collection. Local meetups are also a great way to find deals on used products from players (plus, no shipping!). In my experience, the X-Wing community is very friendly–while I was waiting for my conversion kits to arrive, local players let me borrow cards and even try out entire 200-point lists, and I would gladly return the favor for newcomers.

There is also a bevy of online buying guides for X-Wing. I recommend the following:

Crabbok’s Getting Started with Second Edition: Crabbok is a diehard FFG Star Wars fan who churns out a lot of good X-Wing content. Run time: 14 minutes. See also: his guide to buying X-Wing 2.0 on a budget.

Stay On the Leader’s Buying Guide: A great written introduction to the three biggest (in terms of number of ships released) factions of X-Wing: Rebels, Imperials, and Scum. The strength of this article is how it breaks down the cost to acquire each faction. It’s important to note that there are four other playable factions in the game–the Resistance and First Order have been broken off from Rebels and Imperials respectively, and second edition introduced two brand-new prequel factions, the Galactic Republic and the Separatists.

Team Covenant’s Buying Guide: This guide hasn’t been updated with the latest releases of ships, but it does give a nice overview of the cost to get started with each of the seven factions.

Where to Buy

While you can always buy and pre-order X-Wing expansions directly from the FFG website, there are a number of alternative retailers and secondary markets you can use to grow your collection:

New Stuff:

Your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS): It should come as no surprise that the institution that organizes game nights, provides you with product information, serves as a venue for tournament play, and acts as a social hub for local gamers should be the first place you consider buying X-Wing from.

Miniature Market, CoolStuffInc, and GameNerdz: These three online game stores form what I’ll call the “holy trinity” for X-Wing: they almost always have new products in stock, free shipping is available for orders over $100 for Miniature Market and CoolStuffInc or over $75 for GameNerdz, their prices are consistently 15% lower than MSRP, and sometimes they hold sales which drop the prices even lower.

Amazon and Walmart: You can often score some deals on X-Wing products (especially on select first edition ships) from these two retailer behemoths, plus their thresholds for free shipping are lower. However, be advised that Amazon and Walmart do not stock X-Wing themselves, meaning all of the sellers there are third parties and sometimes they charge prices that are greater than MSRP.

Used Stuff:

Facebook Star Wars Games Swap N Sell: This is probably the largest secondary market around for X-Wing (as well as other FFG Star Wars games). I’ve conducted multiple purchases using this group and for the most part they’ve been very positive experiences. Just make sure to follow the group’s rules, communicate clearly with sellers, and choose the “businesses and services” payment mode on PayPal to insure yourself against scammers.

Reddit FFG Star Wars Trade: Never used it, but this subreddit sees a lot of activity and others have reported good trades. As always, buyer beware.

eBay: Simply type “x-wing miniatures game” into the search bar and you will find dozens of pages selling everything from card singles to ship models to massive lots. I have purchased cards and ships here, but I tend to avoid sellers that have less than 100% feedback and few transactions.

How to Thrive

#1 Connect with the Local Community

When I’m hyped about tournament play or spoilers for new waves, I devour X-Wing content like it’s my daily vitamins–podcasts, blogs, streams, FFG preview articles, you name it–and I love all of it, but after playing competitively off and on for a few years and casually a few more, I’ve found that the most satisfying times I’ve had with X-Wing have been at the local level. To find local groups, I recommend starting online since local communities often have parallel online communities that discuss store events, play times, sales, and the state of the game in general. Facebook is by far the biggest platform for local X-Wing groups, and within Facebook, player-run groups seem to be the most successful. You might also try Meetup.com or simply Google “X-Wing Your City, State” to look for other online communities.

#2 Find the Fun

This might seem like an odd concept: “Of course I think the game is fun, that’s why I’m here!” But within X-Wing, there are a variety of play styles, game formats, and other creative ways to enjoy the hobby. Are you a highly competitive player looking to score the latest acrylic tokens and movement templates, or do you count yourself among the “Fly Casual” crowd? Do you prefer flying jousters or arc-dodging aces? Do you like to mod or repaint your ships? Interested in multiplayer games or cooperative play?

No matter your preferences, chances are there is someone else who shares them. This is another benefit to connecting with the local community: you may find a paint buddy, a partner for homemade game formats, or simply someone willing to fly against your jank lists!

Speaking of homemade game formats, one of the jewels to come out of first edition was a cooperative campaign called Heroes of the Aturi Cluster. The creator has since gone on to other endeavors, but the greater X-Wing community has come together and produced some unofficial updates for second edition. You can find the original campaign here or follow the much more active Facebook group.

#3 Get a squad builder

Hokey spreadsheets and ancient note-taking apps are no match for a good squad builder at your side, kid. The official FFG squad builder app is rightly derided by the X-Wing community as the worst of them all (I mean, seriously, could they have made the text size any bigger or the scroll any clunkier?) but it’s out there, available for both iOS and Android. Many prefer the Launch Bay Next app (which also works for both iOS and Android) for mobile use and Yet Another Squad Builder (YASB) 2.0 for desktop. The former has a clean-looking interface with appropriately sized text and easy toggles for hyperspace and extended formats; the latter is a no-frills, dark mode-esque interface which has a nice tournament-friendly printing template. Both do a fairly good job at updating points costs quickly whenever FFG releases changes.

#4 Learn the meta

When people talk about the “metagame,” they’re referring to the most dominant lists in tournament play. Usually, these are the most efficient and powerful combos available for the lowest amount of points. The meta for X-Wing also depends on the tournament format.

X-Wing has two official tournament formats: Hyperspace and Extended. Hyperspace includes all the products released since the inception of second edition plus a few from first edition. Extended includes everything ever released. My advice to new players is to stick to Hyperspace unless you plan to buy a first edition collection and the according conversion kits. Plus, there’s a lot of overlap in the metas of both formats: some of the strongest lists in Hyperspace are still very strong in Extended, so players with newer collections really aren’t missing out! To see if an older ship is Hyperspace-legal or not, go to FFG’s main X-Wing page, scroll down to the Support section, and find your faction’s current point cost document. The legality of each ship will be shown on the right-hand side of the page.

Those interested in the competitive scene will want to bookmark List Fortress, which publishes tournament results and list data from X-Wing events, and its sister website MetaWing which analyzes said data to determine which lists, pilots, and ships are performing best in the current meta.

Then, if you want to go way off the deep end, there is a huge–huge–world of podcasts and blogs to explore. I’m talking Radio TCX, Gold Squadron, Fly Better, Birmingham Barons, Stay on Target, and Carolina Krayts–just to name a few. Check out MidwestScrub’s near-definitive list of community resources for more.

#5 Learn the “FFG meta”

First, let’s appreciate just how monumental a task that Fantasy Flight Games, the publisher of X-Wing, has on their hands: they must regularly develop new and innovative mechanics to a game that has zero rotation and 20+ waves of products released; they must make the new ships powerful enough to justify buying, but not so powerful that previous ships instantly become obsolete; they must work within the Star Wars license with significant oversight from Lucasfilm and attempt to please an extremely divided fanbase, and they must coordinate global fulfillment of a product that takes months and multiple teams to design, test, print, and ship.

For the most part, I’d say they do a good job. Many of the beloved Star Wars characters are strong and their abilities thematic. The introduction of variable point costs means that even if they don’t get the point costing right out of the gate, there is room to go back and fix broken elements or counter power creep. Also, the new factions allow for a lot of interesting future development.

That being said, there are a number of legitimate criticisms of FFG, from sluggish responses to metagame brokenness and lackluster support for organized play, to notoriously bad estimates for product availability. No matter what you read in the preview articles, don’t believe it til you see it in game stores!

The good news is that things are getting better: prize support is improving, FFG has promised to release regular point updates twice a year and have shown a willingness to make emergency updates, and they’re more cautious when it comes to forecasting fulfillment. All of the game’s seven factions were represented in the top cut at the recent North American Championships. Plus, when it comes to the metagame, players don’t have to wait for FFG point updates to unofficially ban or discourage the use of certain lists in casual play. The X-Wing community will always find creative ways to keep the game fresh and exciting.

Conclusion: Get Involved, Have Fun

Speaking of which, if there’s one thing I love about X-Wing, it’s the community. Look at all that has emerged from the fanbase: professional-grade stream channels and podcasts, cooperative campaigns, ugly ships – we even have our own meme page. Casual or competitive, there’s something for everyone. At the end of the day, the best advice you can get as a new player is simply to meet the local players and not take yourself too seriously. You will lose a lot of games in the beginning, but with Practice and Dedication™, you too can become a great X-Wing pilot.

Hopefully this guide was helpful; please leave feedback and I’ll try to address anything that I may have left out. Thanks for reading!

Many thanks to Patrick for both taking the time to create this guide and for allowing us to share it.

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