While I don’t make it out to every single tournament in St. Louis, nor do I spend thousands of dollars traveling to play, I certainly would consider myself to be a competitive X-Wing player. I hardly ever put ships on the table without trying to learn something for the next tournament, and each tournament I go to is just practice for the next one.

For a large part of my X-Wing competitive career, I have been focused on playing high initiative Starvipers. Thweek carried me to a Store Championship win. Guri won me templates at the Gold Squadron Classic, the one major Second Edition tournament I’ve been able to make it to. Up until the Hyperspace format announcement, I don’t think there was a single game of Second Edition X-Wing I played that I hadn’t had at least one Starviper on the table. Now, looking through the Hyperspace legality of the Scum ships, what do I see but a big, fat “NO” next to my beloved Starviper, and I’m faced with the question that many X-Wing veterans are asking themselves. “What now?”

This is love in starfighter format. I can’t abandon love, can I?

What do I do now that (insert favorite ship here) is no longer going to be an option for most of the more serious competitive play that will be available locally?

I will admit that when I first saw the details for the Hyperspace format, I was just the tiniest bit bitter. The salt flowed deep and wide. And it’s taken me a few days to (mostly) get over it. I do understand it. I understand why FFG decided to handle things this way. I get that Extended is way too much for new players to grasp. Even for those who have the budget to get all the First Edition stuff and convert it, it’s simply too mentally taxing to keep up with everything, to learn all that information while also learning how not to land on asteroids. So a more limited format makes sense. As does the decision to make the more accessible Hyperspace Trials that limited format. I can also see that having the two different competitive formats will help to keep the meta fresh, and who doesn’t love a fresh meta? I understand all of that, and can even agree that it is absolutely the correct decision. But… my Starvipers! It still feels bad to have one of my favorite aspects of the game out of reach, and I know that I’m certainly not alone in feeling that way.

Hyperspace Trials may be the same size as System Open Series on the X-Wing food pyramid, but there will be many, many more Trials than Opens.

One of the issues that the Hyperspace format creates for many competitive players is that the drastic cut in the number of ships available to the three original factions actually eliminates entire archetypes from factions. Throughout the life of First Edition as I knew it, and thus far in Second Edition, the Empire has been known for its Imperial Aces. List after list has been created in this archetype and almost always has consisted of two aces plus one support ship. Which aces and which support ship changed from month to month depending on the particular demands of that particular meta, but the archetype always remained. Now the Hyperspace format destroys it. Imperial ace players now have no choice but to adopt a different play-style, or move on to a different faction if they want to participate in a Hyperspace event.

I am not, and have never been, an Imperial Aces player, but I’m faced with a similar decision. There isn’t a ship left to the Scum faction in the Hyperspace format that comes close to giving me the same feel as the Starviper. The Fang Fighter would be the closest approximation ace-wise, but it has a totally different feel and play-style to it. It feels to me like much more of an inelegant brawler and less of a graceful arc-dodger. So I’m looking at doing something I previously hadn’t considered doing, and that’s converting another faction to second edition.

I think that for a multiple ace archetype, either the First Order or Resistance might very well be “the place to be” for the Hyperspace format. Between Kylo Ren and Blackout in the Tie Silencer and Quickdraw (with Afterburners) in the Tie Special Forces, the First Order has a few different options for high initiative, double repositioning aces. Part of what draws me to the Scum aces over the Imperial aces is the relative independence of the Scum aces. They are fine to fly on their own or fine to fly with a wingman. I believe and hope that the First Order aces will have a similar feel to them.

Then, of course, in Resistance there’s Mr. Poe Dameron. An I6 with classic First Edition Push the Limit built in with his pilot ability. And at about the same price point as Guri, which is almost a whopping twenty points cheaper than Kylo Ren in his Silencer. I’m seriously contemplating just going all in with the Resistance aces and pairing him up with the two (sorry Rebels) I5 A-Wing pilots Resistance has in their repertoire. With so much speed and so many repositioning options available in one squad, it might just make me forget about the lack of bendy barrel rolls for a bit.

At a local tournament at the Collector Store LLC the day after Wave 2 launched, I got a chance to put a squad with those three pilots on the table. The exact build out was:

(68) Poe Dameron

(8) BB-8

(0) Integrated S-foils

(2) Predator

(2) Black One

(8) Afterburners

(5) Pattern Analyzer

(4) Heavy Laser Cannon

Points 97

(38) L’ulo L’ampar

(4) Juke

(5) Pattern Analyzer

Points 47

(35) Tallissan Lintra

(4) Juke

(5) Pattern Analyzer

Points 44

Total points: 188

The first game was an absolute travesty. It seemed like I had totally forgotten how to even play X-Wing, and all I could do as my ships exploded was crack jokes and make fun of myself for my extremely poor flying. The rest of my games went better, but “better” is a somewhat relative term. I didn’t self bump anymore, and no more A-Wings landed on rocks the first round of engagement (or at all, for that matter) but I still lost both of the games. Overall, it felt like the squad just didn’t have enough punch to get the job done. Juke, without the token stacking action economy of the Tie Phantoms, just didn’t hit as hard as I needed it to. Also, a Resistance pro tip: jousting with A-Wings is a bad idea. I would say that I don’t know what I was thinking there, but the fact is, I wasn’t thinking at all. I’m sure none of you are such scrubs, like me, that you would try to joust with your A-Wings, but in case a fit of madness overtakes you, I’m just letting you know right now that it’s a bad idea. Poe was everything that I hoped he would be. He was squirrelly, hard to catch, and he hit hard. People who are better than me at X-Wing will be able to do terrible and wonderful things with him.

At the end of the three games, what stood out to me was that I had a lot of fun flying these three ships, despite losing every game. With this build-out, I don’t think I ever really had a chance, but none of my games were 200-0 losses. So now it’s time to adjust and change out what didn’t pull it’s weight, then put it back on the table and see if I can figure out how not to joust with A-Wings.

What I’m hoping you take away from this post, from my journey through bitterness about ships and archetypes being denied us in the Hyperspace format to having fun losing with Poe and twin A-Wings, is that while change is uncomfortable, it is often healthy. And I do think that this change is healthy for the game, and will be good for me as a player as well. It seems that, maybe, being forced to not always build my lists around just one ship might actually be good for me.

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.