At the beginning of every game of X-Wing the First Player is chosen. As far as descriptors go, First Player describes itself extremely accurately.

If two ships have the same Initiative, which shoots first?

The First Player.

If two ships have the same Initiative, which moves first?

The First Player.

If two ships have abilities that happen at the same time, which ship’s ability activates first?

The First Player.

I think you get it now. Any conflicts in timing between two ships controlled by two different players are resolved by simply checking who is First Player. Note that this is distinct from having two ships controlled by the same player. If two abilities controlled by the same player trigger at the same time, that player chooses the order in which to resolve them. There is no need to worry about who is First Player if both events are controlled by the same player. Thus, if you have four different ships with at I2, then you will always be able to move those ships in any order you like. If, however, your opponent also has a ship at I2, then that ship will move either before your four ships, or after, depending on who is First Player.

Ironically, given the name, many seasoned X-Wing players consider First Player to be something of a disadvantage. The reason for this is because of movement. Information is extremely valuable in X-Wing. The more skilled pilots and agile ships have boosts and barrel rolls (sometimes both!) to help them adjust their position after they execute the maneuver on their dial. If my I6 Wedge Antilles has to move before my opponent’s I6 Soontir Fel, I am going to have an incredibly hard time getting shots on Soontir. My ability as First Player to shoot first is small consolation, since I probably won’t be getting as many shots in the first place.

That said, there ARE cases where First Player can help you. If you are flying a list that relies heavily on “bumping” enemy ships – flying directly into their flight path to deny them their actions – then you might WANT to be First Player, so that your low-Initiative ships can move into place before your opponent moves. In general, the ability to “bump” is often the silver lining to the cloud that is being given First Player. Even if Wedge can’t escape and get shots as effectively as he otherwise could, he at least can try to block Soontir, leaving him vulnerable to taking shots from Wedge’s wingmates.

How To Choose

All that said, we have yet to cover possibly the most important part of the First Player rules: how to actually decide who is First Player. The First Player rules actually add a lot of subtlety to the squad-building aspect of the game because:

The player with the fewest points worth of ships and upgrades in their list gets to choose who the First Payer is for that game. If there is a tie, decide randomly.

Or put another way, the player with the most unspent squadron points gets to choose who the First Player is for that game. Unspent points in a completed squadron are called a “bid” by most players, since, in the battle for choosing First Player, your unspent points effectively are just that: a blind “bid” for Second Player (since that’s usually what people want). There’s a legend here in the Maryland area about a player who, in a casual 1e tournament, took a list that was nothing but Soontir Fel (in his then-traditional 35 point build) and a sixty-five point bid. Soontir was extremely popular at that time, and that player wanted to make absolutely, totally, and 100% sure that he could move after the many other Soontirs that he assumed he would see that day, so much so that he decided that fielding a single 3-hit point ship was worth it.

It is the opinion of this author that a 130-point bid is excessive. A solid bid can, however, make the difference with squadrons that rely on an arc-dodging ace. Judging which upgrades are necessary and which are just fluff is an important skill to have, since those points of bid can be so crucial.

The other skill to learn when speaking regarding First Player is anticipating the other bids you might see at a tournament, and what lists you’ll see them in. For example, any list running Soontir, Darth Vader, or Scum Fenn Rau will probably have a decent bid since all of those ships tend to be keystones, and perform much better if they move at the very end of the round. This not to mention the abundance of keystone I5 ships which will be competing for that last movement position.

Consider, then, when determining your own bid, what sort of lists you’ll want to outbid. Is your Soontir so crucial to your list that you need to move after other Soontirs? Better bid high. But if you just want Wedge to be sure that you will have an advantage over the other five levels of pilot skill, don’t bother leaving off potentially helpful upgrades in exchange for a bid that will probably get beaten anyway.

Many people build to a full 200, and for a lot of lists in the game that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. You have ships in great enough quantity or quality that you don’t NEED to move last against every opponent. But the power of the bid is such that one should never take upgrades simply for the sake of filling an empty upgrade slot. That Jamming Beam might help you in a few edge cases. But that bid is more likely to help your entire team.