Personally I can't wait to give Han a Navigator. I think the ability to adjust his speed will give you quite a few chances to move him out of hairy situations and avoid traffic jams. Its even more effective if tied w/an Engine Upgrade. It should come in handy for keeping you out of range of missiles and Saboteurs too.

I've learned that the most important thing is to never stress any of your ships within range of a Y. If they ionize you while you've got that stress token, you can't perform any actions and you're most likely never going to shake it. They're just gonna keep blasting you until you're dead.

You have to have to plan to stack the odds in your favor or else they're crap. You can't expect to just plop them on a bunch of Rookie X-Wings and blast away. Same with pretty much any Rebel ship besides Wedge and Horton (as rmb43 just said) and possibly Luke. Wedge w/PTL and a Torp is pretty sick. He'll move after most models so he can TL the target he wants, then PTL to get a Focus. Spend the TL to shoot, then you've got the focus token in case you roll more than 1 focus, or else you save it for defense. Luke can pull the same trick, but doesn't have Wedge's -1 def die ability. Horton is good w/it b/c his ability allows you to re-roll a blank and his Y-Wing is sturdy enough to almost always get the torp off. On the Imperial side, Krassis actually makes excellent use of them. Slave I is durable enough that you can save it for the perfect shot and his ability lets you re-roll one die. Last night I TL'd a ship that was outside of my firing arc on one turn, lined him up on the next and took a focus, then fired his torp. I rolled a Crit, Hit, Focus, and Blank. Used the torp's ability to change the focus to a Crit, then used Krassis to re-roll the blank, got a focus, and used my focus token to make that a hit.

Just to clarify: Luke doesn't allow you to re-roll any dice. He allows you to make a second attack. That's a very important distinction when the other game mechanics come into play.

Cool. I've been thinking about something similar.

From the preview: In other words, the Challenge deck cards are fixed and not allowed outside of that play format. The decks used by the players facing the challenge deck will be normal decks though. No. (Unless you consider playing the current game solo a fun use of your time, I guess.) I would think so. The 3 vs 1 format was their original concept for multiplayer, so I hope they continue with it. No idea how they would go about releasing them though. Maybe they'll do a big box like this twice a year? Maybe they'll release 1 challenge deck every couple of months, packaged like the current Force Packs?

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I'm just saying that if you design your squadron around a ship with a range-based ability, that ability is wasted points if you don't use it and gives your opponent the upper hand. If you want to be unpredictable, by all means go for it! Chewie and Han are just better choices for that though. Hell, the best part about flying the Falcon (and Slave I) is that you /can/ make those unexpected moves and still be able to get off a shot. There's nothing better in this game than when your opponent expects you to go left and you go right - right out of his firing arcs that is! I'd prefer to go after Howlrunner with those Cluster Missiles than the Assault Missiles. The AOE dmg from the AM won't knock-out Howl's Stealth generator, so you may as well roll a lot of attack dice and hope that you get lucky. If your Falcon has Gunner - which it should ALWAYS! - then you basically get 3 chances at taking her out before those TIEs get to shoot at you.

Usable, yes. But that doesn't mean useful. There's probably a lot better Objective Sets to use instead, at least when it comes to Mara's set.

Sorry, but I've got too many commitments to fit in two gaming nights/week. Especially back-to-back. Like I mentioned above though, some Lincoln vs Omaha matches could definitely work in the future if planned for. Back in the days when BattleTech was extremely popular they did something similar. One group of players would travel to the other city and they'd face off against each other, then the next time they'd switch cities. And if you guys ever decide to have a tournament, be sure to post it on here. I'd bet a few guys could make the trip.

It looks like there might be problems with switching from one format to another though. Good single player decks probably won't be as effective in 2v2 as your average deck designed for the format, and vice-versa. And they make it sound like the Challenge decks are pre-built, so you'll want to have decks specifically built to play against each one. I think they're all really cool ideas, but it kinda screws you if your game night plans don't pan out... Plan on playing 2v2 but someone doesn't show up and you don't have the right decks to play 1v2. Plan on playing 1v2 and somebody doesn't show up, you don't have the right decks for 1v1. Unless you're Mr. Suitcase.

The other problem that I see right away w/the Rebel ships is their set up. Having the two ships so far apart totally negates Lando's ability. Its turn 4 before the two finally get w/in Range 1 of each other. They should be flying in formation together so that Wedge can Target Lock, then perform a free Focus from Lando. Then Wedge should be using a Photon Torpedo to blow something to bits. In this case, Howlrunner should be his primary target b/c it ruins the Imps whole build.

It bugs me that Leia doesn't have the Princess trait.

After you buy a few more ships you'll be fine. Unless you're the type of person who wants to carry every single token with you everywhere, you'll find yourself with more of them than you need. I don't even bother to punch out most of the tokens that come w/my ships anymore.

No worries. Bazinga quoted the FAQ rule several posts back, so I didn't bother to specify it in my first post.

He catches on quickly.

I just place the card itself by the model. Since I usually run large ships, there's always room on the ship's base. On the occasions where I'm using it on a small ship in the middle of a traffic jam, I'll lay it on top of the model.

You have to take into account that the rule about touching is a part of the Overlapping Other Ships section (pg 17) so those rules only apply if the ships' bases have overlapped. And thus why FFG had to have the FAQ about two ships not considered touching if they didn't overlap each other during this round. The FAQ overrides the rule as written. In this context, "touching" isn't actually the physical act of two models being in b2b with each other, its a game mechanic term. FFG should have used a different term, like Base-to-Base, along with a specific definition of what does and doesn't trigger the condition.

Say an X-Wing ends its movement overlapping a TIE Fighter. - The X-Wing would get placed behind the TIE in physical base-to-base contact and they'd be considered touching b/c their movement overlapped on this turn. - The X-Wing can't shoot at the TIE b/c they're in b2b. Next turn, the TIE moves a Straight 3 and performs its action. Then the X-Wing also performs a Straight 3. - Even though they'll end up in b2b contact, their movement did not cause them to overlap, so they're not considered touching. - The X-Wing can perform an action. - The X-Wing can shoot at the TIE. If you're a racing fan, think of it as drafting. LOL - EDIT - the key to this is the second sentence you quoted: "As soon as either of these ships moves away (so that the bases are no longer touching), this combat restriction no longer applies." In my example, as soon as the TIE Fighter moved away from the X-Wing, the touching condition ended and the TIE became a legal target for the X-Wing. Then, even though the X-Wing pulled the same maneuver, since the models bases would not overlap, they aren't considered "touching" by the game's mechanics.

How did your first night go? I'd be awesome if we could eventually get some Omaha/Lincoln grudge matches going.

We had a new guy there on Tuesday, but I didn't get a chance to introduce myself. Was that you?

If you're just playing w/friends for fun, go for it. Have fun. If you're playing in a serious setting you're going to need 1 physical card for each ship. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to borrow what you need from a friend or two though.

You can join as late in the season as you'd like, but obviously your chances at winning diminish. Some practice for the next season never hurts tho. :-) Tues the 9th will be week 4 of this season. I think there's 9 weeks total, but I'm not 100%. Our previous TO had to step down due to RL conflicts and our new TO is getting up to speed. I'll see if I can get him to reply to you. Since its summertime and we figured that most people would miss a week or two due to family vacations, etc, we decided to take this season a bit more relaxed. Instead of playing 2 matches each week, we're playing 2- 100 pt matches on odd numbered weeks, then even numbered weeks we only play 1 match and leave the rest of the time for open-gaming, make-up games, or whatever you want. The even week's match has some kind of wrinkle to it too. Week 2's game was a 125 pt match. This week's match is open affiliations, so you can have both Rebel and Imps in the same fleet. BTW we have 2 guys who drive in from Lincoln every week, so you might be able to car pool w/them.

I would buy this in a heartbeat!

I know someone in Lincoln who might be interested. I will send him a link to this.

We're starting the 3rd season of our local X-Wing league on Tues, June 11th. 7:00-10:00 PM @ The Game Shoppe in Bellevue, NE. http://www.thegameshoppe.com We had an excellent season 2: 15 unique players participating over the course of the season, with an average attendance of 12 each night, but new blood is always welcome! Its $5 for entry into the league, but not sure what the prizes will be yet since the new X-Wing kits aren't available yet.