Editing Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game (section)

== Gameplay ==
Fantasy Flight Games actually included a tutorial for the game on their Youtube channel which you can view [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuhwSma960Y here], but if you're reading this than you're probably expecting some instructions on playing the game and the tactics on winning. 
Pre-game is typical of wargames, you have a set number of points you can spend on ships, or upgrades for them, and we'll get to the types of those later. The game is divided into phases, the ''Planning Phase'', ''Systems Phase'', ''Activation Phase'', ''Combat Phase'', and ''End Phase''.

During the Planning Phase, you use a small dial that comes with each type of ship that dictates what moves it can make. You rotate the dial to the maneuver you desire, set it in face-down position, and wait for opponent to do the same. Each ship has its own dial to correspond with its maneuvers, and you cannot pre-measure your maneuvers, so be sure to clearly think on what moves you want your ships to make as a wrong move can easily cost you the game.
[[File:X-Wing Guy.jpg|thumb|300px|right|This guy has the right idea.]]

The Systems Phase isn't used in every game, but it's when bombs are dropped, TIE Phantoms get decloaked, and punks with Informant and Sense can peek at enemy maneuver dials.

For the Activation Phase, each player reveals their dial and their ships make their moves. The order is determined by the ship's initiative, the lower initiative going first and then movement order works its way up to the pilots with higher initiative. That may not seem to make sense initially, but it represents how better pilots would be able to maneuver more quickly in response to what is happening around them while every ship is moving at the same time. During this phase, ships can also perform Actions, usually one per phase, which can affect later Combat and Activation Phases. The most common one, which will be brought up here to explain due to its corresponding sides on the dice, is the Focus action, which grants a Focus Token to the ship using that action.

The Combat Phase is determined by initiative, with the highest value going first. Hence why pilots with lower skill moved first in the previous phase, doing both would imbalance the stat. All ships have their own firing arcs which are shown as colored lines on their base, which is generally limited to the area in front of them unless they have some kind of side guns or rotating turret. Attacking ships roll a number of Attack Dice equal to the number indicated for its Primary Weapon, though may instead choose to use a Secondary Weapon if they have one. Range is determined using the ruler provided for the game in the starter sets that is divided into three range areas (five for the capital ships in the game), range 1 provides a bonus attack die, range 2 does nothing, and range 3 causes the defender to gain an extra Defense Die. Attack Dice have blank sides, hits, critical hits, and Focus, where if the ship that has a Focus Token can use to change all Focus results to Hit results. The player whose ship is being fired on rolls a number of Defense Dice equal to their ship's Agility rating. Defense Die have blank and Evade results, the latter which negates of a Hit of the controlling player's choosing, and Focus, which if they have a Focus Token they can use to turn into Evade results. Regular Hits have to be negated before critical hits. Any Hits that aren't negated lead to the player drawing a Damage Card, and once a ship has a number of Damage Cards equal to or exceeding its Hull rating, it's destroyed. Critical hits, in addition to dealing damage, have the Damage Card placed face up and its effect applied to the ship for the rest of the game starting the following turn. Shields prevent Damage Cards from being drawn and are removed as a result at a 1:1 ratio until the ship has no more Shields. 

The End Phase, ends the turn. All Focus Tokens are removed and if a player still has ships or hasn't met mission requirements, the game continues to another turn.

===Building A Squadron===
The nice thing about X-Wing is that the upgrade cards that come with each ship can be mixed and matched as you see fit, so even if the meta shits all over your favorite pilot suddenly, new potential combos can arise that don't need you to suddenly buy eighty bajillion new models.  Want to give some Tie fighters shield upgrades?  Go right ahead!  Remember though that you still need to actually be able to kill things, so don't go too crazy on kitting your squad out or you'll wind up sorely lacking in the firepower department, but conversely many ships don't really shine until geared up so it all becomes a very delicate balancing act.  Or you can just go nuts and slap every single possible upgrade on two fighters and see how long it takes to get utterly wrecked.

===Second Edition===
Here's what's different:
===General===
*Points costs are missing from ship and upgrade cards; instead you have to rely on <s>FFG's official squad builder app</s> the app is dead, even before FFG left the development of the game, so you'll have to use fan-made builders instead. These feed you the points costs for your particular list, which can be updated like a [[/v/|vidya gayme]] as FFG sees fit. FFG claims that this will more easily allow for custom events, emergency balance patches at tournaments, etc., but <s>it smells like an attempt to crack down on the online X-Wing community's use of fan-made squad builders that collate all the game rules to try out new ships without buying the models or borrowing from another player</s> turns out the community apps outlived the official one actually, and they were never cracked down on. On the other hand, it will probably do a lot to curb the power creep issues that plagued much of the first edition. 
**The core set will include a set of "quick build" cards that are balanced against each other for casual play. Each build has an associated [[Warhammer 40,000 8th edition|"threat level"]] indicating how [[cheese]] it is; FFG claims that a threat level of 8 is roughly equivalent to a 200-point list.
**Points updates will be released as downloadable PDFs that you can print out instead of having to rely entirely on the squad builder.
**Points costs and limits have been approximately doubled to allow for better granularity when balancing costs; the standard 1v1 scrum list is now 200 points.
*Disney has apparently leaned on FFG to make the game feel more "Star Wars"; this is expected to mean that things like promoting the use of named characters that Disney can sell toys of over taking lots of generic redshirts.
*Some models will be re-issued with upgraded molds; one example given is a T-65 X-Wing mini with movable S-foils.
**FFG has moved production from China to the USA, so many models are substantially more expensive: Cheap Small ships like X-Wings and TIEs are up to $20 from $15, the new ''Solo'' Falcon is $40 when the regular 1e Falcon is $30.
*The Resistance and the First Order have been promoted to full faction status and will be receiving extra ships in the second wave.
*Existing ships will require a conversion kit to be playable in the second edition. Rebel, Imperial, and Scum & Villany will each get a $50 kit at launch with a dead forest of cards and tokens for most of the ships released to date, plus medium bases for the ships that have been retconned to Medium class.
**Each ship in an conversion kit will get a number of copies of its maneuver dials proportional to its points cost; elite ships and Large ships like B-Wings and the Falcon come with two copies, while swarms get four. Regulars will be keen to notice that may not be enough for players who play large games (like, say, the FFG-approved Epic format) or have gone all-in with swarm lists, thus forcing them to buy more ships and change their builds or buy a second conversion kit for a cool $100 just to keep playing. [[Just as planned]].
**The conversion kit doesn't include the new damage deck, [[Games Workshop|meaning unless FFG sells damage decks separately you have to buy a $40 core set on top of the $50 conversion kit just to use the shit you already bought.]] Fortunately they have since released independent decks. Since they come in each faction's colours with custom ship art on each, you can now spend 'even more' money on getting a deck to match each faction you play.
**The Firespray/Slave I [[Squat|is no longer legal in Empire lists.]]
**"Some" of the upgrade cards from the Aces series are included in the conversion kits, but the full expansions have been discontinued.
**In the conversion kits, ships have at most three copies of the generic pilots, many of the cooler pilots (including Ahsoka Tano and a lot of X-Wing pilots) are missing. Supposedly, some of the missing pilots are going to be released in "Soft Expansions" that just have cards, and no model. These will largely be [[Proxy|proxied.]]

===Gameplay===
*The Pilot Skill stat has been renamed Initiative, and is used for a ton of miscellaneous ordering steps beyond just shooting, including bomb explosions and deployment order. Initiative's soft cap is 6 as opposed to Pilot Skill's cap of 9, and ace pilots with high Initiative like Soontir Fel are substantially more expensive than they were before, though pilot abilities play a much more substantial role in cost than before.
*Cleanup steps like bomb explosions now have their own "system" phase instead of piggybacking on another phase.
*Medium ships have been introduced for ships like the K-Wing that are too small to be Large and too large to be Small.
*Ion cannons have been reworked; you now have to apply additional tokens to larger ships (2 for Medium, 3 for Large) to give them the ionized condition, and the first uncanceled hit deals one damage instead of applying a token. Leftover hits result in additional ion tokens.
**Ionized ships can focus (you still can't declare any other actions) after their ion move.
*[[CoDzilla|Force-sensitive pilots]] are a thing, and will have a supply of "Force charges" to activate abilities or convert a focus result into a hit or evade. Force abilities aren't limited by the action economy (unless the card says so) so you can blow your load and use them all in one turn, but they regenerate at a rate of one per turn so you'd better hope you won't need to do that again for a while. Unless you're Luke, who [[Awesome|recovers a Force point each time an attack is declared against him.]]
**Examples of Force upgrades include cheating your way up the initiative ladder, ignoring the token cost of special weapons, or just straight up cheating and looking at an enemy ship's maneuver dial for free.
**There are Dark Side specific Force Powers like Hatred.
*Some upgrade cards begin play with a set number of energy counters that are spent to use their abilities; discard-on-use cards are a thing of the past.
**Some upgrades (like R5-D8) let you spend charges to discard damage cards, effectively increasing your hull value.
**There's a new "Gunner" slot separate from the Crew slot for attack-buff crew like Dengar and Bossk.
**Modal abilities like the U-Wing's pivot and the X-Wing's S-foils now have their own Configuration slot instead of piggybacking on the Title or Modification slot.
*Every ship has all four 90-degree fire arcs on its base, plus a special "bullseye" arc in the middle of the front arc; upgrades can interact with this to give you bonuses when attacking a target in your bullseye arc.
*When you decloak with Small ships, your free barrel roll uses the 2-speed template.
*Ships can now have red actions, which work exactly like red maneuvers.
*Some ships have "linked" actions, which let the ship perform multiple actions in a turn if they're done in a specific order, like a Focus done immediately after a Barrel Roll. Almost all linked actions are red actions, but some exceptions exist, like with the Special Forces TIE.
*[[Deep Strike|Some effects can temporarily remove a ship from the field, returning to play after the effect is resolved.]] This is a generalization of the docking mechanic used by the ''Ghost.''
*Droids can have a "Calculate" action, which works exactly like focus except it changes one eye result instead of all of them. The tradeoff is that some droid fighters can share Calculate tokens. IG-88 can get two tokens at once, allowing him to split them between different results.
*Tokens are now segregated by their shape and color; round tokens always disappear at the end of the turn, while square tokens are persistent and get flipped when you use them instead of being discarded. Calculate, focus and evade tokens are all green, and cards like the new Vader crew upgrade directly interact with all green tokens instead of having to list all the token types.
*Barrel rolls now have strict rules for how you perform them based on the alignment of centerlines on the base and the maneuver template; this has been done explicitly to nerf arc dodging according to FFG staff.
*The Lancer/''Shadow Caster'''s unique quadrant-based turret mechanics have been backported to all turrets, and there was much rejoicing.

====AMG Transition and "2.5"====

When Atomic Mass Games took over the development of X-wing, they made some changes to the rules to better suit their vision for the game. Needless to say, this brought on much [[butthurt]], as the game was considered to be in a pretty good place at the time. The new changes have become known as "X-wing 2.5", as the AMG developers insist that this is not actually a new edition.
In summary, what they changed was:
*'''First player order''' was entirely changed. Instead of using points bids and having one player be first player throughout the entire game, it now uses Random Order After Dials, or ROAD. Each turn, after the players have set their dials, the first player is randomized. Bids are gone entirely, encouraging players to bring as much as they can to the table. This also reduces how easy it is to force bumps and forces duels between initiative 6 aces to not be decided from the start of the game.
*'''Listbuilding''' was revamped massively. Instead of pulling from a pool of 200 points to buy your pilots and upgrades, you have a pool of 20 points to pick your pilots, and these points cannot be spent on upgrades. Each pilot instead has an allotted loadout value that they can spend on their upgrades, without any additional cost to your list. Since you gain nothing by leaving these points unspent, this new listbuilding generally sees more cards on the table than before.
**In trying to make pilots feel more unique or lore-accurate, upgrade slots now vary much more between pilots. Extra talents or mod slots is one thing, but other pilots entirely transform their chassis. Sabine gets to bring torpedoes on her A-wing, while Iden Versio can bring heavy cannons on her TIE fighter, and Oddball brings a torpedo slot to every ship he flies. Keep an eye out for unique upgrade slots, since they can really facilitate some interesting ship and card combinations.
**The 20 points limit is a lot less granular. A 6 point ship will always be a 6 point ship now, and if you try to bring three ships at 6 points you better hope your faction is one of the few that can purchase some ship for 2 points to fill that remaining gap, or you're letting your opponent start with 2 victory points; yes, those are a thing even in standard play now, see below.
**Loadout variety is has also changed, but not strictly for the worse. If you want to get creative and fly unconventional stuff, you'll be more limited by the system. Efficient and bare-bones ships are out unless you want to actively nerf yourself, or if you want to bring a lot of upgrades you'll be stuck with just the handful of pilots that are allowed to have high loadout values. On the other hand, since the meta was tending towards bring just the essentials at the end of FFG's X-wing, you'll see more variety for the more competitive players.
**Generic pilots are practically dead. AMG wants you to fly the cool dudes from the movies, and you can't do that if the unnamed ones are more points-efficient. Well, now those are dead in the water. Just how dead varies; some generics eke out a niche by being a point cheaper than any named counterpart, and some still manage to stay just barely useable, but others are strictly worse than any named pilot for the same price, to a laughable degree. By bringing a named pilot, you can simultaneously get an increased loadout, additional slots, improved initiative, and a nifty pilot ability, at the same price as the generic. This means that the number of pilots you can actually fly is down by a third. Also means [[your dudes]] has to be done by proxying named characters, unless you want a massive challenge.
*'''Scenarios''' are a new feature for standard play. These are symmetrical missions to play, four at the time of writing, that are supposed to be the standard going forward. This is your standard fare with objectives, either to pick up, tag, or stay close to. A common complaint in the 2.0 competitive scene was that games would often start with half an hour of both forces dancing around the edge trying to get the perfect engagement, then clashing when the players no longer have a choice, and the overall winner of the initial fight often then running away to preserve their points lead. By forcing players to fight around objectives, these issues are adequately addressed. You can still ignore these if your games never had this issue, or if you enjoyed that kind of gameplay.
*The '''Ban List''' was substantially added to. AMG has a few mechanics that they think are unfit for a dogfight game, and so they've added basically any card that contains any of these to the ban list. Any upgrade that allows you to peek at dials, change your maneuver or positioning just before you move, or deploy outside the standard deployment zone is now gone. A few of the less fun upgrades are gone as well, such as autoblasters and the health-regenerative generic astromechs.
**This has caused some of the most iconic pilots for some ships to no longer be available. Hera can no longer fly the Ghost, and hilariously Han Solo is now banned from his own falcon in the resistance faction. This may be fixed in the future by changing their cards with errata or by releasing new ones, but not at the time of writing this.
*'''Obstacles''' are meaner and nastier. Asteroids cause 1 guaranteed damage in addition to the random damage, debris fields cause damage on a hit or a crit, and gas clouds guarantee a strain and may ionize you. You are also prevented from shooting while standing on top of any obstacle, instead of just asteroids. To help a bit, you now still get your action after fully moving through an obstacle - provided you can still take one, stress permitting - and you ignore the effects of moving through an obstacle that you start your move on, as long as you're careful not to still be on it when you stop moving.
*'''Collisions''' have a few more effects, causing you a damage if you collide with a friendly ship or letting you perform a red focus or calculate action after bumping up against an enemy. You can now also make [[choppy|'''attacks at range 0''']], though while making these you don't get the range 1 bonus and you can't modify your attack dice. Pilots that were able to make attacks at range 0 previously can now instead treat those attacks as being at range 1.
*After being '''ionized''', you can now choose to go slightly to the left or right instead of having to go straight forward. 
*'''Standard loadouts''' included in scenario packs, like the Battle of Yavin or Battle of Coruscant. Like the quickbuild cards that have been a part of X-wing since the start of 2.0, these are pilots with fixed upgrades, except some may not otherwise be available to that ship or be entirely new. They also have all of the text and other information you need to play the ship printed on their one big pilot card.
**These will also be standard legal, unlike the quickbuilds. While this could be a neat addition to the game for some players to enjoy, time will tell if it pans out to reduce build creativity even more than AMG already have done with their new listbuilding. If they turn out to be as strong as or stronger than the builds you can create with the standard system, they could cause even more controversy.

Comparisons have been made to [[Marvel Crisis Protocol]], another game run by the same developers. It includes similar listbuilding elements and giant cards with tons of abilities for the named heroes of that game, so it's easy to see where inspiration might have come from. A year in at the time of writing, at least the game is being kept alive with some new products, and balance updates have been improving the relative trainwreck that was the first iteration of the rules.