The intro…
Hello, welcome to the blog and happy new year!
It feels like it’s been AGES since my last post (and it has!), so what am I going to talk about today?
Before I get started on other things it’s worth just quickly mentioning a few events that are happening.
First up, Richard Greenaway is hosting a tournament this coming Saturday the 11th of January at the Games Bunker in Weston-Super-Mare. I believe tickets are still available and I heard a rumour that just maybe the new XWA Tournament kit might be in use for prizes…..
Next up, it was announced yesterday that 312 Squadron are running a year-long, online multi-event championship – The Conquest Series!
At present there are 8 one day open qualifier events planned spanning multiple time zones. Top ranking players will qualify for the invitational finals in December this year. This looks to be a really great event so if you’d like more information there’s a Google doc here which outlines dates and details. Alternatively if you don’t like reading (though, given what you’re doing right now, I hope you do!) there’s a YouTube video you can watch instead. Give it a look!
Lastly, Adepticon has launched its tickets for 2025 and laid out availability for X-Wing! There’s some REALLY interesting dynamics going on with this that I feel need mentioning. First up, the ticket availability. I’ve not pulled up exact numbers but I’m aware that there will be 2 ‘heats’ of 5 game swiss (one Thursday, one Friday) with anyone reaching 10 points (3 for a win, 1 for a draw) qualifying for the Saturday. EAch of these heats has 128 tickets available. 256 X-Wing players.
Looking at other games – namely MCP and Shatterpoint – they have significantly less spots per day (48 for Shatterpoint, 64 for MCP). Legion and Armada have 128. There’s some big conclusions I could draw from that but I’m just going to leave it there for the moment…
Second of all, and purely anecdotally, I’m noticing a lot of people (non USA based) aren’t planning to go. I think the culmination of a somewhat underwhelming GT season (despite the eventual points change) and AMG’s long and drawn out abandonment of the game means that there just isn’t the interest in going this year.
Given the high cost for people outside of the US to attend, I totally get it. I’m not going.
That said, there is a very compelling reason to actually go and take part.
Is it the prizes? Meh, maybe? Last year’s were ok but the attractiveness was later watered down by the same prizes being in GT kits. This year being the final official world championships will likely increase the after market value of whatever is given out. That’s likely to be compounded if the turn out isn’t all that great.
But the main reason? The future.
To my knowledge (and please, correct me if I’m wrong!) it’s Adepticon who decide how much space they allocate to each game system. 2024’s MASSIVE attendance (over 300 players from memory) has led them to give X-Wing a LOT of space this year.
If not many people go in 2025, how much space will they give in 2026? Does it even matter?
Well, the answer is, very obviously, nobody knows. If 2025’s attendance is significantly lower then yes, there’s a danger that 2026 will be given less space. And let me be quite clear here – the XWA’s plan (as laid out in the original manifest when formed) is for X-Wing to continue to hold a world championship event until at least 2030.
The good news here is that Adepticon is aware of our plight. When AMG made the announcement in June last year about the end of development, Adepticon posted this on the same day:
Is lower attendance in 2025 expected? Yes. Is it disappointing and a little sad? Of course. Does it mean the end? No, of course not!
Let’s get into it then…
Patreon update…
YES! It’s that time ALREADY!
The end of January brings the end of Q1 for the year (well, the way I scheduled my year it does!) and so it’s time to start talking about what goodies I’m sending out!
First up, it’s templates! Interestingly, 2025 will bring to a close the full set of Exile templates (5 straight and all 3 hard turns). It will be possible to backfill in case you’ve joined after it started and have missed any, just so you know!
This quarter will be the 2 hard turn template. Sadly I don’t have a picture at the moment as mine is in storage and order hasn’t arrived yet but here’s a picture of a different one so you get the idea.
If you’d like to get one of these or any of the goodies that I’m pulling together and dropping spoilers for over the next few weeks then you can sign up to my Patreon account here and pick the tier that suits you (please note that templates are for Veteran tier and above!).
This feels like a good time to say a massive THANK YOU to my current supporters. Your contributions help me to keep the blog going in its current form AND to keep dishing out cool swag!
Alright, that’s enough self promotion for today. Moving on!
XWA Update…
Ah, yes, the X-Wing Alliance!
So, for those who might not know (i mean, where have you been?!?!), let me catch you up real quick.
The X-Wing Alliance (XWA) is a community formed group that has taken on support of X-Wing since development was ended by Atomic Mass Games.
Told you it would be quick!
The XWA issued a release last week which gives a bit more depth to that
All in all that’s not too shabby for 6 months old eh?
Did this info warrant its very own section? No, not really. It got its own section because of MY update!
Further info drop – I am part of the XWA and my role is Organised Play Prize Lead. In short, I’m responsible for pulling together lovely shiny things for Tournament Organisers to use for prizes when running events.
The very first part of this job was delivering on our very first prize kit (mentioned in that release above) which, in all honesty, has produced more challenges than I expected.
I’ve been learning very important lessons in several areas in terms of data collection, international shipping and production/procurement. It’s been quite the ride!
The long and the short of it is that our Wave 0 kits are now in the hands of several TO’s across the world and we should soon be seeing events running with these cards being given out as prizes!
If you are a TO and you know nothing about any of this then you can check out this Google Doc with info and a link to the order form.
As a first foray into prize kits I’m happy with how this has turned out but also glad to have learned the many lessons along the way at this stage so that we are in a better position to streamline things as we plan ahead.
It’s not my place to make any big announcements BUT let me assure you that many irons are in the fire and several plans are afoot and 2025 will definitely have some exciting things to look forward to! I can’t wait!
The main bit. Sort of…
Ok, so putting all of that other stuff aside, let’s get to the REAL content – did I actually play any X-Wing?
Well, thankfully, yes I did!
What I didn’t necessarily do, though, was document them as thoroughly as I would if I was doing a full batrep (JARGON ALERT!!) on them.
I guess the main thing was that I wanted to focus on my enjoyment of the game. Not that I don’t enjoy it when I’m planning to blog, but it is an extra thing to think about in terms of taking the photos and so on.
I managed a couple of games before Christmas and then on the Friday after Christmas we had a longer session at Sin City Comics where we’d originally planned to hold one of our slightly more bonkers mass games.
I’ve talked about them before but Mark Hall likes to come up with some rather wacky rules or features and a bunch of us play all together on a few boards all put together.
It’s normally a very long single game (like 6 or so hours!) with lots of random elements and a LOT of fun. This year, however, we didn’t think we had enough people coming to make it work. In the end we resorted to just going down and playing some normal games and put the info out for people to come and join us if they wanted.
In the end there were actually 7 of us (which would probably have been enough for that big game!) but there was also a slight miscommunication with opening hours. While we though we could stay until late, the store would be closing at 6pm. Still, we got there for around midday and a fun time was had.
The biggest news of the day is something that I’m REALLY happy about though.
Waaaaay back in 2017 I got into X-Wing because a friend of mine had bought it with his son and invited my son Cai over to play.
Over the years Cai and I played together, bought ships and travelled a bit to play in tournaments.
Then covid hit and, truth be told, a lot changed. Obviously in store play stopped altogether for a time and while I continued online, Cai sort of lost interest. He was also starting GCSEs and hitting that awkward teenage phase where you DEFINITELY don’t want to be seen doing something geeky where friends might see you. Let alone with your dad. Yuck.
His interest, understandably, dropped.
Fast forward to a few months ago, I had some of my X-Wing gear on the dining table and as he walked through the room he just said ‘sometimes I wish I hadn’t stopped playing’. A glimmer of hope maybe?
We chatted a bit and he was aware of the changes that 2.5 had brought and wasn’t as keen as he had been. I said that he was always welcome to come along and that there’s no pressure to pick things up immediately. Just have some fun rolling dice.
Well, with our venue change from right by the tills at Tesco (VERY public) to a back room of a comic shop (definitely more incognito), him now being legally an adult and his car being off the road, it was a culmination of circumstances that led to my asking if he’d like to come along.
He said yes.
I promptly went to a very friendly discord and asked for a suggestion of an Empire (his preferred faction) list that would be relatively straightforward to fly and within minutes I was digging out ships from my storage boxes so that he could have something that wasn’t built by me (i.e. trash!). From the suggestions made I went with one from Dom Flannigan who gave me this:
Juno Eclipse – TIE Advanced x1 (4)
Swarm Tactics (7)
Fire-Control System (2)
Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (9/9) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 2
Scimitar 1 (BoE) – TIE/sa Bomber (4)
Marksmanship (0)
No Escape (BoE) (0)
Proton Torpedoes (0)
Ion Bombs (0)
Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 3
“Whisper” – TIE/ph Phantom (5)
Fifth Brother (12)
Targeting Computer (1)
Ship Cost: 5 Loadout: (13/13) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 2
Lieutenant Sai – Lambda-class T-4a Shuttle (4)
Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (0/3) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 5
Scythe 6 (BoE) – TIE/ln Fighter (3)
No Escape (BoE) (0)
Predator (0)
Ion Maneuvering Jet (BoE) (0)
Targeting Matrix (BoE) (0)
Ship Cost: 3 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 1 Damage Threshold: 2
Total: 20
Some good solid ships with good firepower and some decent action efficiency. I packed it up and off we went!
Once at Sin City we initially had odd numbers so, since it’s his first game in a LONG while, I stand by Cai and assist a bit while he starts off. A few turns in I go off to get us some lunch and when I come in, wouldn’t you know, he’d won the game against Alex Boulton!
While I played against Andy Cameron in the second game, Cai played against Josh Hall and he managed to win again!
The third game would be a little bit tight for time with the store closing at 6 but I played against Cai so that:
1 – I could hurry us up and start packing things quickly without being too rude
2 – I could see how his list was working
3 – I could test how well my list jousted into it.
Well, it turned out that:
1 – there was no need because
2 – it was working VERY well since
3 – he beat me by one of the largest margins I’ve experienced in 2.5
So, three wins for Cai after at least 3 years of no play. Not too shabby I guess?
We chatted a bit on the way home and while winning all 3 games was obviously a rather large factor, he did say that he enjoyed it and was open to coming along again (although not to anything large scale or serious). Mission successful then I guess! Will he play more? It’s hard to say for sure. His uni schedule is fairly light at the moment and his friendship group has shifted a lot (as it does when life’s seasons change). He knows there’s an open invite but I’ll definitely be making more targeted efforts to bringing him along.
The conclusion…
As for me? Well I clearly got spanked in that game against Cai (note to self, don’t joust that list!) but in the game against Andy I did manage to pull out the win despite losing a ship quite early for not much in reply.
I won’t go into detail, partly because I’m still tweaking the list but mostly because I chose to just embrace the play and didn’t take any pictures of it. It was good fun though and while it was pretty swingy in terms of dice (there was a point where Boba couldn’t reroll ANYTHING better than he already had!) I think I played it ok.
I’m hoping to get a game or two in at casual night this week where I can look at changes and settle on whether this is what I want to take to the (very imminently) upcoming Sith Taker Open! It’s just over 3 weeks away at the moment and I’m not entirely sure how it’s crept up on me so fast!
Anyway, that’ll be all for this week. Pop back next time and see whether my fortunes imrove!
The outro…
Thank you so much for visiting my blog, I hope you’ve enjoyed it! If you’d like to support me in continuing my X-Wing blogging adventure there are a few ways you can do that.
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A MASSIVE thank you to my wonderful Patrons for their ongoing support for the blog and enabling me to give away shiny things!
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