The intro…
Hello and welcome to this week’s blog!
There’s not really a lot going on in terms of news but it’s been good to see local level tournaments popping up on List Fortress. Plenty of XWA events too which is really great.
In the UK the Cornish Nationals is coming up on the 26th & 27th of October. If you’re in the UK and you’re free, I highly recommend heading down to Truro for 2 days of pew pew with some lovely people! You can sign up for a ticket using this Google Form if you’re interested!
In other event news, there’s a store tournament happening in Weston-Super-Mare this coming weekend run by the very lovely Richard Greenaway. It’s at the Games Bunker and tickets are available here.
What’s that? You’re STILL looking for a tournament to go and play in? Well then, how about coming to little ‘ol Newport and playing with us?
In our new home at Sin City Comics & Gaming at Newport Retail Park we’re hosting our first tournament and we’d love to see you there! It’s on Saturday the 23rd of November and we’ll have prizes galore and a fun, friendly atmosphere.
You can get a ticket from SC’s website. Can’t wait to see you there!
There’s really not too much else to cover without hitting the main thing so let’s just move on to…
Patreon Update…
Yes, it’s week 2 of Quarter 4 spoiler time!
Following on from last week’s Ezra alt art, Patrons will be glad to know I’m continuing the template set line and this time it’s the Exile 4 straight template!
If you’d like to get your grubby mitts on these or any of the other Q4 goodies or if you’re a truly altruistic person who wants to support a stranger on the internet for no reason other than to be nice then you can sign up to be a Patron here! As always, there’s no pressure to join up, I’m keeping going no matter what. This just helps me out with hosting costs and allows me to make cool things to send people!
Thanks to my supporters for being such awesome people. I’m really looking forward to getting this next batch of stuff sent out to you!
Alright, best I get to the main things then eh?
The main bit…
As you might have guessed from the title of the blog, I’ve got no game to talk about today. It’s a bit of a bummer really as I’ve been enjoying playing about with the new list. I’m still getting to grips with it and while I have got the odd game in using Fly Casual, I could really do with a few more in person games if this is what I’m going to take to the Newport tournament next month.
Still, life happens and it is what it is.
So, what am I going to talk about then?
Well, I think it’s time for a bit of a story so sit back, grab your hot/cold beverage of choice and let’s get into it.
Back in June this year AMG did ‘the thing’. In case you’re not fully aware, ‘the thing’ is announcing the end of development of X-Wing.
Pretty quickly afterwards the community got busy pulling together people who were influential, passionate and knowledgeable about X-Wing to start a co-ordinated community effort to take the game on.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – ‘Dylan checks, uh, one of those boxes!’
Quite early in this effort fellow Exile and Welsh Open organiser Mark Hall very thoughtfully put both our names forward to be included. My immediate reaction was, in all honesty, ‘I don’t think I’ve got time for this!’ and I quickly retracted my name from consideration.
In what I was hearing was happening I really wasn’t sure what value I could add and where I might fit into an organisation that was figuring out what it was, what it wanted to do and how it could do it.
Speaking to Mark he told me of hundreds of messages pinging off over the first weekend as thoughts, ideas and opinions bounced off virtual walls in the discord server that was to become the X-Wing Alliance.
I didn’t envy him.
Something that I know about myself is that I’m more of an editor than a creator. I can look at a thought, idea or plan and give opinions on how it could morph or change for the better. Creating something from scratch though? Not for me. One of the very few exceptions on this in my whole life has been Exile Squadron. Obviously the idea of pulling a group of X-Wing players together under a common banner isn’t exactly an original idea so maybe I can’t even claim this as one of those examples but getting the logo done from local inspirations and getting merch made is an endeavour I’m pretty proud of.
Exile Squadron exists because I thought of it and pushed it through.
The thought of filtering through thousands of messages coming in at all hours of the day from people in different time zones for plans that, while they did in a way concern me (as a player), I doubted very much that I could constructively add anything.
With the Welsh Open fast approaching and the XTC on the horizon I was very content to be on the outside and excitedly wait for updates.
Fast forward a few weeks and I get a call from Mark. One of the groups that being formed in the XWA is looking at prizing for Organised Play and he thinks that, given that I sort all our prizing for Newport and the Welsh Open, that maybe I could make a contribution.
With a more defined role to play, this was definitely more interesting. I give it some thought and come to the conclusion that yes, with a team and lead already in place I can offer my thoughts and perspective on some things. A few hours later, I’m in the Discord.
Dan Athey had been nominated as OP Prize lead after putting forward a great case with evidence of things that he’d created for previous events. There was even a tournament kit in the planning phase which could be repurposed for XWA use.
I offered my thoughts and helped with some feedback on the kit application form as well as sharing some of the things I’d experienced with getting cards printed and so on.
The kit hit a wrinkle and while I saw a lot of work happening in the background to remedy it.
The summer ended and XTC came in with a bang. In my duties as captain of Wales I was pulling together lists and players and contacting other captains to arrange pairings. It was a bit crazy. Some time in mid September I messaged Dan to see how things were going with the kit.
Hi Dylan, they’re actually about to post looking for someone to take over. I don’t have the time or energy to do it justice at the moment.
I stopped and thought about it.
Could I do it?
Do I have time time and energy to do it justice?
Can I bring anything to the table?
A week later and I’d not seen anything on the subject and it had given me time to ponder the question. Over and over.
The fact that I hadn’t discarded the thought out of hand was gnawing at me a bit. Could I do it? Do I have the time? Can I do a good enough job?
I got a phone call from Mark again. He wanted to hash out dates for the Newport tournament (and the Welsh Open 2025, still in negotiations!) and I mentioned about possibly putting my name forward.
By the end of the conversation I’d messaged a council member to put my name in for consideration.
And you know what? Two weeks later, here I am, OP Prize lead in the XWA.
So what does this mean for everything else? I mean, I already have the blog, Patreon, Welsh Open, local tournaments and XTC on my X-Wing plate (did I miss anything?!). Is this one thing too many?
It remains to be seen but hopefully not. After all, in this role I’m not doing any actual design work. There’s an excellent team of people already in place who are desperate to bring the very best that we can in order that Tournament Organisers have access to kits full of cool prizes to reward players with. It’ll also be somewhat seasonal with big intense chunks of planning but then (hopefully!) slow down once orders are placed and kits are shipping out.
So what do I intend to bring to the role?
Well, in short, cool stuff.
You want more detail? Ok, fine.
My aim will be to provide kits which are interesting and fun full of things that people are excited to get. As a ‘middle of the road’ player I’m very passionate about a fair spread of prizes and while the top end players obviously deserve cool stuff, I believe that even the scrubbiest of scrubs deserves to come away with some lovely shiny things too.
I want our kits to be good value. I know that different TO’s and stores run in different ways and so our kits will aim to be as affordable as possible so that ticket prices are kept reasonable and not put people off attending.
It’s also important to me that the TO is rewarded for giving up their time to, very often, be out all day NOT playing X-Wing. The time and effort put in to keep the local scene active should never be overlooked and we want to show our appreciation to these local heroes.
I’ll be working with the head of OP Sith Taker Tim King as we start to look at organised play post-2025 worlds at Adepticon. I’m REALLY excited for what the XWA OP season could look like and what we can do going forward.
‘What of the announced XWA tournament kit?’ I hear you ask.
I can’t go into details just yet with some things still being worked out BUT – work is ongoing and we (that’s me plus a group of very talented and amazing people!) are looking to launch something SOON*. Information will be plastered EVERYWHERE once it’s all finalised, don’t you worry.
*I’d LOVE to put a date on it but I also hate to over promise and under deliver. It won’t be long, honest.
For now, will a little spoiler do?
Of course, when it comes to organising tournaments I don’t know everything. If you’ve been reading the blogs for a while that’ll be abundantly clear! In preparation for the 2025/26 season I’ve got a lot of data to collect and I’ll be putting together and publishing at least one questionnaire for TO’s to fill out when we get to that stage. That will be plastered across social media when it’s ready too.
The conclusion…
So, yeah, I’m in the XWA with a pretty scary but also very cool role to play!
I’ve had so much enjoyment over the years from this game and the community and now I get to have a small part in keeping that going. That in itself is really very humbling and will drive me on to do the very best I can.
That was an AWFUL lot of talking for a blog with no game so for the sake of your sanity (and perhaps mine), I’ll wrap things up now.
Thanks for reading and come back next week. Maybe I’ll have a game to talk about!
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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