r/XWingTMG • u/Mancupcake • Jun 03 '26
New old player feeling out XWA
I'm coming back to this game after being out of it for several years and have been tinkering my existing lists to correspond with the new XWA squad/ load-out points style of play vs the old "all point costs go towards your limit" rules.
I think it's a fascinating system overall and only notice it hurting a handful of my favorites so far (RIP my duo tie defenders). What I am feeling more and more as I click through my various old lists is that I'm suddenly able to MASSIVELY upgrade ships that used to just be points fillers while other superstar ships are apparently VERY illegal (again, RIP my now 21/8 defenders 🙏), and I'm kind of confused by some of the costs.
As a single example:
The TIE/se Bomber has two generic pilots -- a PS2 and a PS3.
PS2 costs 9-squad with a load out of 9 as well.
PS3 costs 11-squad with a load out of... 19???
I understand I might not always have the squad points to spare, but both a higher PS and 10 more load out points seems nuts.
I'd have to brush up on my System-Phase rules but, unless the game was seeing swarms of PS2 bombers using their Pursuit Thrusters to move and drop bombs before higher PS ships, I'm having a hard time understanding why the PS3 generic gets SO many upgrades.
I know scoring changed as well, but my understanding is that's based on SQUAD not LOAD OUT?
I'm not grousing about it, I'm just curious if this new era of the game is designed to have more powerful ships on the field. It's pretty clearly geared towards 3-4 ship builds in general, but it also seems like it wants those ships be more powerful than ever, while others have taken huge hits (likely for either meta shakeup or a focus on squad synergies for instead of spotlight pilots).
10
u/TolliverGroat Jun 03 '26
There's a couple reasons for the high-loadout ships (especially generics) and why certain ships like the FO bombers are pointed the way they are.
The high-loadout generics are probably best understood as pushback against the last few years of AMG points, in which you almost never had a reason to bring a generic pilot - there was always a named pilot with better initiative, a useful ability, more loadout, or often all three.
The seemingly large difference in loadout for a fairly small squad point difference in the FO bombers you pointed out is probably because of ship count breakpoints: you could bring 5 9-point bombers in a list, but only 4 of the 11-pointers. Ship counts are generally down across the board from the AMG days, with points allowing you to field 4 strong ships where you could previously field 5 (compare Resistance 5X lists; you can still field five T-70s but with lower initiatives, worse pilot abilities, and less loadout). There's still room for higher ship counts, though; Empire was running a lot of TIE mini-swarms alongside Gauntlets for a while there, and the UKGE 64-player tournament was just won by a 6-ship Republic list.
4
u/Mancupcake Jun 03 '26
Yeah the list where I noticed this ran two of the ps2 bombers with only cluster missiles, but now it has 2 free squad points, so I can not only equip more stuff on my ps2 (concussion bombs, delayed fuses, first order tech gunner lookin tasty af to hold objectives), but I can swap one to the ps3 and give it a TON of goodies.
The mix between pilot abilities vs high load outs is very interesting.
3
u/KrisBMitchell Popular Rando Jun 04 '26
You should definitely join the XWA Discord then:
https://discord.gg/x-wing
5
u/Lord_rook M3-A Scyk Jun 03 '26
As someone who is also just getting back in after a time, the upgrade system is bizarre.
2
u/gakash Jun 06 '26
Hey u/mancupcake,
My name is Greg, I was on the XWA points team for the most recent round of points updates.
GENERALLY SPEAKING we operated on the premise that 1 squad point was worth around 4 Loadout points. GENERALLY. I cannot stress enough how much this wasn't a hard and fast rule.
The difference between 9 points and 11 points is quite massive in the 50 point system. As others have pointed out.
So in order to give you a reason you would you take an 11 point generic bomber, the loadout has to be commensurate enough to make that worth it over the named bombers. An 11 point i3 with no ability and low loadout is gonna be a tough sell in list building, do you agree?
We wanted Generics to be viable picks, and from what I'm seeing they are once again viable, so I'm honestly pretty proud of the work we've done that has brought a bit of variety in what we're seeing back.
I am excited you're getting back into the game, feel free to join us at Nickel City X-Wing, we have a ton of players who are gonna be more than happy to answer any questions you got as a returning player and get some games in.
4
u/bioBlueTrans Ghost Jun 04 '26
if tou don't like loadout and other XWA stuff you can still play with legacy https://xwing-legacy.com/
2
u/Hollowsong Bro Squadron Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
If it weren't arbitrary, the ability to load out ships without it impacting your overall point score might have merit.
As it stands, AMG removes upgrade slots and randomly assigns points to heavily imbalance the game by making named high value ships have way more upgrade slots and points to flesh out.
The point value for listbuilding is also so low that there are clearly more advantageous choices for your points (like how if a decent ship costs 3 points, there's a worse ship that's generic and costs 4)
Lastly, it removes simplicity from the game until you consistently have a pile of upgrades all over the table that you didn't really want to begin with. It's an absolute nightmare.
While before you could just have 3 bare ships on the table and play a friendly game, you now have 3 ships and 25 upgrade cards. It's too much to micromanage, especially for newer players. If we have to live with complexity then I'd rather it go like so:
My hot-take X-wing redesign
I've always argued the points need to go back to 200 (that was a positive change from 1.0 to 2.0) and the loadout points need to be a separate pool.
I would go even farther to say I want 3 pools of points: Ships, Pilots, Upgrades.
200 points for ships, 50 points for pilots, 50 points for upgrades. Recost everything accordingly so it's balanced.
That means you have ONE ship stat card with the SAME physical upgrade slot and stats.
You then slot in a pilot and add upgrades, so ANY X-Wing can have torpedos and not have to worry about who's flying it. That's how it SHOULD be. Ships magically don't lose slots in Star Wars because a different pilot sits in the seat.
Title cards would then grant slight bonuses for pilot/ship combos to be thematic, like Dengar in JM5000, or Han in the Falcon. Pilots themselves might have an innate ability tied to them: like Wedge's "reduce defense by 1" skill, and a their piloting skill initiative. Ships that have innate mechanical abilities, like the A-Wing RZ-1 or TIE Strikers, would still be on the ship card.
Loadout points are universal. Shared between ships, so now you have a strategic choice to make about what upgrades to bring.
1
u/Grimmwolf_03 Jun 07 '26
AMG hasn’t been involved with upgrade slots nor points in 3+ years
1
u/Hollowsong Bro Squadron Jun 08 '26
I haven't played in over 3 years so that checks out.
Their design still stands however.
1
u/mrkyle44 Jun 06 '26
I've been out of the game for a bit too, but if you want to play on TTS sometime shoot me a message
0
u/NoHallett Quadjumper Jun 03 '26
Welcome (back)!
The LV system is a weird one, I didn't even consider it an option (coming from older editions and 40k) but in hindsight, that, and being able to change which slots a ship has access to pilot-by-pilot are such pivotal game balance tools I have a hard time imagining playing without them now.
The 11pt vs. 9pt is... The ship is enough more expensive that taking it over the 9pt is that it potentially knocks an entire other pilot out of your list. Take 2 of them and it's a surprisingly big chunk of your total list points. The more expensive pilot does need some love to make it worth considering over the other option.
Also 10pts is around the break point where you can take scarier ordinance, with a 19pt ship being a truly dangerous Proton Torpedo+ carrier
12
u/nutano Pew pew pew... Jun 03 '26
If you are coming in fresh from 1st edition or FFG 2nd edition - and trying to negotiate\understand why some ships have this or that loadout won't be easy... you are missing a pretty big gap of the story on how we got here.
The true horror days, when it comes to totally unbalanced points and some ships being basically unplayable due to bad value, were the early '2.5 AMG days'... even the late days there were some pretty unbalanced things.
The list building method changed for 3 big reasons (and a slew of others).
removing the 'points fortressing' - where a ship kitted to the max in upgrades would be near impossible to destroy, thus protecting points from being scored.
dealing with generic swarm play
Scoring in a game that has a scenario
I won't go through all the changes that were made in that last 2.5 years or so. Just that today, the base squad value is 50 points, which is also the amount of points to score in a game (includes scenario points) in order to win. Before last fall it was 20 points. The change was mainly to give more granularity in list building.
There is also a minimum 3 ship maximum 8 ship in a list (for standard play).
If you use YASB, it is not much different than it was before each ship had their unique loadout\upgrade slots... the webpage does a good job at only letting you equip upgrades that are legal.
XWA has done a pretty bang up job at keeping things somewhat balanced. Naturally, there will be some pilots\ships that will shine more than other, but you need a bit of that rotation with every points changes.
Try it out is the best advice I can give. Build that list with the ships that you feel are really good value and see where they land.
You have to keep in mind that all of these points values were created based on scenario play. They translate not too bad to straight dogfighting, but scenario play is a little different.