X Wing Musings

Been a few weeks since my last post, because “real life” sometimes has to take priority, and it has been (as they say) “Bastard Hot” in the UK. However, it has given me plenty of time to muse on things. One of the things that’s been on my mind lately can be boiled down to one question “how can you actually get better at Xwing?”. Whilst I’m in a dangerous position claiming to be actually “Good”, there’s a bunch of ideas I’d like to share that might help you improve your game – feel free to use them!

Know the fundamentals

There’s a load of materials out there from the last 10 years that can give you some great foundations. Some examples are include The “Rule of Eleven”, “Turn 0”, and Formation Flying. There’s a ton of ideas in the old FFG “Flight Academy” section that still hold up today. I’m not going to go into detail in this post, but I will say that if you read through these articles, I guarantee you will find something that you either forgot or didn’t even know (for me today, it was that the Rule of 11 becomes the Rule of 14 if they are at the back of the deployment zone. Who knew?).

Anticipation

The most important thing to consider is probably anticipating your opponent. It helps to know more or less what every dial looks like, but when in planning, work our what your opponent is likely to do, it means you can plan to intercept or block (depending on your strategy). One of my first “aha!” moments in Xwing was when I stopped trying to plan to position my ships in a nice place for me and tried to place then in a bad place for my opponent. One of Xwings’ best features is the poker-like mechanics of hiding your dials, so it really helps to focus on what your opponent is likely to do. The only downside to this is that they are probably doing the same to you! Sometimes you have to double bluff to throw them off the scent (although if you only play the same people, they can get wise to this over time).

Also, remember Time on Target – you probably won’t ever destroy enemy ships if you don’t shoot them, so being able to maximise the turns you can shoot at them is really key. Things such as turrets are really useful for this.

Learn your list

What does your list actually do? Aces? Big Bases? Bombs? Swarms? Each of these has a valid place in the game, but each is treated differently. When you are building an Aces list, for example, you will likely have less ships but higher initiative. You need to keep them alive and avoid exposing them to too much firepower, for example. Swarms just want to fly in a straight line in a block and roll as many red dice as they can! There’s never a “perfect” list, but I will say that for most events, having options is key – it really helps to have some ships that do more than 1 thing (e.g. one or two aces with a mini swarm, or a big ship with a load of bombers, etc). With the current state of the game focused on objectives, passive mods and repositioning is massive to allow you to keep up pace with your opponent.

The Ion Price

Things that stop the opponent doing what they need to are really useful, so Ion as a mechanic is a huge tool to have. I was recently having a discussion around what the most powerful bomb in the game is and the Ion Bomb scored surprisingly high as it allows you to stop an opponent from doing any action other than focus AND stops them from moving more than a 1 template the next turn, making them very predictable. It’s also pretty cheap. Having a way of ionizing ships is a pretty decent way to turn things to your advantage.

Learn to deal with Pressure

This probably really only applies to tournament play, but sometimes, pressure can get the better of you. I was recently at an event for work and saw a presentation from Sir Clive Woodward, which really resonates on this topic. If you’re not familiar, Sir Clive was the manager for the England Rugy squad the last time they won the Rugby World Cup (in 2003). He was also the program manager for the UK Olympic team in 2012 (when we last hosted the Olympics). Beyond that, he was a very well respected rugby player in his own right, playing for the national team on many occasions.

He had some great ideas on how to deliver at any event, including his TCUP premise – Thinking Correctly Under Pressure. The theory with this is that stress can cause a huge dip in performance so you need to train your brain to avoid distractions and focus on the task in hand – almost like muscle memory. Part of how you would do this is plan for every possible outcome and learn how to accommodate it, because having a prepared play for every situation gives you the right tools for any challenge.

So how do we apply this to Xwing, as opposed to international sports? Well, in a similar way:

• Get your reps in. If you know your list, you know what you can do in various situations. You will have better answers for any given situation. If nothing else, it will help you judge distances better, which is very helpful for, say, avoiding praking on a rock! How many times, when you are playing a new list, do you find yourself being surprised at where your dialled maneuver takes you? That’s why you need to practice.
• Break your game into strategic chunks – pre engagement, engagement, and endgame. You know for 1-2 turns, you are going to be getting into an engagement position with the opponent. Then there will be shooting. Then either you’ll have to turn around and do it all over again, or you have to run off to reload. When time is low, or if there aren’t many ships left (!), that’s your endgame. When you are looking at your list, consider what you are trying to achieve – does it help you to slow roll in so engagement is on turn 3 rather than 2? Or do you want to get straight to it and start shooting turn 1? What are your ships primed for? Stick to “Plan A” and you won’t have so much to think about, allowing you to make the right decisions.
• Trust your gut. After a while, you will notice that your first instinct is quite often correct! Before placing dials, it’s quite common to change your dials a few times… but do you need to? I have found over the years that changing your dial is a response to stress and actually the first dialled move would have been better (especially for things like tight turns in front of rocks…). Obviously, if you forgot something and have new information, that’s fine to change, but you’ll be surprised how often your instinct is right!
• Don’t Panic! Ships will explode. That’s the game. Dice can be bad sometimes. That’s also the game. If you let these things bother you, you will lose sight of your win condition. I’ve had a real journey to really understand this (a very long journey indeed!) but only look to control the things you can control and try not to worry about things you can’t, as this gives you a higher chance of missing things in the gamestate (e.g. triggers).
• Be nice! Always try to be a good player to your opponent, because if you’re generating bad vibes, your opponent may generate bad vibes too, meaning you both have a crappy time and get even more stressed (and then miss more triggers etc). Again, this is something I’ve had a bit of a personal journey on over the years, and it can take time to get this right.

By preparing for as many eventualities as you can, ensure a better outcome even if you are having a bad day on round 3!

Finally…

Remember your win condition. Don’t forget that you need to score more points than the opponent, so work out how you can do this every turn. Is it objectives you need to grab? Is it ships you need to kill? Or is it just not getting killed you need to focus on! If you’re just playing on vibes, you’re probably not planning for your endgame.

Hope this is of some use! I’ll be putting some of this into practice next week at the Mandos Summer Slam in Newport Pagnell. Maybe I’ll see you there?