Mat

Here are three great list builders for X-Wing:

– http://fabpsb.free.fr/gindex.php?lng=en
– http://xwing-builder.co.uk/build
– http://geordanr.github.io/xwing/

The basic tie breaker for initiative in the rule book is that the Empire wins initiative. According to the tournament rules however, initiative ties are broken by each side rolling a red attack die, looking for hit results (with critical hits trumping regular hits). We’ve implemented that rule for our weekly X-Wing night at my FLGS, with the following change: Each side rolls 3 dice. It’s usually quicker than with just 1 die.

Also, keep in mind that when there’s a tie for initiative, the winner of the tie breaker can still decide to give initiative to his opponent.

… Focus! By far the most versatile action, as it can be used for attacking or defending.

While I find it more fun and thematic to use named pilots, the odds clearly favor having more generic ships than fewer “quality” ships. When facing swarms though, better flying (staying in formation) and concentrating on one enemy ship at a time can help.

In my experience, the best way to maximize your Cylon reveal is to sabotage the Crisis preceding your turn. Better yet, try to convince the current player (preceding you in turn order) to use Executive Order on you and then waste that turn completely by doing something bad for the Human players, either through your Once per Game ability or risking resources, raptors, etc. It’s an automatic pre-reveal of course but there is nothing the Human players can do about it.

Just a reminder that, according to the official FAQ for the game, Superman’s special ability should be more precisely written as “+1 Power for each differentLY NAMED Super Power played each turn”.

So, for example, if 2 Kicks are played, then Superman’s extra power is +1, not +2.

Don’t underestimate the power/usefulness of Locations. They’re pretty much all great and as a bonus they don’t clutter your deck since they’re played at the beginning of your turn when drawn and remain as a permanent effect from then on. They can be rare, but usually when they show up in the lineup on my turn, I try to grab them before any other cards. There are obvious combos too, like Arkham Asylum with the Wonder Woman player, or Fortress of Solitude with the Superman player.

The lineup card draw can create unbalanced situations with 2 players, especially when it comes to the multiple copies of cards. We came up with an interesting variant: Only keep one copy of each named Heroes and Villains (except Suicide Squad) in the lineup deck.

For 2-player games, we remove the horse card (worth 8 points) from the General Store, to balance things out a little.

The points penalty for having the most tiles can swing things greatly, so it can be advantageous to manage better and have less, but wisely chosen, tiles, especially for 2-player games.

Both these heroes have stacking abilities (Batman: +1 Power for each equipment played each turn; Superman: +1 Power for each differentLY NAMED Super Power played each turn) that can prove hard to beat in multiplayer games, so it may be preferable to reserve them for 2-player games.

The Style is the Goal expansion is great and renews the game quite nicely. The new trade mechanism is perfectly implemented and the new cards and houses are very interesting. Of course, being now able to accommodate 5 players is a big plus too!

I agree that the best strategy is to have no unique strategy for this game, as adaptability is your best bet. Still, I tend to have real bad luck with dice rolling in general, so I usually go for tools every chance I get. Then of course I try to grab as many tool-multiplying cards I can for the end-game scoring.

I almost always build the Crane (bottom row, column II), which reduces the gold cost by 1 for columns III and IV, early on since gold can be hard to get.

Another variant rule:

The player with the least victory points selects the Event Card from a draw of 3 cards.

More of a variant than an actual house rule, we’ve tried the following:

2-player games
Each player chooses their opponent’s Character Card, which are then revealed simultaneously.

3-player(+) games
Each player chooses the Character Card of the player on their left; the cards are then revealed simultaneously.

The original rule for the King’s Aid often make it too easy to win the end-of-the-year battle. The Expansion fixes this to some degree (even though most players are able to keep the 4 token until the end of the game) but here is what we’ve implemented instead:

Roll two D6 and the difference between the two dice is the King’s Aid.

As it says in the main description, this expansion requires a copy of Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride: Europe… but it is also compatible with Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries.

The most common “problem” mentioned about this game is the fact that the first player able to upgrade their flagship (through diplomacy) can quickly become a runaway leader (especially for 2-player games). The house rule that we implemented is:

– If a player with an upgraded flagship is defeated in battle, they revert to the initial basic flagship. They still keep the upgraded flagship (and its points value) under the basic flagship card in the flagship area (to separate it from the ships defeated in combat and prevent players from upgrading to a different ship by mistake later on) and can claim it back, at the beginning of their turn, once all players also upgraded their flagship.