Sean's Lengthily Titled Article Regarding How To Recruit Your Wife/ Friends/ Etc. to Play X-Wing Miniatures

Long time readers will remember me talking about Sean. He's one of the guys I play X-Wing with over Google Hangout and off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure of the people I'm still friends with, I've been friends with Sean longer than anyone else. We go quite a ways back me and him, we've made several terrible/ good movies together, saw Public Enemy in concert together (in 1991, no less), cohabited in Austin, TX for awhile, played (poorly, for the most part) on the high school golf team, wrote a couple of punk songs, wrote a couple of rap songs, you name it pretty much. At this point, by my math (which means the following figure will be highly suspect), I estimate we've been friends for somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 years. 

In any case, he mailed me an article today that's very much a TheMetalBikini.com Friday-type article. It's sort of an editorial, sort of a comedy bit, sort of a primer for how to get people to try X-Wing, but it's all Sean. Well, with a bit of editor-style comments thrown in by yours truly. 

HOW TO TEACH YOUR WIFE (OR OTHER RANDOM FAMILY MEMBERS) TO PLAY X-WING WITHOUT TURNING THEM OFF BY DELIVERING A SHOCK-AND-AWE BEAT-DOWN

Despite the fact that your Blogmaster General is an obvious X-Phile, I have been unable to persuade him to engage me in a round of X-Wing since June 1 when I annihilated his 4 X-Wing setup to claim last place (despite winning 2 of 3 Swiss rounds [see other articles discussing the uncharacteristic methods of scoring used]) at the Regionals we attended (I still feel as though I came in dead-ass last, but whatever). Since I have been unsuccessful at drawing the Eye of Sauron away from Netrunner, Elder Scroll (it's Elder Sign, smarty pants), Arkham Horror, etc., for the last 2 months and also because my incessant whining (Stop It! Stop Whining!) has thus far been ineffective, I decided that before my DTs got any worse, I needed to branch out, do some networking, and find other folks to play X-Wing with. And by other folks, I mean my wife and brother-in-law.

Now if you’re like me and the guy pouring the drinks, you probably don’t get out much. And if that is the case, you have exactly two options: (1) figure out how to get your wife (or other random family members) to play X-Wing with you or (2) play MMORPGs until you are served with divorce papers (and frankly, why quit then?). Option 2 is just passé, so I recommend going with option 1. The trouble here is that much like Luke Skywalker’s trench run in the first Star Wars movie (meaning the one they made first, not the first one like Episode I or whatever, you know, a New Hope…Episode IV, I guess they call it now, unless they’ve changed it again or something), you have just one shot at destroying the Death Stare. You mean Death Star; that’s a typo right? No. I mean Death Stare: the look that is capable of destroying any chance that you will ever get your wife to play X-Wing with you again after you demo with the wrong list and accidentally annihilate her chances of having any fun by giving her only a one in a million shot at beating you. So what do you do to successfully defeat the Death Stare? Isn’t it obvious? You need the Secret Plans. And guess what? I found the Secret Plans and I’m going to share them with you.

While I’m sure it goes without saying, I discovered the Secret Plans the same way that all men discover anything, really…by being an idiot. And so it came to pass that after about 3 or 4 weeks of trying to persuade my wife to let me teach her how to play X-Wing, my lamentations finally paid off! Having given little thought to what lists to put together for a demo, I quickly thought that a 50 point list with X-Wings and TIEs sounded good, since those are the ships that come with the Core Set. And since X-Wings are a bit more offensive than TIEs, I set my wife up with Wedge and Rookie Pilot which is an even 50 points, and I set myself up with Night Beast, Winged Gundark, and Howlrunner with Swarm Tactics for an even 50 points. My reasoning told me that 2 ships versus three ships is pretty even and that Wedge is a beast, and I could just train my TIEs on Rookie and give Wedge some shots and have a nice easy game where my wife could shoot at my TIEs with Wedge and kill me real good. Alas, my reasoning was wrong. (See being an idiot, above). On the first turn we flew straight at each other from across the table. On the second turn, my wife performed 1-banks in opposite directions (inexplicable, right?), splitting her ships, exposing her flank, and removing all my ships from her firing arcs. So here I am with range 1 bulls-eyes on Wedge with 2 TIEs and the same range 1 bulls-eye on Rookie with the TIE on the other side. What am I going to do? Pass? Letting somebody win is one thing. Just not playing the game so that someone else can win: now that’s something else. To make matters worse, I tried to guess maneuvers that would take me away from her ships, and I guessed wrong, leading to a situation where she continued to have her ships at point blank with her having no shot. A few bad die rolls by my wife, a few good die rolls by me. Game over. She never even hit me. She made one movement error at the beginning of the game and it was unrecoverable for her as a beginner. So that was a bad trainer list. My bad. I saw the Death Stare was pretty darn close to being in range at that point, so I had to think fast. I needed to this salvage this situation quickly, so I climbed into my escape pod and that’s when I discovered the Secret Plans.

Feeling I had just a fleeting chance to fix this whole mess, I switched off my targeting computer (those things just eff things up anyway) , quickly issued a mea culpa, observed this was a silly list to start with and suggested something with less of a nuance to its maneuverability might be more fun. And by less of a nuance to maneuverability, I meant one and only one ship, specifically: the fastest hunk-a-junk in the galaxy with the pilot most equipped to communicate thoughtfully with women, i.e. Chewbacca. We were playing 50 points, and since Chewie is just 42 points, I skimmed through the upgrades and decided on Gunner and Marksmanship, arriving at an even 50 points. I played the same Imperial list that I had played against the ill-conceived two X-Wing list from the first game. This time, the results were strikingly different. Without needing to worry about the firing arc, my wife was able to shoot every round. Because she had the Gunner upgrade, if she rolled her reds really bad and missed, or if I rolled my greens really well and she missed, then she got another chance. Because of Chewie’s card text she could never take a face up critical damage result and she had a lot of hull and shields to keep her on the board long enough for a fighting chance to legitimately take out some TIEs, which she eventually did do, of course, and with 5 hull left to boot. By the time it was over, she had had a good time, learned how to play the game, and felt that the game was fun and worthwhile, and has been willing to play again. At the same time, it was actually challenging for both players and while I didn’t play as aggressively as I might have played against he who shall not be named, I didn’t just give it away either. So despite a very poor start to my battle plan, I managed to stay on target and defeat the Death Stare.

The next week, I had the opportunity to extend my network of X-Wing Acolytes when my wife suggested I train my visiting brother-in-law in the ways of the Force, i.e. to play X-Wing. He is a regular gamer, but had never played X-Wing before. Since it worked so well in destroying the original Death Stare, I set us up with the Secret Plans again in the hopes of not having anything so gratuitously unoriginal as a “Death Stare II” or whatever. One concern I had with the Secret Plans was that I feared they were a little unbalanced in favor of Rebels (considering how badly my wife beat me with that list), so I wanted to give the Secret Plans another shot to see how they would work out. In another shining example, the Secret Plans proved themselves to be just as balanced as anything else, as my brother-in-law and I played to a draw. The game ended with Winged Gundark (PR 5 with initiative) firing at Chewie and taking his last hull, which resulted in Chewie (who is also PR 5) being able to return fire and take Winged Gundark’s last hull to eliminate both ships from the table. While I did hedge a little against my wife, I played my brother-in-law straight up. It was a fair fight and it went down to the wire, with both of us sweating the die rolls on the last couple of turns. It worked out to be really fun, with a lot of good action and a very satisfying conclusion. My brother-in-law really enjoyed it and told me that he is definitely going to buy the game.

Ultimately my observations are that the Secret Plans are good for training players in a quick 50 point round of X-Wing that involves some decision making, while limiting the chance for the beginner to make unrecoverable tactical errors. The use of Chewbacca with Gunner enables the beginner to focus on learning the movements, actions and attack algorithm, while being forgiven for simple maneuvering errors. The 360 degree YT-1300 arc ensures that your trainee (or Padawan if you are dorky enough to think that word is cool, but hey…at least it isn’t “youngling”, right? The horror. The horror.) will almost always have a shot and that the great majority of the time will be able to damage your TIEs. While the trainee will perhaps take a good deal of damage, he will not have to suffer the effects of critical damage and has plenty of hull and shields to withstand a number of rounds of play. At the same time, the trainee gets exposure to the need of your TIEs to have the YT-1300 in their firing arcs to fire, the extra actions (evade, and barrel roll) that the TIEs can take, the TIEs need to K-turn when appropriate, and the nuances of maneuvering that come along with using the smaller ships, as well as the way card text and upgrades work on ship selection. Both my wife and brother-in-law, despite their inexperience, quickly observed (on their own without my prompting them) that the goal of taking out Howlrunner was paramount and Howlie was the first to go down in both of these games). By the end of the game, I thought we had covered most of the basics and that they had a good understanding to build upon for future sessions. This setup allows you to expose the trainee to elements of the game that the trainee doesn’t need to initially focus on, and that you can supplement as your trainee gets more comfortable with the core mechanics. Additionally, the trainee has to focus on only one ship to get the hang of things, but it is a good enough ship that it can hold its own without being blasted into oblivion. The Secret Plans play pretty fast and are, I think, quite a bit of fun even for someone with a fair bit of experience playing the game. I think the Secret Plans are certainly not the only list out there that can be a good list for teaching, but I found the Secret Plans particularly effective, action-packed, and fun, and not nearly as ill-conceived as the two X-Wing setup that I led with. I am sure that one could substitute Gunner and Marksmanship for something like Luke Skywalker: Gunner and Veteran Instincts and probably have the same style of experience. I recommend the Secret Plans as a training list for folks that you may want to initiate into the ways of X-Wing, and particularly for those who may not have a lot of gaming experience and need something that gives a good amount of well-rounded exposure to the elements of the game, while being simultaneously fun and forgivable in its style of play.

So if your friends are bored of X-Wing, and if no one else can help, and if you can get your wife to play, then maybe you can beat…the Death Stare.

I love it when a plan comes together (especially if it's a Secret Plan).

That last line is especially poignant as today at lunch after skim reading Sean's email regarding this article, I got a notification that Toyota of Louisville (KY) favorited a Tweet I wrote last weekend.

Bikini Battle Basics- Things Every X-Wing Player Should Know

Bikini Battle Basics is a series of articles here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand or could just be a topic that warrants further discussion, but doesn't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

Bikini Battle Basics- Things Every X-Wing Player Should Know

This is one of those articles I've had sitting around in my "drafts" folder for like a month and a half now. It's changed pretty substantially over that time, it started out being "10 Things..." and briefly expanded to "15 Things...", but as I wrote articles on topics like The Three Main Actions , The Damage Deck Explained!, and Obstacles and Asteroids Explained! the list has gotten shorter and shorter and killed any potential 10 Things I Hate About You jokes in the process, which let's be honest, wasn't going to turn out well for any of us anyway. Hell, I might have even had Ion Weapons in there at some point- can't remember for sure now. Probably did. But as I often do, I digress.

As you might imagine, in most of those cases, as I started to write the entry in this list for the above topics, I soon had enough material to make an dedicated article, so that stuff spun off into the articles I've linked to above. 

There were always still a few more though, and as they've been sitting around that dusty old drafts folder for several weeks with no significant changes in the form of additions or subtractions, I figure I'm finally safe to write this article. 

1. When Can I measure/ pre-measure stuff?  

If you think about this for a moment, there are two times you'd want to pre-measure or measure before being committed or whatever in this game- before you move, that is, before you select a maneuver or Action that allows movement, and to see if a target is in range so you may fire when ready.

So which, if either or both, are permissible? 

For shooting, i.e. determining if a target is in range of your weapons or if the target is in your arc, that's always fine according to the rules. The main takeaway here is if you declare a target that turns out to be beyond the range of your weapons, you can still choose another target with no penalty. It's also totally cool to measure with one weapon system, realize your target is out of range, then decide to fire another weapon system at that same target, or pick a different one using either weapon system on it- whatever. 

For moving your ship, there's a little more to it than that, but not a lot really. 

In the rule book on page 6, it says, "... During the Planning phase, players canot use maneuver templates in order to "test" where ships will end up." 

Breaking that down, it does just what it says- you can't stick a template down on the board to make sure you're going to avoid an Obstacle with a particular maneuver in your Planning Phase. 

As for Actions that produce movement outside of the Execute Maneuver step, and therefore aren't really married to the Planning Phase, of course this is totally kosher. In fact, as the rules says you can't Barrel Roll or Boost into another ship or an Obstacle, you have to "pre-measure" before hand to ensure you won't violate that rule. 

The only grey area I've seen folks talking about on forums is whether or not a player can pre-measure a Daredevil maneuver. If you recall, Daredevil is kind of strange in that it's a Maneuver that occurs in the Perform Action step (all the other moves during Perform Action are termed Actions). In my mind, the using a template to pre-measure is more linked to the Planning Phase than anything else, so I think you can go ahead and use a template to pre-measure Daredevil, personally although there is some room for debate or ambiguity, I suppose. 

I think the main thing to remember here is X-Wing Miniatures isn't a "Gotcha!" type game like 40k is when it comes to stuff like this. You can pretty much try whatever you want, whenever you want, barring of course laying down a maneuver template in the Planning Phase as mentioned above so it's more about making a smart decision rather than penalizing you for making a wrong one. 

2. Initiative- What is it, do I have it, what's it good for? 
The rule book defines and discusses Initiative on page 16, but to answer the three main questions people have regarding Initiative- 

What is it? It's a way of resolving timing conflicts. If you and your opponent both have Pilots at the same Pilot Skill, whoever holds the Initiative activates all of his Pilots with that Pilot Skill value first. In other words, the guy with initiative will maneuver and do his Perform Action step before the other player. 

When the Combat Phase rolls around, the guy with Initiative will resolve his combat steps before the other guy. I know. I used to get that mixed up too. 

Additionally, the book says if there are multiple abilities resolving at the same time, the guy with Initiative resolves his first. I'll be honest, I can't actually think of a scenario in which that would occur, but if/ when it does, the guy holding Initiative would resolve first. 

Do I have it? It depends. If both players spent the same amount of points on their lists and you're the Imperial player, then yeah- you have Initiative. If the two players didn't spend the same amount of points, the guy who spent less on his list has Initiative, regardless of Faction. 

EDIT: Bikini Aficionado Marty Ellenberger pointed out in the comments that Initiative works a little differently in Tournaments than above- in Tourneys, there's no tie goes to the Imperials stipulation- the player with the lower point total has Initiative as usual, but if there is a tie between the players' point totals, the Tournament Rules say it goes to the winner of a coin toss. 

What's it good for? Well, that's definitely a matter of opinion. Obviously there are uses for Initiative  but the real question to me boils down to, "If I'm eyeing a one-point upgrade, do I take it or leave it hoping to get Initiative?" 

Well, it depends on your list, of course. If that one point is going to get somebody and R2 Astromech and you really feel like you could use the extra green maneuvers, then I'd say to hell with the Initiative and spend the point. If you're just looking to add Determination for the hell of it, maybe hold onto it and secure Initiative. 

I don't think I've ever had any good or bad experiences with Initiative either way. In general, I think most folks made way too big of a deal out of it in the beginning, then as we got games under our belts, we realized it wasn't that big of a deal and stopped worrying about it. Now that everyone is like, "Meh- whatever", towards Initiative it might be the time to start securing it again. It does have some tangible benefits after all, and who knows- it might be the difference in Han firing on Soontir Fel or Vader instead of the other way around. 

3. Conflicting Rules
This one isn't really spelled out explicitly anywhere I'm aware of, but we do have a bit of a precedence from the X-Wing FAQ. 

From the Upgrade Cards heading on page 3 of the FAQ:  


Q: If two or more game effects conflict in 
changing the difficulty of a maneuver, which 
effect takes priority?
A: An effect that increases the difficulty of a maneuver 
takes priority over an effect that decreases the 
difficulty. For example, if a ship equipped with R2 
Astromech is dealt the Damaged Engine card, all 
of the ship’s turn maneuvers are treated as red 
maneuvers, including the 1- and 2-speed turn 
maneuvers.


You'll see people talk about stuff like, "the worst of two possibilities" when it comes to conflicting rules debates on forums and stuff. That's kind of not entirely accurate. What we've actually got here is a situation where two cards change the difficultly of a maneuver, and in this situation the FAQ says the effect that increases the difficulty takes precedence. That's it.  

4. What's the difference between "Large" ships and everything else? 
Well, first, as of the time of this writing, there are two "Large" ships in X-Wing Miniatures- the YT-1300 and the Firespray-31. Nevermind any rumor stuff about those being medium ships or whatever, if you look at the little pamphlet that was included with those two ships, they're both termed "Large." 

The pamphlet calls out three main things to keep in mind with Large ships- Ion Tokens, Overlapping, and Setup. To be honest, you really only need to know the first one and the last one- Overlapping works exactly the same way it always does- just with a bigger base in play.  

When it comes to Ion Tokens, a Large ship takes two (or more, I guess) Ion Tokens to trigger the Ion Weapon card text. If a Large ship only has one Ion Token, there's no effect. If you do end up with two Ion Tokens on your Large ship, after you run through the rules on the Ion Weapon card, you discard both Ion Tokens. 

Ok, all well and good, but what about that part in the pamphlet that says, "A large ship is unaffected by a single ion token; the ion token simply remains assigned to the ship."- does that mean Large ships can't get rid of Ion Tokens unless they get Ionized- i.e. from a second successful Ion hit? 

Well, yeah. I'm pretty sure it means exactly that, actually. I can't find any other way mentioned anywhere in the rules, FAQ, Ion Card text, or Large ship pamphlet that states anything about otherwise ridding yourself of a single Ion Token, can you? That's me actually asking the question, not me being a smart ass. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes. 

As for Setup, rather than extend the standard "deployment zone" for X-Wing past Range 1 of your own board edge, they simply decided that Large ships' bases may extend past the designated setup area so long as no part of the Large ship's base is outside the play area (i.e. off-table) in doing so and it fills the length of the area. 

That sounds kinda convoluted, doesn't it? What's it really mean? 

More or less it boils down to if you don't want to have your base square with your table edge, that's ok as long as your Large ship's base is filling the entire Range 1 deployment area. In other words, you can't deploy your ship square to the table edges with the rear edge of the base just a tiny bit inside your deployment zone. If you want to stick your base out over the edge of your DZ, it has to fill the entire DZ, or put another way- one of your corners better be touching the table edge. 

5. How many moves does it take a ship that can move at a Straight 5 to get across the board? 

Dig on the above picture. Scary, innit? Tape measure included so you know I'm not showing this example on a piece of felt that's less than 36" wide. 

Bikini Battle Basics- The Damage Deck Explained!

Bikini Battle Basics is a new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand and warrants further discussion, but don't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

The Damage Deck

I've mentioned a few times in my Wave 2 breakdowns that one of the currently overlooked ways to try and deal with a big ship, is to try and inflict some Critical Damage, which is local parlance for a face-up Damage card. 

That sounds good on paper and all, but how significant are the face-up cards, really? Are they actually a valid way to mitigate someone's Exposing Chewie Falcon or a Marksmanship Han or Kath or Trelix or you should just stick with the notion of packing enough missiles to blow them out of the sky quickly? 


To put this another way, why didn't we see this or talk about Critical Damage more in Wave 1? Why did so many people say crits sucked (which of course took Proton Torpedoes along for the ride as well)? More importantly, why did they seem to be right?

Well, because they kind of did. 

Think back to your Wave 1 games, did you have many matches where you were dealing with the effects of a Critical Damage card for more than a game turn or two? I don't think I did- I hardly ever got them to start with- usually I'd just get blown up outright instead, or gunned down the very next turn. In all likelihood, if you got yourself a crit, you had 1, maybe 2 hull points left and it didn't take long for your opponent to finish you off once you were down that low, especially dealing with whatever penalty you'd just incurred from the face-up card. 

That's changed now. The Falcon has 8 Hull and a Firespray has 6. There's a good chance that both of those ships will be operational far past just a turn or two once their shields are gone, unlike a starfighter. 

I decided regardless of the validity of strategy in Wave 2, it was high time to take a much closer look at the X-Wing Miniatures Damage deck, so without further adieu, let's talk about (Damage) decks, baby. 

All right, so first off, you've got 33 cards in a Damage deck. If after reading that you're thinking to yourself, "But, oh. Uh, I, uh, bought two Core Sets and since I only ever play with my brother, we, uh, mixed up-" 

Just stop right there. Combining two Damage decks isn't tournament legal or even rules legal, and while in the grand scheme of things, I guess you're not really changing the odds of what you're going to pull, the reality is, of course, you just have increased the amount of all the possible cards in your deck. Does this make a difference? Well.... yeah. An 8-ship TIE Swarm can't possibly get Direct Hits on every single ship (as there are only 7 instances of that card), but if you stuck two damage decks together that could happen quite easily. Through the course of this article, I'll be mentioning all the cards that go in a Damage deck and the amounts of each, so just pay attention and fix your deck to match what would be in a standard deck if necessary. 

Right. So of the 33 total cards, you'll notice they're broken down into two categories: Ship and Pilot. Let's go through the Pilot cards first. 

There's actually only 4 different Pilot cards. We get 8 total cards because there are 4 pairs each of 2 duplicate cards. The 4 Pilot cards are Blinded Pilot, Damaged Cockpit, Injured Pilot, and Stunned Pilot. Generally speaking, Pilot cards are going to produce effects that minimize or subvert abilities and Actions associated to the ship's pilot as opposed to the ship itself. I'm not going to do a complete, TMB-style breakdown for each one, discussing impacts on each particular pilot, but I'll give you the card text at least, for the sake of discussion. 

Note that a face-up Damage card still counts as 1 Damage (unless otherwise noted, of course), so you have the effect of the card text and the 1 Damage applied to your ship if/ when you receive a face-up Damage card. I know that y'all all know that, just making sure. 

Pilot Cards
Blinded Pilot- The next time you attack, do not roll any attack dice. Then flip this card face down.
Damaged Cockpit- After the round in which you receive this card, treat your pilot skill as "0." 
Injured Pilot- Al players must ignore your pilot ability and all of your <Elite Pilot Skill icon> Upgrade cards. 
Stunned Pilot- After you execute a maneuver that causes you to overlap either another ship or an obstacle token, suffer 1 damage. 

Critical Damage Pilot cards are going to have a much more significant effect on the named Pilots than generic no-names, and the higher the PS, usually the worse the effect seems. Getting an Injured Pilot on Han, for example, is a good way to stop your opponent from making "Han Shoots First" jokes all day. Damaged Cockpit on a Gold Squadron Pilot or Rookie Pilot likely won't have much actual effect at all. 

The Pilot Cards out of the way, of course leaves the Ship cards. Like Pilot cards, they're all pairs of cards too- there are only 10 unique Critical Damage Ship cards. 


Ship Cards
Direct Hit- This card counts as 2 damage against your hull. Also note there are 7 copies of this card in a Damage deck.
Damaged Engine- Treat all turn (not bank, just turn) maneuvers as red maneuvers.
Munitions Failure- Immediately choose 1 of your secondary weapon Upgrade cards and discard it. Then flip this Damage card face down. 
Thrust Control Fire- Immediately receive 1 stress token. Then flip this card face down. 
Minor Hull Breach- After executing a red maneuver, roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, suffer 1 damage. Then flip this card face down.
Minor Explosion- Immediately roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, suffer 1 damage. Then flip this card face down. 
Console Fire- At the start of each Combat phase, roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, suffer 1 damage. Action: Flip this card face down. 
Structural Damage- Reduce your agility value by 1 to a minimum of "0". Action: Roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, flip this card face down. 
Weapon Malfunction- Reduce your primary weapon value by 1 (to a minimum of "0"). Action: Roll 1 Attack die. On a <hit> or <crit> result, flip this card face down. 
Damaged Sensor Array- You cannot perform the actions listed in your action bar. Action: Roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, flip this card face down. 

Right, if you look closely, you'll see I've listed these Ship cards in something of an order. 

The first two entries, the dreaded Direct Hit and Damaged Engine, are both bad things. There's no option to Action: them away or flip a card or any of that hoo ha- just bad. End of. 

Of course, there are six copies of Direct Hit in a Damage deck, so you've got almost the same odds of pulling that as your Damage card as you do rolling a 6 on a six-sided die. It'll probably come up if you're running a big ship that gets down to hull early in the game. Just hope it doesn't happen multiple times to the same ship. 

The next four entries are all "do something, blah, blah, then flip this card face down", meaning that after their initial effect, they just become standard damage cards. The first two of these four, Munitions Failure and Thrust Control Fire have no random chance element associated with them- you discard a Secondary Weapon System or invoke a Stress Token respectively, then they just become standard damage. The next two, you roll an Attack die to see what happens next. Note that in this context, when it says to roll a hit (filled explosion symbol), that's actually what you do need to roll- a crit (unfilled explosion symbol) doesn't trigger anything special. Basically, it's a probability thing rather than an actual damage thing- FFG wants you to have a 3/8 chance of doing whatever, so they said for us to use an Attack die and look for filled explosion symbols, ya dig? 

The last four entries are all semi-permanent bad things you can get rid of, or at least attempt to get rid of, by spending an Action messing around with them. All four of these cards, Console Fire, Structural Damage, Weapon Malfunction, and Damaged Sensor Array have the potential to be pretty terrible for you, Console Fire and Damaged Sensor Array being slightly worse than Structural Damage and Weapon Malfunction as there are contexts where losing a point of Agility is kind of not that big of a deal (you have a ship like an A-Wing or Interceptor with a high Agility to start with and/ or many maneuvers and Actions available to help mitigate) or a die off your Primary Weapon Attack value (a ship like a Y-Wing with an Ion Cannon or Firespray with HLC or Ion Cannon as all those weapons are Secondaries and wouldn't be bothered). Losing all the Actions in your Action Bar is going to always suck however, as will rolling to see if you take damage at the start of the Combat Phase every turn until you actually do. Unless you're in a really tight spot, or you've got one of those above situations that kind of minimizes the effect of the card on your particular ship, you're usually better off trying to Action that effect away as soon as possible- multiple times if necessary.

Taking all of the above information into account, is finding a way to reliably inflict criticals on big ships worth it in Wave 2? That's up to you (and quite possibly the topic of another TMB article... hmmm...), but from what I've seen so far, there are a lot of Wave 2 lists that feature the big ships with named pilots, and with those two criteria filled, I think a pretty compelling case could be made for the idea. 


EDIT: Bikini Aficionado Forensicus added a couple of pretty useful links in the Comments section I wanted to make permanently part of this article for folks who maybe don't read all the way down to the comments section- 

The very nice mr. Will Balvanz have made this ledger of all the Crit Damages in the Damage Deck: http://teamcovenant.com/wbalvanz/files/2013/03/Damage-Deck.pdf

And someone at AFM have made this "Damage Deck" and Squad List check list for tourney use: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?631l9n3qn3bdazb

Both are pretty handy in the context of this article. Check them out!

Bikini Battle Basics- Obstacles and Asteroids Explained!

Bikini Battle Basics is a new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand and warrants further discussion, but don't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

Obstacles and Asteroids

All right. So first, technically, yeah- asteroids are obstacles in X-Wing Miniatures. I just figured if I titled this post, BBB- Obstacles, folks wouldn't know what I was talking about as everyone in my neck of the woods simply refer to the tokens as asteroids. Currently, they're the only obstacles, but that may change down the road, obviously. 

Obstacles are discussed in the X-Wing Miniatures Rule Book towards the back on page 20. There's really only a few things you need to understand about obstacles- initial placement, effects on ships that collide with them, and effects on ships trying to shoot past them. Like in real life, they can have some devastating effects on your game if you're not careful. 

Initial Placement of Obstacles
Initial placement is simple enough- in most dogfight games without special house rules, specific tournament rules, or scenario rules, you and your buddy each get three and you take turns placing them starting with the Imperial player (note I'm not leaving off a bit about initiative that's usually there, it's not mentioned in my rules; just says "Imperial Player"- you'll see why in a sec.). The only rules here is that you can't place an Obstacle within Range 1-2 of any edge of the play area. After you're finished with placement, the Rebel player gets to choose which side of the table he deploys from. I find lots of references on forums regarding setting up asteroids to make it tougher on your opponent. It makes me wonder if these folks know something I don't, or they've forgotten the bit about the Rebel player getting to pick his table edge.


Obstacles and Maneuvering & Actions
As you'd expect, Obstacles affect ships that overlap them kinda like when you overlap another ship. Ships that execute a maneuver where either the ship's base or the movement template overlap an Obstacle lose their Perform Action step and have to roll an Attack die. If that die comes up a hit or crit (local parlance), then the ship suffers that damage (as per usual- against shields if they have them, against Hull if not, etc., etc.). One thing that bit me in the KRT- if you mange to land your base on top of one of the bigger Obstacles, you'll likely hit it again when you attempt to maneuver off of it because your template will overlap the Obstacle again, which of course triggers the usual effects I just mentioned above again. 

Note the main thing that trips folks up here (including me at the KRT) is that it doesn't have to be the ship's base doing the overlapping- if you lay down a movement template and it overlaps the Obstacle, you invoke the penalties for bonking into one. I totally thought it only mattered if my base hit it, but nope- template too!

Also notice that you don't move your ship back along the template if you overlap an Obstacle like you do when you overlap a ship. Your ship still executes the maneuver you picked on your dial (or was picked for you by an Ion). I've seen folks mess this up too. Don't be that guy. 

Another thing I see that confuses people is whether or not they can use Actions if they hit an Obstacle. The text says you lose your Perform Action step, but what effect does that have on Free Actions, pilots that get an Action Token if they pull a particular maneuver, or pilots who dish tokens to other ships? 

If you look it up, the Perform Action step is step 6 of the Activation phase which the rule book describes as: 

The ship may perform one action. Actions provide a wide range of benefits and are described on pages 8-9. A ship with one or more stress tokens cannot perform actions (see Stress on page 17). 

So what's that mean exactly? 

Well first, you can't declare an Action with that particular ship this turn. Doesn't matter if it's out of your Action bar or something you've bought as an upgrade. That part pretty much everyone gets right, but it can get complicated really quickly with Free Actions and Action Tokens being passed around, so what's the story?  

If you're dished an Action Token, like a Focus from Garven Dreis or Lando, or a Target Lock from Dutch Vander, you're home free right off the bat. Remember what I talked about in the Multiple Actions, Single Actions Explained! article? Most of that applies here too- namely the part about spending an Action Token not actually being the Action. Same goes for guys who get a token if they do a particular maneuver, incur a Stress token, etc. Just be aware that some movement methods (like Boost) don't actually allow you to execute that movement into an Obstacle, so it may actually be a moot point in some specific cases. 

What about Free Actions though? Like if somebody with Squad Leader is flying around near the guy who dinged the Obstacle? Can he pass along a Free Action? The answer here is yes. Remember a Free Action is simply an Action that doesn't count against the "one Action per turn" quota, but the rest of that sentence (from the top of page 8) reads, 

"If an ability allows a ship to perform a "free action" this action does not count as the one action allowed during the Perform Action step." 

Long story short, if a Free Action doesn't count as the Action in the Perform Action step, then it doesn't happen in the Perform Action step (usually, it happens in somebody else's Perform Action step than the ship that ends up being the recipient of the Free Action). A little bit of reading into the rule there, but that's what the official FAQ says, so that's how it works. 

EDIT: Wanted to add some content to this section from feedback in the comments below. 

A question was asked regarding Barrel Rolling and Obstacles with some Squad Leader Free Action thrown in for good measure. 

To answer this question brings up some other good points about Obstacles and Actions (as opposed to Maneuvers), so I wanted to highlight it a bit here. 

First, to answer the questions- No, Yes. 

Here's why- 

No Attack roll gets made to see if the TIE damages itself for moving off the Obstacle because the whole template overlap trigger deal only happens with Maneuvers, not Actions. As Barrel Roll (or Boost, for that matter) is an Action, that criteria doesn't apply here. To answer a possible derivative question down the road, no, there's really no way an Attack roll could happen because you can't legally Barrel Roll (or Boost) if your ship's base is going to end up on an Obstacle- you just pick another Action (if possible) to perform instead. 

Second part, the TIE can now fire because the rules reference being on top of an Obstacle in the Combat Phase for that ship. As the TIE in AMike's question has moved off via the Squad Leader Action from Vader (which must have happened before the TIE's Combat Phase because of Vader's Pilot Skill 9- i.e. when he'd have passed it) and is no longer overlapping in the Combat Phase, he's completely free to Attack another ship this round. xad5xhytg  <-- my oldest just ran up and hit a bunch of keys on the keyboard while I was writing this. 

Big ups to Rules Gangsta and Bikini Aficionado Marty Ellenberger for keeping a brotha on point. 

Obstacles and Combat
First, understand that an intervening Obstacle (just like ships), even one that denies you line-of-sight, never completely denies you a shot on your target as long as you're not touching it. I've seen some folks claim they're completely obscured by an Obstacle- not in this game you're not. We ain't playin' 40k here, boys- no camping!

What does happen is the defender can possibly get an extra green die if the shortest path between the base of the Attacker and the base of the Defender (i.e. the Range Rule) overlaps an Obstacle. If that happens, the Defender gets a green die. 

This got FAQ'ed a little bit in reference to the width of the X-Wing Miniatures range ruler. If it's an issue, like the ruler only partially overlaps the obstacle, turn the ruler on its side and use the skinny edge to draw the shortest path between the bases and see if you overlap, and use the rule as appropriate.  

Last bit, and really I'm just drawing attention to something I just mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago- if you're overlapping an Obstacle in the Combat Phase, you can't attack any ship. However, and I've seen people miss this second part before, so pay attention, the overlapping ship may be targeted as usual by other ships. 99% sure we played this wrong at my local FLGS Kessel Run as I seem to remember me attempting to do this on purpose to deny shots and hopefully force a fly-by of the TIE Swarm I was facing. Karma works though- I lost my last Hull point on the collision with the asteroid. 

So there ya go- simple, right? Now go play!

Bikini Battle Basics- Ion Weapons Explained!

Bikini Battle Basics is a new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand and warrants further discussion, but don't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

Ion Weapons

I just recently realized I've been playing Ions wrong from basically the start, which while disappointing to be sure, I think will turn out to be a good thing in the long run, at least for the purposes of TheMetalBikini.com and readers like you. 

After my incorrect rule interpretation was brought to light, I wondered how many other people have been playing it wrong as well. Not trying to sound egocentric or anything- I hope that doesn't come off as, "Oh, well if I've got it wrong, everyone else must too" as that's not my intention. The fact of the matter is though, I wrote the Ion Cannon Turret post with my previous (in other words, incorrect) understanding of the rule quite a while back and none of y'all called me on it. Don't bother clicking on it now and trying to find where I screwed it up- I've fixed it. And yeah, I realized all of this before I posted Ion Cannon, so don't bother. :) 

Secondly, there's the matter of the rule being written with some rather ambiguous language. The rule isn't exactly 100% straightforward to begin with, so it's rather easy to see how and why so many people have gotten this rule wrong. 

So what's the story with Ion Weapons? You've got two groups of rules, essentially- the card text on the Ion Weapon cards themselves (Ion Cannon Turret and Ion Cannon) and the Ion Token card. The weapon cards explain how to inflict an Ion Token upon some poor sap, the Ion Token card, as you might expect, explains what that means exactly when a ship ends up with one. 

First, let's look at the text on the Ion Cannon Turret and Ion Cannon cards. The text is virtually identical save for an inconsistency where the ICT talks about the target ship and the IC which talks about the defender. I'm comfortable saying they're virtually identical, other than the bit on the turret card being able to fire at stuff outside the firing arc. The text is as follows: 

If this attack hits the target ship/ defender, the ship suffers 1 damage and receives 1 ion token. Then cancel all dice results. 

Ok, so first, the word "hit" is an official rulebook sense of the word "hit", not the local parlance for a attack die result that looks like a filled in explosion symbol. For more info on that, check out the Bikini Battle Basics- Combat Phase Explained!. To sum up succinctly, if after cancellation you've got at least one hit on your target, he suffers one damage and gets an ion token. 

What effect does this Ion Token have on the target? Does it have an immediate effect besides the 1 Damage? 

Well, yes and no. He does immediately gets the token, but it doesn't really have any effect until after this round ends- that is, he can still use any Action Tokens he has in play and shoot as normal for the rest of this game round. 

As soon as the End Phase is complete, ending that game round, a new round begins with another Planning Phase. That's when you pick up all your movement dials and start selecting the maneuvers for your ships. The guy that has the ship with the Ion Token though doesn't select a maneuver on his dial though- he now has some sparkly new special rules to adhere to. This is when the text on the Ion Token actually invokes some effects. The Ion Token card text is as follows... 

Drum roll, please. 

Drum roll. 

1. Planning Phase: The owner does not assign a maneuver dial to this ship. Yes, this is the only way I know of to keep somebody from dropping Seismic Charges out the back of a Firespray. 

2. Activation Phase: The owner moves the ship as if it were assigned a white 1 straight maneuver. After executing this maneuver, remove all ion tokens from the ship. It may perform Actions as normal. 

3. Combat Phase: The ship may attack as normal. 

So that's it. 

The only other thing worth mentioning about Ion Tokens is you need two of them on a YT-1300 or Firespray to ionize it as they're large ships. 

As I've alluded to before, an ion shot in and of itself isn't bad, especially on some super maneuverable, super dangerous enemy, but the time you really want to get an ion shot in is on a ship with a Stress Token. As Ion Token card point number 2 forces them into making a white maneuver instead of a green one, they keep the Stress Token and therefore can't declare an Action this turn. That's good stuff right there. 

Bikini Battle Basics- The Combat Phase Explained!

Bikini Battle Basics is a new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand and warrants further discussion, but don't fit directly into a site category like Listbuilding, for example. 

I've seen a lot of questions on rules forums about weapons, ability effects, and face-up Damage card text that can be resolved by simply taking a really close look at the Combat Phase. As I'm not immune to stuff like this either (I just figured out last week when writing up that article on the Ion Cannon that I've actually been playing Ion Weapons wrong), I thought perhaps a Bikini Battle Basics- The Combat Phase was in order. 

Before you start reading, bear in mind, what we call hits and crits when we roll the dice are not actually hits and crits. I think this is where a lot of folks get confused with rules and card text. Hits and crits (local parlance) are simply filled explosion symbol results (what most folks call hits) and unfilled explosion symbol results (what we call crits) until Step 6, so throw the hits and crits thing out the window for now.

Just realize if you haven't already, if I say "local parlance", I'm talking about what people say (i.e. die results, not a rules defined "hit"), otherwise when I use the term "hit" I'm talking about what the rules say. 

Clear as mud? Ok, let's go.

The part in the rulebook we're looking at is the Combat Phase, page 10-13.

1. Declare Target
Ok. Right. Pretty standard stuff here, the only thing I'd draw attention to is not being able to target an enemy ship you overlapped in the maneuver phase that's still touching you. Also note that you're totally fine pre-measuring to see if your intended target falls within the range of your weapon at no penalty (meaning if he's out of range, you can still choose to fire on somebody else this turn that's in range, in arc, etc.). 

2. Roll Attack Dice
K. Determine the attack value of the weapon you want to fire, pick up that many red dice, drop them on the table. Simple enough. Remember if you're at Range 1, you roll one extra die unless you're using a Secondary Weapon System (in which case, you get no extra dice- no soup for you).

3. Modify Attack Dice
This is where you can spend action tokens and resolve abilities that re-roll or otherwise modify attack dice results. I don't think it could happen in Wave 1, but in Wave 2, there are some defender abilities that resolve against the attack dice. If you're in a situation where both the attacker and defender have abilities that modify the attack dice, the defender resolves his modifications first, then the attacker resolves his.

4. Roll Defense Dice

Defender rolls number of defense dice equal to his ship's Agility value. He gets an extra green die if he's at Range 3 from you (unless you're firing on him with a Secondary Weapon System), or there's an obstacle between y'all. I'm going to write up a BBB on asteroids/ obstacles in the next day or two where I'll talk about this more in-depth, but for now, if the shortest path between your base and his base (which is how the "Determining Range" rule works) crosses an obstacle, he gets an extra green die. 

5. Modify Defense Dice
Same deal as attack, but for the defender this time- spend those Action tokens if you've got them and you want to use them. Also note if both the attacker and defender have abilities that resolve against the defense roll, the attacker's abilities resolve first, then the defender's. 

6. Compare Results

This is where the die result cancellation actually happens and is the first time the word "hit" is actually used in this context. Note when cancelling, Evade results and tokens are applied to filled explosion symbols (hits, in the local parlance) before the unfilled explosion symbols (crits). 


7. Deal Damage
If the defender was successfully hit (official rules definition) by the attacker, he loses shield tokens (if applicable) and/ or receives Damage cards based on the damage it suffers- uncancelled filled explosions result in a Damage card, uncancelled unfilled explosions result in Critical Damage, which is a Damage card turned face up). Note that crits (local parlance) have the same effect as hits (local parlance) against shields- it's only when they hit the hull that something different happens. 

Of course, if a ship incurs damage equal or greater than its Hull value, it's immediately destroyed (unless subject to simultaneous attack rule- long story short, you and the other guy are at the same PR) and the model is removed from the game. 

Multiple Actions, Same Actions Explained!

I was playing a game last night with my friend Sean over Google Hangout and as it was his first game of X-Wing Miniatures, naturally, he had a few questions. 

One of the questions that cropped up had to do with Squad Leader, what Action could be declared with the Squad Leader Action and then, subsequently, what Action could be declared with the Pilot's native Action- namely, could those two Actions be the same? Or what about Vader and his dual Actions pilot ability? Could Vader declare the same Action twice?

As this is something I used to get wrong, I'm kind of sensitive to it, so I thought I'd take a moment to talk about it here because it is a little convoluted. 

I find it's easier to use examples when talking about this stuff, but don't let it confuse you- even though I'm talking about Focus, the same would apply for any Action (and yeah, you could sub Target Lock throughout the following example and use Dutch Vander instead of Garven Dreis). 

Note also that a Free Action is defined by the rulebook as an Action that doesn't count against the one Action per Activation Phase rule. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less (top of page 8). 

First Example- 
Luke Skywalker has executed a maneuver and follows up with a Focus Action, completing his Activation Phase. Later, Wedge Antilles who has been upgraded with the Squad Leader Elite Pilot Skill, elects to give Luke a Free Action (per the Squad Leader card) from his Action bar. Can Luke select Focus again? 

In this example, no. Luke couldn't take Focus a second time because the rules explicitly state the same Action may not be taken twice in the same turn (Rulebook, bottom of page 9). 

Second Example- 
Luke Skywalker possesses a Focus token from his Activation phase when he declared Focus as his Action. As the game progresses through the Combat Phase, Luke still possesses his Focus after firing on another ship. Later in the same Combat Phase, nearby Garven Dreis uses a Focus token to modify his To Hit roll. Dreis has a special rule that allows him to pass the Focus token along rather than discard it. He elects to pass it to Luke Skywalker. Can Luke use both Focus tokens in this Combat Phase? 

Yes, in this example, this is totally cool. The reason? Luke has not declared the same Action twice- he has simply received a Focus token from Dreis. He then has two Focus tokens to help him fend off any attacks for the rest of that round.  

The key to understanding this is realizing where people get hung up- namely that the acquiring of a token and the spending of a token are not actually Actions, but the result of the Action.

Declaring an Action is the most common way of acquiring a token, but they're not the same thing. In other words, declaring a Focus Action gets you a Focus token, but just because you have a Focus token doesn't necessarily mean you declared a Focus Action. 

So long story long, if you're the beneficiary of a specific Action token from a special ability, maneuver, upgrade, etc., it doesn't matter what Action you declared back in your Activation phase and it doesn't matter what tokens you currently possess- you're good.

If however, you're the beneficiary of an additional Action, it does matter because you're declaring an Action and you can't declare the same Action twice in the same turn. 

Ya dig?