Rogue Squadron- If I Were the Xwing God...

On a recent Scum and Villainy Podcast the question was asked, “If you could be the God of Xwing for a day what would you change?” This question intrigued me because it has a bigger scope than your usual armchair developing. We gamers love to discuss possible changes to our games. Rules tweaks, nerfs to cards perceived as overpowered, or buffs to underutilized cards. Rarely do we take a look at the system as a whole for a game we enjoy.

So what would I do if I were the X-wing God and had complete power to change anything? With no restrictions and the ability to change very basic rules and long standing cards? I wouldn’t change very much. I rather enjoy the game for a reason. But there would be a few things that I think could work better.

First, I would completely redesign ordnance. I really like the Armada system for attack dice. Having different dice means you can make dice do different things. For most shots, I’d keep the red dice as is. They are well balanced for the game with a 50/50 chance of hitting and great odds if you’re focused. For most ordnance, I would add the equivalent of Armada’s black dice. These dice would have more hit results, no focus results and the addition of a critical miss.

Critical miss you say? Yes, the other change to ordnance would be that they are not one shot and discard. Instead, each weapon would have a special effect that triggers on a critical miss result. This new icon opens up a lot of design space to serve as the built in downside to ordnance becoming overpowered while still being worth taking.

You could make standard ordnance, such as proton torpedoes and concussion missiles, have a very mild critical blank effect. You can fire them all day until the critical miss comes up and then you have to discard the card. The weapons themselves are slightly more accurate than your usual shot, since there are no focus results and more hit results. Other ordnance could have a greater risk vs reward. Advanced Proton Torpedoes, for example, could still work at range 1, throw five very accurate dice but a critical miss deals the ship that fired them a damage card.

Instead of adding a Critical Miss symbol to the game you could also borrow a mechanic from Star Trek Attack Wing. I’ve never played but I believe their ordnance cards work by exhausting them when fired. Then, you have to spend an action to unexhaust them. That in combination with the stronger attack dice would also make ordnance powerful and worth the points but not overpowered. You could then change Extra Munitions to Rapid Reload that allows you to roll a die and potentially immediately unexhaust a fired weapon, giving ordnance carriers some more oomph.

The next major change would be to give every small ship a repositioning ability (boost, barrel roll or SLAM). One of the great strengths of this game is the positioning game. Can you anticipate your opponent’s move and pick the right move to counter it? Do you trade your accuracy, in the forms of focus or target locks, for a superior position via a boost or barrel roll? Ships that lack one of these actions largely get left behind.

Kihraxz and X-wings rarely get flown because they are to easy to predict. There is a reason Engine Upgrade is one of the most popular upgrades in the game. There’s a huge difference between facing a large ship with it and without it. This would be a related change; making Engine Upgrade two points and small ship only, like Vectored Thrusters. Then every small ship would have a native reposition, boost, barrel roll or SLAM, and could take a modification to add the other. There could be large ship only upgrades that give them a boost or barrel but these would cost more to account for the extra utility the large base gains.

The final major change would be to turrets. The best option that jives with the game’s maneuver focus would be making all turrets function like the Lancer’s new Mobile Arc. This concept is a lot of fun to fly and fly against. It costs you an action to shift which adds some balance to the greater board coverage. It’s still possible to dodge getting shot but is significantly harder.

To balance this, large ships would either be cheaper or would come with the ability to shoot twice. After all, they do have several crew on board. You could even take it a step further and give some ships two mobile arcs. This would help differentiate ships. Decimator, YT-1300 get two mobile arcs, one attack from each. Their primary arc is used only for ordnance. YT-2400’s, Jumpmasters and Lancer’s get one attack but can use primary or mobile.

Double attacks and double mobile arcs would probably need more consideration though. If I only had my Xwing God powers for a short time, I wouldn’t implement that. Just changing turrets to mobile arcs and cutting some points from each turret ship (and turret upgrade cards) would work pretty well over all.

Those are all of the big, high level changes I would make with ultimate power over the game. I think they would improve the core of the game (maneuvering) while fixing one of the biggest mechanics that just has never worked right (ordnance). Would I be able to limit myself to just these changes though? Absolute power is pretty corrupting…

…no, no, I would not be able to limit myself. I would also probably address some of my personal pet peeves (Elusiveness sucking, Lt. Lorrir sucking, Scyk being to expensive, Corran Horn not being an Xwing pilot, etc). But those are gripes for another time.