The Season of Lists

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities Rejoice,

Comrades, for the Old Points have been overthrown, and the New Points have been bestowed upon us. Put away your stale meta Lists, Throw open the Builders, and bring forth a new dawn, with new ships, in new combinations. What a time to be alive!

Looking to the Future

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear" - Antonio Gramsci

It's an odd time, right? As I write this we're waiting on new points and new ships, and the tournement season seems to have would down, and who hell knows what is going on with Store-level Organised Play, and yet here we are, a toy spaceship addiction to feed. What to do, what to do. 

Hyperspace Season: Endgame

So last week we were up at "Stupid O'Clock" on a Sunday (or "Normal time" for a weekday) to head up to Beanie Games on Teesside and our last "big" Tournament of the Season. Our tally since the start of the year is the System Open, 3 Hyperspace Events, and some sort of store event at least once every two weeks, so its fair to say we've played a lot of Toy Spaceships in that time. But with the Hyperspace Season closing for now, and the summer (and points changes!) upon us, it seems a good time to take stock.

What's in a Win?

Here's the latest "Car Question" - "Hey, Dad, when are we going to win something". To which I reply "Son, this is valuable Father-Son Bonding time that in years to come we can look back on with fondness and teary eyes. We are already winners." True Story, or maybe not. Dear Reader, you can decide for yourself. But back on topic, we have one last Hyperspace event to go as the Season winds to a close, and one last shot at Glory and Shiny Bragging Dice, and so the question of how good we actually are, and how much we care about that seems to come up. 

Please Sir, I would like some Loot. 

Milton Keynes: A Star Wars Story

Yes, its another UK System Open Post!

Last Weekend was, as any good X-Winger will know, the UK System Open in Milton Keynes, with 560+ players fighting it out over two days. A event of cut-throat, do-or-die competitiveness, with no holds barred, where only the strong survive and weak perish. No, wait, the other thing. 

FUNS?!

Decisions, Decisions,,,

So following on from my hopes and dreams for Hyperspace, I was going to follow up with some thoughts on my experiences on actually playing the format. But then FFG dropped a bunch of changes and everyone seemed to get cross again, so I've left it a few more days before venturing some opinions about the future. I mean, other than calm down folks, but I think we all know that. Lets have at it, after the cat. 

Hype-ing for Hope-erspace

Yes, its another opinion on Hyperspace. No Wait! Come Back!

Undoubtably one of the biggest changes to X-Wing 2.0 was the formalisation of variant formats, and the idea of the "Hyperspace" ship/upgrade rotation for major events. It's caused....debate. But it's now properly upon us, and Club Night is full of U-Wings, for goodness sake, so it's clearly having an impact. We've got our first event this time next week over a Element Games in Stockport, so naturally thats what we've been talking about pretty solidly.

It's my blog, I can talk about what I want to!

Where's Your Head At?

So welcome again to another episode of "Things I talk about in the car with the Teenager", or "Parenting Hormonal Monsters for X-Wing Players". OK, so that's a little mean, but it has been an interesting couple of weeks on the gaming front and we've ended up talking a lot about psychology, and mental processing, of all things. So let's get into it, after the cat. 

Who's the Casual Now?! (Spoiler Alert: It Me)

Hello, and welcome back to another blog on "Conversations I have with The Teenager in the Car". It's a thing now, clearly. This weekend was a big one for us on the X-Wing front, as we hit not one but two tournements with new shiny lists we didn't know how to fly. It went about as well as you'd expect (more on that in a moment) but it also brought up an interesting conversation. You see, back when we started out playing somewhere other than the kitchen table, one of the things were told about was "Serious Players". Oddly, Element Games' Sith Takers were held up as "Serious Players", a dark place beyond the Pennines "Serious Games" were played with "Serious Lists". But there is an assumption behind this, if you think about it, about the old Casual/Serious split, and so that's really what I'm thinking about now.

Todays List Building Challenge is How to Get the List From the Cat

On Expectation, the Enemy of Fun

Well hello again. It turns out a bunch of you read my last blog so dammit, I just have to do another one. We went to our first tournament of the year this Sunday - the "Wave 1 Championship" at Travelling Man Leeds, our home store. 16 players, four rounds of Tiny Spaceships and only the second week of the year, and so inevitably I wanted to try out a new list I had next to no practice with. Oh yes, that's how we roll. Below is a verified true image of the reaction I get in my house when I explain how this latest new list is going to be "great".