X-Wing Guide for Tabletop Simulator

This guide is for those who wish to get into X-wing Miniatures on Tabletop Simulator and will help others who have played the game in real life with some of the differences in the TTS version compared to real life.

Introduction to X-Wing Minatures

Welcome to my first ever guide, I'll be covering the basics of X-Wing Miniatures so you can jump right into a game on TTS and have a blast.

X-Wing Miniatures is a tabletop game made my Fantasy Flight Games where two opponents battle it out in space in their own recreations of dogfights in the Star Wars Universe.
The game contains detailed models of iconic ships from the X-Wing to Vader's Tie-Advanced.

There are a ton of customization options for building X-wing lists. If you want to recreate canon scenes from the films or other material such as having Wedge Antilles in his X-Wing along with Lando piloting the Millenium Falcon over the backdrop of the Death-Star then go ahead! Or you can choose to make a list that has a lot of synergy between the pilots which can be devastating against your opponent, it's all up to your playstyle.

Before we get started, there are a few links to websites and a couple of workshop items I recommend you should get:

Websites:

X-Wing List Builder[xwing-builder.co.uk]

This is the X-Wing List Builder, it gives you a complete list of all factions and their ships to field in the game along with a user-friendly UI to build your own lists and save them so you don't have to keep building a new list each time you get into a game.

X-Wing Miniatures Rule Book[images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com]

This is the Official Rulebook from Fantasy Flight Games, it provides detailed information on how to play the game and some extra tid-bits when it comes to specific actions, it's the first thing I was shown when I wanted to learn how to play.

X-Wing Complete Collection

This is the complete collection of all ship models and abiity cards. Before scripting was implemented you would get your list built here. I'm putting this here because it's still amazing to look at and see all the ships layed out neatly. But it must be noted that it's a lot to load up.
(Credit to Col. Jack O'Neill)

Workshop Items

X-Wing Automated Table

The table used on TTS, fully scripted to make things SO much easier to do when playing.
(Credit to Hera Vertigo, Flolania, Korean Templar and dzikakulka)

X-Wing List Spawner

This is a must-have for X-Wing players, it's an automatic list spawner that you can use to spawn in lists you have saved from the website (X-wing builder) linked above. Saves you a ton of time and tidies your personal chest.
(Credit to dzikakulka)

Building a list

So you want to get into a game of X-Wing, first thing you'll need is a list or a build (or squadron) to use.
The X-wing builder website (http://xwing-builder.co.uk/build#) is where to go to get started.
When you open the website up, I first recommend you sign in with one of the options available (Facebook, Gmail etc) as this allows you to save your squadrons.
The next thing will be selecting your faction. You'll have a choice between Rebels, Imperials or Scum (Pirates/Cartel for a more appealing name), so first you'll pick which one you want to go as.
For this example I'll pick Rebels.



So this screen will pop up with a bunch of names on the side. These are the different pilots you can select and their respected ships. Each ship has different stats and Unique Pilots such as IG-88B shown here have unique abilities.



Unique abilities allow you to create lists with specific purposes, there are many types of lists that are created with different purposes, from high damage output lists, to tanky lists, to even lists that are for pure enjoyment and hilarity.

There are a few known lists with their own nicknames as they have been used commonly (will be updated when I can remember or find out about others):

The Swarm

A swarm list usually comprises of multiple cheap fighters such as generic TIEs or Z-95 headhunters. They also can incorporate one unique pilot with abilities and upgrade cards that turn the swarm into a pain in the backside for the opponent.

The Party Bus

Bit of a more advanced list to use if you're brand new to the game and considered quite a cheese thing to bring but none-the-less viable, the party bus is a Scum YV-666 (Bossk etc) crewed by Dengar, 4-Lom and Zuckuss or another variation of crew members. It's basically designed to kill Aces (Unique pilots in fighters) and can be really offputting to new and old players alike.

From these two examples you can see certain roles created by players to serve their purpose in the game, however this doesn't mean you need to follow any specific build so you could create anything you want, regardless if it's considered good or not.

General Rules regarding building a list

There are a few rules when it comes to building lists and I learnt most of these from other players I've played against. They're rookie mistakes that everyone starting might make and will save you time having to fix your list because you made one of these mistakes. (again will be updated once I can remember other mistakes):

Unique Pilot with same Pilot as Crew

I actually learnt this one recently and it's logical. There are lots of ships who have unique pilots and crew cards with the same pilot.
For example, if I want to use Han Solo in his YT-1300 Millennium Falcon, I can't use Han Solo as a crew member too as he's the pilot of the Falcon.

Another example is I have Bossk in his YV-666 and Latts Razzi in their own YV-666 and I decide to put Latts as a crew member in Bossk's ship. That won't work either because how can Latts be at two places at once?

Allowed actions for ships

I'll bring IG-88B back for this one. If you look at the bottom of the card there are 4 icons representing different actions you can perform with this ship.
IG-88B has a Focus, Target Lock, Boost and Evade action icon on his card so therefore he can perform those actions. In-game if you declare that you want to perform a barrel roll action, you cannot perform barrel rolls because it's not on the action bar on the card.
Now there are cards that let you bypass this and they usually come with a penalty such as a stress token, so unless you have one of those cards you still can't perform an action you don't have.



When you've finished building a list

So now you've got your list sorted and you're ready to play, just save it and it'll appear on 'My Squadrons' on the website. In the next section I'll cover how to get your list into the game to play with against an opponent and how to play the game in general.

Setting up

Joining a game

So now you're ready to play, you can join a game.
Just like every other game in table-top you'll go into multiplayer and join a room which is playing X-Wing or you can host a room yourself. You'll jump in and see that the automated table is up. You'll probably get asked if you want to play a game. If there's a game going on already then either wait patiently and spectate or if another player joins the room (Rooms usually consist of 4-player slots so 4 players can play at the same time) then you can ask if they would like to play against you.

Spawning your list

If you've used the complete collection from the workshop, you'll spawn in your list from your chest's saved items. Don't forget you'll have to place shield tokens manually on your ship.
If you've followed the guide and downloaded the automated spawner you'll use the X-wing builder website to spawn in your list.
Thankfully dzikakulka's provided a picture tutorial on how to spawn your list in which you can find here: List spawner guide[imgur.com]

Setting up

When you join a room you'll pick your side which has a corresponding colour. Your side will have a hidden zone, here you'll place your movement dials for you to see.
If the dials are scripted then you can press the 'Layout' button on the stack which will place them in a neat configuration for you to pick up and put in your hidden zone. You can then pick up the corresponding ship and place it on the center of dials, after youv'e done this you right click the ship and go to it's description and type 'sd' and then press enter. This will assign the dials to the ship. You can then place the ship back where it was and click the 'Remove' button.
After your cards and ships have been placed in your area, you can begin the game.

Dies, Tokens and Cards

Dice and tokens and damage cards

There are two die in X-Wing, the red dice known as the attack dice and the green known as the defence dice.
Each die has different icons representing different effects.



Focus

The eye shown on the dice above appears on both attack and defence die, if you have a Focus token you can spend it to either change it to a hit or an evade. This is the most common token you'll see in the game.







Evade

Found only on the defence(green) die, an evade means your ship can dodge one hit. If you have two evades, then you can evade two hits and so on.

There are also evade tokens, these can be used as an automatic evade of one hit. So if I roll two defence die and they're both blank against 2 hits, I can spend a evade token to dodge 1 of those hits so I only take 1 hit.











Shield Tokens

These are shield tokens, they represent one shield on your ship, you place these next to your ship card. Everytime you take a hit, you remove one shield. Once you've lost all shields you start taking damage cards (shown below) instead.













Stress Tokens

Stress tokens are tokens you recieve when performing certain actions, manuevers or when the opponent has an ability or card that makes you recieve one.
Stress tokens carry a negative penalty of not being able to perform other actions (focus,evade etc) They can be removed through performing green manuevers and with abilities.












Hit and Crit(ical hit)

The filled in white star on the right represents a hit, the hollowed star on the right is a crit.

When a ship takes damage (assuming it has run out of shields) it will recieve either on of these cards. The left card is a normal hit and the right card is a Crit.









There are many other tokens but those are the basic tokens you'll see, if you encounter any other tokens




Pilot Card

Each pilot has a different pilot card.
The pilot card displays all the information of the pilot such as name, stats, ability(if Unique), action bar and upgrade card icons.

Pilot skill
The Orange number on the top left represents the Pilot Skill of the ship.
IG88B has a pilot skill of 6.
The pilot skill determines the order of which ship goes first for different phases.
Attack
The red number under the pilot skill is the primary attack of the ship. IG-88B has 3 attack so therefore he rolls 3 attack die at range 2 primary (Ranges, attack types and arcs explained below).
Agility
Also known as defence, the green number under attack represents the ship's agility. IG-88B has 3 agility so he rolls 3 defence die.
Hull Points
The yellow number under agility represents the hull points of the ship. IG-88B has 4 hull points so he can take 4 damage before being destroyed.
Shield Points
The blue number under hull points represents the shield points of the ship. IG-88B has 4 shield points, so he can take 4 damage before the next damage is on his hull.
Ability
The text at the center of the card is the ship's ability. Each unique pilot has it's own unique ability which it can use in the game.
Action bar
Below the ability box is the action bar. This determines what actions that ship can perform, so for example IG-88B can perform Focus, Target Lock, Boost and Evade actions.
Upgrade bar
At the very bottom of the card is the upgrade bar. It displays the upgrades in their icons of what upgrades are allowed for the ship to use.























Upgrade Cards

Upgrade cards are cards that provide certain perks and abilities for your ship to use. As stated above, the upgrade bar shows you what upgrades your ship can use, if your ship doesn't have the icon for a specific upgrade then it cannot use that upgrade.

Playing the game

Here's the general gist of the game when playing, showing the different phases of the game.

Winning the game
The main way to win the game is to destroy all of your opponent's ships before yours.
Or you can do it via points but most people play to the death.
If the opponent leaves the match they instantly forfeit, although in TTS games of X-wing are friendly so it isn't really considered a forfeit.

Determining Points of List

First thing you'll do is declare how many points your list is (the maximum is 100 points although sometimes you may get higher if it's a custom game.)
If one player has for example 99 points and the other player has 100, the player with 99 points will take initiative or start first.

If both players have 100 points then one player with take an attack dice and ask their opponent to call it, essentially heads or tails the opponent will either call 'Hit' or 'Miss'. If the opponent who's calling it gets the roll correct, they can choose to take intiative or give it to the player who rolled the dice.













Placement of Obstacles (Asteroids and Debris Fields)

Each player will then take 3 different asteroids or debris and place them on the side of the board with a total of 6 obstacles. You can place down the obstacles picked by your opponent. Each obstacle has to be a different type so you can't have two of the same asteroid.
Luckily for TTS being scripted, a square box (green range rulers making the box) is created representing the area which you can place asteroids and/or debris.
The player with initiative places the first obstacle down in the area, then the opponent will place another obstacle down and so on and so forth till all obstacles are placed down.
































Deployment phase

Again, thanks to TTS being scripted, two lines (Red range rulers making the lines) will appear on either side of the board.
This is where pilot skills come into play. The ship with the lowest pilot skill goes first.
If both players have a ship with the same pilot skill then the player with initiative places his ship down first.
The ships have to be placed behind the line but they can face any direction, they do not have to face forward towards the center of the board.

After all ships are placed down, the line is then removed and players may wish each other good luck.


LET THE GAMES BEGIN!





Movement phase - Dials

First thing each player does is pick a manuever dial corresponding to each ship they own. You pick up the card in your hidden zone and flip it facedown BEFORE taking it out of the hidden zone. You don't want your opponent seeing your manuever as it can lead to a significant advantage for them.
You place the facedown dial next to the ship.
Once all dials are placed, you can say ready or the most common word is 'Set' to show you're ready to reveal your manuever.

Just like deployment, lowest pilot skill moves first.
So the player with the ship with the lowest pilot skill will flip his card over and show his manuever, by which he'll move his ship to that manuever. After he's moved the ship, he can assign an action to the ship. This will keep going till all ships have moved.
Again if two ships have the same pilot skill the player with initiative will go first.
If no ship is in range of each other then the players will move back to the movement phase and pick another dial.

Shooting or Combat Phase

Now the fun starts.

First we need to talk about ranges and Target Locks.

Ranges, Arcs, when to use TL and Weapon types


There are three ranges, Range 1, Range 2 and Range 3.
Ranges 1 and 3 have a bonus whereas Range 2 does not.
If you're firing at a ship at range 1, you gain one additional attack die.
If you're firing at a ship at range 3, your opponent gets one additional defence die.
So, here is an image of the ranges. Kath is shooting at Vader at R3, Vader's Tie/Advanced has an agility value of 3 so therefore he gets 4 defence die in total due to the R3 bonus.
Now lets say Kath uses a cannon, Cannons are secondary weapons so bonuses don't happen regardless of what range. So vader would only get 3 die if it was a secondary attack.

Arcs are another important aspect of X-wing. Each ship has it's own arc, most ships like the ones shown have a 90 degree forward facing arc. Kath shown in the picture also has a dotted 90 degree rear arc, this means Kath can fire at ships behind her. There is also a 360 degree firing arc represented with a circled arrow around the base of the model.

Target Locks are also only used within these ranges, when performing a Target Lock action, you can only TL a ship in range of them (so R1-3). What a Target Lock does is allow you to Reroll blanks or focuses. This is pretty handy in-case your rolling is as unlucky as mine so you get a second chance to do damage.

**IMPORTANT INFORMATION**
Unlike real life X-Wing, you do not have two different colour Target Locks, instead what you do is put a TL token next to the ship you want to assign it to then place it on the enemy ship you want to lock-on to. Each player has a different colour corresponding what side they're on.

There are 3 weapon types, primary, secondary and auxillary.
Primary is usually used by the main arc, this is the red attack value on your pilot's card. Some ships have a 360 degree primary arc like the falcon, while others need to have a turret card to fire outside of the 90 degree front arc.
This is where secondary comes in. Secondary weapons are your card weapons, such as torpedos, turrets, missiles, bombs and cannons. These weapons can sometimes only be used once and some will have the benefit of being able to fire outside the main front arc.

Rolling attack and defence die

Unlike movement and deployment phase, the ship with the HIGHEST pilot skill shoots first.
So the attacking ship will declare what weapon type it's using and therefore roll it's number of attack die. Now this is usually where new players do a mistake if they're on the defending side. They'll roll at the same time as the attacker. The reason why you DO NOT do this is because the attacker could have multiple abilities they could use to modify their dice results and cause more damage to your ship.
So wait till they're finished and just to make sure ask them if they're ready and then roll your defence die, then once you've rolled your die, you can modify your defence die depending on what you have (focus tokens for eyes, evade tokens etc) to try to soften the blow or dodge it completely.
That's not all, some ships have end of combat phase abilities that will need to be resolved before the end, so make sure you have a good look at your opponent's list before moving on. Patience can be a key trait to have during combat phase.

Once the combat phase is finished, then you go back to movement phase and the placement of dials. Rinse and repeat till either you or your opponent has no more ships on the board. Simple!

FAQ

Had to put this here as I ran out of space on the above section. Feel free to ask more questions too so I can add more to this page.

What happens if you land on an obstacle?

Fret not, it happens to everyone. You've made a move and uh oh, you've landed on an obstacle.

Asteroids can be consider the more annoying of the two.
First of all if your ship lands on the asteroid, it can't fire. So that means if it passes over the asteroid it can fire, but you still need to resolve the asteroid's effects.
When coming into contact with an asteroid, you take a red attack die and roll it. If it lands on a hit or a crit you take 1 damage.
If you roll a blank or a focus, you don't take damage.

Debris fields lets you fire regardless if you've landed on it.
You'll roll an attack die just like asteroids, but you'll only take damage on a crit, and yes it's a critical hit, not a standard hit, so if you're unlucky flip that damage card up boy!
Unlike the asteroids you also take a stress token too from passing on debris fields.

What happens if I or an opponent make a incorrect manuever?

In tournaments, if a incorrect manuever is made, the opponent of the player who made the incorrect manuever can choose a manuever for him to make.
In TTS it's more of a friendlier game, so people will usually let you correct the mistake but most players like to test their list that they're planning on bringing to a real tournament so they might want tournament rules in their game on TTS as well.

Can I choose not to perform certain actions?

Certainly, if for a example an upgrade card says 'you may' then it means you don't have to use it's effect. You can also choose not to spend focus or evade tokens during combat phase, to save it for another attack or defence.

I hope this guide has provided enough information for you, obviously this doesn't cover all the game has to offer, but if you have any questions then the best method is to ask someone in-game or even while playing a game of X-Wing yourself.
So have fun out there!

Range checking Rule
Found this out recently, you can only spawn the range ruler if your ship is planning on performing a Target Lock as it's action.

[Nyarlathotep]

In the "Dies, Tokens and Cards" section, the first image shows 2 blank green die faces. (I'm pretty sure you are missing the 'eye' face in that pic)

[Mr.Dylers]

Cool guide, thanks for making it.

[Typhoon]

Are you asking about the workshop items? Just go into your Library, click on TTS, then scroll down to workshop on the main page and you can either search the items yourself or use the links provided above. Once you've found the workshop item, you click the 'Subscribe' button to download it. Hope this helps!

[trek98597]

how do I download to my computer? I am very confused