Luke Skywalker takes the focus action to gain a focus token—which can be used to gain an edge while attacking or defending.

Effectively combining actions and maneuvers can help ensure your plans come to fruition, but this also means knowing when to take risks. In addition to red maneuvers, certain red actions in X-Wing Second Edition can cause pilots to become stressed. Whether you receive stress from a red maneuver or a red action, stressed pilots cannot perform any actions or execute red maneuvers. With so few options available to stressed ships, you must decide when to be aggressive and when to play it safe.

In addition to regular actions, some pilots in X-Wing Second Edition can influence the Force to help them in the heat of battle. These pilots can spend Force charges throughout a battle to heighten their senses and hone their perception, allowing them to perform some otherworldly feats.

Luke Skywalker uses one of his Force charges to change a focus result on one of his defense dice to an evade result.

Force-sensitive pilots have a Force capacity printed on their ship cards that determines the number of Force charges they receive at the beginning of the game. At the very least, a Force charge can be spent to change a single focus result to a hit or an evade. Force charges can be much more powerful than that, however, and several upgrade cards unlock even more potential in Force-sensitive pilots. 

Stay on Target

Maneuvering your ships and performing actions are all designed with one goal in mind: getting into position to fire at your opponent’s ships. To target another ship, it must be within your ship’s firing arc and in range. When you’re activating and moving ships, your pilots with the lowest initiative must move first, but when it’s time to fire, the order reverses and pilots with the highest initiative attack first!

At the bottom of every ship card, you’ll find numbers representing a ship’s attack, agility, hull, and shields. When you make an attack, you gather red attack dice equal to your ship’s attack and roll them. After you’ve rolled your attack dice, your opponent will roll green defense dice equal to their ship’s agility.

The TIE fighter has caught the X-wing within its firing arc and takes a shot. It has an attack of two, so it rolls two attack dice.

For example, a TIE fighter’s attack is two, so it would roll two red dice in an attack against an X-wing. As the X-wing has an agility of two, it would roll two green defense dice. Each evade symbol cancels a single hit or critical hit, but shots that connect cause damage.

At first, damage whittles away a ship’s shields, but once all of a ship’s shields have been removed, it is dealt damage cards instead. For regular damage, the damage cards are dealt facedown. If a ship sustains critical damage, however, the damage card is dealt faceup, potentially causing all sorts of difficulties. Critical damage could cause a pilot to panic and gain stress. Or, one of your engines could be damaged, increasing the difficulty of your turn maneuvers. No matter what happens, a ship is destroyed when it has damage cards equal to its hull.

The TIE fighter lands a successful hit on the T-65 X-wing, so the X-wing is dealt a facedown damage card. The X-wing now has damage cards equal to its hull value, and it is destroyed!

Choose Your Crew

Before you start flying your ships, X-Wing Second Edition invites you to assemble your own squadron from some of the most iconic starfighters and pilots in the Star Wars galaxy. The first step is to choose a faction, and from there, you have two options. You can jump right into the action with Quick Build cards that list pre-built ship and upgrade combinations. Or, if you want full control over your squadron, you can use the X-Wing squad builder app to build your squadron on your computer or mobile device, allowing you to quickly create a custom squad.

The X-Wing squad-builder tracks the point values of ships and upgrades, letting you build your own X-Wing Second Edition squadron on your computer or mobile device. It also creates a dynamic environment for Organized Play or casual games!

Once you’ve selected your faction in the X-Wing squad builder, you’ll be able to start adding ships and upgrades. In addition to choosing unique pilots such as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader for your squadron, every ship can be outfitted with upgrade cards to enhance its capabilities. Whether you load proton torpedoes onto your Y-wing, upgrade an X-wing with an astromech droid, or outfit a TIE fighter with afterburners, every upgrade helps you create a squadron that fits your playstyle.

The ships and upgrades that you choose are worth a certain number of points in your squadron, and the squad builder app explains all the rules of squad-building, enforces those rules so that you do not accidentally build illegal squads. Rather than printing point values on the ship and upgrade cards themselves, the X-Wing squad builder app governs the point costs of all ship cards and upgrade cards, and it also determines what upgrade slots are available to a given ship.

Not only does the X-Wing squad builder app enable fast and accurate list-building, the versatility of the X-Wing squad builder app means that it will be easy to support multiple types of games, creating a more dynamic play environment. Whether you’re playing at an official tournament or around your table at home, the X-Wing squad builder can be used to create specific experiences that test all of your squad-building abilities. For example, the Organized Play team could easily adjust the point costs or upgrade slots available to certain ships for the course of a single event, a series of tournaments, or a season of the game.

Certain ships, ship cards, and upgrade cards may rotate in and out of tournament legality, giving the Organized Play team an opportunity to create unforgettable and unique tournament experiences. You can even use the X-Wing squad builder app to create your own custom game types if you’re playing at home or running your own tournament in a local store! By restricting certain cards or ships, you can create a tournament that’s as unique as the game experience you want to explore.  

Man Your Ships

Now is your chance to pilot some of the most advanced starfighters in the galaxy. Assemble your squadron and recreate thrilling Star Wars space battles with X-Wing Second Edition!