I finally got my game today and played two games with my wife. She played Imperial and I played Rebel. For the first game, we played with the quick-start rules. I narrowly won. For the second game, we played with the advanced rules, but kept the 3 pilots from the quick-start game. She won with the Obsidian Squadron Pilot almost dead and no hits on the Academy Pilot.

There was a whole lot of running around and chasing each other without getting firing solutions. I suppose that gets better with practice. The second game kind of dragged and I think that had some negative effects on my wife's perception of the game. She's more of Euro game / filler game type of person. I asked her which of my "hard core" games she likes best after playing X-Wing. I assumed she'd say she liked X-Wing because it was simple, but in fact, she found it somewhat boring. Surprisingly, she said she would rather play The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. I guess that will see more table time in the future at our house.

Her comments made me realize that a lot of the intensity really comes from devising a strategy, building a squad around that strategy, and executing that strategy in combat. She didn't have a strategy so just flew around, not really caring if she lived or died.

For my part, I felt like the hardest decisions to make were which action to use. My wife, on the other hand, worried more about where to move and didn't really think about actions that much.

It was very nice of her to play it with me tonight, but now I hunger for a game against someone else like me.

 The game gets better and better every game you play… you will start to admire the tactical depth of it as you play more.

Strombole said:

Absolutely. Devising new strategies is one of my favorite parts about this game. When you create a squadron, give them a goal, and see how they work together, it's just great lol