Roughly a year and a half ago I posted an article entitled “The Second Generation: How to Involve Your Children in X-Wing” (reposted here for posterity). It went on to be the most read and commented article in my year of X-Wing blogging. I still occasionally receive emails or chats with people saying, “Hey, that really helped, my kid and I now play X-Wing together too!”
But that was a year and a half ago, and so much has changed in the Smith Family Household. We began to ask the question, “What do you do when your kids are old enough to grasp ‘all’ of the rules to the game?”
Tip #1: Keep the main thing the main thing
Dads, let me remind you of a principle I wrote about in the Second Generation article:
I’d intentionally stacked the odds in her favor. Why? To make it fun for her. She wanted to move her Star Flower and roll dice. She wanted to blow my ship up. And I wanted to let her. You see, I don’t have to win against my daughter. Dads, that’ll come later. Right now I want to stoke that quality time love language that she has and make it something she looks forward to doing. “Daddy, daddy, when can we play the ship game again?!” is the question that I want asked when I walk in the door.
Fun with your kids should be the “main thing” in playing X-Wing with them. Not you winning. Not making it as real-to-the-rules as possible. If they leave a game frustrated and not having fun, you’ve failed. Please don’t misunderstand, that doesn’t mean “let them win.” I win against both kiddos at least half the time due to dice variance and superior reasoning skills. But regardless of winning or losing, we make the play itself fun.
If you’ve ever seen a Dude Perfect video, you know that those guys go crazy when they hit a shot. That excitement is contagious! We try to bring that same enthusiasm to ship movements and dice rolls. When Daughter correctly guesses the perfect maneuver to catch Daddy’s ship turn after turn, we high five and “Woo hoo!” her. When she rolls three hits/crits, we make it a big deal. When I roll blanks we groan and “Oh no!” together.
As a result, win or lose, they have a blast playing with tiny plastic spaceships. Most nights when I get home the second question out of their mouths is, “Hey daddy, can we play Star Wars tonight?” Yes, kiddos. Yes.
Tip #2: Continually evaluate complexity
My daughter is now seven. We’ve long since graduated from the super simple version of the game that we flew when she was four and five. She uses a (single) real ship, with a real dial, with real attack and agility values. Six months ago we added actions, stress, and pilot skills/ship abilities to her repertoire.
Game changer! She loved it. It changed the way she picked which ships to fly, in the same way that introducing real dials to her changed everything when she was five. “Daddy, Anakin seems way better than Norra. I get to zoom around! I’m going to fly him tonight.”
But then I made a mistake: we added upgrade cards. I could see it as we played the next several games. Her processing took longer. She was less sure of herself. She second guessed where she was putting her ships. She spent 10 minutes choosing which ship to fly instead of 30 seconds. But, most importantly, it diminished her desire to play the game.
There’s a reason X-Wing is age-rated at 14+. The level of interaction that goes into each card and each phase of the game is not small. There’s a lot of information to process at any given time, and the more ships, abilities, and upgrades you add to that equation, the easier it is to miss of any one of those elements.
Lesson learned, we dialed back the difficulty. We’ll eventually add upgrades back in. But if the point of playing with Daughter is to keep the main thing the main thing, it is important to keep the level of decision making to something that is fun.
Tip #3: Invite them in
Both my kiddos know that they’re playing “their special version” of X-Wing, and that Daddy plays “with more ships and cards.” And despite introducing too much complexity too soon in the case of upgrade cards, I want to always leave them with the taste of what’s right around the corner.
That value plays itself out by inviting them, where appropriate, to participate in “Daddy’s games” of X-Wing. Not all situations are created equal, though, so I view this through a two-part lens:
- Games with Mom/Family
- These games mostly happen at home when our kiddos should be in bed, but have snuck out of their room to participate in 10-15 minutes of fun before heading back downstairs and going to sleep. Wife and I have an unspoken agreement that the outcome of child-interrupted games never count, so we solicit Daughter and Son for their ideas as it relates to dial placement, which action(s) to take, and which ships to shoot. “What do you think, Daughter? Barrel roll out of that ship’s arc so we don’t get hit, but can’t modify our own dice…or stay where we’re at and take a focus?” Or, “Okay, which way are we pointed? Yep. Mom’s ship will probably end up here…so what maneuver do you think we should do to keep her in arc, able to shoot, while receiving minimum fire back?” And most mind blowing for them right now, “Okay Daughter, here’s my plan. We’re going to move with Anakin which lands me here. Nobody in arc, right? Okay, let’s use the Force to barrel roll this way. We’re going to boost too, and if that’s the case, should we go front, middle, or back on our barrel roll?”
- LGS games
- I’m blessed with a wife and kids that will often bring food up to the LGS on my one night a week that I get out to play. Seriously, they’re awesome. But having made the drive out (25 minutes away, all green lights), all three of them want to spend a little time in the store before driving back home. So they watch, knowing that they can’t give me advice about what I “should do” or what the opponent is going to do. So, instead, they take notes for the 5-15 minutes that they’re there. They’ll whip out their little notepads and stand on chairs where they can see the game. I’ve told them to watch the things I do, and then “Sharpen and Encourage Daddy” the next day.
And boy can they be spot on. “Daddy, on this turn, you almost lost the game! You tried to do a turn around but bumped right in front of his biggest gun. You were a fool!” Yes. Exact words from my daughter…and I’m a better player because of it. When they ask the “why” questions the next day, it helps me process what went well, and what didn’t, so I can explain a complex set of decisions in a way that kiddos can understand. And by explaining it to them that way, I almost always learn something too.
- I’m blessed with a wife and kids that will often bring food up to the LGS on my one night a week that I get out to play. Seriously, they’re awesome. But having made the drive out (25 minutes away, all green lights), all three of them want to spend a little time in the store before driving back home. So they watch, knowing that they can’t give me advice about what I “should do” or what the opponent is going to do. So, instead, they take notes for the 5-15 minutes that they’re there. They’ll whip out their little notepads and stand on chairs where they can see the game. I’ve told them to watch the things I do, and then “Sharpen and Encourage Daddy” the next day.
Final Salvo
As I stated in my previous article on this topic: I hope the above tips prove useful in some way for you. The more people that we have playing the great game of X-Wing the better. But much more importantly than that…the more dads, moms, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, and friends we have spending time with their loved ones instead of off somewhere else doing something by themselves the better. Yes, my goal was to get my family to enjoy playing X-Wing…so I could spend time doing something I like with people I love. The same strategy can work for most people in your life. Hook ’em, get them started simply, ramp up the complexity.
Fly safe!
