Article 0: Back 2 Dials
This article acts as a transcript for the introductory episode (Episode 0) of the revived Back to Dials Podcast.
Hello! You are listening to the Back To Dials Podcast for the X-Wing Miniatures Game! I am your host Liam and this is Episode 0: Back 2 Dials.
This episode is going to serve as a bit of an introduction to myself and the podcast. I’ll also be talking a bit about the legacy this podcast has and what it means to me, and the goals I wish to achieve with the podcast and website going forward.
To start of with, hello! As stated my name is Liam, and I started playing X-Wing during its first edition in February of 2017, nearly five years after its initial release and just over a year and a half before it entered its second edition. My dad and I tried out the core set after he saw that a friend of his flew from Colorado to California to play in a tournament, and the two of us have been hooked ever since. Upon recording this I have won many store tournaments, finished in the top 4 of the 2018 Walker Classic, top 8 at the 2023 Las Vegas Open Grand Championship, won the 2023 Salt Lake City AMG Grands Championship, got top 8 at Nova Open 2025, played the Rebel faction for Team USA in 2024 and 2025 for XTC, and finished 23rd and top 16 at the World Championships in 2024 and 2025, respectively. On top of all that I hold the title of Loopin’ Chewie State Champion!
The original Back To Dials Podcast was started in 2015 by Asa, Adam, Tyson, and had some early on back end help from Joe. The show continued and was headed predominantly by Asa and Adam until the summer of 2019, and fizzled out on streaming and recording games in 2020 due to the pandemic amongst other factors. The original podcast was great at teaching little tips and tricks for players of all skills, was full of antics and shenanigans when it came to its interactions with other podcasts at the time, had a fun comedic style wholly unique to themselves, and of course the infamous feedback@backtodials.com contact which is still referenced often today. The primary host of the podcast Asa Graf was especially well known for his natural skill when it came to commentating games, and even showed off his one of a kind talent alongside Gold Squadron Podcast at the 2019 World Championships.
I first interacted with Asa and Adam at one of my first ever tournaments, Extra Life 2017. At this tournament they had asked me to play on stream against Jon in the first round. I even remember my father putting me up to taking one of the participation prizes, an Omicron Group Pilot alt art card, and asking Asa and Adam to both sign it because, according to my dad, “they and their setup looked like the pilots on the card.” In early 2019 I also submitted an article I wrote for them to use, titled “the Biggs effect”, to post on their website. All this is to say that honoring the legacy of Back To Dials, not just as a Colorado X-Wing podcast but many aspects they were known for, is important for me to continue on with to this day.
I first planned to try and create my own podcast in March 2020, using the new free time I had acquired to speak about many similar topics like gameplay strategy and different community resources, even going as far as registering the domain Imperial Academy Podcast and setting up a website. Sadly, I just didn’t see the need in the community for such a podcast with how little in person play and lack of new players there were. Couple that with the fact that the game’s overall popularity went down following the changes made by Atomic Mass Games in 2022, for a while I just lost the motivation. But recently with the community efforts of groups like the X-Wing Alliance and the X-Wing 2.0 Legacy project, we are starting to see a slow uptick in players again, new and returning. And to try and help them find their footing as well as match their skill to those who have been playing all this time, I felt like now was the best time to start this project up again, and felt that Back To Dials really captures the needs at this moment.
There will be two primary aspects to this new rendition of Back To Dials. With the full support and blessing of Asa and Adam, this podcast is meant to be a way that I and other veteran players who are masters in their craft share tips and tricks for different aspects of the game. Similarly the website is also set to hold a repository of different .stl files of different gameplay elements that one can print out with a 3D printer, so they can still play and enjoy the game even when it is discontinued and out of print.
When it comes to the podcast, my goal is to have each episode be hyper-specific on one topic or another which covers a different aspect of the game that you can learn more about from a master on that subject. I hope to be consistent in releasing around one episode per week, though depending on the research and scheduling guests for some topics that may vary. Each episode will also be aiming to be around 15 minutes so that one is able to listen to them during their commute or while on a break. Along with this each episode will also be posted to YouTube so that for the eventual day (hopefully far in the future) that when this rendition of the podcast ends the repository of information doesn’t go away with it.
For the .stl file assets I plan to start with the core components, bases, templates, base inserts, dials, obstacles, objectives for XWA, tokens, etc. All freely downloadable from the website public use. After getting all the core components created my next hope is to provide actual ship models and corresponding painting guides to color match the official products since one of the driving factors for the game’s success was that the prepainted minis had a lower barrier of entry for new players. On the same note of episodes being posted to YouTube, my plan is to have each .stl posted to Thingiverse, with any subsequent information, so that once again there should be no worries of the community losing access to the resource at any point.
Sadly recording and streaming games just isn’t viable for me to do. The resources needed to record in person games is quite great and my computer doesn’t have the bandwidth needed to run and stream Tabletop Simulator either. This may change some day, but at current there are no plans to do any game recording for Back To Dials, but thankfully there are multiple other groups doing this already.
On a similar note is that this is now backtodials.net. The backtodials.com domain was just too far out of my price range and for complete transparency, it was going to be 195 USD whereas the backtodials.net domain is only 20 USD per year with another 8 USD each month for the associated email. If funds run tight I could even keep the email as a way to contact us just without being able to reply from it at no cost. I have no interest in opening a Patreon at this time because I also believe it to be important to not gatekeep any part of the current Back To Dials or create any superfluous incentives that are only available through a Patreon.
Overall, I hope that the X-Wing community enjoys the triumphant return of Back To Dials and that we can help keep the game going for years to come!
This has been Liam of the Back To Dials Podcast, and as always if you have any questions or feedback feel free to email us at feedback@backtodials.net. We’ll see you on the table when it is time to go Back To Dials!
