A little while ago, in a game room not too far away... Joe Messerle and I sat down to play a game of
Fantasy Flight Games' new darling
Star Wars: X-Wing. I must admit I was rather skeptical of this game. I was
luke-warm on Wings of War (although I later revised my stance once realizing that WofW works really well in large groups), and had heard this was a similar system. So I was a bit skeptical at first, but the pre-painted miniatures looked really good, and I figured it was at least worth checking out.
Then I watched the excellent video produced by Fantasy Flight detailing the game mechanics, which I've included here, and was sold.
If you'd rather read your rules overview, head on over to
All Miniatures Great and Small for a great look at the box contents and overview of the rules!
I won't re-tread the game mechanics because both the video and "All Miniatures Great and Small" do such a good job of explaining them, but suffice it to say- the rules seemed "just right" to me. Crunchy enough to be satisfying, simple enough to learn quickly. I immediately headed out to
One Eyed Jacques in Richmond and bought the core set, an extra X-Wing and TIE fighter, a Y-Wing, and a TIE advanced. In all, that set me back $100- which may sound a bit steep for just 7 ships. Indeed, the price is just at the edge of "too expensive", but once I opened everything up I felt like it was all worth it.
The core set comes with a ton of beautiful counters, and each ship is very well painted with several pilot and upgrade cards, flight stand, etc. For my next purchase, I plan to get another core set adding more TIE fighters, an X-Wing, more dice and movement templates etc. Check them out on
The Warstore.
And now, a brief battle report.
BATTLE REPORT
*ZZZZZZTTTTT* "This is Red 3- power fluctuations have -" *ZZZZZZZTTTT*
In this mission, the Rebels have one ship disabled in the middle of an asteroid field. They must wait 5 turns until the ship comes online, and then must get the ship off the board. The Imperials have to destroy that ship. In true Imperial fashion, once an imperial fighter is destroyed, a fresh reinforcement gets to take its place!
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| The disabled ship |
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| We marked the disabled ship with some fire so we wouldn't lose track of it. The ship can still move and perform actions, but it is severely limited in its maneuver. |
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| A pilot from Storm squadron and his wingman. |
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| Red 4 and Gold 2 move to protect their comrade. |
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| A patrol from Black Squadron. |
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| "Watch out for those asteroids!" |
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| Red 4 narrowly avoids an asteroid with a sharp turn to port. |
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| The disabled ship turns right into the TIE Advanced's firing arc who immediately gets a target lock on the Rebel fighter. |
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| Red 4 moves in on the TIE fighter from Obsidian squadron, and scores a target lock. |
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| Red 4 tears into the TIE fighter, but doesn't quite bring it down. Red 4's deflector shields hold. |
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| The TIE advanced screams past Red 3, and zeroes in on Gold 2. |
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| The patrol from Black Squadron plots an intercept course. |
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| Obsidian 1 tears into the Y-wing, who's robust deflectors barely hang on. |
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| Red 3 and 4 form up, and hunt down Obsidian 2. |
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| Black squadron move to surround Gold 2. |
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| Obsidian 2 falls to a proton torpedo blast from Red 4! |
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| I'm hit! Gold 2's deflectors fail |
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| An Academy pilot arrives to replace Obsidian 2. |
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| Red 3 and 4 split up just as Red 3 comes fully online. Red 4 tears into Black 1. |
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| The Y-wing makes a hard turn, putting stress on the aging frame. |
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| But Obsidian 1 does a quick barrel roll to line up his sights, and destroys the Y-Wing. |
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| Red 4 flips around, scarcely clipping an asteroid. |
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| When an insanely lucky blast from the Academy Pilot knocks out Red 3- earning the Imperials a victory! |
Rough fight for the rebels! But it was an insanely fun game. Joe and I were both geeking out, especially once we put on the "A New Hope" soundtrack in the background. The game just "feels right". A+!
