X-Wing Miniatures Review:
Introduction:
I've been playing a X-Wing Miniatures by Fantasy Flight for a few months now and I thought I'd write a piece on it. X-Wing is a Star Wars themed tabletop game, the core set includes 1 X-Wing and 2 Tie fighters the staple fighters of the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire respectively. There are more booster packs including other ships to build a full and proper Rebel, Empire and as of recently Scum fleet. The game focuses on the dog fights between the smaller ships in the star wars universe with an emphasis on manoeuvring, dodging and shooting.
My first game:
It was sometime between the second and third turn of my first game that I knew I was hooked and that I would be spending a lot of money on this game. The magic that is Star Wars was being brought to life in front of me in form of cardboard dials and plastic ships. In my mind lazers were firing, ships had their engines on full blast trying to avoid the barrage of lazer fire, dodging, manuevering, barrel rolling and finally at the end I took my final shot at the enemy tie fighters and they were blown into space dust.I was instantly addicted.
Pros:
Great for Star Wars fans
Easy to learn, harder to master
Flexible rules allows for any number of players
Many different game modes and playstyles
You don't have to own all the ships to play the game
Models are pre-painted, that hasn't stopped the community from re-painting them!
Cons:
Expensive investment if you want to own all the ships
Games can be time consuming
How the game is played:
On the first turn each player puts their ships on the play board lowest pilot skill first ascending we then move to what is called the planning phase.The game is broken down to several phases, in the planning phase pilots use their dials to plan the manoeuvres of their ships, everyone locks in there moves secretly and places the dial face down.
The next phase is called the activation phase, in this phase pilots reveal their dials and move their ships in order from lowest pilot skill to highest. The dials reveal the pre-planned manoeuvres and manoeuvre templates are used to move the ships on the play board. After the ship performs its manoeuvre it normally gets to take an action, actions are special things ships can do either to prepare for combat or to try avoid combat all together, the most common actions are focus, evade and target lock.
While a focus tokens are useful for both attack and defense and give you a bit of freedom of choice in the next phase, evade is used soley for defense and target lock is used for offense.
After all the ships have moved and performed their actions accordingly we move onto the combat phase, this time ships get to fire at each other from highest pilot skill to lowest. First the attacker rolls red attack dice for damage, then the defender rolls green defense dice to try mitigate the damage.
During this phase you can spend an evade token as an extra evade die to cancel out an enemy damage die. You can choose to spend your target lock to re-roll any number of attack dice or you can spend a focus token to change any number of defense or attack dice to evade or damage results. Focus results look like a little eye icon.
After all attacks are done, all damage is applied and all destroyed ships have been removed from the board we go back to the planning phase and repeat.
This is a brief summary of the rules and doesn't really go into the intricacies, you will find a lot of cards in the game can modify the basic order of things.However the basic rules are pretty easy to understand and after one or two games you will get the hang of it!
You should invest in this if:
You love Star Wars
You ever had a Star Wars figurine or micro-machine collection
You have the time to sit down for an hour or more and play this game with friends.
You love collecting Star Wars stuff
You like playing good table top games
Conclusion:
X-Wing miniatures is a great tabletop/war game! I recommend it for any Star Wars fans looking for a table top adventure which will throw them into dog fights with their favourite Star Wars ships, pilots and crew. The game-play feels authentic and the mechanics paint a very clear picture of what a Star Wars space battle would be in a turn based form. Almost as if time was slowing down for your pilot to make split second decisions. This game is very addictive and can cost thousands if you aren't careful, however you are not required to spend this much if you just want to play casually. If you can find a club that is already playing this you might be better off borrowing cards that are missing from your ideal build so you don't have to spend too much.
