New Review:
Star Wars: X-Wing
What is it?
- Fantasy Flight Games first real original miniature game comes to us in the form of one of their first Star Wars licensed products. All previous mini games put out by FFG have been made by other studios and FFG has simply done the work of publisher. So how did their first real miniature creation turn out? Pretty darn good. Game is still not widely availabe yet but will be out very soon. While much of it feels like it is copying a game they used to publish, Wings of War, the game does make quite a few tweaks to make it fairly different. X-Wing focuses on space combat on a dog fighting level using a simple and functional game system.
The rules
- First thing you do is of course build up a force by using cards. The cards contain all the ship stats and represent the pilot of the ship. You can have cheap rookie pilot X-Wing, an elite piloted one, or even a unique character such as Luke Skywalker. Certain pilots will have on them unique abilities also that set them apart. Stat wise, ships are all standardized, so all X-Wings no matter who pilots them has the same stats, but the difference lies in pilot skill level and access to unique abilities. Like most miniature games, pilots have point values which you use to build up to a specific army build level. Along with pilot cards the game also has the nice feature of having smaller upgrade cards that can be used to further customize your ships. Add proton torpedoes to a ship will cost you some more points, while some ace pilots also have access to being able to purchase for points some extra ability cards.
Game breaks down in a pretty simple structure. Each ship has it's own dial which on that unique dial has all the speed and manuever combinations that ship is capable of. All players take all their dials at once and selects a manuever they plan on doing this turn. Once that is done, playing in Pilot skill order, the ships are moved one at a time by revealing the dial of that ship and the chosen manuever. mauevers are performed instead of measuring, but using templates that the core game comes with. The templates attach to guides on the base of the figures so a person can easily determine where a ship goes with no need for careful measuring. Templates come in variety of moves as well as speed options. manuevers are done in ascending order till all ships are moved. After a ship is moved, you get the option of performing an action, actions basically are what the pilot is doing while moving around, so you can choose to be evading which gives you a bonus against being hit. Other actions include stuff such as locking onto a nearby ship, doing a barrel roll, focusing on combat, and many other abilities. Doing this in ascending order represents how higher skilled pilots get to see the manuevers of lower skilled pilots and hence get to make a better choice on actions to choose.
After all ships move, combat is conducted one ship at a time again by skill level of the pilot, but in descending order to represent higher skilled pilots having iniative on combat. Combat in X-Wing is performed with dice instead of cards like Wings of War, using custom dice you get in the games starter. Range does impact your chances so maneuvering your ship well is very important and not just about firing arcs. Get in close, and you get an extra attack dice. Attacker rolls the calculated attack dice, while defender gets to roll the defense dice which is determined by how agile the ship is. Tie Fighters for example being more manuevarable tend to have higher agility than Rebel fighters so they are harder to hit. To deal damage, the attacker must roll more hits than the defender has rolled evade results. The number of hits over the amount of evades rolled, determine how many hits are done to the target ship. Some results on the hit dice also represent critical hits. Damage is represented using damage cards that come from a single damage deck shared by both players. If a ship has as many damage cards as it has hull points, it is destroyed. Some hit results on dice cause critical hits, when this happens you simply flip a damage card faceup where it has a random critical effect that applies to a ship. An example of a critical hit is engine damage, which makes it harder for a ship to do specific manuevers on later turns. Players continue performing attackins in the skill order and once done, a new round is done till the mission is completed, or all of one sides ships are dust.
Further Notes:
- Pretty simple sounding? It really is and it feels quite nice and elegant really. Some might be disappointed in the smaller scale of the game perhaps as obviously many like the concept of huge space battles in Star Wars, but players can of course make up their own mega battles. While the product design visually and some of it's concepts take from Wings of War, it does come off as pretty different game. Combat feels lot less random and in general theirs alot more you can do with your craft than in Wings of War. The customization options do make things quite interesting and future expansions are sure to just further expand on what a persn can do. The core game box set only comes with 3 figs, but it works as a cheaper intro set, and it comes with everything a player needs to play X-Wing. The game also comes with 3 scenarios that are nice and really show how the game will benefit from player creativity. Already online many fans are coming up with recreations of famouse battles from the movies and books. At Gencon and Star Wars Celebration Cons FFG has previewed the next wave of ships to be added which are to include the first "medium" sized ships, being the Millenium Falcon and Slave-1. From the rulebook it sounds like we are going to get ships even larger than this as well so what the future holds for the game is up in the air, but they obviously have lot of options. Base game is based on Space Combat, but atmospheric combat is surely in the careds for a distant expansion for stuff like airspeeders (battle of hoth anyone?).
The figures are prepainted miniatures which sets some players off, but these are excellent quality and really blow away those pieces of crap Wizards of the Coast put out for their space battles game. The plastic used is sturdy and not cheap rubbery stuff that will warp. Players will have to be careful with the handling of these ships as the minor details like the X-Wing cannons are fragile as heck. The paint quality and detail is very good though, up there with some of the best when it comes to prepaints. Production quality over all fits with FFG's normal high levels with alot of nice design choices that make for easy streamlined play. Ship bases for example all have the full ship data printed on them using cardboard overlays you can swap out depending on who the pilot is. So most relevant battle info is right there on the board for all players to see. Gameplay while quick doesn't mean the game plays super fast per say. The recommended play level is 100 points which can take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. For many miniature gamers though, that won't seem like alot. 100 points depending on your force build will likely be around 3 to 5 ships per side.
Pros:
+ Very simple and fun rule set. Not fiddly at all and quick to teach.
+ Excellent quality prepainted figures
+ Lots of potential to expand especially with EU material and different Eras such as the Clone Wars.
+ Everything to play in the core box
Cons:
- Individual ships are a bit pricey at $15 retail each fighter. You do get cards and a bunch of tokens to go with that ship though.
- Game is bit on the small scale while each ship added will increase play time.
- As of writing this, the game only has 4 different ships available, so play options are limited.
- Ship expansions come with a variety of cards, many of which can be used by other ships. So if you want a specific card for another ship, you are kinda forced to buy the other ship expansions to get all the cards. The Y-Wing for example has a R5 droid which X-Wings can use and many will want.
Again it's really early, so how the game will flesh out is tough to say truly, the next 4 ships in wave 2 of the games release schedule is supposed to be out before December. We don't have dates yet, just know which ships are coming. Game has a strong core start that feels very solid, so we have to see what gets added to it in the future, but what they have does offer lot of potential for growth in various directions. They could easily just put out card packs that add new pilots, abilities, and ship equipment!
Check out the full rules out for yourself at the games official site:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=174
