I Hate My Camera - an FFG X-Wing Miniatures Game Review

I feel I owe you all an apology. I just looked at the pictures I took with my cheap ass camera and I can see that I have a box titled "X-Wing" and that I have some vaguely X-Wing and TIE Fighter shaped blurs. I will never buy a Vivitar camera again.

So, I suppose I can still tell you about it at least in written form.

To begin with, this is the first Fantasy Flight Games I have ever purchased. I did purchase the game at the local Target (pronounced with bad phony French accent according to SWMBO), so this is not a free evaluation copy or anything like that. The local store did not have the expansions so I do not have the Y-Wing, TIE Bomber, or TIE Advanced. (BTW, I like how the first round of figures effectively lets you replay the Battle of Yavin, minus Han's cavalry charge at the end).

I have not bought any of the current trend of "euro-games" or modern board games before so I was impressed with the quality of the non-miniature materials used for the products. The counters are thick and easy to grab. The box and counters have what seems to be a fabric of some sort in the surface which I'm sure is there to extend the service life. Printing quality on the tokens is excellent and easy to read. One quibble with the box is that the top has a big viewing hole in it. Obviously this is to show off the miniatures of the iconic ships from the Star Wars franchise while sitting on the store shelf, but it means that storing things in the box means either the box has to be flat on it's back, or you keep the packaging for the fighters and never lose it. All the counters and maneuver templates released from the counter sheets easily and without ripping or tearing. I do recommend getting some additional baggies for them though. Since I'm something of a...collector...I have a number of small bags from previous miniature purchases that fit the bill quite well.  The pilot cards, upgrade and damage cards, and dice each came in their own zip-lock bag. The box does allow for all the components to fit back in without having to play Tetris, though I'm not sure how well expansion components will fit later on.

The miniatures are not made of the bendy plastic like previous Star Wars games. The TIE Fighter panels and X-Wing laser cannons were not bent at all. The plastic does feel like it would break if too much pressure were applied, so I'm kind of concerned about the kids being rough with them. The flight stands are made so that a cardboard stat counter fits on the base and the stands are keyed so that the fighter will only fly forward. The painting is actually pretty good on them, about the level at which I would have painted them if they were supplied unpainted. It wouldn't win any awards, but nothing worse than what I've painted before.  I tried to take some comparison shots with my Silent Death fighters, long story short, the figures are too big to mix well with Silent Death figures. The figures are 1:270 scale so should work with 6mm, but the cockpits on the X-Wings seemed too small, though the TIEs seemed like they would work. The fighters dwarfed my GZG battleships. So, they probably aren't going to mix all that well with any pre-existing starship games you may already have.

The rulebook and quickstart pamphlet are well printed on glossy paper. Rules are easy to comprehend and there good examples when needed. The quickstart rules are extremely watered down from the full rules, but my kids had them down pat before the first turn was over. Our quickstart game resulted in only the first pass being a passing flyby as we got better at anticipating the movement, though in the last turn Zachary zigged when he should've zagged and my TIE fighter got on his six and turned his X-Wing into a rapidly expanding cloud of gas. Throughout the game we were all singing the appropriate themes and adding our own sound effects, so the game gets a big "+" on fun factor as it captured the feel of universe quite well. Tonight I plan to get our first game in with the full rules.

TL:DR: Overall I like it very much and will probably spend an obscene amount of money on expansions. Especially when the Millennium Falcon and Slave I are released later this year.

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