She'll make .5 past light speed...

Made a random stop today at a game store and they had the X-Wing wave two ships.  A quick call to Household 6 and a financial transaction later I became the proud owner of the Millenium Falcon, no knowledge of Sabaac required.  Looking forward to flying that hunk of junk that doesn't look like much on the outside but has it where it counts.

Here she is being escorted by two X-wings.

Several Fighters Have Broken Off...

I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas and received all kinds of new goodies. For me, I received a few things I'm really excited about: a new camera and some more X-Wing miniatures. The camera is a Canon Powershot SX160is and in short, it rocks! Tonight the boys and I played a game of X-Wing and with no messing with settings it took clear pictures despite my sometimes shaky hands in somewhat poor lighting. Got it at Wal-Mart for less than the camera I was going to get. With a good camera hopefully I will feel more inspired to post more often as I'll be able to show what I'm talking about.

For the figures I received one each of the Wave 1 expansions for X-Wing: a TIE Advanced, a TIE Fighter, a Y-Wing, and an X-Wing. The reason for the extra TIE and X-Wing is that the expansions come with pilot and upgrade cards that aren't in the core box set. That and everyone knows that TIEs work in flights of three and Rebels in wingman pairs. Today I finally got an opportunity to get them going in a game. It was a throw everything on the table and see what happens. To keep things simple and get an idea of the effectiveness of the TIE Advanced and Y-Wing I kept the pilots to the highest non-named cards with minimal upgrades. The Imperials has a Storm Squadron pilot in the TIE Advanced with concussion missiles as well as three Black Squadron pilots with no upgrades. I flew two of the TIEs while Phillip flew the TIE Advanced and the third TIE. Zachary flew the Rebel scum with a Gray Squadron Y-Wing with the ion cannon and two Red Squadron pilots both with proton torpedoes. The X-Wing leader had an R2 astromech droid. Something I wasn't paying attention to was that all the pilots cards had a Pilot Skill of 4 which meant that the Imperials would always go first but damage was simultaneous. As you'll see in the end-of-turn photos, Phil zeroed in on the Y-Wing with single-minded determination and charged up the middle, Zachary split his fighters trying to spread us out, and I came up the side and did a lot of circling around until I could get on the tail of Zachary's left-side (from his perspective) X-Wing. Without further ado, here are the turn-by-turn pictures:

Initial Deployment

Still closing

First shots fired, mostly just stripped shields from Red 2 and the TIE Advanced. First use of the Ion Cannons as well. Rebels scored the first hull hit against one of my Black Squadron TIEs.

The furball begins

My TIEs setting up for a pass to circle around and get on Red 2's tail. Phil and Zachary trying to line up shots.

Allllmost there, get a cheap shot on Red 2.

Zachary knocks out Phil's TIE, I biff on the attack against Red 2.

To be vindicated in the next turn with three solid hits on Red 2. At this point Phil has the Y-Wing down to its last point of damage left and I try to coach him on how to get in the slot and predict Zachary's movements so he could stay on the Y-Wing's tail.

This was one of those moments in wargaming where you're left scratching your head. Phil had the Y-Wing directly in front of him, but even with the re-rolls from his target lock rolled all blanks on the attack dice. Zahcary rolled a blank die for his dodge roll. End result, Y-Wing buzzes the TIE Advanced as it passes by, presumably with the pilots making rude gestures at each other.

The Y-Wing was eventually shot from behind by Phil, removing it from the game. At this point Zachary decided to call the game. He was outnumbered and all three Imperial ships were in position to get on his remaining X-Wing's tail in the next turn.

Overall a fun game, though I think Zachary forgot that his X-Wings had proton torpedoes. I think next time I'm going to load the Y-Wing out with torps and keep the dog fighting to the X-Wings. Once again, X-Wing provided a fun, easy to play, game that is ready upon opening the box. Next time though I'm not bringing the laptop out with the Star Wars Soundboard open. It created too many distractions with Zachary and Phil chaining together sound effects instead of setting their next maneuver.

In unrelated news, I did get some painting done today. Sprayed the base coat on my next batch of Dreadball figures as well as some incremental work on some Heavy Gear figs and parts of my second Kraken for CAV2.

This Is Red Leader...

Played a second game of FFG's X-Wing with Zachary and Phillip last night. We used the full rules this time. Overall they picked up the rules pretty quick, but need to work on predicting where their target is going to go and picking a maneuver to best position themselves. The game remains highly intuitive though. Movement, normally the bane of any space fighting game, is very visual and easy to understand. Combat is fairly straightforward, especially since the results are on the custom dice and no charts are needed.

We played a 31 point game (as recommended in the rules when using just the core box for a squad build game). I played the Rebel Alliance and chose Red Squadron Pilot with Proton Torpedoes and R2-D2. Zachary played "Dark Curse" and Phillip "Night Beast."  My pilot had no special abilities and the lowest pilot value but had the advantage of having shields, R2-D2, and the torps. Dark Curse gets a free Focus action when he does a green maneuver. Night Beast is actually a bit of a pain with his ability, a model attacking him cannot change focus results to hit or reroll attack dice. This pretty much means you need to overwhelm him with odds by getting in close for primary weapon attacks or use your proton torpedoes and hope for the best.

The game went a long time because Zachary was so focused on performing green maneuvers to get his free focus action that he wasn't putting himself into position to attack and Phil is still getting the hang of predicting opponent moves and making his selection to position himself to attack. Zachary got better at this, but it was too late. In the end I won and we all had fun. The game produces a very cinematic visual as the ships swoop around the table. I'm looking forward to getting the expansions and seeing how they impact the game. I think in our next game though Luke Skywalker will be taking the stick. I want to see if that back-water bush pilot kid is all they say he is.

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.

Would you like to know more?
Or even more...

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

Picked up FFG's X-Wing Miniatures Game tonight. Will do an unboxing and probably a battle report tomorrow.



Update: OK, did the unboxing, played the  quick start scenario with the kids, even took pictures. Went out for ice cream with my wife instead of posting pictures.