May the force be with you… My current craze is Fantasy Flight’s X Wing miniature game. Honestly I am not a fan of Star Wars. So when there were news and preview of Fantasy Flight X Wing, I showed no interest at all. It was only when I stumbled upon the video tutorial for X Wing miniature game while I was was browsing for Dust Tactics news, that got me interested.
After watching the video tutorial, I was impressed. I managed to get hold of a core set from my local stores just in time before they were sold out. (I learned that 2 hours plus after I got my core set, the store sold out already… phew I got my copy already)
The X wing miniatures for the game came painted already. So, straight out of the box, its good to go. As for the quality of the paint job, its a simple reasonable paint standard, of base colouring then followed by washes standard. Its good enough for a board game level. The quality of the miniature fighters were ok. Well, the only complaint would be that the X-Wing Fighter wing’s laser was bend slightly. Though I was fussy about that, but after a while I grew to accept it as a board game standard miniature. I know, with some hot water, I should be able to bend the laser back.
The X-wing miniature game core set came with the usual hard cardboard tokens. Out of the box, as usual, I had to push them out from their cardboard templates. Besides tokens, there were the cards for the character pilots and damages stats card. Fantasy Flight grey and yellow sleeves would protect these cards in perfect conditions.
The game goes through a typical phase of movement, followed by actions, and finally shooting phase. Movement phase is done with both players choosing a movement direction dial for each miniature without letting your opponent knowing. Thereafter, movement is then revealed sequentially with skills level and the miniatures moved with the direction templates. This movement concept provides a concept of surprise where you would try to guess what your opponent’s movement would be and try to outwit him.
After that each players can choose their respective actions and skills to use. Once actions are all decided, its time to blast some lasers. X-wing miniature game uses their own type of dices. Shooting is then done with rolling of the dices and comparing to the pilot’s stats. Damage is then assigned with the damage stats card to the fighters. This would complete one round and the phase start all over again from movement, action and shooting.
The X-wing miniature game allows building small squad of fighters. With a simple point system and characters cards, you can assemble your own squadron of fighters, pretty like building an army list in Warhammer 40k, but at a skirmish level.
Overall, I must say, I enjoyed the X-wing miniature game with its interesting movement style and firing concept. The squad building will leave you hungry for more miniatures. So far, I got a core set and all the wave 1 expansions. With a idea of building a low point Empire Tie fighters, I got lured into getting another core set for the fighters… haha. In fact, if you already have all the wave 1 expansions and its character cards, getting another core set for the miniature is a better option comparing to getting the individual expansion miniatures again. Now, I am waiting for wave 2 of the X wing miniatures releasing year end. In the mean time, may the force be with you… Fire!
