Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game

It's Star Wars Episode IV-VI dogfighting on your tabletop, and you get to play with X-Wings and TIE Fighters. What more do you need to know?

The rules are simple, gameplay is fairly fast, and the components are beautiful. And it's basically 'playing with Star Wars toys' but with a rule system. However, the core set only gives you three ships and you'll soon want to expand your squads. This is where it gets expensive. In fact, many people are investing in two core sets and at least one of each expansion.

And with Wave 2 around the corner, offering A-Wings and TIE Interceptors, along with big ships like the Falcon and Slave I, it's more than likely you'll be looking at an outlay of ~£100 for a set you'll be happy with. Fantasy Flight Games know what they're doing with this one.

The game arrived on Thursday and we played our first game on the Friday, the set-up for this game is strait forward and simple. 2 x tie fighters and an X-wing are included in the game complete with everything needed (apart from a flat surface to play it does include everything!)
Each model comes with its own stand and multiple pilot stats. You can have anybody from Luke Skywalker to an academy pilot.
The models themselves are extremely good quality, painted to a good standard and if the other craft in the range are equally as good I don't think you will be disappointed. , The scale seems to be about 1:144 so I would suggest you are not going to see a star destroyer! Although the Millenium Falcon and Slave1 are in the pipeline along with an A-wing and the Tie strike fighter on top of the already released Y-wing and Advanced Tie fighter (Darth Vaders ship)

Movement and turning sticks, weapon range stick and all the markers are made of a good quality heavy-duty card (I personally would have preferred a plastic but I think with normal use you have got years of use with the supplied templates!)
The rules work on a igo-ugo system of pilot quality, the lowest quality pilot moves first then up in proceeding levels of experience until the the top dog moves.
Firing is in reverse with the best firing first and working down (at this moment in time its worth mentioning if you are in a perfect shooting position and you get hit and destroyed, all that hard work will go up in a puff of smoke!)
In the evening we had some eight games using 2-3 Tie fighters an a single X-wing, we varied the quality of pilots and weapon and equipment loads for the craft (the x-wing can vary its weapons and equipment - the Tie can only vary the pilots!)
The quickest game lasted about three moves (a hint here don't play chicken with three Ties flying directly at you!)
The longest was well over half an hour and was by far the most enjoyable

This game is by the same company who produce Wings-of-War and is similar in many respects but definitely not the same except in the quality.

Overall I would give this a score of 8-9 out of 10

So far myself and the wife are really enjoying this, the rules are simple and easy to pick up but the game has plenty nuance and strategy, especially in building your squadron.

The set includes 3 ships, plenty of tokens/counters and flat cardboard asteroids to make the playing field more interesting. The rules include 3 scenarios other than out write dogfight that each require a different strategy plus there are plenty of scenarios available on fan forums (my favourite includes a scale size blockade runner)

The only problem is that 3 ships isn't quite enough to maintain interest for that long, i consider the Y wing and Tie advanced essential purchases as they add substantial variation and many more tactical options. I'm really looking forward to the next wave of ships as the Millennium Falcon and Slave one introduce new rules and again more tactical options.