Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game

If you have played Wings of War/Glory WW1 or WW2 game you should enjoy Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game. The game is very similar but has enough differences to make the game unique.

In Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game, one player will assume the role of the Rebel Alliance while the other controls the Imperial Fleet. Both sides will have ships and bonuses that they can bring forth into their skirmish, each one having its own squad point value. Players agree on a set number of squad points to use and seed their fleets before the game begins, or they can choose to play one of the predefined scenarios.

The core game comes with an one X-Wing and two TIE Fighters, along with some ship cards, upgrade cards, and everything else required to play. Expansion packs bring more ship types and abilities to the table, allowing players to customize their fleets in bigger and badder ways. 

Components (Core Game)

Ships & Ship Tokens - One X-Wing and two TIE Fighter models make up the ships in this game. They attach via pegs to their bases similar to Wings of War/Glory planes. Each ship token lists one particular pilot and their unique stats. They are placed on the base of the ship model before the match starts to identify which pilot is flying what ship.

Tokens – Fantasy Flight are great with tokens and there are plenty of these available to help players keep track of their progress in the game. Action tokens are used when performing special abilities, mission tokens are used during certain scenarios, obstacle/asteroid tokens can be added to the playing field to mess with player movement, shield tokens provide extra defense and keep track of a ship’s deflector shield strength, stress tokens are used during difficult maneuvers, critical hit tokens remind players on which ships suffered damage and penalties, and ID tokens are used for when multiple generic pilots are in battle.

Maneuver Templates & Dials – Instead of using manouver cards like WOW/G During one of the phases of a turn, players will use dials to determine how a particular ship moves. Further along in the turn, the templates are used to physically move the ships from one end of the template to the other. There is a maneuver template for every movement action found on the dials, though not every dial has the same array of movement options…some ships are more nimble than others, for example.

Dice – These are unique 8 sided dice with different symbols instead of numbers. The red dice represent attack dice and the green dice represent defense dice. They are rolled during combat to resolve hits and determine damage, if any.

Range Ruler – The range ruler is used to determine if a ship is within firing range of another ship. It can also assist in determining a ship’s firing arc. Different bonuses and penalties apply, depending on how close or far away the other ship is in relation to the attacker.

Cards - There are a few different card types as well. Ship cards list a particular pilot’s abilities and what ship they fly, damage cards keep track of regular damage and critical hit damage, and upgrade cards represent special items that can be purchased and assigned to a ship before the match starts.

Components (Expansions)

Below is a quick list of the expansions and what they come with.

X-Wing Expansion – This expansion comes with four pilots (including Wedge Antilles), one X-Wing model, a dial, and a set of cards and tokens.

 

Y-Wing Expansion – This expansion comes with four pilots (including Horton Salm), one Y-Wing model, a dial, and a set of cards and tokens.

 

TIE Fighter Expansion – This expansion comes with six pilots (including “Backstabber”), one TIE Fighter model, a dial, and a set of cards and tokens.

 

TIE Advanced Expansion – This expansion comes with four pilots (including Darth Vader), one TIE Advanced model, a dial, and a set of cards and tokens.

 Setup & Gameplay

One of the best ways of seeing how this game plays is to watch the video tutorials that Fantasy Flight have made. For more information, you can check out the manual and video tutorial here:

Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game Manual
Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game Video Tutorial

While the video does a great job at giving an overview of gameplay, there’s still a bit of a learning curve when it comes to remembering what all of the abilities and actions do. New players may require a few playthrus to get a feel on how some of these abilities and actions work and when to use them. The manual is twenty-eight pages long, though to be fair, there are diagrams to help drive a few mechanics home and not all of it is gameplay related. Luckily, knowing all of the abilities and actions is not required to win…new players can explore as they go, mastering an ability here or learning about an action there. 

I also appreciate how the ship classes and their specific characteristics were included in this game.    While the X-Wing is bulkier and slower to turn than a TIE Fighter, it has shields. Fans of the ships of the Star Wars universe will appreciate the detail and how they play in this game.

Some people might be put off by the cost but it is comparable with WOW/G and the X-Wing game ship expansions have a lot more content then the WOW/G one's.  The starter game is going for about £25.99 which is not bad and I would encourage anyone interested in the game to buy two starters as each extra expansion is roughly £12.  As someone who loves larger space battles, I didn’t feel that one X-Wing and two TIE Fighter models were enough.

More expansions are on the way and the next wave should include an A-Wing, TIE Interceptor, Millennium Falcon, and Slave I…needless to say I’m excited. I am looking forward to hopefully B-Wing's, TIE Defenders and Bomber's.