A guest post from our favorite vegan restaurateur, Vagbond Prime, about a game I know he’s excited about. . . and one that has got me pretty excited, too. We’re also excited he’ll be joining us more regularly, reviewing tabletop games and all sorts of geekdom. He originally posted this article here.
Welcome, Vagabond Prime:
***
This will come to very little surprise to anyone who has known me for more than a few minutes: I love games. It’s not a casual love, it’s an all-consuming love that knows little in the way of boundaries. I have a particular weakness for anything with miniatures. I love to collect miniatures, and I have spent literally thousands of hours painting them. Whenever a new miniature game comes out, I start to drool. I want those figures. If there is a Kickstarter going for a miniature based game, there is a pretty good chance I’m backing it.
I’m also a pretty rabid Star Wars fan, but that’s a whole other post.
You would think the X-Wing miniature game would be a no-brainer, right? Fantasy Flight Games has a pretty solid reputation for producing high-quality products, and X-Wing looks really pretty. It also looks pretty expensive, which is what kept me away for nearly six months.
Well, I want a time machine. I need those six months back. X-Wing is, simply put,freaking amazing.
I gave in to curiosity several weeks back after reading the near-frenzied reviews for the game on Amazon. I headed down to Game Night Games in Sugarhouse, and picked up a Y-Wing expansion pack. I figured the worst case scenario would have me owning a pretty sweet model, best case would have me enjoying a new game. What I didn’t know, though, was how much stuff is crammed into that tiny little blister pack:
That’s a lot of stuff for 15 bucks! I still had no idea how to play the game, but I was intrigued, to say the least! One thing I noticed right off: You have options for who pilots your ship. That’s pretty cool!
The other big plus for me was the model itself. I have handled a ton of miniatures, and painted more than I can count. This model is stunningly rendered, and incredibly detailed. Look at the little R-2 unit! The engine nacelles are really tricky to pull off, and Fantasy Flight did an amazing job. And that paint job is really good for any table-top game. This is the very first pre-painted miniature that I haven’t entertained the idea of re-painting. Good stuff all around!
The next step was buying the core game. You can pick it up at your LGS for about $40, but if you can’t get it locally, Amazon should have it on hand for $30. The core game comes with two TIE fighters, an X-Wing, movement templates, dice, and the rules. Everything is extremely high quality, and the quick-start rules will have you playing in less than 10 minutes!
And that is where the true beauty of X-Wing comes to light: It’s a really good game. The mechanics are borrowed pretty heavily from FFG’s Wings of War combat game, with some spiffy improvements. Dog-fight combat is the nature of Star Wars space battles, and this game captures that wonderfully.
I will share further thoughts on the game later; Right now, I have a new Firespray model that I need to read up on before I take on Swank’s YT-1300 in a session tomorrow!
