Star Wars X-Wing - Info and Quick Review

I'm a bad geek - I've never been a fan of Star Wars. I've never found anything wrong with it, it just never resonated with me like it has for... well, almost everyone else I know. So when my friend bought the new Star War X-Wing game that the entire internet has been raving about, I had a lot of reservations. I assumed that people were going crazy because there was a Star Wars game that didn't suck, and not because there was a good game that happened to be Star Wars. As it turns out, the Star Wars license is just extra frill on a very solid and strategically deep game.

At its core, I'd liken X-Wing to a re-imagining of chess. Unlike the miniatures games I'm used to, terrain plays a very small role in the actual game, and the rules of the game are pretty straightforward. You have two sides - the Rebels and the Empire, and a handful of ships controlled by each. The intro games I played pitted my two TIE Fighters against my friend's lone X-Wing. Similar to Warhammer 40k, individual models can be outfitted with equipment that increases the point cost of the model, but makes it much more powerful on the table.

Ships all share a basic set of rules. You have numbers representing how many attack or defense dice you roll, Hull Points (damage the ship can take), and Shields (these are removed before Hull Point damage can be assigned, and can be recharged by special equipment). Each ship also has a unique movement dial from which each player simultaneously chooses who each ship will move on the table. These dials differ based on the ship, with ships like TIE fighters being quicker and more maneuverable.

Once each player has chosen their maneuver for the turn, each ship is moved starting with the lowest  Pilot Skill. Rather than moving in inches, you have maneuver distances between 1 (slow) and 5 (very fast). All maneuvers have a template associated with them, and depending on the ship you can move straight, bank left or right about 45 degrees, or move forward and end 90 degrees from your original facing.

Movement is where the true strategy in the game lies.You can move through ships, but if you top your movement overlapping a base you must stop at the point of contact and lose your action for that turn (more on that later). Furthermore, you have no idea what your opponent is going to do! Are they going to bank left and try to avoid one of your ship, or zoom forward and face the other direction to try and catch you from behind? You have to examine the game in its current state, think about your opponent's best options, and try to move in the most advantageous way possible. It's surprisingly exhilarating to try to out-do your opponent without putting your ship in unnecessary danger.

Each ship needs to have an action assigned to it as soon as it's made its movement. Not all ships can use every maneuver, but the options are Focus, Evade, and Barrel Roll. Focus is the most useful, allowing you to improve your chances on a single attack or defense roll. Evade allows you to automatically ignore one of your opponent's successful hits, which is often the action you'll choose if you have no one in your sights or you don't think you'll survive an attack. Finally, Barrel Roll lets you place your ship to the left or right using the Maneuver 1 template, letting you get slightly better position or try to get out of your opponent's line of fire. Personally, I loved the Barrel Roll as it let me lightly adjust any mistakes I made in my movement phase, allowing me prepare to better position myself for next turn.

The rest of the turn is pretty straightforward. Starting with the highest Pilot Skill ships make their attack, using a rather clunky range checker to determine if the attacker is close (+1 attack die), normal (normal attack/defense rolls), or far away (+1 defense die). You make your attacks and hope for a hit or critical hit on your attack dice. You opponent then rolls their defense dice, hoping for enough evade icons to avoid any damage.

As I said, the game itself is very straightforward. But the movement phase is truly what makes or breaks a turn. If you can get a high Pilot Skill ship withing close range, there's a good chance that you can scrap an opponent's ship in 1 turn. If you can get yourself in the right position, your opponent will need to spend 1 or 2 turns just trying to avoid you, letting you put a lot of pressure on them. I played 2 small games of X-Wing, and both games felt like a true dogfight. We were zooming around the table, both fighting to get a strong position against the other. I had TIE Fighters both games, so I used to speedy, weaker ships to try to take down is slower, more powerful X-Wing.

Despite the seemingly simple rules, the game seems to have a good deal of depth to it. While both of my games broke down in to a dog fight, Game 2 found me using different strategies, and things I tried in Game 1 just weren't working. And that's just a basic game using 3 total ships. When you add equipment, more ships, and use pilots with abilities, the game doesn't seem to be in any danger of becoming stale.

If you are a fan of Star Wars, you probably have this game already. If you want a quick, fair, no-nonsense game of strategy, you should probably get this game right now. Stores are having difficulty keeping it in stock, and there's a very good explanation for that. This game is fun, exciting, and competitive without being too stressful.  So give it a try - you won't be disappointed!

See you tomorrow!

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