Okay so this game has been out for a while and I have seen the stuff on the game store shelf and have seen a few people playing it at the store and even talked to a few people that have been playing it in different areas of the country and they all have made this game look very tempting to me. So after some serious consideration and talking to a couple of friends I decided to take a serious look at this game and pick up a copy of the Core Set from the local game store to see what I thought about it. I was also given some advice about what all other ships I should really be looking at getting.

So I am going to give you my review of Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars X-Wing

The Core Set (which is an absolute must have to even play) comes with one X-Wing and two TIE Fighters, as well as the specialty dice and all the templates and tokens needed to play the game. The rulebook is actually pretty short and if you go and watch the Tutorial Video on the Fantasy Flight website you get a good concept of the rules and how the game actually plays. Man this game is super simple to play compared to the other games that I play, and honestly it is a huge relief to play a simple game that is this much fun. If you are playing just the Core Set you can play a game in about 30 minutes or so... especially if you keep you play surface fairly small. The game can play in as little as a 2'x2' square but if you want to play more ships you will obviously need more space. The tokens and the movement templates are a thick cardboard and I am a little worried about them getting torn up from use. I do wish that the Core Set came in acrylic or something a little more durable but that is easily remedied by going to a third party. But really that is my only complaint when it comes right down to it.

Now I could not just leave it at that, we had to go deep and get some of the Expansion pack ships such as The Millennium Falcon and Slave 1. For ANY Star Wars fan those two ships are a must have. Also we picked up some A-Wings and some TIE Interceptors (as that was all we could get cause everything else is out of stock). We did pick up enough ships and with using some of the upgrade cards like Proton Torpedoes and R2-D2 we played a 150 point game on a 3'x3' game surface and it was a blast. Since we are still somewhat new to the rules and with all the other little additions to the game with all the upgrades and such the game took close to 2 hours but I look for that time to come down with the more games that we intend to play.

The hardest part of the game play was the way the ships move around the board by selecting your move on a maneuver dial and then you HAVE TO make that move using the templates. At times it makes the game more like a badly choreographed dance. That and trying to anticipate what your opponent is going to do make things interesting... sometimes they turn right in front of you and sometimes you forget which way you are facing and you pick the right distance and type of maneuver but the wrong direction.

The ships that we have managed to get our hands on LOOK GREAT for being prepainted the details on the ships look really good and they actually look like miniature versions of what you see in the movies which helps with the game play and getting you into that world... or vastness of space as this one turns out to be.

As far as needs go there isn't much that you need to add outside of more ships that is. One thing that I can highly recommend that you pick up is a second set of dice... or even a second core set cause you only get 3 red shooting dice and 3 green defense dice and there are situations where you might need 4 or even 5 dice. You really don't need terrain because you actually think about it space is really wide open and there is not much in the way of things to hide behind. There is the occasional planet or moon or even the occasional floating space rock or rocks. IF you must have 3D terrain to fly around grill lava rocks make great asteroids or pick up one or 2 of those craft foam balls and call it a moon.

Overall I have to give this game like 4.5 out of 5 because of the one con I have with the card movement templates, but that is the only thing that I have wrong with game. I highly recommend this game to others. If you have been sitting on the fence about getting into this game, get your ass off the fence and come have fun. Cause we have had a blast since picking this one up last Friday night.

Labels: Product Review , Star Wars