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X-Wing: First Playthrough

 

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to take an early look at the Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game from Fantasy Flight Games. I sat down with Evan and Zach to put the core set and several of the expansion ships through their paces. Now that X-Wing is out in the wild, we’d like to give you our impressions from the first few games we played. Also, sorry for the poor quality on these pictures. The lighting in Evan’s dining room was not ideal.

Rebel Closeup

The first thing you will notice when opening the box is just how beautiful the models look. FFG has managed to cram a whole lot of detail into these tiny ships. They previously stated that they were trying to make their ships as accurate as possible, even going so far as to visit Lucasfilm and examine the original models used in the films, and it really shows. If you played Wizards of the Coast’s old Starship Battles game, be prepared to be blown away by the quality of FFG’s ships when you compare them to your WotC ones. Even the quality of the (many, many, many) tokens and dials that come with the game are superior to many other games I own.

After an hour or so of admiring our new ships and going through all the pilots and upgrades to choose our squadrons we finally were able to play. And man, do you need a big table to play this game. The game only requires a 3’x3′ playing area to move your ships around in, but you still need plenty of room outside the play area to set all your pilots, upgrades, damage cards, the movement tracks, movement dials, dice, and all your action tokens. We ended up setting bar stools beside the table for each player to keep all their extra bits on because our table wasn’t quite large enough to hold everything.  But eventually we had all the Rebels lined up at one end of the table, and all the Imperials at the other and could start.

The first couple turns of any game are not going to be very exciting as it will take at least two moves for ships to get into firing range at the beginning of the game. Once you are in range, however, things get really fun really fast. The movement dials serve to insert uncertainty into every turn as you’re not sure what your opponent is going to do before you plan your move. Part of the fun comes from trying to get into your opponent’s head to guess what he’s going to do and plan accordingly while he is doing the same thing to you. It’s a bit like playing chess if both players moved every piece on the board at the exact same time.

Measuring

Doing the actual movement is incredibly easy thanks to the movement tracks provided by the game. Well, at least until you get several ships bunched together in a big dogfight. Then, as you’re trying to move, every other ship in the game is in the way of your movement track. We ended up often marking the locations of ships and pulling them off the board to make room for another ship to move. Of course, you never manage to quite get those ships exactly in the same place they were at and in a game where turning just a few degrees one way or the other can mean the difference between having a shot and not, this is a very big deal. I would have liked to have seen the movement tracks made out of something a little more flexible than the rigid cardboard to make it easier to thread the tracks in between ships. Same thing with the range finder you use to measure attacking distance.

Dogfight

The dice you have when attacking are a heck of a lot like the custom dice used in the roleplaying game that FFG is also making. The attackers have dice with hits, crits, focuses, and blanks on them while the defenders dice have evades, focuses, and blanks. Evades cancel out hits and crits, and both players can convert their focuses into hits/evades provided they used the “Focus” action this turn. The amount of damage the defender takes is determined by how may hits and crits (if any) were not canceled out. Crits can have some really powerful effects that can badly cripple an enemy ship even if it’s the first point of damage they have taken. In one game we played, the Rebels lost purely because Luke got critted and wasn’t able to fire his weapons for a turn. And yet, there are also crits that are only useful in the right situation, such as one that forces you to discard your secondary weapons. Well, if you don’t have a secondary weapon on your ship then it is effectively just a normal hit.

As a whole, X-Wing provides a fun, fast paced dogfighting game that is my favorite miniature game to date. My biggest gripe with the game is a problem that every FFG game suffers from, and that’s copious amounts of tokens, dials, and other doodads. This means that whenever I want to go play somewhere, I’m carrying around more spare cardboard than I am actual minis. However, I do love the card system for pilot stats and upgrades. Much nicer and more efficient than a giant 400-some page rulebook like you get with games like Warhammer 40k.

Cards

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New 1313 Trailer

1313 Trailer

There’s a finally some new footage for Star Wars: 1313. Take a look at this newest trailer, courtesy of IGN.

For the most part, this is just a minute and a half of footage that we’ve already seen, only re-cut. There are little bits of new footage interspersed throughout the video, most notably the wide shot of the actual level 1313 of Coruscant. I cannot wait to explore this place!

Level 1313

Still, this trailer really bothers me for the same reason that most Hollywood trailers annoy me these days. Too many jump-cuts, the “robot fart” sound effect that seems to be a prerequisite to all trailers these days, and the fade to black before a big action sequence. It’s like there’s only one guy in the world making every action/sci-fi movie trailer, and now he’s invaded the gaming world too.

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The Chevin Are Coming!

The Chevin are Coming

We just received an email from Bioware that seems to be teasing the upcoming world event: The Grand Acquisitions Race. Watch the video below to see for yourself.

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Red 5, Standing By

Red 5, Standing By

Today Fantasy Flight Games posted a brand new preview of their upcoming Star Wars: X-Wing miniature space battle game. This sneak peek offers a very general look at what an average turn in a game might look like. Each turn consists of three phases: Planning, Activation, and Combat.

During the planning phase players will select from a number of maneuvers available to their fighters. Each maneuver has a speed (the distance your ship will travel), a bearing (what direction the ship will be facing when the maneuver is over), and a difficulty (more difficult maneuvers can cause stress to the ship preventing the pilot from taking an action during the Activation phase). Each ship has a dial which displays the maneuvers for each each ship and the varying speeds and difficulties; each ship has its own unique set of maneuvers. Each player sets their maneuvers in secret.

Maneuvers are then revealed during the Activation phase. Movement distance and angle is calculated using “maneuver tracks.” These are game pieces that you’ll place at the front of your ship’s original location and where the track ends is your ship’s new location. After each ship moves, its pilot can take an action. Actions can be anything from selecting an upgrade to focusing on the combat about to take place.

Maneuver Dial and Maneuver Track

During the combat phase the ships all get to fire at each other. Starting with whichever pilot has the highest skill, they can each target any ship within range. The attacker rolls a number of special attack dice (determined by the ship’s attack value and modified by range) which will come with the core set while the defender will roll a similar number of defensive dice (determined by the ship’s agility value). Damage is determined by the number of damage symbols that turn up on attack dice minus the number of evasion symbols on the defensive dice that were rolled. If ships have shields, those are depleted first and the hull damage is kept track of by damage cards. each ship has a number of cards equal to its hull strength. However, should a critical hit symbol appear on the attack die and the defender is unable to evade it, when the ship receives a damage card, it will be flipped over with an extra effect revealed. These extra effects include things such as a pilot losing consciousness or equipment on the fighter becoming damaged, making maneuvering or combat more difficult.

Fantasy Flight promises to have more previews such as this one in the future featuring various ships and pilots from the Core set and new ships to be released in the expansion packs. Star Wars: X-Wing does not have an exact release date beyond sometime this Fall; however if you happen to be attending GenCon in August, you’ll be able to test out the game have a chance to participate in the first ever X-Wing tournament.

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Under Construction

Under Construction

As you may have noticed, things have been a little quiet around here recently. We’ve had a lot going on, but, more than anything else, we’ve been looking to make some changes to Mos Eisley Radio. We are most certainly not leaving the podcasting space, nor are we abandoning the Old Republic community. Far from it!

Before we say anything else though, we have to give a multitude of thank you’s to all those who have continued to not only listen to our shows, but also contribute to our great community both on our forums and in SWTOR itself. Without you folks, there wouldn’t be much reason for us to talk for two hours every week.

I’m not going to go into too much detail just yet, but what I can tell you is that within the next couple weeks you’ll see some some big changes made to the site and the flagship show. We have a lot in store for you, a lot that is going to be a bit unexpected, but, I think, a lot of fun, very informative, and will give our community even more to talk about. We know patience may sometimes be in short supply here on the interwebs, but if you stick with us, I think you’ll find it’ll be worth it!

Keep checking back here for updates and follow our twitter feed, @moseisleyradio. Follow our SWTOR guild leader Alan on twitter, @AlanShotFirst, as well as the official MERC guild feed, @MERCGuild, and also the hosts of MER and Ossus Academy, Zach, @zachbrown83, Evan, @epgelion, and Leo, @crackerbox42.

Thanks, guys! We’ll keep you posted! – Evan