Saturday 4 June 2016

Star Wars X-Wing: The Big Battle


Not your standard tournament game.

Last weekend we went to Brighton to see my Godson, his sister and my dear friends who are their lovely parents.  I, now having a job, was able to fulfill my Godmother role of providing Xmas and birthday presents for both the kids.  Being that they're Star Wars fans, and having got them both the old Star Wars X-Wing core sets a year or so ago, it seemed like a good idea to get them the new core sets as their late Xmas presents and having talked to both of them I had a fair idea of what ships they liked.

So Dylan got an A- and B-wing, the B-wing being his favourite fighter, and Chloe got a TIE Interceptor and Tie Advanced aka Darth Vader's fighter.

It's tricky manoeuvering your fighters when the table is this full.

Then they got to unpack everything and we ended up with sixteen ships on the table: six Rebel Alliance and Resistance fighters versus ten Imperial and First Order ships.  No attempt was made to balance the forces using the points system, all we did was not have any cards in play.  So all the fighters were pretty vanilla, and you know what, it was one of the best games of X-wing I have had the pleasure of playing.

I was the Mistress of the TIE fighter formation flying team.

Final outcome was a win for the Rebels/Resistance who only had to fly off the other-side of the table from where they entered, but the Imperials destroyed the fleeing B-wing.

On reflection, should have made the B-wing something the Rebels/Resistance had to protect, as it would have made for a more balanced game.  But apart from that the rules were up to the job of running a game without it becoming a slog or slowing down, though adding cards might have slowed down the turns, depending on what was chosen.

Fun was had.
PS: a link to a cartoon that says it all.
  

10 comments:

  1. Great to see young (ish) kids having fun playing wargames :)

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    1. It is isn't it. Their parents are good about not letting their kids play their pods/pads/tablets all the time.

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  2. I was actually about to post the same comment as Steve. I'm glad that they're fond of it (although I'd expect that it might be possible given the Dr. Who attire one is wearing!). I tried to get my little cousins (more like nieces and nephews) interested multiple times in tabletop gaming but it didn't stick. Pokemon, Heroscape, Xwing, and a board game or two but they just kept asking me if they could play on the xbox instead the next time they came over. :(

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    1. They're good kids and also want to play on the X-box, but Star Wars: pew-pew noises and heavy breathing FTW.

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  3. Who makes these games/toys? You didn't say.

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    1. Fantasy Flight Games. Terrific game and the models themselves are beautiful. Most Barnes & Noble bookstores in the US carry them, as do most game stores everywhere.

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    2. Thank you Joseph for saving me the answer. I hadn't thought that anyone wouldn't know about the game, so I've added a link to the article.

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  4. Having played a bit of X-Wing, I think that the cards can be a trap - it's just a few points here and a few points there, but unless you're going for specific synergies, soon enough they add up to what could have been a whole separate ship with its own independent hit points. See Lanchester's Laws…

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    1. What strikes me is that X-Wing is a bit like BattleTech, as in there's a large RPG element in it, and the cards work when doing a campaign that's focused on personalities. Otherwise cards offer little outside of tournament play, which is not my cup of tea.

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    2. That's probably true - I haven't tried campaign play. But even in the club play that I've mostly done, it's easy to waste your points on an ill-considered set of cards rather than going for the peculiarly effective combinations or more ships.

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