An X-Wing Maneuvers into a Fruit Bowl: First Impressions of the X-Wing Miniatures Game

Andrew Crivilare: "Yeah, but if they touch, ya know....stuff happens."

Somehow I got two of them on my tail. I’m on my own—far away from the fleet. We exchange misses for some time. They seem just as green as me.

Such is the scenario that played out in my mind when I took Fantasy Flight Games’ X-Wing Miniatures Game for a spin. I was outmatched against Sam’s two TIE Fighters, but my X-Wing had the advantage of durability and firepower. Still, her fighters were quick and evasive. The Star Wars-themed minis game is a quick and dirty combat game that is no doubt made more exciting with bigger ship collections.

It’s one of those rare games that’s especially friendly towards newcomers. They give you the average set of rules for a FFG product (as in a lot), but they were also so gracious to include a “Quick-Start” ruleset. Follow its instructions closely and you’ll get the basics down after one session. Given that they’re all I’ve played with so far, I’ll stick to talking about them.

Proprietary 8-sided dice forego numbers for symbols to resolve combat: red dice giveth hits and green dice taketh them away. The game provides dials for each ship so the player can select how their ship is going to move according to cardboard rulers that determine both distance and direction. Players pick their moves at once and move in order according to pilot skill. The more skillful, the faster you’ll move. However, your piloting skills come at a price: you have to wait to attack. While the rule balances out the static initiative of faster pilots, I can’t rationalize why the better pilots are worse shots. A few more games may settle this.

The game round is punctuated by four basic phases: plan your path, execute it, attack your opponent, and check for victory. Players collect damage cards as they sustain hits to their ship, which is a simple way to illustrate hit points.

The game makes a point to separate the pilot from the ship: starfighters have their own stats as do their pilots. Included with the core XMG set are two named pilots—Luke and Biggs—and several nameless ones. The Quick-Start rules mandate that you stick to the nameless ones for the sake of simplicity, which makes sense. Symbols alien to the Quick-Start rules appear on other pilot cards. I’ll get around to reading the rest soon.

In a move that reminds me of the board game Last Night on Earth, FFG included several other cardboard pieces, such as asteroids and a shuttle. After a quick glance at the full rules, it’s clear that FFG sees players’ creativity playing a part in the game’s longevity. Already included at the end are a couple of missions that complicate the game from an outright dogfight to a structured sortie. I applaud this move, which is to be expected given my high praise for FFG in the first place.

The inaugural game played out like this: 

It took us some time to get used to the maneuver patterns that are available to our ships. She scored some hits on me early on. For a long while, it was a slow awkward dance across our dinner table. At one point (pictured above), our ships nearly collided. While the rules make no adjudication about collisions in space, it's a hell of a thing trying to accurately place the rulers so movements are correct. Most of the time, I was able to evade her shots and she mine, but, despite my advantage of a shield, her shots connected and my nameless pilot was lost in a galaxy far, far away.