A little late to the party I know, but last night’s game
with the ‘Friday Night Phalanx’ was the now famous ‘X-Wing’.
An excellent game as it turned out, with a thorough and yet
elegant system, which is easy to pick up and runs the gamut from calculated
tactical play - where you are trying to second guess your opponent(s) - right
through to more random unplanned events, which keeps things exciting.
(1)
Components – painted, highly detailed, and
assembled to present information and incorporate all tactical information on
the stand or card.
(2)
It’s the original trilogy.
(3)
Beautifully integrated dice mechanics and card
mechanisms which give a real feel for how we imagine starship combat would be
and how we remember Star Wars and Empire in our heads.
(4)
It’s the original trilogy.
(5)
It evokes a real sense of the movies. We were
constantly quoting lines from the films (stay on target) as X-Wings swooped in for
the kill or TIE fighters massed to swarm an unsuspecting (but apparently well funded)
rebel ship. Oh yes, and only Steve can do an accurate TIE fighter ‘screech’.
(6)
Have I mentioned it’s the original trilogy?
- Movement mechanics operate off templates, the more complex of which can ‘distress’ ship/pilot and dictate recovery.
- Dice/combat gives varying results, resulting in ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ as unexpected critical hits do untold damage to …attack plans!
- Everything looks really good, and despite scale or range compensation vs model size, it’s not something that gets in the way as it might say with wargame rules. In fact, I didn’t even think about the scaling until well after the game.
We actually were able to play two games in a 3.5 hour
window, which is excellent for 4 players.
Pics are a little intense as my hand was shaking with
excitement ;) …
The TIEs take on two X-Wings. It won't be an easy fight; the TIEs have no shields and are basically a bloke in a vac suit with an engine strapped to him (oh yes, and solar panels for some reason).
Bad dice rolls for the A Wing, as its hopes of at least taking out the Advanced are dashed, and it succumbs to numbers.
***
A lot more to come of this one then with some larger games
and potentially a campaign of sorts with rebels trying to destroy imperial
prototypes, Imperials trying to find the rebel base and…ahem…an apparently
ragtag band of so called ‘rebels’ (who appear to be quite well funded I might
add) using hit and run tactics and deceit to provoke unwarranted attacks
against the just, yet wholly misunderstood, Imperial authority in the galaxy.
All we are trying to do is end this destructive
conflict...and bring order to the galaxy.
Where’s that damned planet killer? We should get a name for it…You know? The big, grey, dangerous, death globe star thing…That’s it! We should call
it, the ‘Dangerous Globe’!
