Unboxing the Slave 1 Expansion for the X-Wing Miniatures Game

I continue to build my X-Wing miniatures collection. I now own 4 Rebel ships, 2 X-Wings (incl. the one from the base game), an A-Wing and a HWK-290. These make a few nice 100 pts. squadrons to play with.

Building a squadron for the “Dark Side”, however, feels trickier, mostly because I feel buying a bunch of Tie Fighter feels boring. I like diversity. Unfortunately, in X-Wing, quantity tends to rule over quality (and variety).

For club-games at least, there is a solution however, that allows me to drop some serious points on an Imperial squadron: the Slave 1, my first big ship for the X-Wing Miniatures game.

I am not gonna lie: This is easily my favourite ship so far.

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#1 – The Slave 1 / Firespray-31 Bounty Hunter Ship

The Slave 1 Expansion Pack comes in a huge box. The contents are essentially divided in two parts. The right side, with the clear windows front and back holds the miniature (letting you have a nice look at the paint-job). The left side holds a little white box with all the tokens, cards, the base for the miniatures, etc.. .

There’re more tokens and cards than I can name, including both the “usual stuff” (focus, evade, stress, etc..) and a few new ones, including tokens for Seismic Bombs and Proximity Mines, as well as a few mission-specific ones like a “bounty-token”.

Also included is a leaflet explaining some of the new rules (e.g. bombs) and a new mission (on top of the 3 in the base game), which I am told is standard for the big expansions. This mission sets a 90 pts. of Imperial Bounty Hunter Squadron against 125 pts. of Rebels with the “bounty”, trying to escape. A lot more fun than the “learning-missions” from the main box.

The Slave 1 is probably the “smallest” of the big ships, smaller than the Millenium Falcon certainly and, I think, smaller than the Lambda Shuttle.

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#2 – Slave 1 Size Comparison

The Slave 1 is still a “big” ship. The miniature clearly dwarfs the smaller ships. It is also mounted on a larger 8cm x 8cm base, instead of the 4cm x 4cm bases of the smaller ships. As the base is factored into movements in X-Wing, this means the large ships move slightly faster than the smaller ones for the same maneuvers. They also run a greater risk of bumping into things.

Another welcome detail, the plastic pegs that mount the Slave 1 miniature on the base are not only thicker than those for the smaller ship, but fit together far more tightly. Where the smaller ships sometimes come off during the game, the Slave 1 sticks to its peg and base like glue.

Definitely an improvement there!

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#3 – Upgrade Card Madness

Not just the ship is enormous, so is the bounty of cards. No less than 13 “small” cards with new weapons, upgrades, etc… come with the box (though some cards are doubles).

Why are their duplicates of cards? Mainly because FFG insists, for “official events” at least, that people bring a card each time they equip a ship in their squadron with said card. Thus, if you want to have 2 ships with a Stealth Device, you need 2 cards. Bringing the rules just once is apparently not enough.

A bit cheeky if you ask me, and I hope companies like Games Workshop don’t catch on. So far, I only need to bring rules for a Space Marines once, even if there’re several of them in an army.

But those are the ways of “collectible (card) games” I guess.

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#4 – Thoughts

Whatever way I look at it, I am having a blast with the Slave 1.

• It’s a great-looking ship, both for the original design (obviously), but also because FFG’s “pre-paint” works alot better (IMO) with darker, more detailed ships than it does with brighter, “cleaner” ships (Lamba-Shuttle, I am looking at you).

• It brings a lot of fun and variety to the table, especially for Tie squadrons: bombs, cannons, missiles, crew and dirty tricks. It’s a true dark-side swiss-army-knife in the game.

• Loads of upgrade cards, an extra mission, etc.. . Unlike the smaller X-Wing ships, this truly feels like a small expansion to the game, and not “just” a new miniature.

• I get to play as Boba Fett (“He’s no good to me dead.“)

The Slave 1 is easily the best addition I have for the X-Wing Miniatures game so far.

Z.