Unboxing the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game

I am somewhat late to the party. Nevertheless, after hearing lots of good things about Fantasy Flight Games’ smash-hit X Wing the Miniatures Game, I decided to take the plunge.

It certainly is a great little game (more on that another time). Here’s what you get when you first open the basic box for the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game.

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#1 – Cardboard Madness – Tokens, Tokens, Tokens!

The game itself comes into a nice, compact box. If you’re used to the huge boxes like DreadBall, Dark Vengeance, etc.., it looks small in comparison, but it’s certainly loaded with contents. Most notably, there’re a lot (a lot!) of cardboard tokens to clip out before you start your first game.

The picture above only shows a small selection.

• Maneuver-templates in various lengths and shape that are used to fly your ships.
• Maneuver-dials (build from three parts) that allow you to select a move for each ship.
• Tokens (lower right corner), which mark actions and effects on the ships (and pilots).
• Asteroids, mission tokens, etc …

Moreover, there is a 28 page rulebook and a quick-play reference sheet (that also shows you how to assemble the ships), 3 (red) attack dice and 3 (green) evade dice – which I found to be one or two too few even for games with only the starter box) – and a lot of cards:

• A set of (small) damage cards, which are used face-down for regular damage and face-up (where you’ll find an effect-description) for critical hits.
• Five small upgrade-cards for the ships, including Star Wars classics such as Proton Torpedos or R2-D2.
• Larger (MtG-size) pilot cards. The X-Wing Game comes with 4 Rebel X-Wing Pilots, including two named ones (Luke Skywalker & Biggs Darklighter) and 9 Imperial Tie Fighter Pilots, including 3 (nick-)named ones (Mauler Mithel, Dark Curse and Night Beast).

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#2 – Ships & Pilots

The ships – as an entire game-play figure for the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game – come together in three (or four) parts:

1. The actual miniature of a Star Wars ship (e.g. the Tie Fighter above)
2. The round maneuver-dials, which are unique to each type of ship, and used to set your ships’ maneuvers in secret.
3. The pilot cards specific to each ship (e.g. a Tie Fighter pilot can only pilot Tie Fighters), which add certain abilities (e.g. “Night Beast” above can perform a free Focus actions in certain conditions) and come with different Pilot Skill levels (the orange number in the upper left corner), which determines who moves first (low skill) or shoots first (high skill).
4. The base for each miniature, which comes with card-board inserts that match the pilot you have chosen (and allow you to know, for example, one Tie Fighter from another).

This system – arguably – is one of the strengths of the game. Combining ships with different pilots (and upgrades on top of it) allows for the endless combinations and variants that allow different squadrons (“army-lists”) to be different from another.

Even a squadron made exclusively from X-Wings or Tie Fighters doesn’t have to be the same from game to game, as different pilots (and upgrades) allow for different approaches and tactics.

Once into the game, musing about ideal “lists” and good synergies before a game is as much a part of X-Wing the Miniatures Game as it is in many other wargames.

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#3 – The X-Wing Miniatures

The starter-box comes with one X-Wing and two Tie-Fighters. Much has been written about them being pre-painted. In the case of the X-Wing Miniatures Game, the pre-paints are very nicely done (though, obviously, awesome painters can turn them into something even cooler).

Game-play wise, it has to be said that the X-Wing Miniatures Game starter box is truly just that. It gets you started. It has a few missions to teach the rules of the game. However, an X-Wing vs. two Tie Fighters offers little of the tactics or pilot synergies that “make” this game.

I would never recommend that box as a complete game in itself. If you want to play X-Wing the Miniatures Game, start with this box, but expect to need more ships to play the game properly.

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#4 – Verdict

Overall, it’s a very odd box indeed. The X-Wing Miniatures Game somehow manages to be both crammed full of quality stuff that is a joy to unpack and yet offer – at best – the bare essentials to actually play the game. Also, one more of each die would’ve been great.

Personally, I loved the box, having bought it knowing full and well that I would buy more expansions to play. I wish FFG would put a bigger “starter-box” on the packaging somewhere.

The quality of the game-pieces (not to mention the game itself) you get with this box (£29.99 official RRP, but about £23.99 on Amazon) is beyond reproach.

Z.