Fantasy Flight Previews the Tantive IV for X-Wing

Fantasy Flight’s fantastic X-Wing Miniatures Game is a bit at a cross-road. They’ve mostly exhausted the known ships from the classic Star Wars movies that make for good dog-fighting: the TIE Fighter and its movie-variants, the eponymous X-Wing, the Millenium Falcon and Slave 1, etc.. .

The game has clearly been a massive success for Fantasy Flight Games. Now, they are expanding it into two directions at once.

• First, by adding more ships from the Star Wars Extended Universe. They have the advantage of fitting the scale and purpose of the game. They have the disadvantage of being less-known than ships seen in the movies.
• Second, by adding bigger ships from the original Star Wars trilogy, no longer modeled to scale, for cinematic play. The largest ship (for now) is the Tantive IV previewed by FFG.

---

#1 – FFG’s Tantive IV Preview

“Did you hear that? They’ve shut down the main reactor.”
–C-3PO

The original Star Wars trilogy opens with an image of the Tantive IV desperately trying to outrun an Imperial Star Destroyer as both ships race past the desert planet Tatooine. When the Tantive IV is crippled and captured by the larger Star Destroyer, it is boarded by Darth Vader and a score of Imperial Stormtroopers. In the chaotic moments that follow, two Droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, manage to get to an escape pod that transports them safely to the surface of the desert planet below…

Thus begins the space opera that has enchanted millions of viewers and changed millions of lives, and with the upcoming release of the Tantive IV™ Expansion Pack for X-Wing™, you’ll be able to relive the drama of the Rebellion’s desperate struggle for survival and blast headlong into all-new adventures of your own devise!

The highlight of the Tantive IV Expansion Pack is its meticulously detailed Corellian CR90 corvette miniature. This X-Wingstarship is so huge that everything about it is divided into two sections, fore and aft; the CR90 corvette requires two bases, two damage decks, and two ship cards.

Designed for use in the game’s Cinematic Play and Epic Play formats, this eye-catching starship also comes with rules for using “energy” to power its shields, turbolasers, and unique abilities; a huge range ruler that allows the CR90 corvette to fire against enemies as distant as Range “5,” and all the tokens and templates you need to bring this starship to life on your tabletop. Furthermore, the expansion includes a set of six new missions for Cinematic Play that can be woven together to form a compelling campaign, and you’ll also find twenty-four upgrade cards, many of which can also be used in the game’s Standard Play format.

---

#2 – Thoughts?

As excited as I am for the smaller Wave 4 ships, I am skeptical about the large ones.

As much as I’d enjoy flying circles around a huge ship like this, FFG’s insistence to stick with a CCG-format, even though they disengaged themselves from “regular” play with the introduction of “Cinematic Play” and “Epic Play” seems to make this unnecessarily clunky in implementation.

• Separate ship-cards for fore and aft?
• With different abilities?
• Different upgrades?

It seems to be purposefully convoluted to sell chunks of cards, and not first and foremost designed to be “fun” (or “cinematic”) to play.

Maybe it will all turn out differently in the game. I sure hope I get to “test” a game of X-Wing with a Tantive IV at one point. From the previews I’ve seen, I still fail to wrap my head around how this will be anything other than a cards-and-token-nightmare?

Or not? Am I missing something?

Let me know what you think?

Z.