Geek Syndicate
A player’s first game or two are likely to run into a fundamental, probably unavoidable stumbling block inherent in the use of miniatures for this type of game. By turn two or three, you’ll probably be faced with a cluster of ships piled up in the centre of the table, all prevented from taking actions or shooting at any enemies they are touching base-to-base (although it’s perfectly permissible to fly entirely “through” other models, as we’re representing three-dimensional movement here). With ships in close quarters, range and manoeuvre templates can be hard to position accurately and the game becomes an exercise in best-guess positioning. After a few experiments, however, players learn to anticipate the movements of ships (both their own and their opponent’s) more effectively and the rules for denying targets and forfeiting actions suddenly become weapons to wield. That shift actually marks the point at which X-Wing suddenly elevates itself to a bestof-class game, in our opinion. All our games have been tense and finely balanced regardless of which side we were playing, which suggests a system that has been extensively tested and carefully honed. With the rules nailed down, success in the game now becomes a question of anticipating your opponent in an environment where the balance of power shifts with each manoeuvre. Dice rolls, with very few exceptions, are reserved for firing weapons, and even then are susceptible to modification based on pilot actions. X-Wing is very much a game of forcing your opponent’s ships into leaving themselves vulnerable, while optimising your own positioning. The whole thing feels fluid and dynamic, even with large numbers of ships in play. That last comment brings up an important issue. X-Wing is very much an expandable game. In fact, a single box set wouldn’t even come close to allowing players to explore the scope of it. After only a few playthroughs, you’ll very quickly feel yourself straining against the limitations of the included ships and components. For players used to board game prices for expansions, there may be a pretty unpleasant sticker shock in store. Essentially, X-Wing is priced as a table-top war game. Single-ship expansions (which include additional counters, pilot cards, upgrades and, occasionally, whole new rules) cost about a third as much as the main box set each, with the upcoming larger ships being about twice that much. Building two 100point forces can easily bump the cost of the game into three figures in UK money. Experienced players of games like Warhammer 40,000 will wonder what the fuss is about, but more casual gamers are likely to wince a little. That said, it would be unfair to call the expansion prices a massive deterrent, given our own investment level in the game. Since receiving our review copy (courtesy of Esdevium Games, still awesome after all these years), we’ve bought ourselves another two copies of the starter box and a further eight expansions for a total of seventeen ships. With the second wave of expansion packs about to drop, we’re already e