We're still at least 17% alive!

Well we can't really deny that Games & Tea has been quiet of late, so we figured an update was about due - this post is part apology, part explanation.

 

A few months ago you may remember we posted a review of Pirates! Card Game, a Kickstarter project by Jules Prick.  It was our utmost pleasure to see the project reach its funding goal, and knock through its stretch goals on the sprint to the finish line!  We've mentioned in the past how when you ramp up your Kickstarter pledge you start to get jucier rewards, and one of the rewards for Pirates! was a pirate sloop tour around the canals of Amsterdam - the birthplace of the game.  Always eager for a chance to dress as pirates and terrorise a European capital city, we jumped on board (see what we did there?), and as things spiralled out of control it's ended up basically becoming a Games & Tea holiday!  Unfortunately, holidays are expensive things, and as a result a large portion of the last few months has been dedicated to scraping together enough pennies to actually see this thing through (an £80 pledge has now turned into a £700 city break!).

However, the funds are now raised, costumes bought, flights and accommodation booked, and some semblance of normality is starting to be restored!  We're jetting off towards the end of September, so when we get back you can expect an in-depth report on our experience of a Kickstarter launch event, and tales of any other game-related shenanigans we manage to get up to while we're there!

 

We're also hoping to get back to a decent reviewing rate fairly soon - one of the downsides to spending so much time raising holiday funds is that we've been unable to get together for fun game times.  We're very eager to get reviews of Space Alert, Firefly: The Board Game, and Space Cadets: Dice Duel on the go, so please bear with us, we promise we're doing our best to restore our former glory!

 

We figured we might as well end this article with a couple of impending releases which currently have us salivating!  Free advertising is not what Games & Tea is about, so it's just a coincidence that these are both from Fantasy Flight.

 

 

If you're one of those rare people in the world who have heard of the Star Wars franchise, this might just grab your interest.  StarWars: Imperial Assault is a strategy board game set in between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, immediately following on from the destruction of the first Death Star (yes, this means you get to play as non-robohand Luke).  Fantasy Flight do seem to be fond of the "1 vs many" gaming style, and they've gone with this approach for Imperial Assault, with one player controlling the Imperial side whilst up to four other players assume the role of the Rebel Alliance.

As you'd expect from Fantasy Flight, the game components look lavish, with no expense spared in production values.  The thing which really caught our attention though is that as well as just setting up for a single game, there is a full narrative campaign of missions which players can enjoy as they watch an unfolding story.  With 59 double-sided map tiles there should be no shortage of battlegrounds, so in theory this should be a game with a high replay value.

 

 

 Again, sticking with the Star Wars universe (Fantasy Flight do love making the most out of their licenses!) we have Star Wars: Armada.  The X-Wing Miniatures Game took the world by storm upon its release last year (check out our review of it here), with demand for more ships far outstripping Fantasy Flight's supply.

Whilst X-Wing did have a few mid-scaled ships such as The Millennium Falcon and Slave-I, the scale of the fighters made larger ships unfeasible, and even though many players were keen to see the release of Star Destroyers and other such capital ships, most knew it was an unrealistic hope.  But Fantasy Flight are never ones to let down their fans and turn down a money-making opportunity in the process, and as a result we have Armada on the way!

Unlike X-Wing, Armada operates on a much smaller scale.  Whereas its predecessor gave players individual fighters to operate, Armada gives you squadrons of fighters which operate as one, and the mid-scaled ships are replaced by the Star Destroyers we all always wanted!  It's not just a case of making everything smaller and keeping the rest of the system identical though - for on thing movement is very different, as players find themselves having to compensate for inertia when piloting such hulking masses around the gravity-free abyss of space.
Due for release later this year, Armada does have us very excited, and we're certainly not the only ones hoping it lives up to the hype!

Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game, Part 2: Gameplay & Verdict

Our last post took a look at the substantial box contents of Fantasy Flight's X-Wing Miniatures game.  Now it's time for us to climb aboard our starfighters and take the battle to the enemy, as we run through the gameplay and give it an overall Games & Tea verdict!

 

 

The first players must decide upon is the points value of their fleets.  Each pilot's points value is shown in the lower-right corner of their pilot card, with more experienced pilots having a higher value than those fresh out of the academy.  Various ship upgrades can add points to each fighter, but for the purposes of this basic runthrough we won't be adding that complication.

 

 

For this battle the Rebel Alliance is fielding Luke Skywalker, with a points value of 28.  The Galactic Empire is sending out Night Beast and an Obsidian Squadron Pilot to face him, with values of 15 and 13 respectively.  This gives both sides a total value of 28, and so should lead to a close-fought battle.

The numbers down the left hand side of the card are the physical stats of the ship and pilot.  From top to bottom they are:

• Pilot skill (orange) - This determines which ships move/attack first.
• Attack value (red) - The number of attack dice rolled during combat.
• Defence value (green) - The number of defence dice rolled during combat.
• Hull rating (yellow) - This shows how many hits the ship can take before it is destroyed.
• Shield level (blue) - This shows how many hits the ship can take before it starts suffering hull damage.

 

With the pilots chosen the ships need to be assembled, complete with base-inserts appropriate to each pilot.  They are then set up in each player's starting area on the 'board' (usually the very edge of the playing area), and any asteroids can be randomly scattered about to add an extra tactical element.

 

Once this set-up is complete it's time to move!

 

 

Seeing as X-Wing is supposed to simulate a constantly-moving dogfight, the ships MUST move each turn.  The course they take is determined by the Movement Dials, as shown in our box contents overview.  There is one dial per ship, and by twisting the dial the players can cycle through a wide range of movement options.  Each ship has to have their course plotted in secret, with the dial placed face-down beside its corresponding model once it has been selected.  When every ship has had its Movement Dial placed, they can begin to move.

 

 

The order of movement is determined by the pilot skill values of each ship.  The pilot with the lowest pilot skill moves first, so in this case it's the Obsidian Squadron Pilot, with a skill of 3.  His movement dial is turned over, revealing a movement of 2 with a curve off to the left.

 

 

The appropriate Movement Template is placed at the front of the Obsidian Squadron Pilot's base, and the TIE Fighter is moved forward, so that the end of the template is flush with the rear of the base.

 

 

Night Beast is the next pilot to move, with a skill of 5, and once he's moved then Luke Skywalker's skill of 8 allows him to make the final move.

 

After making its move, each ship is allowed to take a single action, and the available actions are dictated by the ship types rather than the individual pilots.  These actions are shown by the symbols in the blue/grey bar at the bottom of the pilot cards (next to the shield value), and are also on the right of the base inserts.  There are a wide range of actions across the various ships in the game, but for the purposes of this review we're going to show you the three most-used actions by having each pilot utilise a different one.  Obsidian Squadron Pilot has used a Dodge action, Night Beast has used Focus, and Luke Skywalker has used his Target Lock ability to lock onto Obsidian Squadron Pilot.  Each ship has a token of the appropriate type placed beside the miniature, and then we can move onto combat.

 

 

When it comes to combat, the pilot with the highest ability shoots first, and so Luke Skywalker opens fire upon the Obsidian Squadron Pilot.  The measuring ruler is used to determine that Obsidian is within range 3.  Seeing as this is the maximum range of Luke's lasers, Obsidian gets one extra defence die to try and avoid a hit.

This is the first point at which X-Wing stumbles as an out-of-the-box experience.  The box set contains 3 attack dice and 3 defence dice, but TIE Fighters have a defence value of 3, and X-Wings have an attack value of 3, so if either are receiving a bonus then there aren't enough dice for a single roll.  The only option (aside from buying further dice, which defeats the point of being able to play the game straight out of the box) is to roll once, and then re-roll one of the dice (preferably a miss) to add to the previous 3.  It's a point which could have been easily addressed by simply putting 4 of each dice into the box set, and it seems like Fantasy Flight let themselves down a little after making such an effort to get so many other aspects of the game spot-on (see the box contents section for details).

 

 

So Luke and Obsidian roll off at the same time.  Luke rolled 1 hit and Obsidian rolled 1 dodge, which, combined with his Dodge action, gives him 2 dodges.  Tough luck, young Skywalker!

But wait...

 

 

Luke expends his Target Lock, allowing him to re-roll his dice.  This time the force is definitely with him, and he rolls 3 hits!  Obsidian's 2 dodges allow him to avoid destruction, but the third hit makes a dent, and the Obsidian Squadron Pilot suffers a point of hull damage.  The Dodge and Target Lock counters, having been used up, are returned to the game box.

 

 

The Empire Strikes Back!  Night Beast makes his attack on Luke, who is within range 2, so both ships roll off with just their face-values.  This means 2 attack dice for Night Beast, and 2 defence dice for Luke.

 

 

Night Beast gets one critical hit and once focus symbol.  As he used a Focus action this turn he can discard his focus token to turn that symbol into a hit!  Luke, in the meantime rolled a focus symbol and a miss, but his special ability (see the pilot card) allows him to change one focus symbol into a dodge.

 

 

With these effects applied, Luke has dodged one hit, but the other hits home, reducing his shields by 1.

 

 

Finally, the Obsidian Squadron Pilot gets to have a shot at Luke.  We already know the range is 3 (from Luke's attack on Obsidian), and so the dice are rolled.  Obsidian rolls 1 hit and a focus, Luke rolls 2 dodges and a miss.  Luke has successfully dodged this single hit, and the combat phase is now over.

After the combat phase, any unused Dodge or Focus tokens are removed from play, but any unused Target Locks remain in play.  Let's take a look at how the ships are faring after this round...

 

 

As you can see, Night Beast is cruising around, having taken no damage this turn.  Luke's hull is in-tact, but he has just 1 shield token remaining.  Obsidian Squadron Pilot has suffered the worst though, and has taken a hit to his hull, as indicated by the explosion poking out from the top of his pilot card.

 

The game continues in this fashion - movement, combat, cleanup - until one side has been completely wiped out, or until any predetermined objectives have been met.

This, once more, is a nice element which gives X-Wing more of a standalone/board game feel than that of a tabletop system.  In most tabletop games, battles are played to a predetermined number of rounds, and at the end of the final round the victor is usually decided based on the points value of their remaining units.  With X-Wing you actually feel as though you're achieving something, as the game doesn't end until the mission has been accomplished.  This not only gives a tremendous feeling of satisfaction, but also makes the game exciting to play, especially towards the tail-end of a mission, when ship numbers are dwindling and both sides are anxious to scrape through with a victory!

 

The actual mechanics of the game are well thought out, as we touched on in part 1 of our review.  The simple idea of templates for movement and measuring firing range remove a lot of the typical tabletop clutter, and the combat system of rolling hits against dodges is fast-flowing and intuitive.  The mountain of tokens supplied in the box set are easy to keep track of, especially when each ship only has a limited number of available actions (an Imperial player, for example, will never have to worry about Target Locks with this beginners box).

The Quick Start rules give a nice balanced battle, and contain less detail than we've addressed here in this review.  Once these have been mastered then players can progress up to the full set of rules shown here, and from there can move on to include ship upgrades.  It's an excellent 3-tiered system which allows new players to ease into the game without feeling overwhelmed.

 

The big question though, is how satisfying is it as a standalone game?  Does it require a further investment of ships, or is the starter box enough to keep you going?  Well it's certainly satisfying, but as a complete game it is slightly flawed.  The main flaw being that if the Rebel player chooses Luke Skywalker and upgrades him with R2-D2 then he's effectively invincible, and the Imperial player will quickly lose heart.  The other niggling flaw is the dice issue, as raised earlier.

When we reviewed Puppet Wars a few weeks ago we were let down by the fact that it wasn't playable straight from the box, and the worry with X-Wing was that it was going to suffer similarly.  Well, we can definitively state that it doesn't!  Whilst perhaps feeling a little incomplete (you'll find yourself lusting after a wider range of ships fairly quickly), X-Wing does work as a standalone game.

For comparison purposes we've also played a couple of large-scale 200 point games, and the two experiences are very different.  With the larger games it does feel good to be in control of an entire fleet of fighters, but entire turns will often pass by with no damage being dealt to ships on either side, and frustration can quickly seep in.  Whilst you do have turns like this in small-scale skirmishes, the fact that the turns pass by so quickly means that these are quickly forgotten in the mad frenzy to stay alive!

The nice thing, however, is that if you do decide to expand you can do so at a slow pace and keep the costs down as a result.  After trying out the box set we went out and bought one extra TIE Fighter and an A-Wing, and the simple addition of these two ships has given enough variation to keep the game from going stale here at Games & Tea.

 

The Good Points

• In the X-Wing Miniatures Game, Fantasy Flight have succeeded in making a tabletop system that doesn't feel like a tabletop system.  This makes it incredibly accessible and very easy to pick up and play.
• At the end of the day, it's Star Wars!  Classic Star Wars!  Most gamers will have grown up loving these films, and it feels a bit like living a childhood fantasy.
• Further ships can be bought to expand the set at a very reasonable price, so it doesn't need to break the bank if the decision is made to add a little variety.
• The quality of the minitaures is high, although a little shelf-by-shelf comparison may be required to make sure you get the best ones possible.

The Bad Points

• The X-Wing starter box really should come with one more of each dice.  Any game which will require you to roll 4 dice at some point should provide the players with those 4 dice.
• Combining Luke Skywalker with R2-D2 is an instant way to make the Rebels unbeatable with the box contents, which is a pity seeing as Star Wars fans will want to have them flying together.  They are a perfectly valid combination in larger-scale battles, just not against a pair of TIE Fighters with no backup.
• X-Wing is limited to just 2 players, so isn't really an option in a large gaming group.

Recommended Number of Players: 2 (no other option)

As mentioned above, the only way to play X-Wing is with two players.  There are no options at this point for a third faction to enter the fray, and it can't be played with just a single player.

 

Average Game Time: 30 minutes

Using one of the missions in the rulebook and playing the X-Wing vs 2 TIEs balance from the started box, a game will last half an hour on average.  The addition of extra ships will obviously lengthen games, and large-scale engagements can take anything up to a couple of hours.

 

Replay Value: High

With the range of different pilots, upgrades, and missions, it's fair to say that no two games of X-Wing need necessarily be the same.  Once players have got their heads around the mechanics of the game they can even start to create their own missions, or even ongoing campaigns.  X-Wing is certainly not a game which will go stale for quite some time.

 

The Future: Bright

The Future of X-Wing is in the additional ships being released by Fantasy Flight.  At the time of this review, the currently available ships are; X-Wing, A-Wing, Y-Wing, Millennium Falcon, TIE Fighter, TIE Advanced, TIE Interceptor, Slave-I.  The next batch of releases is set to include the B-Wing, HWK-290, TIE Bomber and Lambda Class Shuttle.  With other Extended Universe and prequel ships still to choose from, Fantasy Flight have the potential to continue releasing new ships for a number of years.

 

Price: £30

The box set for X-Wing will cost roughly £30, and for that you'll get a good all-round 2 player experience.  The smaller fighters retail for around £12 each, and the larger ships (The Millennium Falcon etc) will cost around £24.  As we mentioned, we picked up two extra fighters to give a good variety of gameplay options to our set, and by visiting our local hobby store we were able to buy everything we needed for £45, which is a decent price for a specialist game.

Availability is one of the only let-downs for X-Wing, as Fantasy Flight unfortunately don't seem to be matching the demand with their supply.  X-Wing is such a popular game that most ships are unavailable from many retailers until October (we were very disappointed not to be able to add a TIE Interceptor to our collection, opting for that third TIE Fighter instead), and even the latest wave of releases have already pre-sold out in many places.

 

 

 

OVERALL SCORE: 8/10

(9/10 with the inclusion of 2 extra ships)

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more of the same, come and like us on our Facebook page to keep up to date with our reviews, as well as our general day-to-day ramblings!

Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game, Part 1: Box Contents

Today on Games & Tea we're going to look at something a little different.  We want to keep our little review blog centred around board and card games, and have no intention of changing this, so it may surprise you to see that our latest review is of the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game from Fantasy Flight, designed by Jay Little.

 

 

Now many specialist games are catered towards a more geeky audience, and in any geeky audience you'll be sure to find a large number of Star Wars fans, and it's for this reason that we were very excited to pick up a starter box and see if joining the Empire was everything it was cracked up to be.  But more to the point, we wanted to see how it works as a standalone game.  Obviously as a tabletop system, a new player's X-Wing force is supposed to built upon over time, but from a board gamer's perspective we wanted to see if this would work straight out of the box with no additions at all.  Just two players, two TIE Fighters, one X-Wing, and a plethora of cards and tokens.

Regular readers of our blog will know we cast a similarly critical eye over Wyrd Miniatures' Puppet Wars, which came away as an excellent mini-tabletop system, but a deeply flawed board game.  Will Fantasy Flight's efforts with X-Wing fare any better?  Read on to find out!

 

As usual we'll start with the box contents, and boy does this box have a lot of content!  To the uninitiated this can be quite daunting, and as a reviewer I personally was guilty of the worst cardinal sin a gamer can commit - the first time I saw a game in action I thought it looked too complicated, and walked straight past, having no interest in learning.  We hope that the long list of items below doesn't put off our readers in the same way, as they are all very easy to pick up, and will quickly become second nature to players after a couple of games.

 

 

We might as well start with the most fun element.  If you're going to join the Alliance/Empire then you're going to need ships!  X-Wing comes with a pair of TIE Fighters and a single X-Wing to give two players a nice balanced encounter (yes the X-Wing is outnumbered, but it has shields which balances things out).  These come pre-painted, so as with any mass-produced miniatures there will be varying quality from one model to the next.  If your gaming store has several copies in stock then don't feel embarrassed about comparing the various sets until you find the one with the better miniatures.  We did the same with our review copy, and feel very pleased with the outcome!

Obviously this ships need to hover over the gaming area, so the box also contains three easy to assemble/disassemble bases for the fighters to slot onto.

 

That's right, we did say "gaming area", for there is no board in X-Wing.  However the nice thing about the game vs other tabletop systems (and one that helps its standalone case) is that it requires very little room to play.  Any flat tabletop measuring 3'x3' is enough to play on, and being a game of outer-space dogfighting there's no scenery required.  Some actual board games require more space than this to set up (we're looking at you, Zombicide), so in our book this doesn't cost X-Wing any points.

 

 

Next, Maneuver Templates.  This is another innovation which helps X-Wing's standalone case, as it doesn't require the tape measure typical to most tabletop systems.  Each ship's course of movement is decided at the beginning of the turn, and the ship simply travels along the length of the appropriate template.

 

 

Now for the dice, and once again X-Wing is really selling itself in this respect.  You'll find no standard D6's here, which would lead to cases of "I've rolled a 5, you've rolled a 4... let's pause the game while we check the rulebook to see what this means."  Instead there are three green 8-sided defence dice, and 3 red 8-sided attack dice.  The defence dice have two symbols; evade and focus, and blank sides.  The attack dice have 3 symbols; hit, critical hit, and focus, and once again blank sides.  Each time one ship opens fire upon another, both players roll off against eachother.  If the attacker rolls more hits than the defender does evades, then the defending ship is hit!  Simple as!  Critical hits cause more damage than regular hits, and focus symbols can allow players to convert their misses into hits/evades at essential moments.

 

 

Once a ship's shields have been depleted (or if they had none to begin with), they start to take hull damage.  In the case of regular hits a damage card is placed face-down beside the pilot card (see below), and in the case of a critical hit the damage card is placed face-up, and its text takes effect.  These critical hits can often nullify ship upgrades, disable weapons or navigation for a single turn, or (as in the case above) simply cause extra damage in the long-run.

 

 

A ship is only as good as its pilot, so X-Wing features a set of pilot cards to determine the stats on each ship in the game.  The cards dictate the ship's pilot skill, the number of attack and defence dice rolled, the amount of hull damage the ship can sustain before being destroyed, it's shield levels, the number and type of available upgrades, any special abilities, the ship's available actions, and the number of points the ship is worth.  This may sound like an overwhelming amount of information, but it's clearly laid out and doesn't take too long to get your head around, especially in a small-scale game such as this.

 

 

Each pilot card comes with a corresponding base-insert.  These slot into the miniatures' bases and allow the players to keep track of which ship belongs to which pilot, as well as giving them a quick summary of the ship's stats.

 

 

As we mentioned above, ships can receive upgrades.  These add to the ship's points value but bestow extra abilities upon it, and can often be cards which make-or-break a game!

 

 

In space, no one can hear you stop!  In X-Wing your starfighters are in a constantly moving dogfight, and so stopping to get a better shot at your enemy simply isn't an option.  Ships have to move each turn, and the players decide the distance and direction at the start of the turn by setting their maneuver dials.

 

 

The odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field...  As mentioned, there's no fancy scenery required for X-Wing, but it does come with a selection of asteroids.  These can be cast haphazardly across the table, giving players a bit more of a challenge as they're forced to plot their course around these obstacles, or even use them as cover against an enemy ship.

 

 

Again, X-Wing excels at finding ways around typical tabletop systems.  To see whether an enemy ship is within weapons range, players simply measure the distance with the range ruler.  If with range 1, the attacker gains an extra dice, at range 3 the defender gains an extra dice, and at range 2 both players roll off with their pilots' face values.

 

 

Time to start with the tokens, and if there's one thing X-Wing isn't short of, it's tokens!  Starting from the left we have evade tokens.  A pilot with an evade token may add it to their defence roll to avoid that game-changing hit.  Next up, focus.  A focus token can be discarded to change all focus symbols on an the pilot's dice to hits/evades.  In the middle we have stress tokens, which are gained from certain maneuvers.  These limit pilots' abilities until the player carries out a basic maneuver to remove them.  Then we have critical hit tokens, which just help players to keep track of which ships have received critical hits.  And finally we have shield tokens, which simply keep track of each ship's shield levels.

 

 

Next up, target locks!  These come in matching pairs, with the red counter attaching to the targeted ship, and the blue attached to the targeting ship.  If a player has a target lock on an enemy, they may discard the lock to re-roll their attack dice.

 

 

The identifier tokens are nice and simple.  If you have a pair of Academy Pilots then these slot into the ships' bases to let you keep track of which one's which.

 

 

The X-Wing rulebook contains a selection of missions to play through, and some contain mission objectives.  These are represented in the game by more tokens, rather than extra miniatures.

 

 

And finally we have the rulebooks.  Once again, Fantasy Flight seem to be doing everything right with X-Wing in this respect.  There is a full detailed rulebook, which contains the full range of scenarios, rules for upgrades etc, but there's also a Quick-Start rulebook.  This is a board gamers dream, as it contains a walkthrough of a basic game, making X-Wing accessible straight out of the box.

 

So there's the box contents.  You certainly get your money's worth in this set, and as we've made clear, Fantasy Flight have made some serious effort to make a tabletop system which is instantly accessible to non-tabletop gamers.  The big question remains, does it actually play well straight out of the box, or is this a system which will require time and investment?  Come back for Part 2, where we'll run through that Quick-Start game, and give X-Wing its Games & Tea score.