X-Wing

Last week three of us played a game of X-Wing at Peterborough Wargames Club.

X-Wing is a space combat dog fighting game set in the Star Wars universe around the time of Luke, Han and Darth Vader but also expands into the Extended Universe (EU) so there’s a tonne of ships and characters to choose from each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

The game usually lasts around 40 minutes to an hour which is a massive bonus for a Monday night- you can usually get 2-3 full games in as opposed to for example, half a game of 40k.

The mechanics of the game are also incredibly simple and follow this step process;

• Movement Phase: Choose a manoeuvre for your ship to undertake, record it on the dial then flip said dial upside down. Once every ship/player is satisfied the dials are righted and you move your ships in sequence.
• Action phase: Choose to utilise any of the upgrades your ship may have, alternatively do some barrel rolling if you’re an agile Tie Fighter.
• Shoot: Use some other sticks to determine the range of your target ship. If it’s in your ships firing arc and within range rolls some attack dice, the defender then rolls some defence dice. Any hits that aren’t cancelled by defence dice are taken against the target ship.

There are some other rules to determine how ships interact with scenery and weapons but not many. The rulebook consists of 22 pages including some scenarios; other popular futuristic war games core rulebooks are at least ten times that!

Anyway a typical game is played on a 3×3 board with 100 points per side, around 3-6 ships apiece depending on what ships, characters and upgrades the player chose.

Anyway this is our game; Rebels v. Empire in a straight up shooting match. The player wins by destroying enemy ships, the value of the destroyed ships plus upgrades are your Victory Points, get the most and win the game.

The Empire advance on masse through the (rather pretty) custom made asteroid field. The Rebels split into two flights, each one controlled by a different person.

http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g396/Barsonian/20150126_201708.jpg

“You’re not actually going in to an Asteroid Field” – Yes, yes we are.

There’s a bit of a pile up in the centre, the Tie Interceptors are attacked by the Y-Wings, destroying one, damaging another. The X-wing is outflanked and hit several times in the rear by regular Ties, eventually destroying it.

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“Red Leader this is Gold Leader, we’re starting our attack run now”

The Y-Wings, slow and not very manoeuvrable undertake a few tight turns and swing around the ‘roids. Trying to use their 360* turrets against the Ties without getting shot at. They destroy the other Interceptor.

http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g396/Barsonian/20150126_205034.jpg

The Y-Wings still go around in a big circle hitting the Ties with their turrets, the Ties do some serious damage against the HWK-290 (EU)

http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g396/Barsonian/20150126_211500.jpg

Another Tie is taken out; the final one does a K (Fast paced U) turn and goes on a suicide charge against the Rebels.

http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g396/Barsonian/20150126_213103.jpg

The Rebels destroy the final Tie fighter in a straight shoot out. The game ends in a Rebel victory.

http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g396/Barsonian/20150126_213110.jpg

Each ship comes with a load of upgrade and character cards so there are tonnes of list making opportunities and variability so no game is ever the same.

There’s a few of us with ships at the Club so it looks like this game is here to stay!