Tag: X-Wing

Unboxing the Star Wars X-Wing second edition core set

Star Wars X-Wing

It’s Christmas Eve, and I’ve been saving this for almost two months now: let’s unbox the second edition core set for Star Wars X-Wing!

Second edition for X-Wing came out in 2018, after the hugely successful first edition had been initially published back in 2012. As with pretty much every first edition, things got a bit bloated, and it became somewhat difficult to keep the game going as it was. Second edition was also the excuse to get Republic and Separatist ships in the game, after Resistance and First Order had come out to tie into the release of The Force Awakens back in 2015.

Star Wars X-Wing

Second edition followed the same plan as first edition, with two TIE fighters and a single X-Wing fighter in the core set, alongside all the stuff you need like the tokens and cards, and of course the dice! The colour scheme was very black this time around, in contrast to the greys of the original.

Star Wars X-Wing

They’re still pre-painted ships, but whereas first edition X-wings were static, in second edition you can open and close the s-foils, which actually has in-game effects.

Star Wars X-Wing

The card redesign makes things clearer, however gone is the upgrade slot from along the bottom, telling you the type of upgrades that can be played on each ship, and also the points costs have all gone. I think there was talk of an app at one point?

When Atomic Mass Games took over the game, they published a document that showed all the upgrades that can be taken with each pilot, as well as the points costs. This was last updated shortly before official support ended, so at least we have one final doc that covers how AMG saw the game in its final form.

Star Wars X-Wing

A big change for me is how those upgrade cards now look – gone are the mini cards from first edition! I’m a bit sad at that, because while the bigger cards are meant to be tucked under your pilot (I think!) they still take up more space overall, and it seems like it might make things untidy. Hm. But I guess there’s more room available now!

An interesting development for second edition is the suggested load-out cards. These provide an easy way to get playing the game, because you don’t need to agonise too much over list-building. Instead, you just grab Luke, the suggested upgrades, and you get playing!

This also leans into another interesting development for second edition, the escalation play. The basic idea is that the players start with basic ships, Academy or rookie pilots, then once one ship is destroyed, they can choose a different pilot to bring it back into the game, so the X-Wing rookie may be replaced with Luke Skywalker, or a TIE pilot could be replaced with Iden Versio. Then you keep playing, until a player has destroyed two ships. It makes the game feel bigger, out of the box, than perhaps it feels when you get just one or two ships for a faction.

Star Wars X-Wing

Overall, I’ve been really impressed with the second edition core set. It feels like a cleaner look, as well – the dials and tokens all look better, somehow. I’m going to look into this a bit more over the festive season, and hopefully 2026 will see some great Star Wars games!

Getting back into X-Wing in 2025

Am I mad? 

Well, quite possibly. 

X-Wing

The Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game, originally from Fantasy Flight Games, has been officially dead since June 2024 when Asmodee announced the end of product support at that time. I was somehow vaguely aware of it, as the game had been on life support since it was moved from FFG to Atomic Mass Games back in November 2020. Many fans of the game had been unhappy with the way that AMG had handled the game, which had already been given a second edition by FFG back in September 2018. I think I can see both sides here, as AMG were already handling the success of Marvel Crisis Protocol, and so suddenly being given X-Wing, Armada and Legion seemed like perhaps a step too far.

Regardless, AMG did what they could. They ended Armada, but made a significant attempt to infuse a narrative aspect of play into X-Wing, with a series of mission packs, as well as repackaging a lot of the content for the new second edition. However, I get the impression that the die-hard fans of X-Wing were not interested in that, and just kept making noises about how AMG were killing the game until, four years after taking it on, support officially ended. A self-fulfilling prophecy, maybe?

Star Wars Armada

I am a very big fan of AMG, and I really love both MCP and Shatterpoint, which is often seen as the reason for X-Wing ending. I can’t help but feel like AMG had the short end of the deal here – if they want to make a skirmish miniatures game, but instead they just get handed one that had been saddled with almost 10 years of content and development, what would you expect them to do? At least the naysayers have been proven wrong with Legion, which has had a massive upsurge of support in the last few months. 

But we’re not talking about Legion today. 

X-Wing
I used to own a LOT of ships…

X-Wing was one of my favourite games, back in the day, although I couldn’t really find any like-minded folks to play it with. I collected all the things, because I found it so much fun, but after attending a couple of tournaments I became soured on the whole experience, and eventually sold off my collection when I was buying my first house. I hadn’t really thought about it all that much, until a couple of years ago it seemed to come back on the radar.

X-Wing

Since the death knell, product has been drying up online. I think part of this is the natural urge to get as much as possible to “complete” a collection, which we saw quite a bit with Netrunner back in October 2018. However, the fact that these are pre-painted, scaled miniatures of Star Wars ships has also worked to mean a lot of folks want them for displays, etc. I’ve seen a lot of folks who want them just for the aesthetics, and there’s at least one youtube video of a coffee table being made with these ships being set into clear resin. So there is a very real dearth of miniatures available these days…

So bringing this post back to the original title, why should I be looking to get into X-Wing in 2025?

X-Wing

Aside from the fact that it is a fantastic game, there is something exciting about the scavenger hunt of tracking down the stuff that I would like to have, which hasn’t been easy so far! Prices aren’t too outrageous, thankfully, but they are inflated enough that it makes me think before I buy literally anything. There’s also the problem of first edition and second edition products still out there. I know that second edition cards are available online, but I don’t really want to go down any kind of rabbit holes of a composite collection. 

While I am very much a completionist, and there is a part of me that is more than a little disappointed that I likely won’t be able to get everything that I want for this collection, there’s an equal part of me that is quite happy at the thought of a small but fair collection, which will still allow for me to play the game. After our Star Wars game day last month, James and I were having a lengthy conversation about games and this came up. It’s probably a bit obvious to say it, but one of the big things about tabletop games is how you can continue to play them even when the game has gone away. I suppose I haven’t really given much thought to this over the years, but Lord of the Rings LCG hasn’t had any new content come out since 2020, and with the re-release of the Return of the King saga box last year, it is apparently done. Yet I still play it, and have been playing some of the scenarios from 2012 only recently.

The same thing is true for miniatures games, which historically have tended to require ongoing support with balance, etc, to remain popular. However, AMG published a final document in the summer of 2024 with where they see the points costs for the various ships and upgrades ending up, and have left it at that. There’s really no reason why we can’t still play with those points – so long as we have the miniatures, templates, tokens and dice to play the actual game.

X-Wing

It’s with this frame of mind, then, that I have launched myself into this project. I don’t want to go too crazy with buying stuff, but rather I want to see if I can assemble a reasonable collection of ships that is both exciting to build around, but also functional in the game. If this is something that James and I trot out maybe once or twice a year, then it’ll be worth it – but I don’t want to lavish hundreds of pounds on the game if it’s only something that will hit the table once every six months. I last played the game over 10 years ago, but if my memory serves, this is still a game that is worth playing, even in this day and age. I think it’ll be really interesting to see if that holds up once I can play it again, or if the magic has gone, and all this will have been for nothing!!

The Ones that Got Away

I always seem to get quite reflective at this time of year. I suppose it’s all tied up with the end-of-year mood, looking back and all that. Recently, though, I’ve been thinking about all the games and miniatures that I’ve bought and sold over the years. I mean, I dread to think of how much I must have spent on that stuff, none of which was exactly flipped for a profit!

Games like Android Netrunner have been reconstructed via proxy cards, whereas X-Wing has probably gone forever. I’ve already bought and sold two Tau armies; recently reading some 40k novels, though, has got me thinking about how much fun I’ve had with building and painting stuff like the AdMech, and Deathwing.

I’m kinda thinking about doing a miniseries about these things, though I’m not sure if doing so could be a bit dangerous. Hopefully I won’t end up buying a Tau army for the third time, though…

Revisiting I’m Not Serious

Hey everybody,
2024 is the birthday year of the blog, as I hit 10 years on wordpress in April. To help mark the occasion, I thought I’d go through ten years’ worth of the archives and revisit some of the blogs from the past – sort of like a year-long series of Throwback Thursday posts, I suppose! My intention is to try to do this monthly, though I don’t really know if I have twelve posts that are maybe worth looking back at like this! For the first, though, I thought I’d go back to a post from 2015 where I talked a little bit about some games I had at the local store, specifically a game with X-Wing.

I’m not serious!

I can still remember that game nearly nine years later, where my poor luck and poor strategy (coupled with perhaps a little bit of stage-fright as the game was watched by a few other folks there) mounted up to a shocking turn of events, when Baron Soontir Fel was destroyed in the second round. At the time, it made me laugh a bit because I am not the type of serious power-gamer like the other guys there. However, it’s something that I almost constantly think back to, and question what sort of gamer I am. On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong with not being that sort of hyper-focused player who wants to make the optimum plays each time, and who brings “the best” list or deck to each game. There’s certainly something distasteful that I find about people who play things because they are “the best”, and not because they enjoy them, but it’s all about how you get your fun, isn’t it?

Something kinda clicked for me a few years ago, where I realised that there should be more of an effort made by me to engage more fully with the game. I had been approaching games with an attitude along the lines of, “Well, I can’t predict what my opponent will do, so why try to strategize?” and this informed most, if not all of my games for a good chunk of years. But after reflecting on it, I don’t think that was a good approach to playing games, not least because I don’t think it gives your opponent a good time to have such a chaotic experience. There are obviously games that lean into that kind of gameplay, but to stick with the X-Wing example, that was something where you build a list, get the right kind of cards to complement the pilots you’re using, and the expectation is that you’re going to at least try to win. When you’re faced with an opponent who seems to understand the game, but is doing all this crazy stuff and flying all over the place, it can’t be what you signed up for. And it kinda horrifies me to think that I was that opponent!

Star Wars Armada

It all seems to come down to what you want out of a game – how far you want to take it, and that sort of thing. I like to think that I’ve come a long way since that post was written. I still think of myself as something of a casual gamer, but I’m definitely trying to get more out of the games I play, through strategies and stuff. I suppose that’s something that I wasn’t appreciating at the time, though – on one level, I enjoyed being in the world, and moving the pieces around, etc. But as I have tried to get more into the tactics of the thing, and seeing what is possible in the game, it has become so much more enjoyable. Throwing plastic ships around is one thing, but building a list to achieve a goal, and then seeing that goal come to fruition. Or adapting the play to react to what is happening, but making good decisions that let me pull it back (maybe even win). This is the sort of thing that I was perhaps missing out on, when I was thinking “I can’t predict what will happen, so why bother trying?” 

Within some bounds, it is entirely possible to begin to anticipate how a game could go. I suppose this is more relevant in card games, in my experience, where there is hidden information that gradually becomes known. Let’s take L5R as an example. When you sit down to a game, you might not know who you’re up against. But then your opponent reveals their stronghold and they’re playing Crane – so you can start to filter out what they definitely won’t be playing, and make some assumptions on what to commonly expect from a Crane player (political battles and so on). There is always the possibility there will be some out-of-clan cards in the conflict deck, but the influence numbers are always low enough that it is barely a splash, and as soon as you see one such splash card, you’ll know what else you can filter out. All of that can be done with a fairly decent understanding of the game, and you don’t need to have studied things to the nth degree to work it all out. Taking it further, though, you can study the current meta and see what is popular in each clan, so you can see what you’re likely to face in each matchup. So when you see that Crane stronghold you can make an educated guess not only for what the clan can do in general terms, but also what kind of cards you can expect to see coming at you.

All of this isn’t to say that you need to do homework before you play a game, but a lot of it will come naturally as you gain more experience. You can absolutely study the meta before your first game, or you can go into games willing to learn what you’re going up against, and you can thereafter build that picture for yourself. The global meta might not have anything to do with what is being played locally, after all – you may have learnt common strategies to beat Scorpion and Lion decks, and then come up against nothing but Crane and Dragon when you go into the local area.

All of this is to say that I think there’s an element of responsibility for players to ensure they are playing a good game, as the ultimate objective for these things is to have fun, but you need to be able to read the room. I thought I was having a good time by flying my ships around and shooting stuff when I could, but that doesn’t really help when my opponent has come into this expecting more. It won’t help me get more games as time goes on, either! But there is definitely something rewarding about making more of an effort – I called myself a casual gamer before, and I think that’s a term that is incredibly loaded within this context. Definitely more to be said on that topic, as well. However, even for the casual gamer, I don’t think it’s outlandish to build up that kind of familiarity as you go.

Since I wrote that post, then, I think I have developed as a gamer, and hopefully when I play games these days, I’m not causing shudders of disappointment for my opponent! Of course, life has moved on quite a bit from those pick-up style games, and nowadays I’m playing in a small but consistent group of folks. There are still the odd games happening, but I like to think that I have a better understanding of what I’m trying to achieve when I sit down to play. There are always those moments when I have a plan formulated, and it crumbles as Sun Tzu has told us it would. But I have definitely gone more in for tactics and strategy over the years, which I think is definitely an improvement from the attitude of “well, I can’t predict what they’re going to do, so let’s just smash things!”

Thinking about X-Wing again

I’m not about to go off the deep end here, so don’t worry right away! However, my youngest daughter has been unwell so I’ve been sat up for most of the night with her. Lots of time for thinking. And I’ve recently been thinking quite a bit about X-Wing again, once the best-selling miniatures game that was able to knock Warhammer 40k off its pedestal. It seems so very long ago now that I was into that game, but as will come as a surprise to quite literally nobody, I used to own everything for this game, and I loved it very much.

X-Wing

I barely played it, though, and so shortly before I moved out of my flat back in 2016-7, I sold it all. Le sigh. I suppose it wasn’t necessary a bad thing to get rid of it, because there was a lot of it, plus the extra cash came in handy as I needed to do a lot of improvements to the house I’d bought at the time.

I haven’t really given it much thought in the years since, but I chanced upon a mention of it in a YouTube video recently, and it got me pondering once more…

Lock S-foils in attack position!

The game dates back to the mists of time we now call 2011, when FFG had bought the Star Wars license. X-Wing was the very first game they announced, followed swiftly by the co-op LCG. It wasn’t until 2012 that the game came out, and I picked up a core set but wasn’t immediately enamoured. I think I much preferred the card game, even though it was no longer co-op, and so the idea of moving miniatures around with those templates all seemed quite foreign to me.

X-Wing

However, I think it was a couple of years later, in 2015, that I started to seriously get into it. I think I’d been collecting it anyway, but I started to play fairly regularly at the store, and played in some tournaments there. I can remember horrifying the locals with the fact I wasn’t particularly serious about the game, but it did seem to be thriving for a good while, and I enjoyed being around it.

I think the second edition of the game came out in 2015, around the time of The Force Awakens, and it was a bit of a weird time for everything. There was an element of backwards-compatibility, but on the whole it left my local community a bit divided, despite the best efforts of the store. It was at this point that I ended my journey with X-Wing, and like with almost everything at this time, it was subsumed by the behemoth that is Warhammer 40k.

So where is X-Wing these days? What’s going on with it?

Back in the midst of the global pestilence, FFG/Asmodee moved all of the miniatures lines to the new Atomic Mass Games studio, and while AMG have been supporting Legion, X-Wing didn’t really get anything at first. They apparently fiddled around with the rules, banned some cards, and generally confused the players, but it’s only been this summer that they’ve started to release stuff for the game. Seems like it has now expanded into the Prequel era, and games are narrative-driven, which I think sounds great. Unfortunately, they have released bundles of 4 ships for the Empire and the Rebels, calling them “starter boxes”, for £70 or so!

It seemed like it could be fun to dip back into the water, but at that price point, I don’t think it’s really feasible for me to investigate it further.

Which is a shame, because the scenario focus that seems to be placed on it this time around seems really interesting. There are card packs for the Battle of Yavin, for example, which introduces a scenario and gives “standard” ship builds, so you’re no longer picking who you want in your roster and how each ship is upgraded. It seems interesting, and from what I can tell, they’re doing some work to overhaul the game into their new system through these kind of card packs, rather than releasing any more ships. It seems a bit awkward, then, if you buy second-edition ships, but then these card packs to play them?

It sounds like X-Wing is maybe in a bit of a mess right now, which is a shame because it was such a great game! When I started thinking about this post, I was full of nostalgia for it, and had been vaguely thinking it might be fun to pick up a core set again to explore the game once again. I still think I might yet look to pick some stuff up, if I can find anything cheaply online, but I’m not looking to amass a huge collection again. I would love a couple of different Rebel ships, some Imperial ships, maybe even some Scum.

It’s interesting to me, because I’ve been looking a lot at these old games lately, and in part I think it’s like one long nostalgia trip. There are solo rules for X-Wing that I hadn’t realised existed, so it wouldn’t necessarily be a waste of time, money and effort to get some of these things. Time will tell, though, I guess!

I’m not serious!

Hey folks!
It’s a long weekend again, something always to be cherished! I’ve been celebrating with some games, which is unsurprising to long-time readers – Arkham Horror and Lord of the Rings LCG have both made an appearance thus far, and I don’t doubt that many others will join them before the weekend is over!

May has otherwise been a pretty sparse month for gaming, I think due to other commitments that have engulfed me – namely, the degree. Yesterday, however, I had a day off, and after getting a new tire for the car (I know how to live), I popped along to the local games store for a couple of games.

First up, I’d been asked to give a demo of Android: Netrunner, which appeared on my blog not too long ago, and was utterly decimated by my opponent in his very first game! I played as the Runner (as per), with my classic Shaper deck, while I gave him a Haas/Bioroid deck that was basically the list from Creation and Control, with a couple of other cards added in. We played with open hands, and all his cards were played face-up so as to explain the game as it went along, but yeah… decimated!

I suppose that shows the beauty of how this game works. The deck is really well-made, so pretty much runs itself: a lot of ice, and just enough agenda points, and I just couldn’t get in. That said, I did have some pretty bad draws, only ever drawing two icebreaker programs (despite using two Diesel cards). I’ve only ever played against Weyland Consortium, so it was interesting to see how another corp plays. He liked it, anyway, and hopefully we’ll get some more plays in.

X-Wing

Following that, I had two games of X-Wing, the first using the squad above that centred around Vader. It’s something I’ve wanted to try for a while now, since I started on this X-Wing rediscovery and all! My usual strategy, of ‘just fly around and shoot stuff’, worked really poorly, as I couldn’t do anything to stop Matt’s usual reliance on Biggs. I lost, but it took time to lose!

That was followed by an impromptu game where I made the following squad up on the fly:

X-Wing

Luckily, there were some other X-Wing players in the store, one of whom suggested Fel and loaned me some upgrades to use. It ended wonderfully badly, as the interceptors were picked off quickly, and Echo, while doing some damage, still didn’t do enough before following them. My Obsidian Squadron Pilot, however, turned into something of a star turn – at one point, he managed to score three critical hits when targeting Horton Salm at range 1, the Y-Wing only evading one! However, it still wasn’t meant to be, and he followed his fellows into the cold void.

Looking back over previous games in general, a trend emerges of me doing really badly. These two X-Wing games in particular have just served to highlight that. Being at the store however, with other folks there offering me advice and stuff, it occurred to me that my poor track record doesn’t actually bother me in the slightest. And I think the pep-talk before that second game really underlined the fact that I’m just not a serious gamer.

I’ve probably mentioned, dozens of times now, that I’m not a very strategic player of games. I will usually attempt to put some sort of strategy together in card games like Lord of the Rings or Android Netrunner, but my past experiences have shown that it is so very rare that any kind of strategy will actually come together, so nowadays I tend not to bother with those sorts of things. Part of me feels that card games like these have a much higher luck aspect than most people give them credit for – while you can build a deck that looks perfect, you’re still going to shuffle that deck before you begin, so there’s no way you can reliably get those cards that you need into your hand to allow your chosen strategy to unfold. While many such games will include cards that let you search portions of (or even your whole) deck for cards, you’re usually limited to the number of specific cards you can include in your deck, so if you don’t draw any such “scrying” cards, you’re going to be hampered.

I read a lot about people who have unmitigated success with games like Lord of the Rings, who espouse their chosen strategy as The One etc, but I often wonder how many games they’ve actually abandoned before the first turn is over, because their opening hand (and mulligan) didn’t contain those key cards. Personally, I never mulligan in card games – maybe it’s something I should start thinking about…

Returning to the X-Wing example, the upgrades I was loaned for Soontir Fel were clearly designed to do some pretty awesome strategy, but that guy was shot out of the sky on the second turn due to poor dice rolling on my part. Dice hate me anyway, of course, but that’s by-the-by. There was a look of some horror as my fighter ace was shot out right from under me, almost like I had betrayed that upgrade combo I’d been given. Or worse, that I just didn’t get the game enough to play it properly. Whatever. I actually had more fun playing with my Obsidian Squadron Pilot than I did with that strategically-perfect Fel, because it gave me the chance for some role-playing, as I told the story of a pilot, fresh from the academy (so he remembered all of the lessons because they were still fresh), wanting to make a name for himself by flying alongside the legendary Fel but, when he was shot down, decided to go out for revenge and show that he was a legitimate part of the Empire’s finest. He rolled those three crits on his first attack after going in for revenge, which really just fueled the story.

But you know what? When the game was over, the one thing we were all talking about was how that nameless pilot managed to survive for round after round, trying to avenge Fel – not the wonderful upgrade combo that should have let Fel last longer than just two rounds.

This is why I’m not interested in power-gaming. This is why I will always play the theme decks over the power decks. The opportunity to create epic storytelling adventures will always appeal to me over the opportunity to win. I may not be classed as a serious gamer, but I definitely have fun with these things. And I think my opponents do, too.

New Star Wars stuff!

Hey everybody!

After the heady excitement of my Birthday Week, and the exploration of the Indiana Jones franchise, it’s back to Star Wars, my original true love, and some exciting news for gaming, following the Anaheim shenanigans last weekend!

X-Wing Wave 7

Let’s start with Wave 7 for X-Wing! Releases for this game continue apace, as we get new ships for all three of the current factions. The K-Wing makes an appearance for the rebels, something I’ve been particularly pleased about since I’m a big fan of the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy. It also gets a new move, SLAM, which basically allows it to move twice, so long as both movements are at the same speed. The Imperials get the TIE Punisher, though most people will probably know it better as the TIE Interdictor from the Galactic Battlegrounds game. It’s basically an advanced version of the TIE Bomber (from Wave 3), and both this and the K-Wing have some pretty snazzy ordnance they bring to the table. Very useful is the Advanced Ordnance card, which lets you use missiles and bombs twice, so that’ll most likely become a staple!

Scum takes up half of this wave, which makes sense, given they’re still quite far behind the other factions so far. Black Sun’s Kihraxz fighter makes its appearance, which has got me excited to build a Black Sun squadron, and Trandoshan bounty hunter Bossk’s ship Hound’s Tooth rounds out the experience. He has the ability to escape his destroyed ship in the headhunter Nashtah Pup, which is a nice addition – I was surprised at first that we don’t actually get a headhunter model, but it would most likely drive the price of the expansion up to include it and, as was pointed out to me, most Scum players will have Most Wanted anyway.

So it’s a pretty exciting release, and since I’ve started to play this game, I’m really looking forward to it!

X Wing Imperial Raider

Speaking of X-Wing, we’ve also had a more in-depth look at the Imperial Raider, which I feel has been on the horizon for months already!

Announced back in December (I think – it seems longer!), it’s something that I’m pretty excited to get my hands on, even though I don’t foresee any epic play on the cards anytime soon. There are some interesting bits and pieces there, though – and who knows, now that the Imperials have a big ship as well, maybe we’ll see more epic play games…

Imperial Assault reinforcements

More reinforcements have been announced for Imperial Assault, too. As someone mentioned on facebook, this is where the skirmish game really begins, and I can definitely see that. Up to now, we seem to have been having the lieutenant-like expansions similar to the Descent model, which basically replace tokens from the base game with actual miniatures, but with new chaps that we can bring to the table, it begins to feel much more like a miniatures battle game, much like the previous Star Wars Miniatures games from Wizards of the Coast and West End Games. Even though I haven’t been able to play with the base game yet, I’m hoping I can sell the idea to Tony with the skirmish side, then hook him in with the scenario-driven game. We shall see!

Imperial Assault Reinforcements

The miniatures do look great, though I’m not going to paint them – the manager at the local store has done his store copy, and that looks fantastic, but they’re too small and detailed for me!

Again, I’m pretty excited for these guys, even though I’ve yet to play the game. Star Wars Miniatures was one of my favourite games, back in the day – which is surprising, given that it’s got basically no story to it, and you’re just trying to wipe out your opponent before he wipes you out. But I played a lot of that game back in the day, and it’s really exciting to think we might get that sort of experience again, though on a much more sensible scale (as opposed to the blind-buy from Wizards).

And finally…

Making splendid use of my amazon vouchers, I’ve decided to go for the latest novels in hardcover. It seems Del Rey is moving to all their books coming out in hardcover now, so it’ll help to distinguish them from my now-Legends novels.

More Star Wars!

Well, this was unexpected…

So soon after the GAMA Trade Show stuff for Armada and Imperial Assault, we’re given yet more Star Wars goodness from FFG at this weekend’s Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim!

Yes, I still haven’t played Imperial Assault, and while the expansion model of lots of small packs of miniatures is a little worrying for the bank balance, it is nevertheless pretty exciting to see the game expand in this modular way, as you can pick and choose what you want – especially for the skirmish play, but also adding in actual miniatures for the scenario stuff is cool.

Next deluxe for the LCG is, of course, a welcome announcement, and by the looks of it, we’ll be getting Imperials and Smugglers. As a side note, Imperial Entanglements always reminds me more of the West End Games supplement than Obi-Wan’s line in A New Hope, and I always feel happy to see stuff like that 🙂

Wave 7 for X-Wing was a bit of a surprise, though a lot of folks will probably think it’s long overdue. My guess would be we’re getting one rebel, one imperial, and two scum ships, the Kihraxz Assault Fighter being affiliated with Black Sun of course (and already in the LCG, to boot!)

Anyhow, it’s good to see all the lines looking healthy, and the promise of lots more Star Wars games to come!

But wait – that’s not all!

The Lando story sounds like it could be good. Of course, I’m a big fan of AC Crispin’s Han Solo trilogy, and don’t really relish the idea of that being wiped away, but the comic is set sometime between Rebel Dawn and The Empire Strikes Back, so it’s possible that nothing will contradict the Bantam series there.

The Shattered Empire has already been briefly mentioned as part of the run-up to December’s film, and while I’m intrigued to see what Disney have decided to do with the post-Jedi era, the EU fan within me feels a bit insulted that the press release begins:

“The world has been wondering what happened after the fall of the Empire since the credits first rolled on ‘Return of the Jedi’ in 1983,”

We’ve known what has happened since 1990, and Heir to the Empire, thank you very much! Bah! So it’s with a degree of trepidation, and some scepticism, that I’ll most likely be reading this book when it comes out in September.

So while I’m still a bit sad about the loss of the EU as I knew it, the one bright spot on the horizon comes from this article on sw.com about the upcoming novel Aftermath, part of a trilogy that bridges the gap between episodes VI and VII with both new characters and “familiar faces”. Maybe Talon Karrde and Mara Jade live, after all? For all my love of the EU that I’ve just discussed, it’s something that I actually feel Bantam didn’t do all that well – the Empire fell at Endor insofar as the Emperor and Vader died, but what happened to the galaxy at large? Somehow, that epic sweep that the new trailer seems to sum up so nicely in the depiction of a crashed Star Destroyer was lost, and instead we got the X-Wing series, which was basically a set of novels showcasing just how awesome Corran Horn is as a person. But I’ve had that rant before. We do somehow lack that immediate sense of, just what the hell happened next?

Y’know, this may be the first Star Wars novel I buy in hardcover…

Star Wars: Aftermath

Scum & Villainy!

Picked up wave six of this game from the local store today, £75 well spent, possibly…!

 

So there we have it!

I’m thinking about signing up to an X-Wing league at my local store, can’t really decide if I want to do that yet if I’m honest. But anyway, it’s a thought!