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I am keen to see how this develops:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=2526

If it's anything like the first one from the '80's it will suck really bad.

Hmmm...interesting. Ill have to keep an eye on this. It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off, as the fighter vs fighter minis game has been tried many times, and failed every time. Simulating a dogfight on the tabletop is like trying to simulate a 1 on 1 martial arts fight...there are so many little things going on you can spend a lot of time to achieve very little.

I'm holding out a fair bit of hope for this one. I'm a big fan of the "Wings of War" games, and if they can balance realism and abstraction in the same way that game does, I'll be forced to buy yet another game.

The real problem I see with this game, as with all space combat games, is that combat in space would not happen on a 2-D plane (it can work in airplane games with a touch of abstraction, but it just fails in space).

Any way, I'm hoping for a mission-based game with small-ish squadrons duking it out (2-5 craft to a side). As long as the game has strict objectives it should keep itself from devolving into "I shot down all your craft so I win". Those heroic sacrifices to complete the mission are what cinematic gaming is all about!

Any way, I'm excited for this game, and I'm hoping it rocks!

I hope it is good just so i can have an excuse to annoy my opponent with random SW quotes:

"We can't repel firepower of that magnitude"

"Lock s-foils into attack poisiton"

"You've switched off your targeting computer, are you ok?"


etc.

It looks like this game will be exclusively Tie Fighters vs. X-Wings, but no doubt post release expansions will expand it.

And like Etna's Vassal said, I truly do hope that thegamewill not be 1v1 space combat. Not only will that get old quickly, but it flies in the faceof the Star Wars background (Tie fighters being very lightly armed (2 laser cannons vs 4 laser cannons and 2 proton torp launchers on the x-wing), lacking in shields, and very lightly armored. The only advantage the Tie had over the X-wing was the superior acceleration and speed (and arguably maneuverability, although thats debatable given the physics of space) and of course the vastly superior numbers.

chaos0xomega wrote:It looks like this game will be exclusively Tie Fighters vs. X-Wings, but no doubt post release expansions will expand it.

And like Etna's Vassal said, I truly do hope that thegamewill not be 1v1 space combat. Not only will that get old quickly, but it flies in the faceof the Star Wars background (Tie fighters being very lightly armed (2 laser cannons vs 4 laser cannons and 2 proton torp launchers on the x-wing), lacking in shields, and very lightly armored. The only advantage the Tie had over the X-wing was the superior acceleration and speed (and arguably maneuverability, although thats debatable given the physics of space) and of course the vastly superior numbers.

That and vastly superior pilots.

I don't know about that one. The Rebel Alliance (and later New Republic) had some really excellent pilots flying the X-Wing. The Imperials had their own elite pilots, but it seems their ace squadrons like the 181st were transferred into better starfighters (TIE Interceptor, etc.) instead of continuing to fly the TIE/In.

I'm also going to assume that only the T-65 model will be present, although it would be cool to see the EU variants.

I'm kind of excited... kind of skeptical. The 'ship battles' miniatures game for Star Wars that WOTC released was ill recieved... at least around my area it was. It would be cool to have a fleet of Clawcraft though.

djphranq wrote: The 'ship battles' miniatures game for Star Wars that WOTC released was ill recieved...

Probably because it was a throwaway offshoot from the regular Star Wars mMiniatures game, and wasn't very well thought out, or very good.

A large part of the problem with trying to do space battles in the Star Wars setting is scale... There is just so much disparity between the size of the fighters and the capital ships... or even just between the capital ships themselves. By focussing solely on fighter battles. FFG have at least solved that issue. A further game later down the track focusing on capital ship-scaled naval engagments would be nice.

insaniak wrote:

djphranq wrote: The 'ship battles' miniatures game for Star Wars that WOTC released was ill recieved...

Probably because it was a throwaway offshoot from the regular Star Wars mMiniatures game, and wasn't very well thought out, or very good.

A large part of the problem with trying to do space battles in the Star Wars setting is scale... There is just so much disparity between the size of the fighters and the capital ships... or even just between the capital ships themselves. By focussing solely on fighter battles. FFG have at least solved that issue. A further game later down the track focusing on capital ship-scaled naval engagments would be nice.

I concur... maybe something like Starfleet Battles (I think thats what its called).

I had a chance to play the demo for this, at GenCon.

I was...underwhelmed.

The prototypes are about WotC/Micromachiens sized, on plastic bases that contain the full information for the ship. Each fighter operates independently, and the main box will ship with X-Wings and Tie Fighters. They have a variety of informational tokens, and there are 'turn arcs' which are used to maneuver the ships. This is a 2d board game. Ships could take a lot of 'damage', and really didn't give me the "feel" of Star Wars, per-se. Now, admittedly, no-one wants their starfighter to go 'boom' with a single shot, so there's always trade-offs.

While they say they will release more fighters, it really had a "Wings of War" vibe, and I do not think the game will scale up to more than a handful of ships per side/player. It is unlikely that anything larger than a Stock Light Freighter will be introduced as a playable vessel.

That's my $0.02.

--Brian

While I haven't fully debriefed my buddy that played the demo...his impression was "underwhelming and unbalanced."

Shotgun wrote:While I haven't fully debriefed my buddy that played the demo...his impression was "underwhelming and unbalanced."

That's unfortunate. Hopefully, the demoed version is an early prototype that will go through significant changes before release...

No, sir, I'm afraid that, aside from some minor changes to the pieces, the demo was definitely the game.

Sad to hear the ho-hum reviews so far. I played Wings of War in the past but wasn't hugely psyched about that...it's more of a "play with non-gamer friends" type of game, and I think X-Wing will end up being similar. Plus it looks rather expensive to get into. But it'd probably be a fun little distraction to try while watching the movies or something, kind of like having a round of Axis and Allies Miniatures after watching Saving Private Ryan.