Ah but great fun can be had with a 4'x4' Death Star game mat (or several). Over on BGG there are files to make a game board for the trench run attack. There are rules for laser turrets (not very accurate as it should be!) and trench collisions.Originally Posted by Naharaht
Eric
I saw SW in the theaters at the age of 7 when it was first released. I still have most of my toys (sorry...collectibles :-P ) and my own children are now having fun playing with them. I have a good amount of the SW PocketModels ships having snatched up several of the tins on huge sale from TrU when they discontinued, and it's fun but I'm not a huge fan of that system. Still...it was Star Wars.
Shortly after XWing came out a friend introduced me to it and I personally love it, at the scale it's at now. It does a great job capturing the flavor of fighter battles of the original three films IMO. The rules are very basic. My 10 and 8 year olds play fine (my 10 year old gives me a good run for my money most games), and even my 5 year old "plays". He tells me where he wants his ship to go and how fast and I help him find the right template, but other than that he does the movement, picks his targets, measures and rolls his dice (target Locks and special abilities need some extra guidance). I have pride on how sharp my kids are but if kindergartner can play the basic game it's a good sign it's pretty well designed. :-)
Once you have the basics down, the game can play pretty quick. My oldest loves to get as many ships on the table as possible and those games can take a couple hours to play, but at reasonable sizes you can get through a game in under an hour easy. Scenarios are really fun but there aren't that many out there yet so we often do point matches. The point system seems well balanced and we keep a few lists at different point levels in the box for quick play without having to recalculate everything.
I was a little concerned when they expanded the scale to include shuttles, Falcon and Slave I but I have found they still play well and are balanced in points. I like the new options it brings regarding crew and such. I just cannot see the larger ships as having much interest to me. This is a fighter-scale game in my view. Getting to something like the Corvette you're just going to have either unrealistic maneuvering of that or it's going to be a stationary gun platform to attack or a slow moving objective to defend. The shuttles are enough of that role for this scale. If they want to have a second, similar, game dealing with fleet actions and start a new scale of ships for that I'd probably go for it, but no interest in going "biggie" with a tactical fighter based game.
As for the tournament focus...personally I don't care less in this case. We don't have any local tournament scene for this and I'm ok with that. If there is a tournament focus in the game I would give it a nod to keeping things well balanced so far and that's a plus for me. I think it's ok if a company has tournament participant special items and even tournament 'win' specials, but I prefer to see those as unique paint jobs, signed / limited edition cards, resin models with LED lights, etc. rather than something stronger. As mentioned above uber-anything as a victory prize is a bad idea. Giving the best players access to uber units is usually a quick way to create a glass ceiling in a tournament world and discourage new players.
Since they pretty much have produced all 'real' ships from the first three movies I have very little interest or concern where they go from here. I just hope they keep these current ones in production and available long enough for me to collect what I want. Vader's TIE was the only thing I wanted as a single. I have 2 YWings but would like a third. Four XWings and six TIEs. Falcon and Slave I. I need a couple BWings, 3-4 AWings, 4 Interceptors, 2 Bombers and an Imp Shuttle to feel I have everything I want. So whatever tournament and expansion stuff they need to do to keep the hobby alive long enough for me to collect that I'm good with. :-)
BTW, the simplistic but representative game rules, combined with quality pre-painted minis (I prefer to paint my own but no time!) of XWing is what eventually lead me to discover the SoG kickstarter. So that's another plus for this game.
......
Han shot first
Hm -- my experience is what I call "nail-driver" games, where all game long people are scoring minimum damage, slowly chipping away points until someone is down to 1 or 2; then delivering a Massively Overkilling Blow. It's like driving in a nail: {tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap *WHAM*}. :)
GREEDO.
NEVER.
FIRED.
Bloody revisionists....
;)
Does. Not. Matter. If he could've, he would've. Han shot first to prevent Greedo from doing so himself. Justifiable Homicide either way.
Yeah, I don't get the purpose of the revision anyway. Somwhere between the late '70's and the late 90's was it no longer considered acceptable to shoot a person who pulls a gun on you. If that was the case back in the day, the wild west would have needed much bigger jails. I'm pretty sure that aiming a deadly weapon at someone is 'threat of deadly force' which is the exact same position on the force continuum as 'use of deadly force' since deadly weapons aren't to be used as warning devices. So, to Han I say "May the use of force be with you."
Remember they's also edited ET to replace the guns carried by the police with radios. Couldn't scare the kiddies watching, eh?
Where I live, if you give another person cause to reasonably believe that you have imminent intent to inflict death or grievous bodily harm on them, or to commit a forcible felony like rape or kidnapping, they are still legally authorized to put you down like a rabid dog where you stand.
As for SW... if the sculpts are tapped out, the only way to satisfy the "Shiny Shiny MUST HAVE NEW STUFF!" crowd becomes new paint schemes for different squadrons... and of course that means powercreep, like in Axis & Allies Miniatures, new more powerful ability cards being packed in with the new minis. If there's nothing making you buy more of their stuff every so often, how do you expect them to separate you from your money? LOL
Not the point -- the point is: Anyone who's seen the True Quill knows: Greedo never fired at all -- not first, not even second. "Han Shot First" is as much Revisionism as having Greedo fire at all. :)
Gotcha. Just trying to point out that Han being the only one to get a shot off, PARTICULARLY with what he obviously knew of Greedo, doesn't make him the bad guy some want to paint him as.
Indeed -- to borrow a line from _Demolition Man_: "I saw the security footage -- Greedo had a good ten seconds to decide where to put the blaster-bolt in Han's head... and when someone like Greedo has a gun to your head, ten second is nine-and-one-half seconds longer than you live". >;)
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