“Pew Pew” games as my wife would say, have been a staple of mine for the last few years. I started with WW1 biplanes (Wings of War, then Canvas Eagles), then WW2 planes (Wings again then Check Your Six and others) and finally Star Trek Attack Wing, which I still feel is better value than my latest addiction, but not without it’s issues*.

Star Wars X Wing was always the one that got away.

A confirmed Star Trek tragic, I had lost the Star Wars magic that struck me after seeing the first movie first hand as a ten year old. I cannot over state my love of the early movies at the time, but the following three broke my waning interest, even without seeing them. Something changed, leaving a hole that Star Trek and other sci fi themes filled to some degree, but the worn looking droids, star ships and ridiculous, but ridiculously cool laser swords, fighters and barely disguised WW1 & 2 guns as blasters had a lasting effect.

Recently (January), at an opportune time it seems, I opened an email from a favoured distributor, revealing their Star Wars X Wing 1st edition specials. The new edition had been out for a year or so and was starting to divide the buying public as the tournament players, who had become increasingly unhappy with the state of the game after 10 years, started to switch. Too many rules, too many exceptions to those rules and far too much meta-gaming had created a friendly, but frustrated tournament circuit. This led to most playing a select handful of winning squads over and over until FFG released a “nerfing” update, which forced them to shift to the next big thing. Squads such as the “U boats” (3 Jump Master 5000’s) went from striking terror into their foes hearts, to being just a pain to use.

Second edition was/is a breath of fresh air for the serious players, who will travel continents to play for state of national titles, but for casual players, the choice is less straight forward.

In a moment of weakness I pounced.

Five “The Force Awakens” core sets (for $100 au total!), netted me 15 ships, and a near endless supply of the collateral needed for play. First edition secure for now and the future! The TFA sets are an improvement in rules and components over the original “Red” core set, but the ships are less popular.

In stage one, I was determined to stick to the two factions represented in the sets; The First Order and Resistance from episodes VII to IX. The logic was sound. These ships are more robust and forgiving than the earlier period ships and they are considered well balanced, if a little “soft” for the tournament circuit. After all, I was just a casual player with only a few opportunities to play. I also liked the new movie.

I fleshed out the two factions as I could making the most of some excellent specials, picking up some expansions of the same ships (different cards), getting lucky with 3 Tie/sf’s, the last three in captivity that I could find, an Upsilon shuttle (dead scary to look at, but a bit flat to play), the Silencer, Heroes of the Resistance and two Bombers. I had depth and enough variety to fill most roles, but I kept researching and looking for bargains.

To clarify my needs as I saw them at the time;

To be able to design often asymmetrical scenarios for casual play and simple head to head, pick up games with players that may not be familiar with the game, while representing the complete “X Wing” experience as the forces available allowed.

At some point, the even better specials available in Scum and Villainy, a faction that I could just justify time line wise, (mostly through ignorance of the Expanded Universe), became too good to resist. This faction is nothing if not varied, offering bounty hunters, cartels, pirates, villains and mercenaries. Scooping up as many cheap buys as I could, this faction soon outnumbered the other two. Even better, they can fight amongst themselves. I have even done some re-paints in this faction (Star Vipers).

Then I felt it was ok to add the odd Renegade ship (2x Saws sets), that allowed me to field older vessels with the latest upgrades, then some Imperials as logical older ships for the First Order (Lambda shuttles, some Interceptors etc) and even some later period Rebels as a New Republic “Rogue Squadron”.

Ok so far. The collection was growing, but there was a vague feeling of controlled chaos.

Then the panic set in.

*Attack Wing gives a good game with less. It offers more factions and variety and the ships are capitol ships, which are naturally more robust and versatile on the table, meaning a core set and a few expansions can make for a good and varied set (I probably should have taken my own advice there). The problems are; varied scale, with some very weird inconsistencies, such as a properly scaled Enterprise A, but over sized Klingon Bird of prey, all of the Dominion ships similarly scaled, when the actual ships are hugely different in size etc. The paint jobs also leave a bit to be desired. The standard is not terrible, but the colours are inconsistent within the same fleets with some identical ships sharing up to three different paint colours or finishes.

My major gripe with it though is the blatant swapping and sharing of non cannon periods and factions. It not unlikely at a tournament (something I would never attend, but..) to find a Borg cube captained by Kirk, crewed by later period Romulans with Klingon weapons. This is extreme but not uncommon. I can get around most of these issues by controlling the scenarios I put up and imposing realistic limits of period and faction adherence, but that is only when I provide all of the game. It is odd that the Star Wars game is pretty clean, where the Star Trek one is a free for all. Not playing Cannon Star wars is on the nose, while playing Star Trek to the faction or even time line makes you a stiff.