Do you want to fly an X-Wing?
Or tie fighter? Or any other awesome ship from the Star Wars universe?
If you answered "hell yes!" to any of these questions than you'll understand why I've gotten really into the X-Wing Miniatures game recently.
I've played a lot of games in my life, some at fairly competitive levels, but this is the first miniatures game that I've fallen in love with. Long ago I tried getting into Warhammer, then HeroClix, but I was young and none of my friends wanted to play. Now when I get into a game I don't give up so easily, and living in Austin there is a scene for pretty much every game.
Recreating a classic battle around the Death Star. Unfortunately for the Rebellion, my tie fighters won this time.
I've spent the last two Friday evenings at Dragon's Lair for their weekly X-Wing meetup and it's been great. Everyone there has been super welcoming, encouraging, and fun to play with. The event organizer even lends out squads from his personal collection so newcomers can join in the dogfights.
On the first Friday of every month, they do very casual four player tournaments where you play the other three players once each. Last week was the first time I'd played anyone other than my buddy Chaz, but I still managed to beat all three of my opponents and come away with $15 store credit. Conveniently $15 is what the small ships cost, so I immediately added another ship to my squad: the Inquisitor's Tie Advanced Prototype.
Close up of my tie defenders making the approach on an A-Wing and X-Wing. You can also see my face down dials, which is how you secretly set your ships' movements for the turn. I love this colorful map that we got to use, too bad they were only given out to the Top 16 players from last years Austin area regional tournament.
In my last game of the mini-tournament, I faced off against some bounty hunters in a Trandoshan Slaver and a few Y-Wings (yes you can be bounty hunters, not just Rebels or Imperials).
If you like Star Wars, and you like tabletop games, X-Wing Miniatures is definitely worth checking out. The minis all come pre-painted, you just have to put them on the stands and start flying. It's not the cheapest game around, but compared to lots of other games I've played (cough, cough Magic the Gathering), the price point to be competitive is pretty reasonable.
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I introduced my friends to this game when the Core Set came out a few years ago. We quickly realized how much fun this game is, but also that it costs an arm and a leg. I'm pretty sure I stopped around $250, but a couple of my friends continued on, and now one of them even plays in the competitive tournaments. (He was at one in Syracuse a few months ago.) I'll still play every once in awhile for fun, but the meta of this game has changed so much, I easily get killed. While fun, I hope you have the time and money to commit. I sure didn't.
I agree it isn't a cheap game, but as someone who has spent thousands of dollars over my lifetime on magic cards, and picked up plenty of $40-60 board games and video games that I barely played, $200 isn't much for a game I really love. But I also used a big amazon gift card I'd gotten to start off my collection, so that made it a lot easier. If you know what you want to fly and what is good you can easily put together a few great lists for less though. I also have friends with more ships than me, so it's easy to borrow things that I need to fill out a list. The scene in Austin is also such that you can go the the more casual meetups and just have fun flying whatever against other people doing the same thing and not worry about the competitive meta.
I have also been enjoying the game. Easy to get into and complex enough to keep it interesting.
Great community as well.