My son and I played our first X-Wing game just now. Very small duel between two Academy TIE fighters and a Red Squadron X wing with basic Droid for 24 pts per side. The idea was to learn the core concepts.
First, even with just limited forces it's clear the game has a lot of depth and much more Depth than Wings of War. The action system means choosing between a more defensive stance (evade in the case of nimble TIE fighters), an offensive stance (eg lock on with X Wing) or a balanced approach (focus for either ship). These choices need to be made in the context of the anticipated tactical situation. We're really looking forward to using custom pilots and secondary weapons to broaden the experience but just the core system is interesting.
Second, we learned that the sides are well balanced while being very different. To kill something you need to go on the offensive for a sort of "alpha strike" and time it well. For TIEs this meant getting to close range with both fighters to pummel the X Wing while using Focus actions to boost their firepower. For the X Wing it locking on and using focus on a single fighter in ine blow.
At first we both played too defensively and meandered all over the table trying to avoid getting hit. He did lots of evade actions and I was just trying to stay out of his nimble fighters' arc. He managed to hit me enough times that I lost both shields and was down to one hull point. I got smart, locked a fighter on one turn, came around on the next with Focus at close range and killed it with one solid shot.
In the end my son chose a perfectly timed evade maneuver that saved his bacon and on the next turn turned into my X Wing at an angle where I was in his arc but I couldn't get a shot on him. I was foolish and got into a turning contest with his remaining TIE fighter which finished off my X Wing.
I had been reluctant to buy the game since I find most "air combat" table top games boring and far inferior to PC air combat. In this case the designers managed to capture the flavor of Star Wars fighter combat with an elegant, very fast paced, and very deep system. Given the sci-fi setting they may have some advantages over historical games and they fully exploit that advantage to present a very entertaining puzzle for would-be Skywalkers.
A "standard" game is 100 points on a 3x3 surface. I can see that getting pretty cluttered if both sides go for numbers, say, 8 imperial ships vs 4 rebels. A mirror game of 8 vs 8 imperials could be really cluttered.
That being said it was great fun playing such an interesting game with just three units/models at such a fast pace. We completely lost track of time and the number of turns we played the pace was so fast and we were so engrossed in the action. After reading the rules I had thought the game might be so simple it would only shine with lots of ships in action. After this session it's clear you can have plenty of fun with the core set alone and that even with 4-8 ships per side the action will be fast paced once you pick up the core concepts.
The only potential down side I forsee is that it can be easy to forget certain rules, at least on our first go around. There are a lt of moving parts which can be hard to remember but at east there's not too much to handle at any one time. The designers did a good job of adding chrome to each phase or mechanic without overwhelming the total system.
RECOMMENDATION: hardcore air/space combat gamers should probably give it a miss. The lack of levels/3D space will probably annoy you.
But if you're hardcore and willing to suspend your disbelief or enjoy fast, light games with lots of depth then I don't think you'll be disappointed whether or not you're a fan of Star Wars. And if you like to tinker with rules the system is easily mod-able for other backgrounds or figures. Another thread covers that topic but I'm eager to try some Silent Death models with this system. Tweak the maneuvers and combat ranges to work on larger surfaces and to keep the fighters less tightly packed (short range is just 4" apart) and you could have a great space fighter game for 4x6 tables.
promised pictures!
