X-WING 2nd EDITION

X-WING 

2nd EDITION

Well the Force is strongly with us once more and looking at the box and even inside the box, you could be forgiven for thinking that very little has changed.  Looking closely, I didn't find much to make me depart from that initial impression. 

The packaging, storage of the ships, and all the markers, range ruler and movement templates, dice etc are totally the same.  So what are the differences and how significant are they?  Well, the rule book is eight pages shorter!!  Wasn't expecting that.  The T-65 X-wing model has pivoting S-foils.  A neat touch to physically show the switch to the attack position, but a cosmetic nicety at bottom.

Some of the contents

The Manoeuvre Dials are slightly less impressive, but are far more functional.  Unlike the original where you could only see the movement chosen and could only check the range of a particular craft's manoeuvres by dialling through them, the face of the new dials displays all the move types and you rotate the back disc to point down at your choice of manoeuvre.  That is a really helpful change.

Here you can see the revamped, easy to read manoeuvre dials plus the ship tokens to fit in the bases, followed by the normal, three basic ships: one X-wing and two Tie-fighters.

The organisation of the rule book follows generally the sequence as before.  A page of Fundamental Concepts is slipped in between Components and Set Up, which now has a much smaller diagram and, in the main, all illustrations tend to be smaller.  The key one omitted, which surprises me, is the very useful Ship Card Anatomy.

Instead, you get a thorough example of how to use the new Position Marker.  a very good addition to the card board components that helps you mark the position of a ship that is obstructing the path of another ship's manoeuvre, but not something that needs a careful set of eight little pictures to show you how to use it. 

Spot the new Position Markers

{just above the Manoeuvre templates on the righthand side}

It seems especially unnecessary when the original important Example of an Attack is paired down from 2 full pages to 3/4 of a page.  My impression is that the small number of new elements has perhaps drawn the focus from basic points.  Of these other new features, often linked to new markers, is the addition of Force Charges - that's definitely a concept that deserves to have been introduced.  

As before lots of lovely markers, 

with several new ones making an appearance.

There are several other tweaks added through new tokens, though I found the list of concepts about gaining and spending tokens seemed almost too obvious to be necessary.  By contrast, the introduction of  new Actions, such as Cloak, Jam and Reinforce are very welcome.

Lots of cards

Lots more

And still some more!

Finally, among the changes is one to Squad Building, which features in both sets of rules and is only applicable in moving to games involving more than the three ships in the core box.  This has been developed by providing Quick Build cards that provide predetermined choices.  I like this for ease of play especially for those coming new to the game.  However, they would seem to have taken the place of the three Missions provided in the original base game.

The next step I really didn't like.  When you want to move on to the full player control of the traditional points building system, you have to download the Squad Builder ap.  A small advantage of this is that the ap. prevents you from accidently [or, heaven forbid, deliberately] building an illegal squad.  I know that there won't be many who don't have the necessary smart phone/tablet/etc., but I'm not in favour of it being wholly out of the realms of a paper print-out.

In conclusion, the new edition is every bit as good as the old one and overall the addition of new Actions and their related tokens is to be welcomed.  For the person new to X-wing, all's fine.  For those, like myself, with 2 copies of the original edition plus a variety of other ships, including a Millenium Falcon, I have more than enough to indulge any Star Wars' inclination I have and won't feel the need to follw the new star.  My concern is for the dedicated or even marginal Tournament player.  Will they be facing a whole new outlay to take part, with once again Wave on Wave of ships or a whole series of conversion kits?

As always thanks to Asmodee for providing not only the review copy, but three bonus ships.

RRP £24.62  X-wing 2nd edition