Since I wrote my first blog post for this site, I have been thinking about what to write about next. I thought about some one-on-one dogfights I have engaged in recently, but at this point in X-Wing’s life cycle – and with second edition (2.0) soon to release – I did not think it would be as interesting to this audience. I do have my very first Store Championship competition coming up on August 26, 2018. I will be flying my Scum list and will do a write-up on my performance. Stay tuned!

About three months ago, as I crept deeper and deeper into the X-Wing community and dialogued with many ex- and current players – the former vastly outnumbering the latter, sadly – I stumbled across a solo campaign setting called Heroes of the Aturi Cluster. I had never heard of it, and astonishingly, many players do not know about this campaign. I discovered a fan page on Facebook, requested to join, and after my request was approved, began scouring the discussion threads and files sections for content…

…what was this gem I had just uncovered?!

What I found amounted to a veritable labyrinth of fan-made content that I am still working through today trying to piece it all together. There is the main campaign book, weighing in at 80 pages with accompanying files. The whole thing is “free” to print-and-play, if you have the resources to do so. I will discuss that part a bit later because even “free” is not truly free these days. But the content itself is free, and if you cut corners and can make do with a less-than-fancy version, it is virtually free all the way around.

I mentioned in my last post how I had traded in nearly $3000 USD of Magic: The Gathering cards to a local gaming store, and spent a lot of the store credit on various board games, primarily X-Wing. Additionally, I mentioned that I purchased all of the epic-class ships. To this day, if not for Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, those ships would be little more than desk toys for my office. Epic play has long since disappeared from the general X-Wing game tables, but Heroes adds several of the ships back in for thematic presence and storytelling. Members of the Facebook group have added even more ships and content because of the subsequent “waves” of ships released for the game by Fantasy Flight Games (henceforth referred to as “FFG”). This motivation and dedication is what drives Heroes beyond anything any company could produce in a cost-effective manner.

What do I mean by that? If the main campaign book is 80 pages, that would be easy for a company like FFG to produce. Well, if you check out the Facebook page for yourself – after first becoming a member – you will notice the copious amounts of content produced since that dawning moment that Josh Derksen created version 0.7 on September 21, 2015. There are side missions, quests, several sets of house rules produced and published by game shops to tweak some of the earlier Beta rules; an entirely new Scum-based campaign that adds the Scum ships to the player roster; enemy A.I templates; reference cards; mission cards; etc., etc. etc. There is so much material that players could get lost.

But let me comment on what I know, namely, the main campaign version beta 0.7. Once you download the ZIP file, unpacking it will net you two copies of the main campaign book PDF in two different print formats. You will have to pick which one will work best for you and your group, but it looks to be simply two different sizes: do you want a smaller form-factor book or a standard 8.5×11 version? Those are in there for you. There are also two versions of each of the support documents which contain the print-and-play terrain, stat, reference, and mission cards, player stat cards for the starting ships (X-Wing, Y-Wing, A-Wing, and B-Wing – other ships can be added later per the FAQ).

So I took all the files to Staples and began working up a quote on how much it would cost to print, bind, and laminate the stockpile of cards and templates. My worst fear came when the book quote came back…color laser printing is ridiculously expensive, so I bit the bullet, went home, and printed it all out on heavy cardstock with an inkjet. Does it look as crisp and nice as laser? Of course not, but it works and is more than sufficient. I printed out the new terrain – mines, ion clouds, fueling station, etc. – on sticker paper, and mounted them onto thick project board (also purchased at Staples for very little cost). I had to use an X-Acto knife to cut all that out, which took a good bit of time.

As you can see by the pictures, the effort was well worth it and I escaped with my wallet – and my marriage – intact! The cardboard works so well, much better in my humble opinion than the thinner stuff people are paying big bucks for. I admire the quality of the thinner, laser-cut components, but they move around way too much unless you have a Grip Mat. My cardboard terrain works perfectly on the standard 3×3 FFG game mat because of the better friction of cardboard. Plus, the way they interlock together makes a much more secure bond than the thinner stuff, and that is very important when the ships fly over this terrain. When it wobbles and slides around, it is very difficult to keep it all accurate and straight. I much prefer the way I did it to the expensive alternatives. Plus, I got to do it myself! What better way to get to know the game and components? Staples did do the lamination of the cards and templates, and spiralbound the book with a nice front and rear cover.

But how does it play? Well, for this noob in the X-Wing arena, this has been an absolute joy. Have you ever wondered what would happen to a Rebel GR-75 Medium Transport when it flies through an Imperial minefield and has its systems completely disabled? It will sit there taking ion missile shots from TIE Bombers while your Rebel ships try to fend off waves of TIE Fighters and Interceptors. And then, just when you think the GR-75’s energy has risen to the level necessary to jump to hyperspace and escape, a VT-49 Decimator class ship enters the board headed straight for the GR-75 armed with a boarding party intent on capturing it! If they do, the mission is over for the Rebels!

Or what about a highly defended fueling station outfit with laser cannon turrets and docking bays from which TIE fighters, bombers, interceptors, phantoms, advanced x1’s, or even a Decimator or Lambda shuttle can spring at any time! And you have an outer rim smuggler piloting the Falcon with a commando crew that needs to dock with the station, and make their way to the command module without blowing it up! All the dice rolling and strategic decisions that must be made to keep the turrets at bay while deciding whether or not to allow the commandos to blow up modules to add more of a chance to taking over the command module! AHHHHHH!!! This pic is from that mission:

And what is even better is the A.I. You may be wondering, “Come on, Jaxx, how can the Imperial side work properly against human opponents?” That is the genius and beauty that is Heroes deep system of Imperial ship A.I. The “dials” are replaced by paper templates that base their movement off dice rolls. But those rolls are based on the position and bearing of your ships. It will take a bit of getting used to. When do the Imperial ships swerve to miss an obstacle? That is all in there and accounted for! When do they break formation? That is all there. What if they are about to fly off the board? In the rules. Every little thing has been painstakingly tested and worked out. Is it like flying against humans? Of course not, but it is rather darn close! Honestly, my friends and I have looked at each other on more than one occasion with a lot of worry in our faces because the enemy ships did things that we could not have predicted because of the random dice rolls for positioning and even swerving to avoid problems. It is, in a word, brilliant, and it is one of the main reasons it is so fun to play. And because knowing your opponent’s dial – not the maneuver they chose, but the ship’s dial – is a thing in the base X-Wing game, knowing these dials will at least give you a clue as to where they may be heading! But the A.I. is challenging and can defeat you. That is fun!

The store owner where I buy and play games at said, “This is what I always imagined X-Wing to be.” How I interpreted that was that he longed for a contiguous and consistent campaign mode, and not just one-dimensional dogfighting. That is not to knock dogfighting because that is what X-Wing was designed to be. But this is Star Wars! The universe is so huge and the material so plentiful that a campaign mode seemed to be a no-brainer. In fact, when I first got into the game, I scratched my head and wondered why…until I remembered Imperial Assault. It is quite possible that FFG never went that direction in X-Wing because it would bump up against – and possibly run right past – their big campaign Star Wars game.

In the end, you owe it to yourself to investigate and immerse yourself into the world of Heroes of the Aturi Cluster. For 1-6 players and very few ships, you can have an awesome time in a unique campaign setting. If you have a large collection of 1.0 and have no interest in upgrading to 2.0, this may breathe new life into the game for you and your gaming group. It truly is an epic creation by literal fans, all 100% free…minus the cost of printing, which can be as expensive or inexpensive as you want it to be. But the joy you will receive in working cooperatively with your friends using ships that have long since been moved to the dust bin of X-Wing 1.0 history is unparalleled.

Scramble all fighters to the Aturi Cluster!