Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our new weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here —and let us know what you think.

This week Ars Cardboard dives into miniatures wargaming—but forget stereotypes of tiny Napoleonic soldiers walking across home-crafted terrain. We’re talking about Star Wars miniatures here, from capital ships to TIE fighters to Darth Vader himself. If you’ve ever wanted to command a squad of X-Wings, take control of an Imperial Star Destroyer, or experience a shootout with stormtroopers, the current trio of licensed Star Wars miniatures games from Fantasy Flight have you covered. And with the Force Awakens mere days away, there's never been a better time to dive in.

If you haven’t played a miniatures game before, know that these aren’t quite like traditional board games. Movement takes place not on a board but on a large, flat play surface covered with stylized miniatures that represent squads, fleets, or squadrons. Movement and range calculations are based on physical distance and angles. Miniatures can pack a visceral cool factor—these aren’t just cards or chips on a board—but they can also be intimidating for the new player.

In the case of X-Wing and Armada, the highly detailed models also come pre-painted. The ability to open the boxes and immediately play is a convenience that has moved miniatures wargaming away from thick rulebooks and hours of preparation to something more accessible to casual players.

The third miniatures game, Imperial Assault, focuses on squad skirmishes within an overarching campaign. So unlike our other two games in focus, it provides a solid sense of story and narrative to those who want to feel like they’re playing a role in one of the Star Wars films.

Fortunately despite their differences, all three of these games are a blast to play.



























Star Wars: X-Wing

I was at Gen Con during the release of X-Wing in 2012, and watching towering piles of starter sets and blister packs evaporate was an impressive sight. Even more impressive is that, three years on, X-Wing is still going strong; the game is currently on its eighth “wave” of releases. X-Wing is the elder statesman of the Fantasy Flight Star Wars portfolio. It was the first and, in some ways, still the best at what it does.

Red five, standing by!

The launching point for the X-Wing Miniatures Game is the starter set, which comes in two varieties now: a red set with a Rebel Alliance X-Wing and two Imperial TIE fighters, and a new blue set, coinciding with the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The latter includes a T-70 X-Wing and two TIE/fo fighters, along with suitably appropriate upgrade cards such as BB-8. Either set works well to jump into the game.

In X-Wing, players pick a faction composed of the Rebellion/Resistance, the Imperials/First Order, or Scum (not supported in the starter set) and then build out their squadron of small ships. Points are expended to purchase ships and to upgrade cards/pilots to improve their capabilities. When complete, the ships take the field of play (probably your table).

Each miniature ship comes with tokens, a maneuver dial, and a card showing the ship’s combat stats. The dial handles movement control in the game and includes the various maneuvers that the ship can perform at different speeds: flying straight, banking gently, making a hard 90-degree turn, etc. Not all ships are built alike; the more maneuverable TIE fighter can perform hard banks, whereas the X-wing can only perform larger, sweeping turns. In each round, players secretly select their ships’ maneuvers using the dial. Once play begins, in order of initiative, each player reveals the chosen maneuver and then executes it on the field of play using supplied templates.

Combat harkens back to games like Wings of War, where part of the excitement of each dogfight is not knowing what your opponent is going to do—or inadvertently flying to a spot where you were not expected to go. (More likely is the comical realization that your own ships are about to fly into one another.) When caught in a tricky situation, pilots can risk a “red maneuver” to, say, shake that TIE on their tail, but doing so causes structural stress to the ship. These risk/reward decisions heighten the tension of each engagement.

The barnstorming spirit of dogfighting—and the fact that the rules specifically do not allow you to pre-measure your moves—is what makes X-Wing so much fun.

After all ships have maneuvered in a round, they can fire. A range ruler checks for distance, and each player gathers a set of custom attack dice, as indicated on each ship’s card. An attack roll is opposed by the other player’s defensive roll (which is determined by their ship stats plus any applicable upgrades). Evades can cancel out hits, while doing a target lock or focus during the activation phase could provide additional hits or re-rolls. This chess match of maneuvering into the best position for the best shot—and not getting shot at in return—is where X-Wing truly excels.

Damage pummels the shields (if any—poor unshielded TIE fighter) and then slams against the hull. Some hits cause critical effects, which can blow your engine or stun your pilot. Once a hull is destroyed, the ship’s miniature is removed, and victory points are awarded equal to the value of the ship and its upgrades.

One small downside to the combat system: since die rolls are not simultaneous and require comparing, the game can lag a bit at this juncture. Armada (reviewed below) uses a faster resolution mechanic that we prefer.

A hive of scum and villainy

Beyond the Starter Set, a huge world of options opens up. Fantasy Flight has released numerous expansions, each with a miniature, appropriate counters and dials, as well as new cards. Older, original release ships still remain viable thanks to new upgrade cards and pilots, so while the metagame evolves, your investment doesn’t go to waste.

Primarily a skirmish game, the rub for X-Wing is its pure deathmatch play; you field squadrons onto a play area filled with obstacles and then try to kill each other. While the base game comes with three missions, they’re entirely optional and short-lived. A handful of missions and campaigns have trickled out over the years, but ultimately X-Wing comes down to straight-on dogfighting—tactics rather than grand strategy. The game is terrific at providing a dogfighting experience; even so, fighting simply for the sake of fighting loses some luster eventually.

X-Wing is easy to teach and fast to set up; my 10-year-old son repeatedly requests replays, and small matches resolve quickly. Larger engagements can sometimes devolve into turning battles and wars of attrition with their attendant stretches of boredom. (Armada addresses this with its fixed number of turns and codified objectives.)

But these concerns are a small price to play for some absolutely beautiful pre-painted miniatures and game support that’s second to none. Plus, when you pull off that perfect maneuver no one saw coming, you’ll get to revel in a great shot that was one-in-a-million.

The good

Affordable, fast fun

Stunning pre-painted miniatures

Massive game support and catalog of options

The Bad

Mostly deathmatch play makes the game feel lacking in focus at times; the 1 vs 1 battle that seems to go on forever

The ugly