chaosbunker.de
28Jan/210

Star Wars – A long time ago on a gaming table far, far away

I wrote a couple of times about how well Mandalorian was produced and how much I enjoyed it. It picked up the satisfaction I had with Rogue One, and brushed away the lower excitement I had with the final trilogy. The skirmish battles, the rag-tag crew of individuals, with bounty hunters, scum and rebels, all set in the western and eastern inspired space opera. So I looked into Star Wars on the tabletop.

So far I only had Imperial Assault and X-Wing on my plate, and for that the IP works quite well. A dungeon crawler with two clear sides, good and bad, have your heroes fight squads of Imperial goons and hired guns. And for X-Wing, picking up the Wings of War engine and used it for the sci-fi setting and breaks with one of the major disadvantages of the Star Wars IP for a tabletop wargame, the limited amount of factions.

Star Wars Imperial Assault Fischkrieg - Space Mat

From what I see, Star Wars Legion is produced at a good level of quality. Packaging is done at value, the casting looks fine so far. It is plastic, but more along the lines of Mantics better quality restic, not hard plastic on a sprue. And availablity is a pain in the ass, I got the few boxes that I wanted from four different traders, and the prices are rather random. Some stock is available in high / endless numbers, others seem to be out-of-stock all the time. And don't get me started on limited miniatures. We had that limited edition Obi-wan mess up at the Spiel, and the store exclusive Luke is offered for insane rates on eBay ... so much for promoting the loyal store customers. I don't care about the Legion ruleset, I intend to use the miniatures with rules like Rogue Stars, Scrappers or Black Ops. So that switch from Fantasy Flight Games to Atomic Mass Games is noted, but doesn't change anything (and I catched that rather odd swap of the designers).

Star Wars Legion - Stock Osprey Wargames

What's the problem about limited amount of factions? Look at world war 2 and the disproportional distribution of armies, it feels like every second army is Germans, and when you meet Americans it is mostly the 101st airborne. And that was a world war, with quite a lot participants on boths sides. So imagine how that translates on Star Wars, where you have the Empire and the Rebels. So, yeah lots of Storm Troopers (to be fair, they give you not only regular grunts, but shore, snow and scout troopers), and on the other side a few rebels. Want to build something exotic? Yeah, good luck with three poses of wookies. And as for characters? Get ready for the 384th reload of Luke in a fancy dress. With limited releases and other fancy stuff, on top of that weird availability, limiting the chances to get your hands on a well balanced assortment. Games Workshop does limited releases too, but they have 500 different Primaris Ltn. for you to choose from, and 11 more different armies in 40k alone. Next to that, yeah, you get what is "canon" or might be known from one of the movies, but it is primarely about the main characters. But what I like is that they cover options like different weapon poses or heads with most of the characters. That's neat and gives a bit more variation to the same few models you'll probably see with every second army (if you think that seing Archaon or Nagash with the most of chaos or undead armies was annoying, think of Vader going along with every scout patrol...).

A lot of things that speak against using the IP for platoon sized or bigger game, with few exceptions. BUT for small skirmishes, something along the lines of a tabletop role play game, the whole Italo-Western in Space works quite well. And much better than other settings, due to its size and colour fullness of the universe, for example compared with Star Trek.

Star Wars Legions - Rebels Star Wars Legions - Empire

So what do you need to begin with that? Well, Star Wars has been to the tabletop before, there were a few WizKids publications in the past, you can use Fantasy Flight Games Imperial Assault models, the more recent Legion kits and third party products from companies like Skull Forge Studios. Agis Neugebauer has done some great work, mixing and matching the various products on the market, you can take a look on his page AgisN in the Star Wars section.

And beyond that, you benefit from Star Wars being a broad brand, there toys on the market, that depending on their scale might suit your projects, along with model kits by Revell or Bandai. For example the Bandai AT-ST is at 29 EUR much cheaper than the Legion counterpart at 49 EUR, especially if you're going for the terrain variant of the downed AT-ST (~45 EUR).

Star Wars - Snowspeeder Star Wars - Bandai AT-ST

In the meantime I am waiting for the last parcel to arrive, covering some made-to-order prints (expect some 3d printed stuff in general on here in the future). The boxes above are enought to set up 8 to 12 model large warbands for the empire, the rebel alliance and a neutral faction, and I will go into detail on some of them in the future (especially the ordered resin prints). The surplus, along with the cards and such will be sold.

Posted by Dennis B.

Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

No comments yet.


Leave a Reply

Trackbacks are disabled.