Welcome!

You've stumbled across Dr. P's Dorky Blog, a rather pointless collection of entries that celebrate all things related to the dorky pursuit of gaming and the all-consuming hobby it supports! The blog mainly helps to serve as a scrapbook of gaming goodness and painting projects. From time to time, you may also catch a few oddball posts related to my teaching, research, and other hobbies.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Stay on target...Dork Club, you're my only hope!

The joy of a new game that meets your expectations is amazing!  Couple that with a childhood love for an intellectual property like Star Wars and money departs the wallet faster than a certain YT-1300 stock light freighter on a Kessle Run!  That's right, Fantasy Flight's new game, X-Wing, is one of my new favorites!  It couples the solid tactical mechanics of Wings of War/Glory with enhanced template movement and firing to deliver a great gaming experience!


I was very impressed by the game during a demo of the prototype way back at GenCon 2011.  Slightly more than a full year later, it finally hit store shelves (cough...discount online retailers...cough).  For only ~$25 you get the starter box that includes two TIEs, one X-Wing, cards, maneuver templates, dice, etc.  Everything you need to get playing is included and the production quality is excellent.  The prepainted fighters are gorgeous!  The mechanics of play are very easy to learn, there's lots of tactical fun, and the game has an addictive squad building setup that is engaging.  It also goes well beyond the "kill all the other jerks" by including a number of objective based scenarios in the rulebook.


Again, the game is really simple to learn and the Dork Club gang got going in no time.  Our first game was a bit ambitious in that we set up a challenging Death Star Trench run scenario at about 150 pts per side.  Ships were all over the place and the Rebels were hard pressed to avoid the horde of TIE fighters.  Vader is a beast in his TIE advanced x1 and Y-Wing ion turrets are also great fun!  After losing several Y-Wings and X-Wings, Wedge and Dutch made a move for the trench.  Valiant Dutch slowed down to buy some time for Wedge to take the shot.  Wedge moved in, locked in with the targeting computer, fired his proton torpedoes...and whiffed...epic fail.  Still, it was a great time and a nice trial for a large game.

This weekend, I played 1v1 with a friend and tried some simpler dogfights at about 60 pts per side.  The squadron building is aspect is great fun and there are some really nice combos to be had.  I can't wait to get more games in soon; may the force be with you!