Pegasus Bridge unboxed

Lately I received my copy of Warlord Games' huge Pegasus Bridge set. It was a bit like Christmas when I got the large, heavy parcel and I was really curious what the boys from Nottingham boxed.

But first of all I weighted the box and with about 4.6 kg or more than 10 lbs you get a lot of bang for your buck:

After opening the box my expectations were completely fulfilled. There are four bundles of laser-cut MDF parts for the bridge itself, the Café Gondrée and the pillbox near the bridge approach. Additionally there are the appropriate construction manuals, some resin parts and a couple of figures:

More precisely there are enough sprues to build up twenty German soldiers, a 55mm gun, a MG-42 team and thirteen twelve British paras and the exclusive Major Howard miniatures which is only available with the Pegasus Bridge battle sets:

The figures are from Warlord Games' usual range and have the well known quality. Especially the metal miniatures are excellently detailed, slender and depict lively poses. The casting quality is appropriate. There is little flash and no major faults. In fine: I like those Red Devils a lot.

The Germans look very well too. The metal miniatures bear the same qualities as their British counterparts and are as good as these. The plastic reinforcements are multi-part miniatures. That make them very flexible on the one hand but requires some additional work for cleaning several parts and glueing them together. Although I'm about to turn away generally from platics for this reason, the late war Germans from Warlord Games look very well. A lot of interesting head and weapon options and the advantage of easy conversions.

Additionally there are some resin parts for entrenchments. A gunpit for the 55mm gun and two sandbag pieces for the MG-42 nest. All three in excellent quality but unfortunately the gunpit has a large sprue bush on the bottom side. It'll cost some work to remove this...

One thing I waited for excitedly was the special figure for Major John Howard. Besides Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Johnny Frost and Major General Roy Urquhart he was kind of hero of my younger days since I first watched "The Longest Day" where Richard Todd re-enacted him. All too well I remember the heroic assault on the bridge and his "Hold until relieved" order.

Anyway Warlord Games made a really nice figure of him. At first glance I was a bit disappointed because I irrevocably envisioned him with a beret but after a closer look on the painted model I like the dynamic pose more than I dislike the helmet:

All in all an excellent set which promised to become a real eye catcher when well assembled and painted. I have no idea how large the bridge will or how long it'll take to build and paint it. My goal is to have it finished for June 2014. I'll start with the pillbox rather soon because it seems to be the easiest of the three kits. Hoepfully a good chance to gain some experience with mdf kits since it's the first one for me.

Reviewing X-Wing

A photo I took on my workbench yesterday and edited it slightly...

There are games that arrest one's attention but disappear between other projects. For me the old Wings of War was such a game. I saw it years ago on a fair and liked the test game we played. Since my wife didn't like it at all I forgot about it and its further edition were beyond my radar. But last year Fantasy Flight Games published a follower of this line of ancestors which I couldn't ignore:

After lurking around the core set for nearly a year I bought it last week and whish to present a short review of it. Somehow Anatoli from Anatoli's Gameroom blog had the same idea and presented his review some days before (here). It's really worth reading and I hope not to bore you with my humble point of view.

Contents of the starter kit

Actually the box is packed with a lot of stuff. Obviously and most important it holds three miniatures: Two Tie-Fighters and one X-Wing. Additionally the rules, pilot cards, damage cards, upgrade cards, manoevre wheels for all the ships, manoevre templates, special dice for firing and dodging, a bunch of different tokens as well as a set of mission material like satelites, asteroids and a shuttle token.

Contents of the X-Wing core set. Except the small blue box which I bought in the hardware store.

All of the stuff is well designed and of good quality. The miniatures come pre-painted and except of a small fault at one of the Ties' solar panels I see no reason for repainting or improving them. Even in closeup view they do rather well as you can see on the picture at the top of my post.

Rather mediocre pics of Tie-Fighter and X-Wing. Remember, they're 1:287 scale.

Therefore quality: 5 / 5

On the one hand that's a lot of high quality stuff, but on the other hand three ships is nothing more but a teaser. It's enough to learn the rules and practise the game mechanics but the three suggested missions are rather shallow. Really annoying is that there aren't enough dice to use all rules. E. g. when you fire the X-Wing's primary weapons at short range, you need four red dice, but there are only three in the starter set. While the lag of additional ships could be accepted as starter set factor, including too few dice smells just like daylight robbery to. Especially because FFG offers additional sets of dice...


Playability: 2 / 5

The Rules

After reading the rulesbook I got the impression that the rules should work well and smoothly. After two games which I played against myseld this impression proved to be right. At the beginning of each turn the players chose which manoevres their ships shall fly and adjust the manoevre wheels suitably. Afterwards the manoevre are flown with the worst pilot beginning. Then special actions can be performed and last but not least combat takes place. This yet starting with the best skilled pilot first. Hits and damage is worked out by special d8 and a set of damage cards. It works well and after some few sessions anyone should have taken the core rules in. If you are interested in them, look at FFG's homepage where they offer a free PDF (here) or at Heidelberger Spieleverlag for the German version (here).
But in spite of the simple rule the games promise to be exiting and anything but simple. It's rather hard to anticipate which manoevre the opponent might use and counteract in advance. Seems to promise a lot of suspenseful battles.

Ruleset: 4 / 5

Expandability

Meanwhile two waves of additional ships hit the market and are so popular that they've been sold out for week if not for months. They deliver additional Tie- and X-Wing-Fighters as well as Tie-Interceptor, Y-Wing and A-Wing. Second wave provided the Millennium Falcon and Boba Fett's Slave I. Those are still available.
However rules include arrangements for custom squadrons which may include the additional ships. Thereby one could employ nearly any number or combination of the available ships depending on the mission terms and conditions.

However related to the nice miniatures that causes a high amount of expandability and a lot of potential to collect them.

Expandability: 5 / 5

Conclusion

After all X-Wing is an entertaining dogfight simulation game with the potential to create complex missions either from the Star Wars films or completely free. It's collection aspect complies to fans and gamers alike. Unfortunately the core set doesn't provide more than absolutely necessary to play small games to learn the rules. Therefore serious players will have to invest into another core set or some of the expansions.
But under these conditions X-Wing is a really good game about the combats most of us know from the Star Wars movies. I definitely stay tuned!

By the way here is the original photo: