May the sixth be with you?

OK so I'm a couple of days late posting about Star Wars....

A colleague at work who's a Star Wars fan alerted my to Fantasy Flight's announcement of a second edition of the X_Wing Miniatures Game.

Now I'm not a great Star Wars geek but enjoy getting in the odd game of X-Wing and I'd like to own the main ships from the movies.  By 'main ships' I pretty much mean those I can remember and to be honest that's not that many.  I have several X-Wings and Y-Wings, loads of TIE fighters and Vader's TIE advanced, the Millennium Falcon (of course) and the fancy Lambda class shuttle.  Oh and of course a couple of TIE bombers because they look so cool.  Apart from Slave 1, there's not a lot more I'd definitely want to get.  After that it's just a case of picking stuff up if I see it going cheap.

I've no desire to play in organised tournaments.  X-Wing for me is mostly going to be a game we pull out when we have players gathered and no game planned.  Occasionally I'll plan a large, multi-player game like we did last Christmas.

So what should be my response to the new edition?  Do I want to buy the conversion kits you need to use your old models with the new rules?  Unlikely; I have ships from all three factions and at $50 per faction-specific kit that's a silly amount of money to spend.

So is the answer to carry on playing the old rules?

I can see why, apart from the commercial advantages, FF would want to update the rules.  They have rather grown piecemeal by virtue of what amount to new rules appearing with every new expansion pack.  A chance to review everything and make sure all the interactions are policed and properly integrated is probably A Good Thing.

On the other hand, with none of my regular gaming gang being fanatical X-Wing tournament players desperate to extract every ounce of advantage from minute study of "the Meta", I think we can probably manage quite happily with what we have now.  It might be a good idea to capture a copy of the latest of the First Edition FAQ though!

The new rules are promised to be (by virtue of new manoeuvre dials in the conversion kits) backwards compatible with the old ships.  FF would have had a riot on their hands if they'd done anything else! However, that doesn't mean any new ships that come out will be usable with the old rules.

So what are the chances that any new ships will come along that I'm desperate to include in my X-Wing games?  I quite like those big, tall bombers in the latest film (see, not a real geek; I can remember the names of neither bomber nor film) but you can buy those already.  Lets face it there's only a limited number of really iconic Star Wars ships.

Hmm, I think on balance I'm happy to remain blissfully old-school as far as X-Wing is concerned.