Level Up My Game: X-Wing Miniatures Terrain

Ok, I know I’ve been slacking lately with the Level Up My Game column. It’s been at least a few months since my last one. My bad. I’ll work on that. Hopefully today’s batch of awesomeness will make up for my lack of diligence.

Today, we are going to look at some terrain for the insanely popular X-Wing: Star Wars Miniatures Game (review here). I know what you are thinking “There’s no terrain in space! Terrain is defined as ‘a stretch of land’” (*citation: I googled the definition*).

While you are technically correct (if not a bit pushy), I’m calling it terrain anyway. And no, this won’t be about a star field playmat. I’ll assume almost every X-wing player has one of those already. I mean, who would want to use these awesome looking components on a boring old table. Nobody, that’s who!

No, we got something way cooler for you. I dived into the bowels of the internet and emerged with this glorious feast of eye candy. Produced from a new company called Space Rocks, they’ve set the bar high for other add-on companies. Space Rocks makes custom terrain for X-Wing (and Armada, but that’s a subject for another column) and boy does it look awesome. They have a few different offerings, so I’m going to dive into them each in turn (and save the best for last. Scroll down if you are super impatient. You know who you are).

Asteroids

The first up are the asteroids, probably the most used terrain feature in our games of X-Wing. As every good YT-1300 light freighter pilot knows, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1. Who wouldn’t want to know the odds?

With your core set of X-Wing, you gain a handful of asteroid tokens. Yea… they work. But come on, this is probably the first component the rabid X-wing fan upgrades. I’ve seen people grab some of those lava rocks and glue them to a post. Sure, that’ll work, but these look much, much cooler. The asteroids are made out of a solid resin, they can handle an accidental short drop (I may or may not have tested that), and still look stellar.

The asteroids are removable from the base so if your B-Wing happens to make a navigational error, you don’t have to worry about things getting knocked over. Also, the plastic bases that come with the asteroids match the size and shape of the cardboard tokens that come with the game. So if you are worried about exact sizes, all is good.

Mini Wrecks

So what happens during a battle? Ships get blown to pieces. It’s a fact. I saw it in an episode of Star Trek that one time. Debris everywhere. In X-Wing, the YT-2400 and Decimator expansion packs finally gave us debris tokens to work with. Much like the asteroid tokens, functionally they work, but aesthetically kind of boring.

If you want some small bits of debris to litter your battlefield, you have 4 different options of wrecked ships:

• YT-1300 Light Freighter (Say it ain’t so Chewie!)
• VT-49 Decimator (you probably haven’t heard of this ship before X-Wing Minis)
• Slave 1 (Suck it Boba!)
• YT-2400 Outrider (Famously piloted by the outlaw Dash Rendar. I swear I totally didn’t just google that).

All of the wrecks come in multiple pieces so you can spread them out along the star field or cluster them up. I really liked how the pieces are either a big chunk of the ship or little leftover pieces of it. I tend to make a trail of ship parts along the star field. Combined with the asteroids, these make for some nice obstacles to use in the game.

Big Wrecks

So the little wrecks are definitely cool and work great. They are really only little in comparison to the big wrecks. They are actually scaled appropriate for X-Wing. But the big wrecks are easily my favorite. These are massive ships that have been blown apart and really standout on your battlefield. They come in two flavors:

• CR90 Corellian Corvette
• Rebel Transport

I can only imagine that the owner of Space Rocks grabbed the Tantive IV at some point and decided, “Hey I should blow this thing up.” And that’s what it looks like they did. The CR90 comes in 5 different pieces: Fore, Mid, and Aft sections, plus 2 engines, all burnt to a hulking crisp. I’ll fully admit it, I bought this thing immediately when I saw it. I was bordering on giddy when the package arrived and I must say, it looks just as impressive in person.

The Rebel Transport is broken into two pieces, perfect for mocking this rebel pilots who failed in their mission above the ice planet of Hoth. Part of me wants to use it in a game with the actual Rebel Transport from FFG, it would just be so fitting.

Both of the larger wrecks make excellent terrain pieces and obstacles for your game. As with the asteroids and mini wrecks, they are removable from their bases in case you were worried about overlapping.

Escort Frigate

Finally, the EF76 Escort Frigate. This is literally the coolest piece I’ve seen for X-Wing (outside of the stuff manufactured by FFG of course), hands down. This Nebulon-B Frigate is modeled at the same scale as the official Tantive IV. At least it seems to be, I wasn’t in the mood to bust out the slide rule and do exact calculations. So let’s just call it close enough.

This impressive monster measures over 2 feet long and can be used as an obstacle or an actual ship! Space Rocks has come up with their own rules for using this frigate in epic scale play. So you can bust out your Tantive IV, Imperial Raider, and now the Nebulon-B and really do some damage on the battlefield.

The EF76 Escort Frigate is made of a solid feeling resin material and comes in 4 parts. I think I’m actually going to glue mine together and just keep it on the shelf when not in use. It’s that cool looking. The only thing I wish it had was some engine glow on the back. I may bust out my mini paints and add my own later. It’s not cheap by any stretch, but it’s something that’s definitely going to turn some heads.

Final Thoughts

So that’s Space Rocks’ whole line of X-wing Miniatures products. They have a nice variety of options depending on your budget, ranging from “impulse buy” to “cash in favors with the wife”. As always with Level Up My Game, nothing in this article is necessary for you to enjoy your game. You can keep rolling on with the cardboard tokens if that’s your thing.

However, you know why you’re here. These articles are for those of us that want to make the games we love even better. These are easily some of the best components I’ve seen for X-Wing. I love this new terrain and I don’t see myself ever playing X-Wing without using at least some of them. I used these at Gen Con this year and had tons of people stopping by to snap photos.

If you are a fan of the Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game, definitely check them out for yourself. They really do add another level to your game and fit right in with the rest of the standout components in X-Wing.

And because I love you guys so much, I told the fine folks at Space Rocks I was going to be talking about their stuff. They offered to provide a discount code you guys can use to get 10% off orders on their website (including free international shipping). Just use the code “boardgamequest”. Don’t say I never do nothing nice for you. And no, I don’t get commission or anything, so buy whatever excites you. Enjoy!