Star Wars Pocket Models

Just about everyone I have ever met knows about Star Wars. Those two words bring about lots of happy thoughts and memories in most people. In some,(purists you might call them), it brings out a lot of rage and displeasure towards that universe's creator, George Lucas. That is a tale for another time since I consider myself in the latter of those categories.

As a child, my sister and I used to play Star Wars, piloting an X-Wing flying down the Death Star's trenches to drop those proton torpedoes down that two meter exhaust pipe. It was an easy enough game to play, one of us would sit on the big comfy chair in the living room and the other would throw a blanket over you, this was the cockpit and now you are suddenly,*cue James Earl Jones*, part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor!

This type of game can only entice you for so long as you get older. In fact I'm pretty sure that my sister stopped playing this with me within the first week we came up with it...

Getting older is fun. At some point you will get a job and under the best of conditions, a good paycheck. With a better than average life, as a young person, you might even get to keep that paycheck to spend as you please! That was not me, so I make up for my lame childhood now, finding a good job and buying toys I have no need of.

My desire to command an X-Wing however has not diminished in any way shape or form. Until recent years though, the only way I could command Jedi Star Fighters or X-Wings or Tie Fighters was through video games.

The models themselves come on styrene cards. You punch out the pieces that make the model and using the insert tab a into slot b method of building, you make your model. So they aren't the highest quality model. Clearly billions were not spent to make these things. They do abound in cool factor though. Mainly because they are Star Wars ships I'm sure. They have a sticker decal sheet that comes with them to add a little more realism to the pieces. Not sure how that adds more realism, but when I do, I'm sure to tell you!

Most of the ships are easy enough to put together, and even without instructions, I managed to figure out how to assemble the Arc Fighters. The frigates were another matter all together. I had to go to the website and pull up the directions of the game which include a brief "how to" of assembling the ships.

Once you get your minis assembled, you need to build a deck of cards. Booster packs are the main way you need to go about getting into the game, they give you about four to eight ships and 6 trading cards. Here is what you need to play once you get your models built.

• 2 six-sided dice
• deck of at least 30 cards
• 30 build stars worth of models

Nothing overly complex here. No rulers, only two dice and your minis. The game board isn't very big either, its essentially eyeballed out if you don't have a play mat.

What are Build Stars?

Glad you asked. On the base of the models are stars. Each star represents a build star, like a point value in Mechwarrior or Warhammer. In your game, you have 30 build stars worth of units. Units are valued at anywhere from one to five stars. To start the game, you will put up to twenty build stars worth of minis in your home base with the other ten build stars in your reserve. This is good, as you lose ships, you can replace them from your reserves with an equal or lesser value piece based on the build stars. You will place three cards face down as your objective cards. Next you place your 30 card deck down, draw 3 cards and roll to see who goes first.

Your objective? Destroy either all of your opponents minis or all three of their objective cards. You play in turns. During your turn you can do one of two things, play an objective card(either replacing a face down card with an actual objective card), or take an action.

Playing objective cards is easy. Either replace a face down card with an objective card that you leave face up, or replace a face up objective card with another objective card that is face up. If you replace a face down card, you get to keep it in your hand, if you replace a face up card, it goes into a discard pile to be lost forever!!! Just kidding, it's not a black hole...or is it?

What kind of actions can I take? One of three, move, combat or strike. Move actions are simple enough, move up to 5 build stars worth of minis into an adjacent zone. Combat actions let you take up to 5 stars worth of minis to fight your opponents minis. Strike actions let you attack your opponents objective cards.

This isnt the tell all of Star Wars Pocket Models. The combat is a little more detailed, even though the game itself is simple enough to resolve. The deck of cards plays a lot into make things complex.

Enjoy your collecting!!