I've always been the kind of gamer who prefers buying pewter miniatures and painting them myself. Yes, it's expensive and time-consuming, but you usually get the results you want and have some fun while you're at it.

I remember when Mage Knight by WizKids hit the stores. The first time I saw and held the models I knew there was no way I was going to spend money on the game. Googly-eyed warriors, drooping swords, and malleable shields just didn't work for me. I can appreciate the ability to play models right out of the box, but the quality was terrible.

Yesterday, I saw a starter box of Fantasy Flight's X-wing Miniatures Game at Target, and I was impressed! Things have certainly changed. The paint jobs are much more detailed. I told myself that this might be worth getting into. Some reviewers on Amazon.com complained about the price, but I don't mind paying it as long as the models are high-quality.

I do have a question, however. Is the plastic rigid and durable? I'm not interested in soft plastic miniatures. I prefer something dense and hard. Also, does the paint flake off? A nice paint job doesn't mean much if the paint rubs away after a few months of use.

I appreciate your opinions. Thank you!

I think there might already be a post similar to this but I'm to lazy to find it right now.

I've been really impressed with the durability of the minis. It's dense hard plastic and the paint seems to be hold up well (I've only played about 10 games so far). The blasters on the x-wing are the only thing I'm not really thrilled with. They're not perfectly straight but I imagine that's really difficult to achieve with such a thin piece of plastic.

All-in-all the quality is pretty good. Certainly worth my money. Hope this helps.

I might be in the minority here, but for me the quality is prefectly fine, and due to the fully painted models being more or less drop and play - well worth the cash. Sure you might get the odd one that doesn't fit "quite right" but for the price point (and this might exclude my opinion from most) - I would simply pick up another expansion rather then mess around fixing something. If I do happen to come across one that is too difficult to play with (and I haven't yet) I will just turn it into a wreck marker or something similar.

I have always been a casual wargamer and have always liked the idea of having these nicely painted armies of miniatures, but when it comes to buying, assembling, painting and then playing with them it loses the initial allure it once had. I found this to be the case with games like Warhammer and 40K, both awesome looking games but with the aforementioned issues I never collected many.

X-Wing on the other hand is cool because the mini's are painted to a pretty decent level, aren't too expensive and it's Star Wars I am really happy with the quality of these miniatures and hope they keep producing new models semi-regularly from the Expanded Universe.

on a scale 1 to 10, I would give them a 8……hard plastic, well detailed, well painted….durability will have to wait until more games have been played to determine but if there like Wings of War planes they can't be treated roughly

I think when playing with my kids I'll swap in Micro machine or Star Wars Battle ships, which are pretty close scale wise and able to take a little abuse.

I'm not a hardcore wargamer by any stretch, but I think the quality of the minis (I've got the base set and all the expansions to date) are very good, and are far superior to most "prepainted plastic minis" that are available, particularly the WotC Starship Battles line; the majority of minis I have from taht line are warped or twisted in some way, particularly the snubfighters.

However, while these are much better quality, you are paying for that extra quality, as the boosters are not cheap. In fact, if you don't care so much about the "exclusive pilots," it'd probably be more cost effective to just buy another starter set if you're just looking to double the number of X-Wings and TIE Fighters you have. Also, the plastic pegs that connect the fighter to it's base don't make quite as snug a fit as I might like, but I can accept that as necessary to make switching out the pilot base cards easier.

Frankly, I was impressed with the quality of the demo pieces they had at GenCon 2011, and it's nice to see the quality had only improved rather than dropping as might be the case for mass production.

ANYway, some slightly more technical information, which I think is what you're looking for:

They're not a soft plastic, but rather a polystyrene or ABS plastic like a model kit. Don't think they're a resin. I haven't repainted any, but I'd bet they'd take and hold model paint just dandy without flaking or pooling. The paint that's on them certainly isn't going anywhere, so I definitely wouldn't make any attempt to strip them; they're too fragile - and there's no degradation of detail with what's on them.

As far as price point, if you're a miniaturist you're used to paying ten bucks for a mini, so it's not really an issue. That said, the existing paint jobs are just fine unless you're wanting to do mods like shark's-mouths, camo patterns, red Interceptors etc. Have fun!

One of the things I like about X-Wing is that the game is nice-looking to start with, but if you wish to take the extra step of customization it is available to you for just the price of the paints and some decent brushes. I've already customized my rebel fighters to a degree, and I'm happy I didn't have to re-invest in primer and all the frustrations involved with using it (in my experience).

I'm also pleased that a playable mini is under $20. I was in Warhammer 40K for a while, and near the end of my interest in the game I was amazed at the gradually climbing price of figures. For something like $30 you still didn't have a fun force to play with- perhaps one or two specials or a core group for your larger army. Here it's either one large ship or two fighters to dogfight with.

GeekZap said:

Most (well, all) of my X-Wings sport guns that aren't parallel either, but that's something I can overlook. The fighters all look nice otherwise, and the images of the larger ships for wave 2 show some impressive detail.

Yep, I think this is something I want to get into. Back in the day, I used to collect Red Alert! Starship Disks (i.e Star Trek) from Last Unicorn Games. That was a really fun game, but it was never expanded much due to contractual issues. X-wing looks to have much in common with Red Alert! but X-wing is obviously much more sophisticated--but never necessarily complicated.

Insofar as Star Wars goes, the ship-to-ship combat was always my favorite part of the movies. Sure, Imperial Landwalkers and landspeeders are neat, but those huge assaults against the Death Stars are simply unforgettable. And those wicked sounds the Tie-fighters made as they twirled through on the attack is simply unforgettable. From everything I've read and seen, this X-wing minis game faithfully recreates this.

Hopefully, Fantasy Flight has play tested everything thoroughly. Red Alert! had quite a few snags, and my gaming group had to pass house rules to iron things out. Many companies make the mistake of rushing games into production these days. But it doesn't look like that's the case with X-wing Minis.

ThadiusCole said:

I know what you mean. Games Workshop makes great stuff--I own everything that exists for Blood Bowl--but it is LABORIOUS to get it all painted. By the end, you may end up spending more hours assembling and painting than playing. And I prefer the latter over the former!

I'm a war gamer and a rivet counter to boot. As has been said up above, they're hard polystyrene or ABS plastic and they take paint really well (at least Vallejo and GW paint ). I like the fact that the priming is done for me, and in the case of red squadron the repainting is minimal to get a fairly accurate representation of the movie ships. I'm still debating on whether to repaint my TIE's blue. As for durability…the Y-wings and TIE ships are quite durable but the laser cannons on the X-wings are fragile but not overly so. For example, I've had an X-wing take a 5+ foot fall onto a berber carpet floor and come away unscathed. I'm sure tile would produce different results but thankfully this has not happened to me…yet. If I could get brass rod/wire replacements I'd do it in a heartbeat. Hmmm, maybe Combat Wombat might entertain such an idea…

Trooper TK421 said:

So this is why you aren't at your post.

Well…that and I was mugged by some nerf herding scoundrel and his walking carpet buddy.

qwertyuiop said:

LOL, Qwerty

I think folks are being too hard on the X-Wing's cannon; they're really pretty dang straight. Yeah, only metal rod would do better… but it really isn't necessary. Lord, what an improvement over the WotC ships that ended up looking kinda like a dead spider.

I've seen some allignment issues with the S-Foils, and my first Y-wing was bending like a dolphin about to leap out of the water.

On the other hand they aren't the star wars miniatures from WoTC. I still cry when I look at how horribly inaccurate and bendy the Nebulon-B looks The FFG minis are the most professional I've seen.

I like the miniatures just fine. I'm an experienced starship painter and have a fair-sized Cardassian fleet completely done, so I wouldn't mind the ships coming unassembled and unpainted, but I'm certainly not complaining. The convenience of having them already painted is actually quite nice, since I can play with good-looking ships right out of the box.

Are there flaws? Sure, but they're small enough that I don't really care. Are they worth what's being charged? I think so. If they came unpainted and people wanted to have them painted by somebody else, it'd inflate the price considerably.

As has already been mentioned, the previous Star Wars starship miniatures were pretty awful. X Wing is a breath of fresh air.

They are easy enough to repaint if you want the plastic is decent . and so far all mine have no flaws . Good job by ffg

pretty impressive stuff, only gripe is that all of my Xwings have wonky misaligned engines and 1 or 2 TIEs have very obvious slants in their wings, ie they look more like /o/ than lol. When I have more time i'm considering seperating the misaligned engines with a hobby knife and cementing them back on in the proper way.

I had 1 of the Xwing cannons fall out while it was still in the core set box, but a little bit of superglue easily fixed that

compared to the WOTC starship battle minis these are fantastic! I absolutely hated my WOTC starships all where bent and yucky looking. thanks you coolstuff for taking them off my hands and allowing me to buy into this version.

Duraham said:

Yeah all my x-wings seem to have the upper right engine (if nose is pointed towards you) out of wack, seemed like a model issue since all 4 of my x-wings have the same issue. Not a big deal, only noticeable if you look straight down the nose.

Didn't see wing issues with my ties.

To me quality is very nice. I have been using old micro machines ships and playing Silent Death rules for a long time. I can safely say I have found an excellent replacement to all of that. The only thing I will probably repaint is the color stripes on some X-wings for different squadrons.