I’ve recently gotten the Starfighter! Rules, by Wiley Games.  This isn’t a review of those rules, but I will say that I like them quite a bit.  As I read somewhere (I forget where) you wouldn’t think the Fistful of Lead Rules mechanics would translate well to starfighter combat, but they really do.

I recommend them.

    So, I have the rules. I like them and want to play! I do have a bunch of Star Wars micro machine fighters I could use, and some FFG X-Wing miniatures, so I could play right away but what’s fun about that?

    I pulled out the cheap starfighters I got off Amazon a long while ago. They’re copies of the Silent Death fighters, but bigger, and made of something not metal. PVC or something I guess. But they’re not bendy, they glue and paint well, so it doesn’t really matter.

    I had a bunch of them. I seem to recall they were $5 for 24 or something like that, so I bought a lot. Apparently I gave some to my brother to paint, and forgot, so I went crazy for a bit looking for them. “I know I had more than this…!” 

                Anyway, I also realized I would need flight stands for the fighters, so lets start there.  I found these truly awesome “clear candy sticks” at the craft store.  They’re clear acrylic rod, but thin, and crazy cheap.  A bag of 50 6” sticks was $10.   I cut some in half, some in thirds, so I have 2” and 3” stands just for variety.

                Then I cut some 2” squares from a plexiglass sheet I had, drilled holes and glued the stands in, and glued a small magnet to the top of the pole.  Flight stands done!

These tacks have colored plastic caps you need to pop off.

                The fighters all have flat topped metal tacks on their bottoms.  All my “flying” things have metal on the bottom of them. Planes, dragons, superheroes, etc.  It’s easy to add metal to the figure, so the magnets need to be on the flight stands themselves. 

    The fighters all painted up really well.  Deciding on a color scheme was the most difficult part, and some of them took me a really long time.  I’m still struggling with some of those right now.  But here you can see some of the fighters I finished up.  I have more of each, but these show the color schemes of each faction.  I don’t know what the factions are, I haven’t given them identities yet, but they’re distinctively different which is all I really need.

    The first scenario calls for 3 unarmed freighters to escort. They count as Heavy fighters. In these rules TIE fighters and A-wings are Light. Y-wings and B-wings are Medium. An X-wing could honestly be either.  Heavy fighters are things above that, but below capital ships. So Slave-1, Imperial Shuttles, or the Millennium Falcon are all Heavy Fighters.

Rubber Duck, Pig Pen, and Sod Buster, obviously...

    I built up 3 freighters, roughly Falcon sized. They’re unarmed, but they all have metal tacks on their hull, so I can add magnetic guns later if I want to.
I don’t have great photos of them, but they all came out really nice.



    I also made up Ship Sheets, after designing the fighters obviously. They’re 6”x4”, and I place them in “Recipe Holders”. It’s a great size, the holder protects them, and you can write on them with dry/wet erase markers. I made the card with the fighter, and a generic pilot for the fighter on there.

    Then I made a bunch of Fighter Pilots in regular card sizes (2.5”x3.5”) and put them in card sleeves too. The pilots all have pictures I pulled from the net, randomly generated names, and randomly rolled up skills. Flight leaders have callsigns, the others don’t.

    The non-leader pilots all have 2 skills per card, separated by the hazard stripe. If the pilot is used as the Second-in-command, they use both skills. If they’re just pilots, they use only the top skill.

    I shuffle them up and deal out the pilots I have in each fighter, and the pilot card slides right into place in the fighter sheet. It works pretty well, and gives you a bunch of instantly interesting pilots in your squadron. Of course each fighter has the generic pilot on it, so if you don’t want to do that you can just grab the fighter sheet and play.



    Kind of related; this red fighter is a paint scheme test, which I ultimately abandoned. But look at that canopy! That’s a chrome paint pen. It’s freaking amazing! The photos don’t do it any justice, it’s darn near a mirror in person. My only regret is that I don’t have enough stuff that need to be chromed!

I’ve started a game but haven’t finished it yet. I play at night, so I have to frequently stop to do grown up stuff, like sleep. I’ll write that game up separately.