I have had a few plays of this game now and it’s great. One of my favorite games that I have played.
Pluses of this game: Miniatures are really quite good and it is classic Star Wars. There is some dice action, but over all the game feels quite a bit like Wings of War which I really, really like. Trying to get your maneuvers correct so that you can fire is the real challenge to this game which makes the game I think really enjoyable for re-play ability. We only used 3 ships, but 5-10 ships on the table should make a playable dog fight that will take a while. The game was simple enough in the basic starter and quick enough that young kid was able to keep his attention span on the game and he was able to start thinking about his moves in a way to try to get his ship into firing position. The turns with 3 ships were really fast and it only took about 30 minutes to get through the quick start game.
Negatives: Price point. I think Fantasy Flight has priced this game a bit high. The starter with three ships is ok, but it would have been nice to see the starter at $35 and expansion X-Wings/TIE Fighters and similar closer to $10. At that price, I think the game would be a hot seller and while I think a lot of people will pick this game up, at the lower cost it makes it affordable for 7-12 year olds who often have limited amounts of money when dropped off at “Game Store Day Care”. Additionally, while the movement is a part of what makes this game really great it also can bog the game really down when there aren’t many ships on the board and you are trying to line up those kill shots. We went for a couple of turns without a shot fired which slowed the action down and made the game bog in the middle and I suspect a determined player could evade really well.