It is Star Wars Day. It always brings the thrill of going to see Star Wars at my local cinema as a little boy. Little has grabbed me in the same way since. It was more than just a film, it was a way of life. I have played a lot of Star Wars games over the years and I have mixed feelings about them. My main gripe is that they just aren't Star Wars and that they become a pale imitation of the real thing. That however maybe that they game was using the d20 system which is always a bit of a pain.
With a big long list of uninspiring Star Wars cartoons, this has become less of a thing. Rogue One has proven to me that you can work RPG characters into a story that really works. You can take something epic from the media and make it your own yet keep it in touch with the original.
I had a huge number of Star Wars figures when I was younger. Sadly using the old Palitoy figures (which I think are the same as the ones made by Kenner in the USA) probably would not be much use now. In the last Star Wars RPG I played, Lego figures were used a lot and I still have a lot of time for the idea of using Lego figures in games. These are not things that most people want to use in games.
As a Games Master that believes that games are better with figures, Star Wars has always been a bit of a pig. WEG sold a good range of figures produced by Grenadier (which passed over to Simtac another long since gone company). These sometimes turn up on eBay and I have about thirty stormtroopers. Whilst some do turn up on eBay they are greatly tied into the movies so getty a range of characters, especially for alien races, is a problem. They are also 25mm figures which would make them hard work to match these days.
The Imperial Assault figures by Fantasy Flight Games are very nice and they are quite a few of them but the scope of the range is not as great as the WEG. The range of poses for the stormtroopers is extremely limited for instance but they do have a good place to start. Some of the figures have more use than others for instance, I am not sure how useful a Jabba the Hutt and rancor figures would be for a table top but they do look nice. FFG also do plenty of smaller scale ships which are very nice. Another advantage is that they are in around the 28mm scale and it is possible to get plenty of figures in a similar scale from other ranges to use with them.
Back when WOTC had the games franchise they produced a huge number of figures from both eras. I am a little uncertain what scale to class them as but they don't seem to fit with anything else. The sculpts to my mind are not as good as the other ranges and being early plastic miniatures were a little on the bendy side. I am not sure I would want to stick with them. On the plus side they are painted and freely available but I couldn't bring myself to buy them.
I had a few Star Wars games as a kid and even the more modern games still do not lose their allure. Every now and again I keep reminding myself that I should post a review of Star Wars Rebellion after playing it again last month.
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