They killed D&D! No, TSR killed D&D. TSR had never really been run particularly well and by the late 1990s, it was about to fold. WoTC bought TSR and rescued it from the trash bin it was headed for. While I don't personally care for WoTCs version of D&D, 3.5 was a monster hit that brought D&D into the mainstream. 3E D&D also came with an Open Gaming Licence that made sure that the TSR era D&D and 3E D&D would survive even if the company that owned it collapsed into ruin. The OGL has been instrumental in the "Old School Renaissance" of D&D that has ushered in a plethora of new content for the older TSR versions of D&D. In a way, WoTC actually did a far better job of saving old-school D&D than TSR ever did.

There are a lot of sucky EPTs, but Lone Wolf is not one of them. It is, however, a situational upgrade. It's not good in every list and you'll have to build around it to make the most of it. For example, if you use Lone Wolf in a swarm list, you might find that you never get to use it because there's always a friendly within Range 1-2. On the other hand, it works pretty darned well in a list with 2-3 ships because there's less chance of having an ally close by.

The two Imperial units in the dark bluish grey plastic are quite stylish and I could see them finding a place in the Star Wars Universe. I actually owned the little claw-bot vehicle as a kid and loved it. I always wanted the other micro-fighter one but never got it. The white ones are all pretty lame though... Especially the one with the roller wheels. Even as a kid, I thought that one was just painfully silly.

Wow, watching that just reminded me how bad Phantom Menace really was. Jake Lloyd comes across as unconvincing in the role, but good child actors are extremely rare and I don't think ANYBODY could have pulled off such atrocious dialogue (only Jar-Jar's was worse). Bad directing and editing probably didn't help either. Jake gets a lot of derision for making Episode 1 a hot mess, but it's noteworthy that even the more established actors struggled to make Lucas' dialogue tolerable. Hayden Christiansen is a legitmately good actor, but his Anakin still comes off as a whining, snivelling, punk. In my opinion, Ian McDiarmid and Christopher Lee are the only actors in the prequels that really gave excellent performances, everybody else comes off a little (or a lot!) wooden. Poor Jake... everybody else had careers that survived, but his career was torpedoed by that role.

If GW is a model company why do they charge so much for rules, used to be you buy a codex for £10-15 and get five years out of it, now your paying £60 for codex and supplement that lasts you a year. 40k does not give you good value for overpriced stuff you pay for, their whole model now is squeezing the remaining players as much as possible which is in turn driving more and more people away it's a death spiral they refuse to pull out of its really sad. Even with 20% off on some sites it's not really reasonable anymore. Hell, by the time you've assembled and painted an army, it's already been obsoleted by a new edition. It doesn't help that they keep upping the amount of models you need in an army and the fact that less models cost you more money with every release. I got off the roller coaster and just decided to play my own house rules version of the game with friends using resin-casted models at a fraction of the price. It took awhile for me to completely give up hope in GW, but their predatory business practices have just completely ruined it for me.

I'm a fan of the Aces sets and I think it's a good way to fix ships that are underperforming (like Chardaan Refit did for the A-Wing). I much prefer that than having to buy an epic ship like the Raider or Transport to fix a ship (especially when the transport did noting to address the X-wing's real problerms!). I also think this is a good way to keep older ships fresh and relevant without scraping the bottom of the EU barrel (the new K-wing is unspeakably hideous!). I'd like to see a Rebel Aces 2 set that had some fixes to make the X-wing and E-wing more useful than they currently are (I'd also like to see some Z-95 aces that were worth taking... I'm so jealous of the unique TIE fighter pilots!). The TIE Defender and Bomber are probably the the most in need of an aces pack for the Empire.

These aren't the fixes we're looking for. You can go about your business... Just kidding... but I do think that this presents several problems. a) It doesn't fix ordinance, it just makes it suck less on an x-wing. b) People hate ordinance and this does nothing for those people that want to fly the ship without a torpedo... because they HATE ordinance. c) It will make people who are already upset about ordinance sucking be really angry that it wasn't fixed for everyone. d) An astromech discount is less than thrilling when the generic astromechs are boring and not satisfying as a fix, and the few good droids are unique. The X-wings weakness is that it doesn't have anything that it does better than any other ship. I think what it needs is something that either makes it cheaper, more maneuverable, more survivable, or more versatile. Honestly, I'd like to see multiple options so that the X-wing could be configured in various configurations. I keep seeing people try to fix the x-wing with it's astromech slot, but i think the real solution is to do something with the useless torpedo tube. I'd like to see an option to plug the tube and shave 2-3 points off it a la Chardaan Refit (-3 pts for generics, -2 pts for uniques). If the X-wing can't reposition, it at least needs to be cheap enough to be a viable swarmer, and I don't think 18 points is unreasonable for a ship that's marginally better than a Z-95. I also think the rebels lack a ship in the 18-19 point range (Green and Gold Squad Pilots need upgrades) and I feel that this would fill the role nicely. I'd also like to see an option that allowed you to replace the torpedo tube with a systems upgrade slot (maybe shave off a point in the process) or gave you some additional repositioning options. Honestly, I'd err on the side of making the x-wing maybe a little too good (like the TIE Advance fix) because it's the most iconic spaceships in the SW universe and because the game is named after it.