Star Wars Miniatures: initial reaction

It's for dumb people (or for kids, depending on how you look at it).

No seriously, that's what I thought at first. But after actually playing with the "Starter Set" I bought this weekend with my brother, it was pretty fun. You can get this set pretty much anywhere - hobby shops, gaming stores... I think even at Chapters, IIRC.

It's much like what we've seen before: the box that contains a sample game board, dice, assorted counters, and a predetermined set of character pieces for each player. In this case (the "Revenge of the Sith" set), you get Obi-Wan with a couple of clone troopers and Grievous with a couple of battle droids; the Republic versus the Seperatists.
More characters? You'll have to pick up some of those blind-packaged "boosters." Collect them...

The game itself is pretty simple. The quickstart booklet tells you where you should place the playing pieces first. Then goes on to show how you move around the map, attack the other player, etc... In fact, it seems much simpler than other similar collectable "miniatures" games (thus prompting my "wargaming for dummies" comment on Saturday night). Each figure is accompanied by at a stats card that tells you how to modify your dice rolls when you're shooting a blaster (or in the case of Obi-Wan's card, the fact that he doesn't carry a firearm means he doesn't shoot; but he does get to roll the die twice if he's up close to represent abilities with a lightsaber)...

My secondary reaction after killing 30 minutes with my brother?
It's actually quite fun. Simple to learn and there are infinite possibilities with the game mechanics (especially by virtue of the fact that it's backward compatible with the older sets such as "Clone Strike" etc...). Rules are fairly easy to pick up (i.e.: there don't appear to be any rules in choosing who you can shoot at).

Will I buy more booster boxes? Probably... but not many more.
I've fallen for the whole "collect them all" thing before in my younger days. Only to later realize that I was only playing and trading with the same 1 or 2 people and that it wasn't all that often anyway. My first booster was this weekend. It contained another Jedi Master (one those non-speaking background folks from the movie) and other assorted enemies. I'm sure it'll spice up my games to have more characters to choose from, but other than that ...? Well, we'll see.