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The 2018 Star Wars film, Solo: A Star Wars Story, introduced an origin story of sorts for perhaps the most famous fictional spaceship of all-time, the Millennium Falcon (or the customized YT-1300 Light Freighter, as it’s known by Star Wars aficionados). And you can now fly this iconic ship for the Scum and Villainy faction in the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game.
The Ships
The Falcon in the solo film looks fairly different from the busted-up smoke-charred vehicle that Han Solo has to jump-start – this Falcon is a cleaner earlier incarnation, with touches of blue paint and a different radar dish. Perhaps most notable difference is the Escape Craft, which comes docked in the front mandibles of the Falcon – and the best thing of all is the fact that the Escape Craft physically detaches and can be played as an individual ship in its own right! When the Escape Craft is docked onto the Falcon you can use its shields and pilot ability as if they were on the Falcon, plus the Escape Craft can escape when the Falcon is destroyed (hence the name, Escape Craft!).
As for flying the ships themselves, as you would expect, the Falcon is very manoeuvrable for a large ship and has a rotatable firing arc, but suffers from only having 2 attack dice. The Escape Craft is not particularly agile, but it does include a valuable Coordinate action. The pilots and upgrades that are also included in the box can enhance both ships dramatically.
The Pilots
The Falcon comes with four pilot cards – Han Solo (who can use obstacles to his advantage), Lando Calrissian (who can take stress to gain rerolls), robot L3-37 (who becomes a better pilot when your shields are down) and the basic unnamed Freighter Captain.
The Escape Craft also comes with four pilots – Lando and L3-37 (who have the same abilities as their Falcon cards), the unnamed Outer Rim Pioneer (who helps nearby ships) and the interesting Autopilot Drone (which is a ticking time-bomb when it is not docked to the Falcon).
Upgrades
This expansion contains a collection of 13 awesome upgrade cards including a young Chewbacca, Woody Harrelson (Tobias Beckett), and Han Solo’s squeeze from the film, Qi’ra (or Daenerys Targaryen, for you Game of Thrones fans). There are also Han Solo, Lando and L3-37 crew cards, so if they’re not flying your ships you can have them drinking blue milk and playing a game of Dejarik in the back.
The pick of the upgrades is the rigged cargo chute, where the Falcon can spew a debris cloud of trash out of its rear-end (represented by a large irregular-shaped cardboard token), to majorly hinder any unwanted pursuers!
These crew cards and upgrades are compatible across the whole Scum and Villainy faction so you could have Han Solo fly as the gunner on Boba Fett’s Slave 1 ship, for example, or Tobias Beckett sitting proudly in the co-pilot seat of Dengar’s Punishing One!
Final Thoughts on Lando’s Falcon
I mainly fly as the Scum and Villainy faction, but my favourite ship of all-time is the Millennium Falcon, so when I heard that a version of the Falcon was being released for the Scum and Villainy faction it was a no-brainer purchase for me – even if I was mainly going to just marvel at the beautiful miniature! The fact that it comes with the Escape Craft is a massive bonus – especially as the Escape Craft is arguably pound-for-pound one of the very best ships in the entire faction!
Physically being able to dock and undock the ship is a novelty for this game, and draws a lot of awe from fellow players – they slot together so satisfyingly (like Han and Leia!)
I’d say the only negative is the fact that this incarnation of the Falcon uses only 2 attack dice (as opposed to its later manifestations using 3), but this is reflected somewhat in its lower points cost and can be mitigated with the awesome upgrades and crew, not to mention having the benefits of having the Escape Craft docking with it.
I would heartily recommend Lando’s Millennium Falcon expansion pack as the centerpiece of your Scum and Villainy fleet.
