The Imperial Raider will devastate your future Star Wars: X-Wing games

As fans of Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars: X-Wing miniatures game, we can’t wait to buy this mini and foist it on our unsuspecting friends.

Check it out in all its glory:

If you’ve never seen this star destroyer before, it’s because it’s brand new. As in, it was created specifically for Star Wars: X-Wing.

The Imperial ship’s miniature is in a similar size to the Rebel Transport mini and the Tantive IV Corellian corvette mini, and it’s suited for the game’s Cinematic Play and Epic Play formats. It comes boxed with a TIE Advanced mini and all the requisite tokens, cards and other Star Wars: X-Wing goodies.

Fantasy Flight created the Imperial Raider because they needed a huge Imperial mini that fit the scale of the game. All of the existing Imperial ships were frankly far too large to fit in the game.

“The Raider is a starship made specifically for anti-fighter warfare. Its six dual heavy laser cannons proved more accurate against snubfighters than the turbolaser batteries of its Star Destroyer cousins, and the disruptive effects of its ion cannon emplacements, along with the efficiency of its localized command, make it a powerful addition to small strike force,” said game designers Andrew Navaro, Frank Brooks and Steve Kimball.

I did wonder how they were ever going to put a Star Destroyer into this game, but I love what they’ve done. It’s slimmed down and the TIE-like wings on the sides of the ship look great and fit with the feel of the design. We can only imagine the madness that will ensue when we drop this and all of our TIE Fighters on the board. This should make for some really epic battles. (Maybe we can even pit the Raider and the Tantive against one another.)

It will be available in the first quarter of next year. A price hasn’t been announced. Get all the details here.

Check out some more images below from Fantasy Flight including concept art, box art and all the stuff that comes packaged with the expansion set: