Hi Everybody,

I can blame Target for this latest obsession.

I've known the game existed but never got around to trying it out. I love games and tried to get a few miniature games going over the years but never had time or friends with interest. Earlier this year though I found a FLGS that I liked and made some time out of the work/kids schedule to go there regularly. I ended up getting into MonsterPocalypse and that's the first miniature game where I've really gone all out.

Fast forward 6 months and I'm at Target with my kids (7 & 4). Both have really become Star Wars fans (yay me!) and we spot the clone wars starter on clearance for $5. So I picked it up knowing I always wanted to see what it's about. When we open it at him the girls love the figures as does my son. I give the rules a read and I admit it, I'm hooked. Had to go back up and my another starter so I could play with my toys. :)

So here I am. I find a really great looking game after it's been killed by it's producer. The community looks strong but there appears to be some dissension between the forums (I've joined a couple). I see signs of the dreaded "compete/casual" conflict that seems to plague all games. But you know what? I don't really care (unless whining/bickering gets to excessive levels). I'm really interested in the game and I never let the fact that a game is not in production stop me from playing.

I've been listening to various podcasts, checking out the resources on various sites and I'm pretty excited about the game. Last night at our LGS MonPoc tournament I brought out the SW Minis. My friends were intrigued and they opened up one of the starters (same as mine) they had languishing in the back. So there's a chance I can get some local interest going. Getting figures will be a challenge unless they're still in distribution but I'm hopeful we can get some going. Everybody was really intrigued when I told them about the "dungeon crawl" that I heard on the SWMiniverse podcast the other day.

Looking forward to getting to know the game and the communites. I'm definitely starting out casual but I won't rule out tourneys. Now I need to figure what to try and acquire as far as figures & maps go. I'll keep an eye out on the trading forums but I don't have anything to trade yet. :)

I'm in South Florida so if anybody is down this way drop me a line.

Welcome to the game!


As far as acquiring maps, that is certainly one of the tougher aspects of getting into the hobby. I've tried to condense some info below about possible map sources:


Attack On Endor -- this was similar to a starter pack, but it included an AT-ST and a few imperial troopers along with a book about some scenarios. It also included two-double sided maps that are "official" and provide some nice varied playing environments. You should be able to snag this online for about $9.

SWM Starter Set 2007 -- this has a Vader and aged Obi-Wan in it. You may have already grabbed this from a Target liquidation, but if not I've seen it at a lot of Targets lately. It has a double-sided map (though, only one side is really playable but it is a really nice map, one of my favorite for scenarios, casual, or competitive play).

Map Packs -- Wizards produced three of these, each with an exclusive jedi figure and a two-sided map. They are all pretty nice, and could probably be found online for not too much.

There are also two other nice sources for maps made by members of this community. While these maps aren't officially produced by Wizards, they all look gorgeous and are enjoyable to play on. I'm not sure which, if any of these, are/might become tourney legal, but they are great maps to play on and you can support really great members of the community:

Armored Cartographer (Jedi Cartographer) has several map packs available at the MiniatureMarket website.

The Maps of Mastery website features some nice maps and tiles made by the same person who made the official maps for Wizards of the Coast, I believe.


The Holocron website should have, I believe, an article under the "Guides" section about most of the maps released by Wizards, and it's helpful to get an idea of what the maps from various sources look like as well as how generally balanced each of them is.

Hope this helps!

Thanks everybody,

roguethirteen - great info on maps, thank you that helps quite a bit.

flyingarrow - I've downloaded & installed what I think the latest Vassal mod is (started playing MonsterPocalypse on Vassal this year so I'm familiar with the engine). Question though - do you need the cards to play the figures? Or are the abilities in Vassal somewhere? Or do people just use the bloomilk character stats?

Pens and papers for tracking Hit points and Force Points, even gambit points...perhaps...

Welcome to the game!! I hope you learn to love it as much as we all do.

I'm pretty new to this game as well and it's awesome! This site is a huge help to me with it's squad builder and collection manager. Thanks to shinja for putting this site together!

Welcome to the game, Superfly. I also bought my very first Star Wars Minis in Florida... a store in Melbourne as I recall.

Thanks everybody,

Still deciding what to start acquiring. Right now I'm leaning towards the clone wars map packs and possibly looking into boosters of clone wars. While I'm an original trilogy guy at heart my kids love both and are currently enamored with clone wars. Plus since all I have ATM is the clone wars starter then everything will fit together. And when the kids support daddy's hobby then it makes it easier to pass the budgeting dept. :)