Star Wars: Battle of Mimban (Pinball FX Table Review)

Battle of Mimban
aka Star Wars: Battle of Mimban
First Released September 12, 2018
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Star Wars Pinball
Designed by Peter Horvath
Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 2 ($23.99)
Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki

You certainly don’t have to be a fan of the Han Solo movie to love what Mimban has to offer. I’m not at all, but the difficult production of that film feels worth it just for this pin. I don’t want to say this table single-handedly justified our purchase of Arcade1Up’s Star Wars pinball table, but it’s DAMN close.

Battle of Mimban is Peter Horvath’s finest table and almost certainly the best original design to come out of Zen Studios. The ultimate marriage of all-encompassing environments that can only exist in video games with the sport of pinball. Mimban is, for my money, the greatest war-themed pinball table ever made. It’s gritty, and dirty, and raw, and visceral. The layout has that feeling too, like a freshly dug foxhole. A ramshackle network of orbits and targets that are so simply placed and accessible that it feels like a table thrown together in five minutes, and I mean that in a good way. Like a base camp set up by a front line battalion that could be broken down and moved on a moment’s notice. But, wash away the grime and the dirt and you’ll discover an elegantly-crafted, smoothly flowing table. Getting the bad stuff out of the way, the slingshots are a little aggressive and the left outlane is brutal. You’ll want to light the kickbacks, which is simple: shoot the spinner. That’s it. No complicated multi-step process. Even better is that these aren’t violent kickbacks. They catch the ball and drop it in the outlane. AWESOME!

Signature Element – Split Level: Zen has done many multi-story tables, but only Mimban has successfully pulled off the degree of realism that makes you believe the layout is the offspring of real world split-level tables. Specifically, this shares a lot of DNA with Black Knight 2000. Hey, that’s one of my all-time favs so I ain’t complaining.

Zen has a love for cardboard targets, and no table by them has better usage of them. It shifts Battle of Mimban from combo-centric finesse gameplay to white-knuckle sharpshooting on the fly, and it WORKS. It doesn’t feel jarring or gimmicky at all. Instead of clashing, the play-styles complement each-other. It helps that, despite the complex idea of an actual battlefield with attack waves, the gameplay couldn’t be more simple or intuitive. The clean layout leaves little in the way of distraction, making it easy to know which shots are lit and how to get to them. It also really helps that this probably has the best written rules of any of the more complicated Zen original creations. Thanks to the clever concept of alternating between attack formation and defense, modes that would be dangerously close to samey and repetitive instead feel high in stakes. There’s also enough options to allow players to come up with their own strategies in order to tackle them, including high risk side-missions that usually pay off with extra balls.

Signature Mode – Infiltration: In this short but sweet shooting gallery video mode, you use the flippers to aim a close-range cannon to shoot cardboard targets. Just remember: red guys bad, Stormtroopers good. Don’t shoot the Stormtroopers.

In a way, Mimban kind of reminded me of my first game of Risk. The rules felt overwhelming and complicated at first, but it took only like fifteen minutes for me to learn what I was doing. Battle of Mimban does exactly that for pinball, and it can be overwhelming. But actually the flow is really simple to learn and the targets are clear enough that it makes for an awesome shooting pin. One that has none of the typical problems with modern Zen. Just getting the ball isn’t the hard part. You have to make your shots in a way where you don’t kill yourself.  Retheme this as any other property, or any other setting, and Mimban wouldn’t work. You’d ask yourself “why is this layout so.. so.. rudimentary?” Simplicity works in a tactical war setting, especially with spot-on scoring balance. Hell, this pin feels more like it’s based on a board game than any of the tables in their three-table pack themed around board games! The end result is a table that has to enter the discussion of the greatest digital-only pinball table ever. It has my vote.
Cathy: MASTERPIECE
Angela: MASTERPIECE
Oscar: MASTERPIECE
Jordi: MASTERPIECE
Elias: MASTERPIECE (Star Wars Pinball on Nintendo Switch)
Sasha: MASTERPIECE
Overall Scoring Average: 5.0* 🏛️PANTHEON INDUCTEE🏛️
*Nintendo Switch version is, more or less, identical to all other platforms.
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.