Fireteam Andromeda - Tiny AAR and Pics

Trucked up to the club this week for an intro game of Fireteam Andromeda.  Scott had pulled out all the stops with two fully painted armies, with mechs, tanks, aircraft, dropships and, of course, huge numbers of alien mercenaries.  By the time I arrived, the table was all set up, a mining outpost on a (presumably) terraformed Mars.  The miners were had risen up against the Martian authorities and it up to me to put them back in their place.  The game started with the miners holed up in their reinforced structures, awaiting the arrival of their militia forces.

A couple turns in.  Having destroyed the scout jeeps on the right, my infantry move into the Martian maize.

The core combat mechanic is pretty straightforward; 2D6 rolls to hit, roll to save vs weapon strength, morale check depending on casualties.  Terrain, buildings, range and range cause modifiers to the various rolls, while spending command points can boost accuracy.  All in all, pretty by-the-numbers wargaming fare.

An interesting addition to the genre is the command point system.  Although fairly familiar to historical players, I've not come across a similar mechanic in a sci-fi game.  Essentially, at the start of every turn, each player gets one command for every effective unit either on the table or available that turn (so no points for shaken or pinned troops, nor for reinforcements yet to appear.)  Players then use these points individually to activate a unit, who can then perform their movement and combat actions.  Again, pretty logical.

With two destroyed colony buildings and zero surviving miners, my infantry pull back to cover...

... because these guys were all about to flood onto the table!

Now here's the interesting bits.  Each force can only use a certain number of points in one "go" based on their commanders leadership.  In this game, we could both use up to three command points before we had to let the other player spend their three points.  Half way through the game, I took out Scott's commander and as a result, he was only able to use two points before returning initiative to me.

Yes! Nailed the command vehicle!

Command points aren't only there to activate units though.  As I mentioned earlier, you can spend one to boost a unit's shooting (spending one to activate and one to boost,) or you can spend one to return fire when one of your units is attacked.  Lastly, if you have reserve units, you need to spend a command point to attempt to bring them on, which I think is a fantastic wee innovation and very different from other sci-fi games.

Maybe slightly imbalancing the game, the flying tank took out three tanks, two apcs, three scout jeeps without a scratch in return.  Maybe include some anti-air weapons next time Scott!

The end of the game with an impressive amount of smoke markers.  Both sides had plenty infantry units left, but my force still had three extremely resilient tanks and the ridiculous fighter to call on!

So, a decent set of sci-fi rules, able to cope easily with forces larger than I would have expected. Reading through the rules, there's a flexible approach to choosing your units are plenty of optional abilities to customise your forces.  Fast and brutal, the game flowed quickly enough, and, on a 6x4 table, didn't feel either too crowded or barren.  Lastly, the vehicle on vehicle combat seemed spot on, fairly easy to hit but quite difficult to take something out with one hit (unless you're using the bitchin' aircraft!)

Now the three of us have only read the beta rules, no longer available as the author, Torben Kastbjerg, has published the updated rules here. Although the £10 is a little steep besed on the beta rules, I'm willing to recommend you check them out.

Lastly, a HUGE thanks to Scott for running an excellent game.  When he offered to run the game, I expected smallish forces with the odd bit of terrain and a kill everyone mission.  Instead, we had heaps of troops, plenty of terrain, building that were replaced with ruins when destroyed and a great scenario.  Great effort!

X-Wing - New Year, Same Old Luck

After a break for the holidays, it was back to the club this week for a game of X-Wing.  Since we played last, Adam has picked up a copy of the game for himself, which now gives us the opportunity to run some different lists.  I decided I wanted to try the "Tie-Swarm," fitting in as many Tie Fighters as possible, in this case, seven.

Opposite, Adam opted for three tooled up Rebel ships, two X-Wings and one Y-Wing.  Luke Skywalker was one of the pilots and his ability is to regenerate shields, while the other X-Wing had an Astromech that let him repair damage.  Two abilities that would prove decisive.

Still, at the end of the first turn, above, I was feeling pretty confident, those seven Tie Fighters can put out a lot of shots!

Turn two and the Imperial squadron focused all their attacks on the Y-Wing which was destroyed, but only just.  I saw this a triumph in itself (it takes eight hits to destroy a Y-Wing) as I've barely put a scratch on the Rebel Battle Bus before!   There were still two X-Wings on the table though, time to deal with them.

Or not.  Turn four and I'm down to five Tie fighters.  At very close range, X-Wing is a very brutal game as everyone gets bonus attack dice.

Turn six and I'm starting to get a bit pissed off.  Another two of my ships have gone.  To make matters worse, Luke Skywalker has managed to restore both his shields and the other X-Wing, which was almost destroyed, has repaired all the damage.  Still, if I could isolate each and focus my attacks I could still turn this around...

I'm not even going to bother telling you how the game ended!

So, a new year, but my luck (or skill) at X-Wing hasn't changed.  I can't think of anything worse in wargaming, than having your opponent point out your obvious mistakes, not only to you, but to everyone standing around the table watching!  Despite my horrendous run of losses, I'm still enjoying X-Wing.  We're both looking forward to the new wave of releases and seeing what FFG have planned after that (fingers crossed for the B-Wing next!)

Death Angel: Deathwing Quick Game Report

Brought out Death Angel the other night for a few solo games, wanting to try out the Deathwing expansion I'd picked up cheap (see here and here.)  I thought I'd put up a summary of one of the games and try and show off some of the hooks that keep me coming back!

I chose to play the game almost straight from the book, leaving out most of the changes I've made to the game.  This meant choosing three pairs of Terminators at random, then drawing their formation at random.  If I want a more tactical game, I choose both the squad and their formation myself, which I think is a sensible enough change.  The object of the game is to move through the four, randomly chosen locations and complete the objective on the final card.

So we entered the Space Hulk with a force of Techmarine Hephaestus (Red Team,) Sergeants Arbalan (Team Yellow) and Zaltys (Team Blue,) each accompanied by another Terminator for six in total.  Each pair have different special abilities they can use, but they only apply to the three guys named above - losing them hurts a lot more than losing their "goon" as we shall see.

The squad emerged from the Void (air) Lock to be immediately attacked by four Genestealers (GS.)  I'm not going into the mechanics too much here, but quickly, the Marines have a choice of three actions in a turn, move+activate, support or attack and they can't do the same action two turns running.  Combat is very simple and brutal, with only one dice roll determining life or death and the key thing to remember is that getting attacked from behind is waaaay worse than from the front.

Turn 1, so far so good.

Team Blue Supported the squad by placing a support token on him.  This lets him re-roll attack or defence rolls, but his special ability lets any marine use that token instead of just him.  The other two teams attacked, each taking down one GS.  Zaltys support ability was immediately needed to keep Hephaestus alive.  At the end of each phase, an event card is drawn that adds a random event, spawns more GS and moves the GS already in play.  This turn, we had a gun jam meaning Team Zaltys wouldn't be able to attack next turn.  Damn.

This turn saw two Support tokens enter play and Techmarine Hephaestus Activate the door.  Doing this lets you kill a number of GS when you move to the next location card - imagine the squad sealing a door behind them, cutting them of from the pursuing GS.  Lots of GS attacks this turn, as we couldn't thin their numbers this turn, one of which took out Sergeant Zaltys (and his handy ability.)  Brother Gabreal, Arbalan's goon, was then surrounded by all the GS in play.

Down one Terminator already!

So some sneaky manoeuvring needed this turn.  Gabrial moves and uses his ability to take one of the swarms opposite with him, leaving him facing four and Raphean against two.  Red team then attacked but both missed.  Team Yellow put another support token on the door. At this point there was only one GS card in one of the spawn piles.  If it came into play at the end of the turn, we would instantly move to the next location.

That was a bit harsh! Two down.

The GS attack, Gabriel surprisingly survived (needing a 5 on a 0-5 sided dice) but Raphean was killed.  The "Out of Thin Air" card put two GS behind Arbalan and, with no more GS cards left, we moved to the Black Holds.  Immediately another two GS appear behind Brother Jerico, but we manage to seal two of them behind us.

Two more Genestealers attack!

With all the GS spawned already, the squad should be able to move to the third location in two turns at the latest.  Red team then supported Jerico, who was up against four GS, and triggered Hephaestus Gun Servitor attack.  Unfortunately, it missed.  Jerico kills one GS while Gabriel missed.  Jerico dies and Gabriel moves into his position, only to be killed in turn by a second swarm of GS behind him!

Hmmm, not many Genestealers here. I'm a bit suspicious.

A secret route appears, letting the marines evade some of the GS attacking them.  The remaining squad members, Hephaestus and Arbalan, enter the Hibernation Clusters.  Not many GS to get through to the final location, can we hang on?  Following the rulebook word for word, the two marines would be overwhelmed by GS in a turn.  I use a little house rule to keep four "slots" in the formation; meaning that although there will be GS everywhere, the marines are never in a position, however unlikely, where they can't survive.  This turn Arbalan puts a support token on himself, triggering his ability to try and stop and GS spawning on him (he fails.)  Hephaestus manages to destroy the spore chimney, reducing the places where GS can appear this turn.  With his Quick Instincts, Arbalan attacks a swarm, but doesn't do any damage.  Only two GS appear, but that's enough to take us to the final location.

The Genestealer Lair.  Bugger.

No more GS will appear this game, but two Broodlords do. They draw all the GS in play to their location, fortunately the big swarm wasn't facing either marine.  Both attack, but only kill one GS.  Arbalan is then killed, leaving Hepheastus alone against thirteen Genestealers. I'm sure he went down swinging!

Some points:

We were put up against the hardest possible final card.  The other two can both be one on dice rolls.  The card we had here actually penalises you for rushing through the game. Maybe if we'd thinned the numbers against us a bit, we might have had a fighting chance.

The other two options for the final mission, both easier than the Broodlord card.

Even with all the GS against the squad at the end, there was still a chance to win.  The way the GS move around relative to squad means that the Broodlord may have been isolated and vulnerable.  That didn't happen, but there was a chance it could!

The Deathwing expansion is well worth taking.  It certainly appears that their abilities are much more effective than the Blood Angels from the base game.  In fact, I think I drew two of the weakest teams from the Deathwing; the Assualt Cannon and Librarian teams are both capable of taking out whole swarms at a time.  Next time I think I'll play with all six teams in a single game.

Well, I hope that made sense to those of you who've read this far.  You should get this idea that the game is very fast paced, very brutal and very difficult.  There's probably slightly too much random in there for some gamers, particularly when attacking, but I don't think that the game is ever decided randomly.  One of my favourite games, hope you enjoyed reading about it.

X-Wing: Political Escort Take 2 Battle Report

After a relatively quick (but not rushed) first game of X-Wing, we decided to swap seats and try the same mission with the opposite factions.  Considering that I had suffered two comprehensive defeats in a row playing as the Empire, I looked forward to getting a win on the board with the obviously overpowered Rebel Squadron.  All pilots and upgrades were the same as in the previous game, the details of which you can find here.

I decided to place the Y-Wing covering the shuttle on my left, while the two X-Wings were more central.  My plan was for the Y-Wing and shuttle to plough straight forward through whatever forces were ahead of them (there's no risk of ship to ship collision in X-Wing.) Getting the shuttle off the table should take six turns or so, so durable Y-Wing was the best bet for escorting it.  I presumed that Adam would similarly spread his forces across the table, not knowing exactly where the shuttle would be heading.  Therefore, as he moved to congregate on the shuttle, the two X-Wings should be able to come in from my right, using their superior firepower to knock out any Tie or Advanced they come across without too much return fire.

Philistine that he is however, he decided to forgo anything as sophisticated as a plan and massed the two Tie Advanced and a Tie straight across from the shuttle to bumrush the Rebels!  Still, assuming the shuttle made it past the first wave, it should have a couple turns grace while the Imperials manoeuvre to get back into firing position, giving me enough time to thin their numbers.

Rebel deployment, with some menacing Tie Advanced opposite

Things started much as you would expect, the shuttle and Y-Wing went straight for the opposite table edge, the Y-Wing putting a target lock on a Tie advanced.  The X-Wings both swung round slightly to my left, one target locking a Tie and the other Focusing.  The Imperials mirrored the Rebel manoeuvres, Darth and co heading towards the shuttle, while the basic Tie and Backstabber moved closed in on the X-Wings. 

Things get crowded after the first attack run on the shuttle

Shooting, mostly at long range, was a mixed bag.  Neither Darth or his two wingmen managed to put out any damage, but took none in return from the Y-Wing.  Garven Dreis used his one Proton Torpedo attack at long range, to put two damage onto the Tie opposite (one more would blow it up completely,) but Wedge failed to finish it off.  Worse was to follow for him, as some poor defence dice stripped him of his shields following attacks from Backstabber and the other Tie.  Still, it's Wedge, he's in all three good movies, he isn't getting taken out by some fluky dice, is he?

Turn two and I was expecting the shuttle to take a beating.  There was nothing for it but to keep moving forward again, the X-Wings continued moving round to my left.  The Imperial right slowed slightly and put the shuttle into medium range, while Backstabber and the other Tie moved round behind Wedge and Garven.  A quirk of the movement step in X-Wing is that both players decide their manoeuvres each turn blind i.e. you don't know what your opponents is going to do before you commit to what your ships will do.  I gambled that Backstabber would move the similarly to the previous turn, so moved Wedge on a longer left turn.  Instead of this however, Backstabber pulled a tight right hand turn and moved up into close range against Wedge's rear arc.  Not good.

The shuttle desperately limps on towards the board edge

Vader and his two wingmen combined to knock out four of the shuttle's shields, although it could have been worse.  The Y-Wing tried immobilising one with its Ion Cannon, but the attack was evaded.  Next up the Wedge and Garven attacked, but caused next to no damage, instead taking a shield off Vader.  Backstabber then attacked Wedge, rolling four attack dice (two for his normal attack, one for close range, one because he was behind Wedge.)  The net result was one damage and one critical hit.

Ship damage in X-Wing is handled with an elegant little card deck.  For each hit not negated by defence dice or shields, a damage card is dealt face down to that ship.  Most ships have three hull points, so can take three normal hits before going kaboom!  If a critical hit is rolled and not negated, the damage card from the same deck is dealt face up, counting as one damage, but also causing an additional effect.  As Wedge didn't have any shields left and rolled nothing on his defence dice, he got one face down damage card and one face up. Unfortunately the result was:

WHAT!?!

Three damage from one attack was a bit extreme, but that's what happened.  Losing a ship wasn't totally unexpected, but I was annoyed to lose Wedge instead of Garven.  Not only is his special ability much more useful, but Wedge still had his one off proton torpedo attack to make, something I was hoping to use next turn.  I was a bit distracted by that result, so I can't remember if I blew up the other Tie Fighter on my right or if it simply crashed into an asteroid.  Regardless, a rookie Tie Fighter would show up next turn.

Turn three and things looked a bit grim for the Rebels.  I thought it possible to still get the shuttle off the table if I could reduce the amount of fire it would take this turn.  I planned to get Garven's X-Wing close to the Tie next to Vader and have the Y-Wing immobilise the other Tie Advanced (Vader has a high pilot skill, so regardless he would be attacking before either of my own ships.)  The Y-Wing did immobilise the Tie Advanced, but it hadn't moved very far, so was still able to attack the shuttle.  Garven also fluffed his own attack.  At the end of the turn, the Shuttle was down to a single hull point.

Seeing the writing on the wall, I decided to try and at least take Vader down with me by putting Garven at point blank range to his rear.  However, as Vader had the highest pilot skill on the table, he moved and performed his actions last, so was able to double barrel roll out of Garven's arc of fire. Foiled again.  (Although, when flicking through the rulebook yesterday, I discovered you can't perform the same action twice in a turn, so technically this was an illegal move.  Grasping at straws, I know!)

The nearby Tie missed with his attack, so it was up to the Backstabber to finish off the Senator's shuttle.  I only hope that Jimmy Smits was onboard.

He really bugged me in the that last film

Another enjoyable battle.  Adam pointed out that the two attacks against Wedge were fluky in the extreme, I think that is the only damage card that inflicts extra damage, so it was an unusual result. Still, that's what you get with dice and cards.  In retrospect, I think I should have bunched up my ships and tried to take out the Tie Advanced early on.  The regular Tie can't reliably put out the same damage as the Advanced, so even with respawning Ties, it would have been a easier fight in the later turns.

I'm really enjoying the whole X-Wng experience.  As I'm the only one at the club with a copy, I'm really tempted to get another started box.  Not only would it let me field the "Tie swarm" (eight Ties,) but it is also a lot cheaper than buying the ships and the extra dice pack separately  you really need more than three of each dice.  However, that will have to wait for the moment.  I've decided November needs to be a frugal nerd month.  I'm only allowing myself to buy the essentials; bases, paints, magazines, a new brush or two, different flock, some flags and decals, maybe a rulebook or two.  Like I said, essentials.

X-Wing: Political Escort Battle Report

Another run out of X-Wing at the club this week.  This time we tackled the first scenario from the rulebook; Political escort.  The rebel squadron are tasked with protecting a senator's shuttle as it makes it's way across the board, the Imperials simply have to destroy the shuttle.

We decided to explore list building in the game.  Picking the recommended 100 points limit, Adam again commanded the Rebels while I took the Imperials.  The Rebel squadron looked like:

Wedge Antilles (X-wing)

- R2 F2 Astromech

- Marksmanship Skill

- Proton Torpedoes

Garven Dreis (X-Wing)

- R2 Astromech

- Proton Torpedoes

Gray Squadron Pilot (Y-Wing)

- R2 D2

- Ion Cannon Turret

The Rebel douche-bag-in-chief, Wedge Antilles!

At 100 points, the Rebels essentially have a choice of four poor-to-average ships or three really tooled up ships.  Adam went with the second option, picking two named pilots (both of whom have a special ability,) Astromechs for everyone and some special weapons. Significantly, both X-Wing pilots had fairly high pilot skills, so would be able to move after most of the Tie Fighters, but fire before them, a significant advantage.  A quick tip Adam pointed out for any rebel players, R2 D2 in a Y-Wing is just nasty ( the ship has a hefty three shields, but by not making any stressful manoeuvres  R2 restores a lost shield each turn - I've not been able to put a scratch on a Y-Wing yet!)

The Imperial player has a little more freedom at the 100 point level.  You could actually fit eight basic Tie Fighters into a list, poor pilots admittedly, but they would put out a lot off attack dice nonetheless   Practically speaking, you're limited by the number of ships you have available.  I have three Tie Fighters and two Tie Advanced so that's what I went with. Seeing that this was Adam's second game (and that he won our first game,) I decided to go for the big guy straight away, Vader:

Darth Vader (Tie Advanced)

- Marksmanship Skill

- Cluster Missiles

Storm Squadron Pilot (Tie Advanced)

Backstabber (Tie)

Obsidian Squadron Pilot (Tie)

Academy Squadron Pilot (Tie)

Vader. What could possible go wrong with Vader?

Vader's ability is that he can perform two actions each turn, so he could maximise his attacks by using say a target lock and Marksmanship  defend himself with two evade manoeuvres  or a combination of both.  Backstabber aside, the other pilots are fairly average; the Tie Advanced is still a match for the X-Wing however and numbers should tell with the normal Tie fighters.  That's the theory anyway.

The shuttle in this mission should take six turns to cross the table, but with six shields and six hull points, it's able to take a fair bit of punishment.  The Rebel pilots can also pull a specific action to increase the shuttles survivability.

Set-up.  What on earth is Backstabber doing way over there?

The Rebels started with all three of their fighters surrounding the shuttle and they started to move across the board.  Each ship can make one action after it moves, the Rebels can Focus (change certain dice results when attacking or defending) or put a target lock on an enemy ship (reroll any dice you want when attacking.)  The lead X-Wing focused while the other ships acquired locks on Imperial ships.

Vader and a Tie started on my left, the other Advanced and Tie were in the centre while Backstabber started out wide on my right (he gets bonus attack dice when attacking from outside a ships fire arc - the clue's in his name!) All my ships advanced towards the shuttle, Vader swinging in from the left, Backstabber from the right.  At this point I realised that Backstabber was a bit too far out on the right.  Some long range shots didn't do much damage on either side.

Turn two saw the squadrons close drastically while the shuttle moved slightly to my left.  My plan was to try and take out one (or preferably two) ships on the first pass, before swinging round to give the shuttle a bit of a doing in later turns.  Adam branched the two X-Wings off to my left while the Y-Wing moved the middle of the table.  Attacks were fairly effective this turn, Adam stripped Vader's shields and damaged a couple Tie Fighters, while I Took the shield off Garven Dreis.

Turn three saw a continuation of the moves in turn two.  Little actual damage inflicted on the Rebel side, a couple shields taken off the Y-Wing and one off Wedge.  The Rebels were much more efficient, taking out the Obsidian Tie and putting some damage on Vader, meanwhile Vader's wingman took some damage flying over an asteroid.  A quirk of the scenarios in the rulebook is that destroyed Tie Fighters reappear next turn, albeit as the lowest skilled pilot.  Actually, I'm not sure if this rule applies if you're using your own squadrons - I have a big list of questions I need to put up on the FFG forum.

Turn four, I've got a bad feeling about this

Turn four and Vader actually decided to do something!  Unloading his Cluster missiles at point blank range, Garven Dreis becomes nothing more than debris.  Damn that was satisfying.  As the two squadrons had flown past each other, the Imperials did some drastic manoeuvring to get the shuttle back in range.  Meanwhile, the Y-Wing carried on straightforward  regaining it's shields as it went and immobilising the Storm Squadron pilot with his Ion cannon.  Wedge swung round to line up vader and his wingman.

Imperial forces desperately try to take the shuttle down...

At this point, I remembered that we were playing a mission and not a "blow everyone up" game.  The shuttle would be clear of the table in another two turns, so everyone swung round to get it back into range.  Both Tie Advanced put target locks on the shuttle, Backstabber just put himself in attack range and a rookie pilot arrived on the table right in front of the shuttle.  Sadly all that firepower managed to do was knock a couple shields off.  To make matters worse, Wedge, at close range and with a target lock, took Vader out in one devastating attack - no amount of desperate  flicking through the rulebook was going to bring him back!

...before it disappears off the board for the win.

I still had three ships lined up on the shuttle, but wasn't able to even dent it before it left the table.  I think Adam took out another Tie, but by that point I'd accepted that this one game had passed me by!  Don't quite know how I'm going to explain this one to the Emperor.

Despite a (partly self-inflicted) defeat, I had a really enjoyable game.  Adam said he enjoyed it too, but I imagine victory helps with that!  Victory and defeat were clearly caused by choices made, not through any card results or poor dice rolling (although I had a little of the latter.)  I can't even accuse the squad Adam chose of being broken or overpowered, Garven Dreis' special ability and two of the Astromechs were completely unnecessary in this scenario.  In contrast, my tooled up Vader cost a third of my points and didn't come close to paying them back!  I should also point out that once we started, this game took just over an hour to play through, yet we weren't rushing through turns and took some time out to look up and discuss rules.  X-Wing has some elegant little rules that make the game flow very quickly.  So quickly, that we decided to swap squadron and have another game.

Looks complicated?  Not as much as you'd think

We also managed to set aside one of my original concerns about X-Wing, the sheer number of manoeuvre templates in the game and just how fiddly they would be when the board gets crowded.  You can see from the pictures above that both squadrons were tangled together pretty quickly, but there really weren't any issues in moving ships, checking fire arcs or range.  Even the number of tokens on the table, and there were a fair amount, didn't cause more than minor confusion, "whose target lock token is this anyway?" but I think with a bit more attention on my part, even that wouldn't have occurred.

There's still the other report for me to write up, but I think that's enough typing for one day.  May the Force be with you...

NaH nah NaH nah Nah nah, NAnananananaNa NaH nah NaH nah NAAANNNAA nAAAAA NAAAAAA, NAH Nah nah NNAAAHHH Naaahhh....

X-Wing: A very, very brief battle.

For the first time in a few weeks, I managed to get along to the club for a game of X-Wing with Adam.  We opted for a straightforward dogfight, as opposed to one of the missions, at a slightly lower than recommended point level.  So I came up with two forces with a named pilot in each, along with a couple gadgets.

Adam randomly selected the Rebel squadron and had Biggs Darklighter in his X-Wing, along with a generic X-Wing and Y-Wing.  I controlled the Imperial Squadron with Maarek Stele (fans of the Star Wars post film books will recognise this guy) in his Tie Advanced, another Tie Advanced and three Tie fighters with differing pilot skills.

Sadly, as I was late arriving, we were stuck in a poorly lit area of the club.  Consequently, I couldn't get any decent pictures, but for what it's worth, here's the table after about five turns.

I had taken out Biggs Darklighter with some extraordinarily lucky dice, but barely scratched either of the other ships.  The rebels had destroyed my generic Tie Advanced and put the hurt on a couple of the Tie fighters.  All in all, things looked to be heavily in my favour, but in the next couple turns Adam discovered the Ion Cannon on the Y-Wing and started pumping out shots with that, immobilising one ship each a turn.

A couple turns later, I had put Maarek's Tie Advanced far too close to the table edge and as soon as he was immobilised with an Ion shot, he flew straight off the board!  Emperors Hand my arse.

So I had hoped to put up a proper report on what was an absolutely great game, but lack of pics and notes kind of made that difficult.  Kudos to Adam for being a great opponent (he is far better than I at remembering rules and effects in games, so much so, he was correcting my mistakes after a few turns!) We may have a rematch next week, so I'll get the Mrs to set up the camera for me to get some better pics.  If you're at all interested in Star Wars: X-Wing, I heartily recommend you check out the rules and a gameplay video on the FFG site, the WWPD blog and some great posts here and here.

Sorry if this post has been a bit lacking in content, like I said, I had planned for more. Expect better in the near future (I'm on holiday!!!)

RAFWA Championship 2012 Photos 1

I've started working through my photos from last weekend.  Normally, I'm hopeless at taking pictures, but as the Mrs set the camera up for me, at least some turned out okay.

   

Friday nights demo/practice game.  Boozed up gamers teaching other boozed up gamers how to play!  Carnage.

Big Al's Federated States of America Fleet

Gaz's Kingdom of Britannia Fleet

 Rob's Covenant of Antarctica Fleet (with missing turrets and proxy Bombers)

My Empire of the Blazing Sun Fleet

For some reason I don't have an fleet photo of Woody's Prussian Empire, but you can see them this deployment shot:

This was a great table to play on.  Somewhere in the Southern Ocean, two fleets have engaged each other.  Unfortunately, a Sturginium spill has caused the currents to become extremely erratic.  Each turn we rolled a random direction and each iceberg would move an independently determined D6 inches in that direction.  Again, carnage.

 

Towards the end of the game.  We used the new field orders rules, so both sides rolled randomly for their objectives.  I think the Covenant had to destroy all large and massive vessels, while the Prussians had to destroy 50% points value including all small vessels.

The core mechanic of Dystopian Wars at work here with the Rob's Particle Accelerator. Rolling twelve dice, he scored an initial six hits, but kept rolling sixes to generate more hits. From those initial six, he ended up with twenty six hits.  Too bad it was only against a cruiser! 

The Solomon Islands table.  The rocky reef in the middle slowed movement to half rate except for small ships (and flyers obviously) but it didn't obscure line of sight.  Otherwise, this was a normal table.

Turn 2, the Empire of the Blazing Sun can put out a lot of long range fire.  It helps when Al couldn't roll defensive dice for toffee.

Close to the end.  My objective was 50% of the enemy fleet including all medium ships.  The FSA had to take out all my naval models.

End of the same turn, captured a Gunship and Frigate for double victory points.  Everything but the FSA Battleship and a couple frigates were gone, resulting in a comprehensive Japanese victory!