Some Brief Star Wars Nostalgia!

Recently, I've been on a bit of a Star Wars kick, what with rewatching the movies, Droids, Ewoks (yes I know it was terrible,) the X-Wing tournament and the Star Wars card game. Flicking through YouTube, I came across this:

Now I can't even contemplate how much cash I dropped into this arcade machine when I was a kid (for you infants out there, arcade machines were how you played computer games before you had a computer in the house!)

I'll admit, it doesn't stand up well to the test of time, but this was cutting edge back in 1985! The arcade machine actually quoted the movie with a voice, not text - at the time, this was ground breaking!  My favourite quote from Jedi?  "Han will get that shield down, we gotta five him more time!"  I think this video is actually using an emulator or similar, as back in the day the game was a lot less forgiving!

Yes terrible, even worse than Droids, but, remember, not as bad as the Christmas Special!

This afternoon I spent a bit of time going through the photos from the X-Wing tournament and I'll hopefully get a couple posts in later in the week.  Until then...

Assault at Imdaar Alpha

This weekend I'm off visiting a friend, Gaz, in Edinburgh.  As far as we've arranged, the agenda consists of lots of junk food, beers and games.  Looking forward to getting away from the 'Deen for a while and relaxing for a couple days.
  

On Saturday we've both signed up an X-Wing tournament at the Games Hub (which I've been to, but can't remember where it actually is.)  The tournament is part of the Assault at Imdaar Alpha event FFG are running to promote the next wave of releases for the game.  Hopefully we'll get a chance to break out my Tantive IV at some point too.

Tournaments aren't really high on the list of reasons why I game, the last one I went to was over two years ago, but they are a nice distraction and a good opportunity to get some games in against new people.  I've still not decided on what kind of squadron to field there, but I'm leaning towards a Moldy Crow/twin B-Wing list; it looks competitive, not too cheesy and kind of fun.  I'll try and take some pictures, but they'll just be with the phone as I've apparently lost my camera!

Two New Babies

First off, a big congrats to my regular gaming buddy Adam and his wife on the birth of their new baby errr... no name yet, lets just say little baby B!  Very happy for all four of them, their cat counts as a person doesn't she, even if it means less gaming in the next few months (Me? Selfish? Never!)

Speaking of new arrivals, here's my latest addition:

About the same size as and tons more fun than a tiny wee pooping machine (only joking!)

The Rebel CR90 Corvette "Tantive IV" for X-Wing.  Most famous for the opening scene in A New Hope, the Tantive IV is in all three films, most notably getting swarmed by TIE Interceptors in Jedi.

It's an absoutely lovely mode, the paint job is on par with most of the recent X-Wing releases i.e. excellent for a pre-paint.  There's some lovely detailing work and it has a the usual weathered feel to it.  I can't deny being delighted by the fact the gun turrets swivel!  

I haven't even had a chance to look at the rules yet, something about energy and multiple attacks and destroying any other ship whose base you touch.  Nice! There is a mini-campaign booklet in the box, which is a suitable addition.  In Epic Play (the X-Wing rules where you can actually use this ship) the minimum points level is 300, a lot of points, but the scenario book pits you against a relatively small number of enemy ships, decent enough given the RRP of the Tantive IV!

I'm away visiting a friend in Auld Reekie next weekend; a fair bit of gaming should be involved and this guy is certainly the first thing I'll be packing!

I'm Back Baby.... Errr, Again.

Well, I guess that's long enough without posting on here.  To get the touchy feely stuff out of the way, life has simply been a little too stressful the last couple months to keep my normal routine, not just for blogging, but for a fair few other things.

The quick version is that I legally agreed to buy a house with my Mrs last year, but a few days after that she decided she didn't want to stay together any longer.  We couldn't get out of the house buy and neither of us wanted to live in the house on our own, so it was a very awkward and stressful twelve months.  Thankfully, March saw a lot of potential buyers view the place, we eventually managed to agreed a sale and it went through towards the end of April.

For the last couple weeks I've been enjoying the modest luxury of not worrying about the place (every time there was a strong wind, I was certain the tree in the garden would blow down through and go through the kitchen window!)  Still, the whole experience was pretty rough; lost a lot of money, had to leave my felis catus behind and it took a long time to come to terms with starting again at my age, but, thankfully, I think I've managed to get past that point now.  While I'm talking about this, I'd like to throw out a quick thanks to all my internet friends on the blogoshpere and elsewhere for their support (even if they didn't necessarily know they were offering it!)

Right, that's enough of that.

Managed a reasonable amount of gaming lately, obviously not enough though.  Played some FoG with the guys at the club; still an enjoyable game, but doesn't really grab me anymore. Scott at the club also ran a Romans vs Britons game using a new (to me) ruleset, the name of which escapes me.  A lot of fun, plus the fact that Scott doesn't run small games made it an enjoyable evening.  I also tried the Star Wars LCG by FFG, looks like a game with a lot of depth, but I'm waiting to find a regular opponent before I drop much cash on it.

I've also been on a bit of a buying splurge too; a ton of games have been added to the pile lately, notably:

• Sentinels of the Multiverse.  This is a fixed deck, co-op cardgame which sees a group of superheroes joining forces to fight an evil supervillain.  The game itself is phenomenally simple, the rule book contains almost no rules, rather it just goes over the turn sequence and clarifies exactly what the different terms used mean. Instead, all the actions and abilities in the game are on the various hero, villain and environment cards; the game can be taught in literally less than five minutes. Sentinels is also supremely replayable, I have the base game and one expansion and have yet to play the same combination of heroes, villains and environments twice.  Lastly, the game doesn't use any existing IP; instead all the characters are original creations and it's very enjoyable reading the humorous fluff for each one.  My favorite hero so far is Fanatic, a crusading angel smiting her enemies, while the most entertaining villain is Baron Blade, a mad scientist determined to crash the moon into Earth!  An outstanding game.
  
  
  
• Star Trek Attack Wing.  Right, here's the issue.  I already play and love X-Wing. ST:AW is essentially the same game... with worse models... and poorer quality cards... and with some fairly broken combinations.  So, what's the appeal?  It's STAR TREK BABY!  Yeah, I'm a fan boy, so even though the whole experience is less satisfying than X-Wing, it's still Klingons against the Dominion and that's just full of win.  I just received the first Borg ship in the mail today (Borg Sphere 4270) and, ooooh, tiny nerdgasm, Borg Cutting Beam, Seven of Nine, Regenerate, what's not to love!
  
  
  
• Malifaux Second Edition.  A blast from the past this one, I was playing Malifaux not long after it's original release a few years ago.  A very thinky skirmish game, but also a lot of fun.  Sadly, the game suffered from far too many errors, erratas and updates and I ended up bailing on an otherwise fine game.  The last game I played involved us using the original rulebook, the errata, the faq, the new rules sheet and the pdf of the updated cards, simply too much faff to enjoy the game.
  
  I'm glad to say that M2E is a much better set of rules than the original, cleaner explanations of the key mechanics, less clutter and much better presentation. It's also been an excuse to pick up a couple of the new plastic Crew boxes LadyJ and Ramos and get some modelling in (I will get some painting done soon, I swear!)

I'm still pretty addicted to Android Netrunner, the most rewarding game I play with any regularity, but we're really struggling to get any kind of community together in Aberdeen.  Online, I use OCTGN whenever I can, so if anyone out there plays A:NR and uses OCTGN, feel free to get in touch (my username is Vladdd309.)

Been churning through the books recently too; I've adapted to reading three books at once now, based on what format (physical book, audiobook and Kindle,) compared to two (one factual and fiction.)  I listen to an audiobook on the commute, read the kindle in the house and a regular book everywhere else, especially the bath.  Currently reading the original Foundation trilogy by Asimov, forgotten just how good it is.  Expect a few Two Minute Reviews to follow soon.

It's that time of year again, the IPL is back (coom on the Kings XI!) as well as the Giro.  A few more weeks and I can start pretending again that I like tennis, then it's the Tour and the golf.  Not enough hours in the week!

Lastly, on a complete impulse, I bought a PS Vita in March.  I'm a Xbox fan, but haven't been able to either use the 360 I have much nor pick up the new console.  My laptop isn't up to playing a game so the Vita has been a godsend.  Notably, Killzone Mercenary has just been eating up the dead hour between ten and eleven at night and Wipeout is just as great as it was back in 1994!

Anyway, thanks to those of you have stuck around to read all this.  I'll try not to leave it so long until the next post!  S.

Another New X-Wing Ship - The Moldy Crow

A bit of good fortune crossed my path a couple weeks ago, I had a nice little lottery win. Nothing in the quit-work-and-get-some-hookers-and-blow category, but a nice wee three figures.  It was sensible hat time though, so a good chunk went to paying some stuff off and another hefty piece went into my saving account. There was enough leftover to be a little self-indulgent.  I took a mate out for dinner, bought some new togs and, of course, picked up some miniatures for the pile!

I'll keep the first purchase quiet for now, but I'm quite happy with them.  The second was another ship for X-Wing, the HWK-290 Light Freighter.  Similar to the YT-1300/Millennium Falcon and the Firespray-31/Slave-1, the HWK-290 is better know to fans as the Moldy Crow, and for it's pilot Kyle Katarn. Actually, many people won't recognize the HWK at all, as it's the first ship in the X-Wing range not to have been in the movies.  Those of you who played the Dark Forces series on the pc "Do you fear me Jedi?" should be happy at it's release.

Now I think it's fair to say this ship was the least popular of the Wave 3 releases for X-Wing. A lot of people didn't like the model (it's brown after all) and it's stats are hardly that impressive. Still, I thought, it can't be that bad, can it?

Well, no, it's not bad at all, but it's not great either.  Not terribly manoeuvrable, not that resilient,  not even dishing out that much damage.  The HWK-290 is really the first support ship available for the rebel fleet; it's not going to do much on it's own, but with the right options and in with the right mix of ships. . .

The most obvious build is using Kyle Katarn, The Moldy Crow itself, a blaster turret and a recon specialist crew member.  This will pump out Focus tokens for the whole game, two per turn, allow you to give one to nearby ships each turn and also make proper use out of the blaster turret.  If you have a couple ships with Advanced Photon Torpedoes along side, then they can really dish out some damage in one or two turns.

A similar, but less obvious, way to use the HWK is by just using the cheapest pilot, the blaster turret and recon specialist.  This doesn't give any fancy benefits to your other ships, but it makes an excellent finishing ship.   As the turret can fire in any direction, swing this ship safely round the sides or behind several enemy ships, wait to see what survives the attacks from your better pilots, then use the HWK to finish them off. Best of all, this build is fairly cheap at 23 points so you could squeeze in three other ships in a 100 point game.

I'm quite happy with my purchase, despite the fact I actually wanted a B-Wing (they didn't have any left.)  It's not a ship I'd want two of, unlike the awesome Tie Bomber, but I'll certainly try it out the next time we manage to get a game in.

Incidentally, for any X-Wing players out there who don't know about it already, the Unofficial X-Wing Squadron Builder is a great tool for messing around with lists (and avoiding uncomfortable mental arithmetic.)

New X-Wing Ship - The Tie Bomber

So what's better than buying yourself a little geeky something (or Mr Visa buying you something?)  Well it's getting something bought for you!

Cheers then for my mate Adam for picking me up a Tie Bomber for X-Wing! Nice.

Fantasy Flight obviously know their audience; the TIE Bomber is easily the least cool ship from the original films, so they've compensated by making the rules for it terrific.  Cheap and loaded with ordnance seems to be the way to go with it.

The usual FFG bundle of cards and cardboard features.

A nice enough pre-painted model, but, like the rest of the X-Wing range, would benefit from some touch ups or insignia markings. It'll get to the table in a couple of weeks hopefully, up against another new model, the B-Wing.

Still here. . .

. . . Just not been up to posting anything lately.  Apologies for the long absence friends.  Life has been fairly stressful lately and that, coupled by a wee break to Spain, hasn't had me in the frame of mind for blogging or painting lately.

Things haven't actually turned the corner yet, but I'm at the point now where there's not much to actually do, just a case of waiting for things to happen.  Realising that, I'm actively working to get into a settled routine and resume doing the things that make me happy.  That sounds a bit flakey, I know, but hey, that's how I've been feeling lately.

Still a bit of gaming going on.  Had a few games of Netrunner this week; still my favourite game full stop at the moment, just wish I was a bit better at it!  Also had another outing for Dreadball the week before. Still oodles of fun, but I want to try another team for variety; robots, bugs or rats.  Can't decide.

Naturally, some retail therapy has been needed lately and I picked up two boxes from Fantasy Flight Games; the Elder Signs expansion; Unseen Forces and the new Star Wars RPG beginner box.  The RPG looks very entertaining, it's based on the WFB system (which I've never played) and has a ingenious dice pool system.  The artwork and writing are top notch too.

Frustratingly, I've not tried out the Unseen Forces yet.  The box FFG have used for the expansion is slightly too small for the cards Elder Sign uses, meaning that the large cards are all bent out of shape.  They've spent the last two days under a pile of the heaviest books I have, trying to straighten them out.  Still, reading the rule sheet, the expansions seems to add a welcome degree of difficulty to Elder Sign and the new Blessed and Cursed dice seem fun.

After moving house last month, I've managed to create a little space for modelling and painting.  No painting done yet, but I have managed to finish basing my 28mm Viking warband for Saga (wow, reading back I'd planned to have these finished in May.)  Hopefully I'll get these undercoated over the weekend, providing the rain eases up.

Lastly, we're finally getting to try out In Her Majesty's Name at the club next week.  Sholto has been beavering away creating factions for us to use.  Looking forward to it, pics if I can take anything decent.

X-Wing Wave 3

Following on from Star Wars day yesterday, FFG have released some spoilers for the next wave of X-Wing releases.

The B-Wing looks like the pick of the bunch, with decent hull and shields combined with two lots of torpedoes and a heavy cannon option.  Also, is that a new icon on the task bar?

The profile of the Tie Bomber is far better than I thought it would be.  Just as well, as it's my least favourite SW ship. Able to withstand plenty of damage, the fact it can carry five loads of ordinance makes me think we'll see a pilot who is able to use missiles/torps twice per turn.  Just a hunch anyway...

As I said yesterday, I know fuck all about the Hawk, or the HWK-290. In game it has decent hull points, average agility, but the icon bar makes me think we'll see a couple new turret options (which will also be useful on those Y-Wings too.) Can't say I'm 100% on the paint job, but that's easily fixed.

Lastly there's the Lambda Class Shuttle.  Thank goodness it's on a large base, despite what you see in Jedi, it's a big ship, easily the equal of the Falcon or Slave-1.  Decent firepower and plenty of shields mean it should soak up plenty of damage, something the Empire struggle with.  The real juice is in the options available, that new (radar? Sensor?) icon and two co-pilots give it plenty of options.  Despite my dodgy lateral thinking, I can already see some decent combos open up.

So even with my 12-1 loss:win ratio with X-Wing, I still had a tiny wee nerdgasm over some of the spoilers (read the proton bomb text at the bottom of the page.)  Bring on Q3, can someone remind me to keep £100 aside from my June pay?

May The Fourth...

Be with you... Always

Happy Star Wars day everyone.  

In honour of the films (and the huge commercial empire they spawned,) I set out today to get rid of some disposable cash on something SW.  Despite hanging around the local Forbidden Planet for twenty minutes I didn't end up with anything, although the Lego Snow Speeder Hoth set was really tempting.

Instead I downloaded a few of the older fiction books, namely the Thrawn trilogy, starting with Heir to the Empire.  I'm pretty sure I read these years ago and remember them for being pretty decent, but am not 100%.  Hey, I'm a fan boy so they could be terrible, but I'll still read them regardless and call them great!

I wouldn't be surprised if I put a couple of the movies on later tonight too.

Also on the Star Wars front are rumours of the next wave of X-Wing minis for the FFG game.  Tie Bomber, B-Wing, Lambda Shuttle and the HWK-290.  Tie Bomber is a bit meh, but the B-Wing should be full of win (as long as it's big!) The Lambda Shuttle sounds interesting as in the background fluff, it can carry some heavy weaponry.  There's also plenty of scope for using it in the rebel fleet (with Chewie piloting of course.)  The Hawk is apparently featured in a number of SW computer games, Empire at War being the only one I clearly remember.  Apart from that, don't know much about it.

Basically, FFG could release anything in this release and everyone, me included, would buy them all.  X-Wing is just a licence to print money.

Mobile Blogger App and X-Wing Pics

Yesterday's first post from my Android phone using the Blogger App wasn't without teething problems.  Firstly, it failed to publish the post first time AND deleted the draft in the process. Secondly, I notice it didn't publish any of the pics I'd taken, but neither did it save them on the phone either?  Anyone know what I was doing wrong? Still functional enough to use when I'm out and about.

So what pics didn't appear yesterday?  The new X-Wing releases, that's what!  Oooo, shiny.

First up, piloted by everyone's favourite scum, is Slave 1. It's an impressively large bit of kit, although still dwarfed by the Millennium Falcon.

The coolest Tie variant (at least from the original three movies) is next.  I bought two Tie Interceptors mainly because the game store only had two left, but I'm sure I would have picked up another one at some point in the future anyway.

Lastly, my least favorite Rebel ship (again from the original movies,) the A-Wing.  Meh, nothing wrong with it really, and it's rules look deadly, but it doesn't really do it for me.

For those of you who already have X-Wing, I'd like to point out that the quality of the models and, in particular, the paintwork is a vast improvement on the initial release.  All the weapons point in the correct way and the coloured panels on the A-Wing and Slave 1 have a nice thick colour to them. Compare the first X-Wing model I received where I had to cut all the engines off and reattach them, bend the weapon barrels back into shape and basically have cream paint splashed over black.

Not sure when we'll get our next game in though, next week looks pretty busy.  Maybe I'll have to kick the Mrs out shopping for a while and get some folk round to the house!

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!)

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...

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