Friday 10 February 2017

X-Wing Battle


First turn of the game: my X-wing with Wedge piloting it is at the back as it is going around one of the asteroids while Poe Dameron's X-wing is closing with Darth Vader and Dylan's A-wing has come over to help.

Last weekend we did the fourth Frostbite archery competition and then went to Brighton to see our godchildren.  On Sunday we had a game, with some asteroids to make the playing area interesting.  I had also sorted out some spare pilot cards for both the kids, as they didn't have Wedge Antilles and Garven Dreis: that's Red 2 and Red Leader.  Wedge is a pretty hot pilot with a special ability to reduce a defenders agility, which pleased Dylan.

The mission was one we made up: effectively head hunting a specific target on the opposite side.  I was playing Rebels with Dylan and we had to get Darth Vader: Chloe's ship.  Susan and Chloe were the Imperials bringing law and order to the galaxy, and had to get Dylan's B-wing.

Chloe's Darth Vader has bumped into the rear of Poe Dameron's X-wing as I move Wedge Antilles into position to target the TIE fighter that is sitting between us, which would result in said TIE fighter going boom.

At the end of the second turn both forces had closed the gap and were in the middle of the asteroid field.  This rather limited the range of manoeuvres that were possible.

The TIE fighter between the two X-wings is about to go boom.

The battle split into two halves.  Dylan sent his A-wing over to attack his sister's ship  While on the other side of the table Susan's Imperial squadron has ganged up on Dylan's B-wing.

B-wing lays on a target lock on the pesky Imperial Interceptor TIE.

The third turn saw Darth Vader again bump into the rear of Poe Dameron's X-wing due to me choosing to only move forward one and Chloe deciding to do the same thing, which resulted in change in our relative positions.  Had I been playing Darth this would have been the time to have done a longer move and reverse turn.

Darth and Poe juggle the not hitting each other while Wedge comes up and lays down some hurt on the Sith Lord with a bonus target lock for fun.

Then the right flank turned towards the centre of the asteroid field with the left flank doing some very fancy manoeuvring that resulted in the Imperials reversing direction at the same time as Dylan's B-wing so that everyone was in the middle of a furball.

Then everything turned into a fast and furious furball.

Then the shooting started, with both sides concentrating their fire on the two targets of the scenario.

And the last turn of the game saw both Dylan's B-wing and Chloe's Darth Vader go down in a blaze of firing as both sides concentrated on their scenario victory conditions.  A Pyrrhic victory for both sides.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to play X-Wing and I really need to play more games.
  

6 comments:

  1. Good to see you got in a game or two on your trip! I haven't really kept up with the new release (rules, builds, or miniatures) with the glaring exception of the Rogue One models. The Tie strykers look cool and the U-wing is one of my top three favorite Star Wars starfighter designs of the past 25 years (the other two being the TIE predator and Avenger).

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    1. There's so much to keep up with though. Sheesh!

      I'm with you on the U-wing: prettiest new ship to come out of the new movies.

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    2. My interest in X-wing has waned for two connected main reasons: the card glut and most of the models that I want are already out. It just too much once they started putting out useful new cards that opened up new playstyles as well as fixed earlier issues but only in ships that I had no interest in. I might have kept up with the varied tactics back when I was getting every ship in every wave (typically two!) as I'd myself only keep maybe three sets of combos for my own builds but buying a $15 ship for a single card just got to be too much to ask. I could theoretically play with one of the online army builders and just print out my "cards" but the former really pulled the covers off of the core issue that my inner fanboy was ignored until that point. According to players who don't mind the pokemon "gotta catch'em all!" aspect, the actual gameplay has improved since I stopped. I'll still buy a booster or two when ships that I like visually come out though.

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    3. I don't find the cards add much in the way of enjoyment, though they certainly add features, but not all features are necessarily fun. I'm so not into tournament play, but if I were going to play with more cards, then it would be within an RPG style game or ongoing campaign.

      Got to give the player characters advantages to increase there chances of survival, whether that's as a Rebel or Imperial player. I'd probably keep significant named characters as NPC i.e. Vader and Luke.

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    4. You can build some really impressive individual ships by laying on the cards… but I find that very often it's Lanchester all over again, six cheap ships simply take longer to go boom than two expensive ships even if those two expensive ships have more overall damage-soaking and evasion ability. (Yeah, I like TIE swarms.)

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  2. I really wish you could edit comments. So many typos... some autocorrect, some partial forgotten sentence changes, others just pure oops. :(

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