First Game of 2020

  

Went down to Brighton to celebrate my Godson Dylan's 18th birthday. He wanted to play a game of X-wing, and so his wish was granted. Much fun was had.

Dylan set up a three way game deploying: Scum & Villainy; Rebel/Resistance; Empire/First Order fleets.

After the first turn where Scum & Villainy mixed it up with the Rebel/Reistance before everybody remembered that the goal to winning was to pick up a package adrift in space.

So a race to the center began.

By the end of the game ships had been blown up. In the final turn Alix's Millennium Falcon, with Rey piloting got the token. It was then was promptly blown to smithereens, which meant the game was a draw.

A lot of fun, and next time Dylan has promised to set up an Epic scale battle with two big ships. I think my work as Godmother has turned out well with this one.
  

First Epic Star Wars X-Wing Game

 

Imperial Raider in all its glory.

We were away for the weekend, visiting Brighton to see friends and the Godchildren. The trip down was windy, but we managed to get there without being blown off the road. On Sunday we got to play a game of X-Wing.

Second turn: everyone has moved into range And Dylan's chose his mum's Falcon as his target.

This was the first time  the huge ship rules any of us have played with a large ship. Fortunately, Dylan is a sharp cookie and did all the hard work of explaining how his Imperial Raider flew and fired.

We played one of the scenarios from the Imperial Raider mission book where the Imperial force had to destroy some debris that the Rebel Alliance were trying to salvage.

Chloe's TIE Interceptor is about to be hammered by the two T65 X-wings flown by her dad.

We divided into two teams. Our two Godchildren commanding the Imperial forces. Dylan took the Imperial Raider; and Chloe flew Darth Vader in an Imperial Advanced TIE fighter, and took a TIE Interceptor as her second ship. A total of 159 points.

Myself, Susan, Alix and Ian were playing the rebels. I flew Poe Dameron in a T70 X-wing; Susan chose a B-wing piloted by Ten Numb; Ian took two T65 X-wings, one Red squadron pilot, the other Wedge Antilles who rocks; and Alix flew Han in the Falcon. No upgrades for a total of 160 points.

There was a lot of dodging as the Imperial Raider swung towards the X-wings.

Turn one and the Imperial Raider moved forward, and we rebels advance cautiously as we had didn't want to feel the full might of the huge ship when it fired on us.

Dylan swiped the two X-wings off the board, and now all the rebel players were trying not to be in its path.

The game got very deadly real quick when the full implication of being rammed meant instant obliteration of the small rebel fighters. Things were starting to look pretty grim for the four adults, with Alix's Falcon losing all of its shields and taking hull damage.

It's big and manoeuvres like a barge.

At one point, Dylan looked like he would accidentally fly the Imperial Raider off the table, but he adroitly managed to swing around after batting the two X-wings. However, it did mean that the surviving rebels were able to get into his rear arc.

The swarming begins, the little ships like remora around a shark.

The big ship swung around to then start targeting the debris, but the accumulative damage had started to tell.

The Falcon is flying with half its hull points gone, but so is the Imperial Raider.

Then in a last round of manoeuvring saw the Imperial Raider go down as it turned towards its next goal. This was a very close game as all the rebel ships were hanging in by a thread and if any had been unlucky when rolling the evade dice then the Imperial forces would've have won.

The fall of the Imperial Raider as the remaining rebels avoiding Darth Vader and deliver the coup de grace.

Showing the  cards that are reversed when each half of the big ship is rendered ineffective and when both halves are gone, only then is the ship destroyed.

Birthday Acquisitions

  

The X-Wing meme of – Mistakes Were Made – seems almost applicable here, except that this was no unforeseen splurge, but rather a birthday acquisition. The U-wing is a very pretty craft from Rogue One that I think has all the attributes that made the X-wing so iconic.

Ghost of course, is from the cartoon series Rebels, which like The Clone Wars has added more to story than some of the prequel and sequel films in the Star Wars franchise.

  

Either way, I like the ships and I'm looking forward to playing a game of X-Wing at some point with these two models, and trying out some of the special rules that go with them.
  

Two X-Wing Battles: The Kittens Strike Back

Allan moving his Academy pilot forward at the beginning of the first turn on my new space mat bought from Dark Sphere games.

We played two games of X-Wing this Saturday, which made for a very busy weekend after a morning spent shooting arrow at archery practice, and then shooting again on Sunday in our club Spring Handicap competition.  More on archery here.

Our friend Allan came around to play and have a meal, drink wine, the usual really.  He and his wife Paloma are leaving Britain for sunnier climes, though she couldn't make today because of having to finish her doctorate presentation, which was due Monday.

So, I made up two three-player scenarios, with the kittens playing the opposition and us three humans all working together to foil them, which went about as well as could be expected...

The kittens have destroyed one TIE fighter and are leading the rest on a merry chase through the asteroids.

The first scenario was based on the Millenium Falcon flying out of an asteroid belt and engaging it's stardrive to escape, loosely based on the Empire Strikes Back.  The Falcon had Han and R2 D2 aboard with homing missiles and an upgrade to allow the bucket of bolts to do barrel rolls.

It all got a bit gnarly with ships banging into each other, which worked well for the TIEs in preventing the Falcon's progress.

We each ran two of the Empire's Imperial TIEs with one average and one academy pilot each.  Points wise the Falcon was outmatched, but the kittens still managed to get their very battered and beaten ship off the table.

The kittens on the verge of victory with the TIE players (Susan) insisting the Imperials being allowed one more round of firing on the Falcon as the centre pin wasn't across the edge of the board.  Kittens still escaped though.

The second game features two X-wings escorting a Y-wing off the table.

More asteroids to fly through.

The kittens had Red Leader Garven Dreis, Red 2 Wedge Antilles, and Gold Leader Jon "Dutch" Vander facing the same motley crew of Imperial pilots: one skill four, two skill three and three skill one Academy pilots.

My two TIE fighters are bottom left and centre, and I had to turn my lead to avoid hitting the asteroid.

There was much dodging of asteroids and, the inevitable crashing into one's own ships as the Imperials struggled to gang up on the Y-wing–our victory being dependent on destroying it before it could get off the board.

A TIE fighter about about to go boom after being shot up by the kittens, and the two remaining TIEs failed to inflict any damage when returning fire.

Wedge Antilles is a total killer because his character's special ability is to reduce the enemy agility by one, and TIE fighters are a bit fragile if hit.

The kittens did a reverse turn with the X-wings and lined up on two soon to be ex-TIE fighters, which led to complaints from Susan that I was 'avoiding' the fight.

In a move that couldn't have been staged for more laughs, I managed to crash my Academy pilot into Allan's good pilot, and then crash my good pilot into my own Academy pilot, which caused my two TIE fighters to end up trailing the oncoming X-wing furball.

With the two TIE fighters destroyed the Y-wing slip quietly away after the only TIE that can shoot it fails to destroy it.

Points wise the game was very evenly matched, but the kittens managed to get the slightly battered Y-wing away and beat up the Imperials for their trouble.

Afterwards we ate a lovely roast beef dinner, which Susan had made, drank wine, and then watched Rogue One that Allan hadn't yet seen, which made a perfect end to a perfect day.  I will also say that I enjoyed Rogue One more on the second watch because I was able to just relax and let the story unfold without the niggling question of where and who is that?

NB:  For those of you reading this and not understanding the 'kittens' use in the game, they are avatars whose movement and dice are controlled by more than one of the opposition players, either in rotation or individually taking command of one ship,which makes for an interesting game.

PS: Amended title after posting.
   

X-Wing: Into the Asteroid Field

Sunday last, we had some friends over for the afternoon from the Physics department, who had all expressed an interest in Star Wars and were up for learning to play X-Wing.  For the occasion I played the soundtracks to the movies in the background, which added a certain ambience to the two games we played.

The first was a training game, no cards, no asteroids, just a simple kill everyone game.  After that the interest was strong in playing another game, but make it more complicated.  So I added an asteroid field and cards: astromechs, upgrades and weapons: ion cannons and proton torpedoes.  The scenario was for the Rebels to stop the Imperial shuttle from leaving the table with its precious cargo of handwavium.

A late addition, because Susan was busy cooking, was bringing on the Millenium Falcon for her to play towards the end of the second game.  The Falcon swept up the table and had a pop at stopping the Imperial shuttle from escaping, but Han failed to save the day.

Much fun was had, and I made at least one convert to the game, hello Sam, and he plans to buy a copy of the game and introduce all his friends to it.
   

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.
  

SF Wargame Rules: What I Want

The above is a crop of a picture I got from Catalyst games showing off their BattleTech rules.  I must admit my first reaction was this is not exactly selling BattleTech as a fun game to play.  What I want are a set of  rules that I can use while playing a game.  The above is pretty much my definition of a set of rules that would slow down the game every time one wanted to refer to them.

So I want rules that are really, really accessible.  A good example would be the rules booklet for Star Wars: X-Wing.

But what I want most of all are a set of rules that give me the feeling of playing in the future, which Star Wars: X-Wing fails to do, being WW2 combat in space!  Unsurprising given the source material, and don't get me wrong I love playing the game.

To put it plainly, a game must not only to have the tropes of SF (Robots, Rockets & Rayguns), but it has to feel science fictional, which is something that's very hard to pin down.

Partly I suspect what would make game feel like the future are things that traditional wargames have toiled against down the years: too much information from having the models on the tabletop and knowing the outcome of every move your opponent makes during the game.  So, it seems to me that what are seen as bugs in traditional historical wargames could be made to be seen as features in a science fictional setting.

Perhaps that's why SF wargames are so popular?  I jest slightly, as I don't imagine for one minute that this is a concern for the average punter who buys a game like Warhammer 40K.
   

Star Wars X-Wing: The Big Battle

Not your standard tournament game.

Last weekend we went to Brighton to see my Godson, his sister and my dear friends who are their lovely parents.  I, now having a job, was able to fulfill my Godmother role of providing Xmas and birthday presents for both the kids.  Being that they're Star Wars fans, and having got them both the old Star Wars X-Wing core sets a year or so ago, it seemed like a good idea to get them the new core sets as their late Xmas presents and having talked to both of them I had a fair idea of what ships they liked.

So Dylan got an A- and B-wing, the B-wing being his favourite fighter, and Chloe got a TIE Interceptor and Tie Advanced aka Darth Vader's fighter.

It's tricky manoeuvering your fighters when the table is this full.

Then they got to unpack everything and we ended up with sixteen ships on the table: six Rebel Alliance and Resistance fighters versus ten Imperial and First Order ships.  No attempt was made to balance the forces using the points system, all we did was not have any cards in play.  So all the fighters were pretty vanilla, and you know what, it was one of the best games of X-wing I have had the pleasure of playing.

I was the Mistress of the TIE fighter formation flying team.

Final outcome was a win for the Rebels/Resistance who only had to fly off the other-side of the table from where they entered, but the Imperials destroyed the fleeing B-wing.

On reflection, should have made the B-wing something the Rebels/Resistance had to protect, as it would have made for a more balanced game.  But apart from that the rules were up to the job of running a game without it becoming a slog or slowing down, though adding cards might have slowed down the turns, depending on what was chosen.

Fun was had.

PS: a link to a cartoon that says it all.
  

Star Wars Imperial Squadrons

As any wargamer will tell you, you need two forces for a wargame.  When you buy Star Wars X-wing one gets two TIE fighters to challenge the Rebel X-wing.  I haven't managed to maintain that Imperial disparity, primarily because my interest is in the Rebel Alliance ships, and because money.

Still I plan to add to my collection of Imperial ships because it's nice to be able to make changes in force composition.  Besides which it makes sense to have pairs of ships so that one can have a wingman.  Except for big ships like the Punisher above, or Slave 1 etc.

One of the things where Star Wars X-wing falls short is the ability to re-enact specific moves from some of the movies: for example Darth Vader and his two wingmen in the Death Star trench.  Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, after all this is a game not a replay of a film, but I suppose I would like to have seen a rule that made a nod to this.  Something along the lines that Darth Vader's special ability is to have two junior pilots move when he moves – because at the moment, given the rules about movement order, Vader always moves last and shoots first for the Imperials.

More X-wing to come, as I'm writing up a battle report from a game I played this weekend.  Expect it later this week.
   

Star Wars Rebel Squadrons

My collection of Star Wars miniatures has been growing slowly mostly down to me being broke.  However, now I'm working I feel I can treat myself to adding to my force because why have one of something when two is better and three or more is better still.  This probably counts as a wargamers mantra, along with oh look shiny!

Besides, this is a game I actually get to play, so I have actual motivation to keep adding to my force.  Though my recent X-wing purchases have been for my Godson and his sister who are both big Star Wars fans and who enjoy playing the game when I go and visit them.  We fly around the board making pew-pew noises and complaining about Dodgey Luke getting all the luck.

Anyway, my plan is get another two more X-wings and then re-touch the paint to make them look like the six main Red squadron craft at the Battle of Yavin.  I have compiled shots of the studio models and will do just enough re-touching to hint at each of the named pilots.

While we don't see A- and B-wings in the original film they are, I believe, canonically supposed to have been there, just off screen, lurking or something.

The Y-wings are of course for my Gold squadron.  Again some minor paint changes will be made to make them look more like what we see on screen.  It took me forever to realize that the markings on the top of the cockpit meant: one stripe for Gold Two and two stripes for Gold Three – dividing the band into two and three stripes and the Y-wing without a stripe was Gold leader.

At some future point, when finances allow, the Fantasy Flight Games Rebel Aces set with the different paint schemes for the A-wing and B-wing will be acquired.
   

Happy New Year & All That Jazz

The Star Wars: X-Wing Empire models I acquired over the course of the year (click to enlarge).

This now marks the beginning of the seventh year of blogging and it has been a difficult one for me; a year where I haven't been able to post as much as I would like because I've not been doing much painting for the last six months.  I have a lot of things I intend to post but it means I must finish painting models and taking pictures, which I've singularly failed to do.

This has been down to two real life concerns.

The first a lingering injury in my right wrist that flared up after bad sprain and I was diagnosed with tenosynovitis.  Currently, I'm wearing a wrist brace.  It may also signify a flare up of rheumatoid arthritis or repetitive strain injury from typing. Whatever the cause it's a bad thing, but mustn't grumble, life could be worse.  The second concern is my work.  I'm writing and after three years I need to complete at least one of the novels and try to sell it.  This has caused me to fret a lot about work and not take time off to do hobbies.  On my other blog I've totaled up this years word count and surprised myself by how much I've done.

Still, all play and no fun makes for a dull life.

So, the plan is to do more hobby stuff.  This will include wargaming but also archery, which will get me out of the flat and talking to people who are not inside my head.  It will be good for me.  Looking at what I've blogged, I see a number of posts about BattleTech, Ogre/GEV, and Heavy Gear, which is not that surprising given my predilections.  Mustn't forget to mention Star Wars: X-Wing either, my recent passion.  The only games show I went to this year was Salute and afterwards I reported on my visit to see HMS Defender that was a lot of fun.

So, having seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens (review to come at the end of January to give everyone a chance to watch and not reveal spoilers), and after listening to the wonderful soundtrack from the movie, I've relaxed a bit and sat down at my workbench.  First thing I did was dust everything.  Then I started painting, and while I've nothing finished to show, I can report that paint has been applied and progress is being made.

At the end of the day it's all about doing stuff you enjoy.

That just leaves me to say thank you all for coming and reading my blog and leaving comments.  It's what makes blogging worthwhile.  Finally, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year.
  

Birthday X-Wing

   

It was my birthday yesterday and I was given some Star Wars: X-Wing expansions sets by my partner.  As you can see the plush toy kittens were very excited.  A big box had arrived and I had sat patiently all day to wait for my partner to come home so that she could enjoy the surprise on my face when I opened the box.  She'd kind of given away what was inside by asking me if I'd be disappointed if I didn't get a Millennium Falcon, which was on my Amazon wishlist, when she asked me if the Rebel transport would be a nice thing to have?

The answer to that is an emphatic yes.

Then we had to have a drink to celebrate my birthday, which we drank while I unpacked all the bits & pieces that come with each Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars set.  And girl don't you get a load of stuff to go with each model.  It took a while.  Then we ate a meal I'd made, and it was suggested we should play a game to celebrate my birthday.

Not by me, but by my partner.  How wonderful is that?

The kittens wanted to play with it all, but I suggested restraint, and a compromise was made where they'd get to fly the shuttle with an X-wing escort and have the freighter on the table to admire.  My partner set up the kittens deployment, which was less than optimal it has to be said. They were flying Red Squadron's finest: Garven Dreis (Red Leader), Wedge Antilles, and Luke Skywalker escorting a vanilla captured Lambda shuttle.  No extras in this set-up, which came 104 points, and is not tournament legal, because there is no Rebel Lambda shuttle cards at this point in time.

We took it in turns to operate the dials for the kittens, but both of us managed to not manoeuvre the formation very well for the first couple of moves as we kept flying into the shuttle.  It moves very slowly, and has a big base that mucks up one's well laid cunning plans to fly around it.  As an added wrinkle to how we played last time, when Susan ran the kittens fleet I controlled her force and vice-versa when I moved them.  This idea worked really well, because it meant that neither of us could know what the other was doing and react accordingly.

Meanwhile the Empire swept in from both flanks.  The scenario was to get the shuttle across and off the board for the Rebel scum to win.  Above is Susan's tight formation, which she adroitly  manoeuvred to good effect, mostly consisting of: a generic TIE Advanced Storm Squadron pilot in the lead, with Night Beast and Mauler Mithel for a total of 56 points.

Below are my TIE fighters all in a line, and I was slightly too clever for my own good in the first formation turn, ending up with them all touching each other at the end of the move.  Still it was a cunning plan that mostly worked.  My three pilots were; Howl Runner, Dark Curse, and a generic Black Squadron pilot that added up to 48 points.  Together our force also came to a grand total of 104 points.  Perhaps on hindsight we should have gone for Darth Vader in the TIE Advanced, because the kittens seem to play better than us!?

There was a lot of toing and froing around the board as we both tried to shoot the shuttle while not being blasted to smithereens by the X-wings.  I lost a TIE fighter to the kittens and one could see how the game was going to play out from there on.  Still a highlight was a lucky save by one of the Imperial pilots who had been targeted by Luke Skywalker, who got the nickname Dodgy Luke Skywalker on account of his ability to avoid being hit when shot at.

The Force was strong with my Black Squadron TIE pilot: I thought she was a gonner when Dodgy Luke threw three hits, but as luck would have it I threw three evades, which was very lucky indeed.

Basically if you haven't played the game the pilots all get to choose to play an option from there list on their pilot cards, and it generally pays for the TIEs to choose evade, because they're a bit brittle having no shields.  I had done a reverse turn and my ship was stressed and therefore unable to choose an evade token, so this was a lucky roll of the dice.

And here is the moment where the kittens gloated in their moment of triumph.  TIE pilot Mauler Mithel's last chance to destroy the shuttle whose shields were down, hull damaged and generally looking like a target, and he missed.  He did survive being shot at by Wedge Antilles who was on his tail, but the kittens won again.

We played one more turn to see if the Empire could stop the X-wings from escaping.  We managed to take down Red Leader Garven Dreis, but Mauler Mithel died, and the game ended with four of our six TIE fighters destroyed – Howl Runner and the TIE advanced Storm Squadron pilot having to go back and report their failure to Lord Vader.