May the sixth be with you?

OK so I'm a couple of days late posting about Star Wars....

A colleague at work who's a Star Wars fan alerted my to Fantasy Flight's announcement of a second edition of the X_Wing Miniatures Game.

Now I'm not a great Star Wars geek but enjoy getting in the odd game of X-Wing and I'd like to own the main ships from the movies.  By 'main ships' I pretty much mean those I can remember and to be honest that's not that many.  I have several X-Wings and Y-Wings, loads of TIE fighters and Vader's TIE advanced, the Millennium Falcon (of course) and the fancy Lambda class shuttle.  Oh and of course a couple of TIE bombers because they look so cool.  Apart from Slave 1, there's not a lot more I'd definitely want to get.  After that it's just a case of picking stuff up if I see it going cheap.

I've no desire to play in organised tournaments.  X-Wing for me is mostly going to be a game we pull out when we have players gathered and no game planned.  Occasionally I'll plan a large, multi-player game like we did last Christmas.

So what should be my response to the new edition?  Do I want to buy the conversion kits you need to use your old models with the new rules?  Unlikely; I have ships from all three factions and at $50 per faction-specific kit that's a silly amount of money to spend.

So is the answer to carry on playing the old rules?

I can see why, apart from the commercial advantages, FF would want to update the rules.  They have rather grown piecemeal by virtue of what amount to new rules appearing with every new expansion pack.  A chance to review everything and make sure all the interactions are policed and properly integrated is probably A Good Thing.

On the other hand, with none of my regular gaming gang being fanatical X-Wing tournament players desperate to extract every ounce of advantage from minute study of "the Meta", I think we can probably manage quite happily with what we have now.  It might be a good idea to capture a copy of the latest of the First Edition FAQ though!

The new rules are promised to be (by virtue of new manoeuvre dials in the conversion kits) backwards compatible with the old ships.  FF would have had a riot on their hands if they'd done anything else! However, that doesn't mean any new ships that come out will be usable with the old rules.

So what are the chances that any new ships will come along that I'm desperate to include in my X-Wing games?  I quite like those big, tall bombers in the latest film (see, not a real geek; I can remember the names of neither bomber nor film) but you can buy those already.  Lets face it there's only a limited number of really iconic Star Wars ships.

Hmm, I think on balance I'm happy to remain blissfully old-school as far as X-Wing is concerned.



  

Christmas Games part 1 - X-Wing

I think we're close enough to count this as a Christmas game for 2017 don't you?

Gus and Arthur came over on Saturday to join Charlie and me in a game of X-Wing.  I planned a scenario to take advantage of the models I own.  The Empire was launching a strike on a rebel base.  To complete the mission they had to get a strike package off the far end of our nearly six foot long table.

The strike package consisted of two TIE Bombers with a Lambda class shuttle as electronic warfare support.  Escort for the bombers was in the form of four TIE fighters from the Black Squadron under the command of Gus.  I ran the bombers as it was easier than explaining the bombing rules to someone else at the start.

I kept the TIE Fighters pretty vanilla so Gus could concentrate on flying them in what was only his second game.  The TIE Bombers were loaded down with exciting ordnance including concussion and fusion bombs, which I was keen to try for the first time.

Of course the strike mission had to get through an asteroid field to get to the mission location.  The Rebel forces could come on from any of the other three edges of the table.  Charlie picked three Z-95 Headhunters while Arthur had Luke Skywalker and his rookie wing-man.  Again, for ease of play I avoided too much in the way of enhancements to these ships, though some of the pilots had spiffy abilities.

The Rebel leaders chose to both come on from the same edge...

The Rebels seemed to be a bit hypnotised by the bulk of the Lambda class and concentrated their attacks on it. This left the faster TIE Bombers free to make a dash for the bombing line.

Luke's wing-man seemed not to have paid too much attention to the "wing-man" part of his brief and proceeded to get well stuck in going after the Lambda class.  This left Luke to deal with two TIE Fighters.

In the picture above the TIE Bombers are at the half way mark and there's no-one handily placed to stop them so I decided that Han Solo and Chewbacca should intervene.  The Millennium Falcon entered from the edge nearest the Empire's objective.

Just as the shuttle had attracted fire from the Rebels, so the Millennium Falcon was a bullet magnet (plasma magnet?) for the Empire forces.  Gus developed a tactic of throwing TIE Fighters into the path of the Falcon to keep it from firing while I shot at it with missiles and dropped bombs in its path!

In the pic below the Falcon has already met an explosive end!  Also Rookie Pilot (who seemed to be something of a bomb magnet) has joined Han and Chewie in being spread thinly across the Galaxy Far, Far Away.  Quite frankly I detected but a minor disturbance in the Force.

As you may notice, there are two Z-95s and an X-Wing (Luke) on the shuttle's tail.  Just moments after this was taken the shuttle also broke up in a flaming ball of expensive special effects.

However, next move the Bombers were off the table to give the Empire a marginal victory.

On the whole, I'm not entirely unhappy with the scenario balance.  I wasn't sure how many players I was going to get so I broke the available models into roughly similarly pointed packages.  We ended up using five out of the eight.

I have to admit that the Bombers did get rather more points as they were supposed to be the number one target for the Rebel side.  If the Rebels had started from both sides of the table they would have had more chance of slowing down the TIE Bombers.

An enjoyable game and we finished in time to get in a couple of games of Tsuro afterwards.  My thanks to the players; we must do this again some time!

Strengthening the Legions

Last weekend's trip to visit my Mum in Wirral also gave me a chance to pop into the War Game Store in Brimstage.


I picked up these guys:

Another 60 Legionaries will give me a very usable little Republican Roman army. I'm a little disappointed that the velites-and-command-figures sprue is identical to the previous legions-in-chainmail box but that's not a problem.  Most of the velites in this box are going to be converted into unarmoured hastati.


I have a choice now. Should I keep going with Carthaginians until I've finished my second unit of citizen levy spearmen or should I start painting Italians straight away?  Keep looking out for updates!


Whilst at the shop I also invested in a second TIE Bomber for X-Wing.  I'm planning a scenario based around a strike mission for Christmas.

X-Wings and TIE Fighters

I've owed young Harry in the village a wargame since his Mum bought one in the school charity auction a year ago.  Given a choice of subjects, Harry picked "Star Wars spaceships", the game to be played with his friend Leo.

As I was introducing the rules for the first time, we started with a relatively simple game featuring just the three ships in the starter pack - two TIE Fighters and an X-Wing.  

I wanted to simplify things slightly. I didn't go as far as to use the start-up rules in the boxed set as I think they simplify too far but I did leave out critical hits and I made sure there were no pilot abilities to confuse things.  The TIE Fighter pilots had no abilities at all and the X-Wing was piloted by Biggs Darklighter, whose special ability has no effect when his is the only Rebellion ship in the game.

After a quick teach-in on the rules we got started with Leo representing the Galactic Empire.  Victory went to Harry in about an hour and a half.

The lads then swapped sides as we introduced some more ships, some better pilots and the full combat rules.

Harry had two TIE Fighters (Dark Curse and Winged Gundark) and Darth Vader in a TIE Advanced.  Vader's ship carried a concussion missile.

The Rebels fielded Biggs again, joined by Luke Skywalker (with R2-D2 in the astromech mounting).

Darth started with a head-on pass at Biggs.  He fired off his missile and managed to strip off Biggs's shields.  The action then developed into a confused melee and eventually Vader's ship was seen tumbling off into the blackness of space.  Another win for the Rebellion!

Both of the lads enjoyed the game greatly.  I suspect I know what's going to be on some Christmas lists this year!

What Santa Brought

I received some nice gifts this Christmas and a few of them were game-related.  

First up: Love Letter.  This is a card game in which players compete to smuggle letters of devotion to a cloistered princess in an attempt to win her hand in marriage.  It comes in a rather nice red velvet bag.  I haven't had a chance to play it yet but will report back here when I do.

In passing, I ought to mention that daughter Millie received another card game; Exploding Kittens.  We did play that.  It's very silly.  I won! Yay!

I also received a couple of packs of the excellent Bob Murch's Pulp Miniatures.  Unfortunately I've put them away somewhere safe and now can't find them to photograph.

And then yesterday I was passing the WarGameStore at Brimstage (Wirral) with some Christmas money waiting to be spent. It would have been rude not to stop by. I decided to blow some of the cash I received on some more ships for my developing (I won't yet say burgeoning but give it time) X-Wing Miniatures Game collection.

As you can see I got the Most Wanted pack.  This is a starter pack for the "Scum and Villainy" faction - smugglers, pirates and the like.  It also features third-faction adaptations for some models I don't currently possess but am now very tempted to buy.  Clever marketing that by Fantasy Flight Games.

Oh and I also bought a new detail brush and some GW Cadian Fleshtone paint.

More X-Wing

Andy came over on Monday evening and we had a game of X-Wing.  This was Andy's first game and my first non-solo game using the full rules.

We played with the models continued in the basic set; two TIE fighters and an X-Wing.  As per the rulebook these were piloted by "Obsidian Squadron Pilot", "Night Beast", and Luke Skywalker respectively.  It occurred to me after I'd changed over the card inserts on the bases that swapping between Obsidian Squadron Pilot and the even lower-skilled guy I'd been set up for previously was pointless as the only difference was between two pilot skills that meant either pilot would have moved first and fired last in this game.

We played across the kitchen table on the suitably coloured back-side of a Games Workshop battlemat.  Andy took the Imperials and rapidly learned the value of a well-timed Koiogan turn (an Immelman or split-S for those of you who remember SPI's Air War).  In the pic below he's acquired a stress token as a result of pulling one to give him a shot at Luke.

Combat was a hell of a lot easier for me as I had two targets and hence twice the chance of finding one of them in my firing arc when the combat phase came around.  In the pic below I could shoot at either as ships don't block line of sight.  I chose to shoot at the nearer TIE fighter though I had a target lock-on to the other.  Unlike TIE fighters, X-Wings have the ability to lock-on and you can retain the lock-on whilst engaging another ship so I saved it for a later shot.

In the course of several such passes I took a couple of hits which caused my shields to go down (another bonus for the X-Wing user; TIE fighters are faster and more manoeuvrable but lack shields) whilst scoring hits on both of Andy's ships.  One of the hits was a critical, in this case Blinded Pilot meaning Andy had to shoot at me once without causing any effect before he could recover his vision.

 
In the end I think it was Luke's superior skill (rather than mine) that won out.  Although moving last isn't much of an advantage (you lock your move in before you know what the enemy is going to do) the ability to barrel roll after moving can be useful.  On one occasion I was able to roll such that Andy's TIE Fighter remained in my arc of fire but I just slipped out of his.  This and the ability to choose whether to Focus or Lock-on after seeing where the enemy ends up was very powerful in this set-up.

All-in-all I like this game.  It's got to be taken on it's own terms; as a simulation of the movies, not a simulation of "real" space combat. But on that basis it's a good short game for a relaxed evening with friends or family.  I think a multi-player melee (what Neil McDougall would call a "grand rammy") is called for.

A Galaxy Far Far Away

My colleague Geoff Taylor has very kindly lent me his Star Wars X-Wing collection to supplement my recently purchased starter pack.  I've been trying out the rules solo.  I have found them good.

Good, that is, as  representation of spaceship combat as depicted in the Star Wars films.  You need a very healthy dose of suspension of disbelief to counteract the fact that the physics of the Star Wars universe is complete bollocks.

This, for example is the large Lambda Class shuttle, a nice model with foldy-up wings.  It's a bit slow and unmanoeuvrable, presumably because of the drag of the big wings against the ether, but it's also the only ship that can stop dead in space.  This, for some reason, is a stressful manoeuvre so it can't do it for more than one turn at a time!    

Still, it's fun though I make an inept Luke Skywalker; in my try-out he was consistently out-fought by his wing-man Biggs Darklighter.