Happy Star Wars Day!

Happy Star Wars Day everyone!

Starfighters and Dark Elves

On Monday night Ben came round for a game of X-Wing. Ben was playing the evil Empire and I was running the noble Alliance to Restore the Republic. Our squadrons;

Ben

• Boba Fett (Slave I)
• Howlrunner (TIE) with determination
• Winged Gundark (TIE)
• Obsidian Squadron Pilot (TIE)

Me

• Horton Salm (Y-Wing) with R2-K5 and 2 proton torpedo
• Gray Squadron Pilot (Y-Wing)
• Prototype Pilot (A-Wing)
• Prototype Pilot (A-Wing)

The action was short and brutal. For the first few turns we simply closed head on. Horton's torpedo failed to inflict any damage on Howlrunner. The other Y-Wing scored a critical... but we drew a card with the Pilot characteristic, and Howlrunner had the Determination skill. New rules technicality I learned, when Determination is applied to a pilot critical it doesn't just turn the card face down (i.e. negate the crit but not the damage) it negates the result entirely. In response the TIEs stripped some shields from the Y-Wings.

During turn's 4 and 5 the squadrons had passed each other, and began circling for position. My Y-Wings carried on straight for another turn before beginning lazy turns back around - their ion turrets meant they didn't care what arc the enemy was in. To my right the A-Wings had turned 90 degrees to enter the main engagement from the side, while Ben's TIEs had turned or K-turned to get me back into his sights. The exception was Slave I, that continued straight ahead, putting it out of the action for a turn.

Combined fire from most of my squadron had taken out Howlrunner, and while a lot of my ships had taken shield hits I wasn't feeling too bad about the game. Then disaster - the now shieldless Horton got hit by two criticals from a single attack! Both were direct hits, so 2 points of damage became 4 and he had only a single point of damage remaining! In the following turn the remaining two TIEs finished both Horton and the other Y-Wing. While the A-Wings desperately fought on for a couple more turns, this round of shooting was decisive.

Progress on the Dark Elves

So not much success in X-Wing. However I've had better results making progress on my Dark Elf army. A productive week has seen both the Hydra and the spearman regiment re-based. Both are done in the standard basing scheme I use for most of my models. While I think this works well on small-medium base sizes, on the Hydra's larger base it looks a little sparse. The Hydra is this afternoon's project anyway (I'm going to heavily drydrush the underside in a lighter gray, and touch up some details) so I'll finish the basing as part of that.

(The ghost in the middle of the spear regiment is my Supreme Sorceress. Since I intend for her usually to accompany them I figured I'd do her base at the same time.)

The Asteroid Runners

Last night I played against Jamie in my second full size (100 point) game of X-Wing. My squadron consisted of;

• Y-Wing piloted by Horton Salm, with Ion Turret and R2-D2
• Y-Wing piloted by Gold Squadron Pilot, with Ion Turret
• Y-Wing piloted by Gold Squadron Pilot, with Ion Turret
• Green Squadron Pilot

Against this Jamie had 4 TIE fighters, a TIE bomber, and a TIE Interceptor piloted by Turr Phennir. The deployment ended up with my A-Wing opposite the four basic TIEs on the right, the TIE bomber opposite the two basic Y-Wings, and the aces Salm and Phennir facing off on the left.

As we closed my Y-Wings and the TIE bomber veered towards the left. In the second turn I did something I had absolutely promised myself I wouldn’t do – one of my Y-Wings ended its move on an asteroid. Before the start of our previous game I had commented to Jamie that the asteroid tokens were so small you’d have to be trying to land on them. So naturally I landed on asteroids at least twice. Ships that are touching asteroids cannot shoot, and my squadron doesn’t have enough firepower that it can afford to lose any.

Even so, Salm and the other Y-Wing did reasonably well, ionizing both Phennir and the TIE bomber. The TIE bomber never got to maneuver all game, and just kept drifting along until it was finally destroyed. It did get the chance to deploy a bomb that inflicted a point of damage on Salm but otherwise it barely attacked all game. Phennir got the chance to swing around for a second pass, but he too spent much of the game ionized and drifting.

But it was the basic TIEs that caused me the most grief. There were simply too many of them and they were too maneuverable. They just kept circling around chipping away at my ships. In the end I had only a single Y-Wing left (shields gone, 1 damage taken) against three almost intact TIEs. At this point I conceded the game.

So a great fun game. And it’s given me a name for my squadron – the Asteroid Runners. Named for their tendency to inadvertently land on asteroids. Squadron motto “We are the rock and the hard place”.

Reflecting on my squadron composition, I think an ion turret based strategy is viable, but it’s weak against swarms. If you’re facing three or four expensive ships it’s possible to keep most or all of them ionized. Against a swarm you can only ionize maybe half. I need to find a way to deal with swarms, and unfortunately I can’t see an option for Y-Wings that would do that. Current thinking is to go for two Y-Wings with ion turrets to deal with high-value targets, and two A-Wings with assault missiles to deal with swarms. Not sure about named pilots and upgrades at this stage.

Gold Five Standing By

Yet again I have been led into temptation by my fellow wargamers. After seeing Adam's blog post on the X-Wing miniatures game I decided to give it a closer look, and ended up walking out of Comics Compulsion with both the core set and the Y-Wing expansion. Fortunately one of the strengths of X-Wing is it is light on time commitment and not too bad on the wallet.

The models (pictured with some of the WotC collectable ships for size comparison) come pre-painted. You need around 4-6 fighters for the suggested 100 point game size. After playing a few games (a couple against my brother, one against my flatmate) I agree with Adam's assessment - it's a neat little beer and pretzels game, a bit limited in tactical depth but good for quick and fun games. The main problem it has at the moment is the lack of starship types. There are currently only the X-Wing, Y-Wing, TIE, and TIE Advanced available (and the local store is sold out of the Y-Wing and TIE Advanced). But this will be sorted as FFG release more ship types.

While the models are prepaints I'm mulling the idea of changing the colour areas to customize my fighters. The yellow on the Y-Wings would become gray, and the red on one of my X-Wings would become pink (link for those who don't get the second reference).

Despite this new temptation however I have made good progress on my 28mm Hungarians, finishing off a complete squad plus an armoured vehicle...

The walker is a "Heinrich" light walker from the Dust Warfare range. While I don't expect to field this guy very often (locally people are more interested in real-history WW2, rather than Weird War 2) it is a cool looking model and something to stand in as a (temporary) centerpiece for the force until I decide on what real-world centerpiece I want (probably either a T-38 or a 75mm infantry gun). Now I just have to wait for the rest of my infantry to arrive and start getting some games in.