X-Wing Miniatures Mission 5: Preystalker

"Boba Fett? Boba Fett! WHERE?"


Conscripts Kevin and Frederick have also been bitten by the X-Wing bug, and have picked up some ships.  Last weekend, on Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be With You!), FFG announced the 3rd wave of model releases, namely the HWK-290 (Kyle Katarn's ship from the old SW video game), a Lambda-class Shuttle, a Rebel B-Wing starfighter, and an Imperial TIE Bomber, all scheduled to arrive in the third quarter of 2013.

With all this Star Wars goodness, this past Thursday Kevin and I put on a night of Star War: X-Wing Miniatures Game.

Mission 5: Preystalker
A larger Rebel force (150 pts) is being chased by Imperial forces (90 pts). One of the Rebels has a bounty on his head. It is an asymmetric scenario, with different goals for both sides.

Objectives:
Imperial Victory: Destroy the ship with the bounty.
Rebel Victory: Destroy all Imperial ships.

Imperial Forces:
Pilot: Boba Fett
Firespray-31 (39)
Upgrades: Determination (1), Concussion Missiles (4), Slave-1 (0)

Pilot: "Mauler Mithel"
Tie Fighter (17)
Upgrades: Marksmanship (3)

Pilot: Academy Pilot
Tie Fighter (12)

Pilot: Black Squadron Pilot
Tie Fighter (14)

Rebel Forces:
(the Bounty) Pilot: Lando Calrissian - YT-1300 (44)
Upgrades: Expert Handling (2), Millenium Falcon (1), Nien Nunb (1)

Pilot: Biggs Darklighter - X-Wing (25)
Upgrades: R5-D8 (3), Engine Upgrade (4)

Pilot: Tycho Celchu- A-Wing (26)
Upgrades: Squad Leader (2)

Pilot: Arvel Crynyd - A-Wing (23)

Pilot: Green Squadron Pilot 1- A-Wing (19)

I ran Biggs` X-Wing. Below are the rest of the Rebels; Kevin ran Lando (the bounty!) and Nien in the Millennium Falcon, Frederick ran the flight of 3 A-Wings.



Jim ran a flight of three TIE Fighters, and Mike ran his favourite bounty hunter (Boba Fett) in Slave-1. We used a Space Station Game Mat that from Gale Force Nine that «i purchased at GameKnight.



Note the cool turn record sheet in front of Mike. It shows images of the ship and upgrade cards, with space to write orders for speed and maneuvers; a much cleaner option than all the cards and dials. He used outputs from the following online HTML generators we found to make the images, and a Word doc I provided for the turn record sheet:
Rebels - http://home.comcast.net/~jason.fuller/rebels.html
Imperials -  http://home.comcast.net/~jason.fuller/empire.html

The Rebels had to set up in the middle of the board, facing south. They also all had Stress tokens, simulating the desperate flight they were undertaking. The Imperials set up to the north, in pursuit.  Below is a photo taken just after the first turn. All the Rebels save Biggs have maneuvered so as to reduce pilot Stress. Biggs moved to cut off the TIEs. The Imperials have scored a couple of hits on the Millennium Falcon`s shields.



Next turn, the A-Wings started to come around. The Force was with Biggs as he Target Locked Mauler Mithel, and fired a burst that utterly destroyed the latter`s TIE Fighter! Biggs lost all his own shields and took a couple of damage points in return.



Boba Fett Target Locked Lando, hoping to use his missiles next turn. The A-Wings peeled off a couple of Slave-1`s shields.



Kev, in a sneaky move, managed to Barrel Roll away from Boba Fett, also breaking the Target Lock. R5-D8 managed to repair some of the damage on the X-Wing. Concentrated fire burned through Slave-1`s shields and caused a lot of damage to its hull.



The two remaining TIE Fighters made fast Koiogran Turns, coming about 180 degrees to face the Rebel starfighters. In the ensuing exchange, one of the A-Wings and a TIE Fighter were destroyed. Meanwhile, Lando and Boba continued their duel, with Slave-1 reduced to a single hull point!



Mike maneuvered Boba Fett right in tight behind the Falcon. He rolled hot, inflicting a regular hit and three critical hits on Lando and his ship! The Millennium Falcon now had only two hull points left, and Lando, wounded, was reduced to a Pilot Skill of 0.



However, Lando and Nien Nunb returned fire, reducing Boba Fett`s ship to tiny dust particles. As JamesC would say, "Boba always loses".



The Last TIE Fighter maneuvered smartly, despite only having Pilot Skill 1, pulling the Rebels along in a daisy chain of ships. It took a couple of turns to corner him, whereupon he pulled around sharply for a point blank shot at Lando, who (with Pilot Skill 0) would fire after the TIE Fighter...



...however, all the other Rebels had a greater Pilot Skill than the erstwhile Imperial. The combined fire of three Rebel starfighters destroyed the TIE just as Lando came into his sights.



Just for fun, Jim and Kev made opposed rolls to see what would have happened if the TIE Fighter had been able to fire. The Falcon missed all its defense rolls, and would have taken enough damage to be destroyed. This alternate ending ended up on the cutting room floor, and Lando survived to fight another day.

Result: Rebel Victory

Again, another fun, furious game of X-Wing Miniatures. It really has the cinematic feel of the Star Wars dogfights. I look forward to playing something like a large, fighter on fighter dogfight next time.

X-Wing Miniatures - Smuggler's Ace

A few weeks ago I hosted another game for the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts. I am a very big fan of the Star Wars franchise; over time I must have seen the original movie (Star Wars: A New Hope) maybe 40 or 50 times. So, I introduced the boys to a new game. The Star War: X-Wing Miniatures Game, from Fantasy Flight Games (FFG),

"is a tactical ship-to-ship combat game in which players take control of powerful Rebel X-wings and nimble Imperial TIE fighters, facing them against each other in fast-paced space combat. Featuring stunningly detailed and painted miniatures, X-Wing recreates exciting Star Wars space combat throughout its several included scenarios."

The Core Set a starter set that features three unique missions, each with its own special rules and conditions for victory, cards, and fully assembled and painted starships. FFG has released several Expansion Packs adding new Pilot Cards and Upgrade Cards for existing ships as well as entirely new ships. All require the Core Set in order to be played. The models are very nicely painted and weathered. The Millennium Falcon is a particular favourite of mine.

The game mechanics may be thought of as a cross between Wings of Glory and Check Your 6!  Players secretly choose maneuvers each turn, limited by ship type and speed. Orders are revealed. Ships are moved in ascending order of skill, and then fire in descending order. That is, poorer pilots move first, better pilots shoot first. This allows better pilots to pull actions out of their back pockets (say, to do a barrel roll to avoid fire), as the less experienced pilots reveal their moves.

(The game uses cardboard dials to choose maneuvers. From reading the message boards, over time these dials may wear out due to use. So, for this game I made up some maneuver sheets like for CY6! for the players to record their maneuvers.)

The Core rules and FAQs may be downloaded for free, here.

I obtained a couple of Core Sets, several ship models, and obtained a Space Game Mat from Gale Force Nine (they also have a Space Station Game Mat suitable to use as the surface of the Death Star). I decided to run one of the pre-printed scenarios.


Mission 4: Den of Thieves

Because of their fundamental role in the Imperial Navy, Sienar engineers are vital to the Empire's hold on the galaxy. Their ceaseless toil is responsible for the most recent starship prototype, currently in transit to rendezvous with the Imperial Fleet. Alliance Intelligence discovered it only days ago and offered a substantial reward for the prototype's capture. Rebel-aligned smuglers are prepared to ambush the vulnerable equipment, and the modest Imperial escort must safely deliver its precious cargo.

Mission Setup:
Rebel: 100 squad points

Imperial: 100 squad points

The Imperial player places his ships within Range 1-3 of the Imperial edge of the play area and not within 1 of the neutral edges of the play area. Then the Imperial player chooses two of his ships and assigns one escort token (hothie edit: 2 of these are included with the Falcon) to each (insert the tokens into the tower of each ship's base).

Then the Imperial player places three container tokens (hothie edit: 3 of these are included) within Range 1-3 of the Imperial edge of the play area. A container token cannot be placed within Range 1 of the neutral edges of the play area, and it must be Range 3 or farther away from each other container token. The container tokens must e oriented to face directly toward the Rebel edge of the play area as depicted in the setup diagram.

Then the Rebel player places his ships within Range 1 of the Rebel edge or the neutral edges of the play area. A Rebel ship cannot be placed within Range 1-2 of a container token. Then the Rebel player assigns the smuggler token (hothie edit: 1 included) to one of his ships, inserting the token into the tower of that ship's base.

Special Rules:
Steal Action: The Rebel ship with the smuggler token may perform the Steal action on a container token within Range 1. To perform the steal action, the Rebel player simultaneously rolls 3 attack dice and 3 defense dice. If he rolls more results than results, he removes the container token from the play area and places it next to his Ship cards. If the number of results is equal to or less than the number of results, he places one tracking token on the smuggler's Ship card. Each tracking token automatically adds one result to each future steal action roll. The steal action may be performed even if the ship has stress tokens.

Containers: Container tokens do not count as ships or obstacles, and they cannot be attacked or destroyed. At the start of the End Phase, each container tokens executes a 2 maneuver toward the Rebel edge. If a container token is within Range 1 of one ship with an escort token, it executes a 3 maneuver instead. If a container token is within Range 1 of two ships with escort tokens, it executes a 4 maneuver instead.

Escort tokens: When a ship with an escort token is destroyed, the Imperial player may place that token on one of his other ships at the end of the End Phase. He cannot place it on a ship that already has an escort token.

Smuggler token: At the end of the Planning Phase, the Rebel player may assign the smuggler token to another one of his ships. When the smuggler token is assigned to a ew ship, discard all tracking tokens from the previous ship.

Objectives:
Rebel Victory: collect two container tokens next to your ship cards
Imperial Victory: Two containers must flee off the Rebel edge of the play area. You may win even if all of your ships are destroyed.
 
Byron, Frederick and Kevin ran six Imperial TIE Fighters from Black Squadron, led by the video game character, Howlrunner. I ran a couple of Rebel X-Wing starfighters, one piloted by Luke Skywalker and another by a rookie pilot. Brian ran the Millennium Falcon, crewed by Han Solo and Chewbacca.

Rebel Forces:

• Millennium Falcon w/ Han Solo, 50 pts (Acquire a Target Lock; Focus; Han's Special Ability - When attacking, you may re-roll all of your dice. If you choose to do so, you must reroll as many of your dice as possible.)
• Chewbacca (When you are dealt a Damage card, you may immediately discard that card and recover 1 shield. Then, discard this card.)
• X-Wing w/ Luke Skywalker , 29 pts (Acquire a Target Lock; Focus; Luke's Special Ability - When defending, you may change 1 of your focus results to an evade result.)
• Determination (When you are dealt a face up Damage card with the Pilot trait, discard it immediately without resolving its effect.)
• X-Wing w/ Rookie Pilot , 21 pts (Acquire a Target Lock; Focus) 

Imperial Forces:

• TIE Fighter w/ Howlrunner , 20 pts (Barrel Roll; Evade; Focus; Howlrunner's Special Ability - When another friendly ship at Range 1 is attacking with its primary weapon, it may re-roll 1 attack die.)
• Swarm Tactics (Increase your agility by 1. If you are hit by an attack, discard this card.)
• TIE Fighter w/ Mauler Mithel , 20 pts (Barrel Roll; Evade; Focus; Mauler's Special Ability - When attacking at Range 1 roll 1 additional attack die.)
• Marksmanship (When attacking this round you may change one of your focus results to a critical result and all of your other focus results to a damage results)
• TIE Fighter w/ Dark Curse , 19 pts (Barrel Roll; Evade; Focus; Dark's Special Ability - When defending, ships attacking you cannot spend focus tokens or re-roll attack dice.)
• Stealth Device (Increase your agility by 1. If you are hit by an attack, discard this card.)
• TIE Fighter w/ Night Beast , 15 pts (Barrel Roll; Evade; Focus; Night Beast's Special Ability - After excuting a green maneuver you may perform a free focus action.)
• TIE Fighter w/ Black Squadron Pilot , 14 pts (Barrel Roll; Evade; Focus)
• TIE Fighter w/ Academy Pilot , 12 pts (Barrel Roll; Evade; Focus)

Other skills:

• Acquire a Target Lock (You may place a pair of target lock tokens. You may choose to spend the target lock tokens later during the Combat phase to increase your chance of hitting the targeted ship.)
• Barrel Roll (You may perform a barrel roll action.)
• Evade (You may place one Evade token near your ship. You may choose to spend the Evade token as the defender during the Combat phase to add one additional evade result to the defense roll. Unspent Evade tokens are removed from all ships during the End phase.)
• Focus (You may place one Focus token near your ship. You may choose to spend the Focus token as the attacker during the Combat phase to change all focus results on the attack dice to damage results. You may choose to spend the Focus token as the defender during the Combat phase to change all focus results on the defense dice to evade results. Unspent Focus tokens are removed from all ships during the End phase.)

In the photo below, I can be seen just prior to the start of the game, wearing a suitably Star Wars influenced shirt from TeeFury.



Brian set up the Millennium Falcon in the corner, near the Imperial edge, hoping to steal a couple of containers. I set up the X-Wings on the opposite side.(Note the nice factory-applied weathering on the model.)



The two X-Wings focused on Howlrunner and her wingman, who were escorting a Container. The two TIEs in the centre moved in opposite directions to bring fire on both Rebel players' ships.



Luke's skills and powers are mostly defensive. However, I was rolling hot with the attack dice and managed to nail Howlrunner's TIE.

"The Force is strong with this one."



The Millennium Falcon was fighting three TIE Fighters, taking damage, but Brian was able to destroy another Imperial fighter. Meanwhile, the two X-Wings maneuvered to get a Container-escorting TIE fighter in their sights.

"Watch your back, Luke!"



The Imperials would have scored two more damaging hits on the Falcon, but Han spent a Focus and managed to Evade both of them.

"I have a bad feeling about this."



The X-wings destroyed their TIE Fighter, stealing a Container. However, despite using the Chewie card to avoid a critical hit and gain back a shield, the remaining three TIE Fighters ganged up on the Falcon and destroyed it.

"Get to the escape pods, Chewie!"



By this point, the Imperials had successfully escorted the two other Containers such that the X-Wings were too far away to intercept them before they exited off the Rebel edge of the mat. In retrospect, after the first TIE Fighter went down, an X-Wing should have peeled off to help out the Millennium Falcon


Result: Imperial Victory


People seemed to have a fun time, and some of the guys have since picked up ships of their own. The game does have a few limitations. Foremost is the lack of a third dimension. However, and most importantly, this feels like a dog-fighting game. Where was this thing when I was a kid?

Massive Update part two

Here's some more photos of our recent games.

First up, the excellent Battle of Hudson's Bay game put on by Conscript Sylvain using the "Trafalgar" rules. Dave V. played d'Iberville and I the British.

Above we have three different views of Sylvain's beautifully painted ships and impending disaster for me. In my haste to get a devastating broadside on Dave's ship I maneuvered my merchantmen soooo cleverly that my flagship ended up t-boning one of them, reducing it to so much matchwood (best view is the pic directly above).

Of course the other merchantman was sailing in squadron directly behind and could not avoid collision with the wreckage directly ahead. It sank too :-(

In any case, it's all good for the British commander since there were no survivors from the merchantmen to report his terrible seamanship. And we sank d'Iberville's ship... as Gav Thorpe would say "a definite moral victory."

And lastly, a couple of pics from the recent "Star Wars" fleet scale game. I painted some Nebulon B's, Corvettes, and an Imperial transport from Odyssey Slipways, nice models. The asteroids are lava rocks for the barbecue, painted black and drybrushed. Just make sure to wash them first to get all the red dust off!

Oh yeah, and Neb-B's are alot tougher than you would think, aren't they Greg!! (Well, when they go up against the "special needs" Star Destroyer, that is)

So now we're caught right up to date!

"It's a Trap!"

This has got to be the fastest Christmas-present project ever... last Christmas my wife bought me about a hundred tiny Star Wars snub fighters from Studio Bergstrom (http://www.studiobergstrom.com/) to go with a project I had been working on for some time... a Star Wars fleet-scale game.

A few furious evenings of painting in January and the snub fighters were done - X-, A-, B- and Y-Wings, TIE Fighters, Bombers and Interceptors, and a tiny YT-300 freighter too. Combine this with Titanium Avenger-class Star Destroyers, converted Micro Machines Victory-class SDs and Interdictor Cruiser and Micro Machine Mon Cal MC80s, and you have the makings of a Thursday night game...

I basically threw out most of the stuff I had painted: seven Mon Cal capital ships versus four Avenger-class ISDs, two Victory-class SDs, and an Interdictor cruiser, both sides with full complements of fighters. The putative scenario was the Battle of Endor, this being the fleet action outside the deflector shield protecting the second Death Star. For rules we used the Star Wars Starship Battles set, with additions downloaded from http://www.boardgamegeek.com/.

Bill, Dave O., and Dave V. commanded the Rebel fleet while Frederick, Mike F. and Brian ran the Imperials. The Imperial fleet deployed first in a dispersed formation while the Rebels aimed a tight wedge of capital ships at one flank.

The Rebel strategy proved a winner (well, that and the hot die rolling) as the Rebels never lost the initiative. They threw their fighters aggressively at the Imperial ships, bleeding off shields with snub fighter attacks and Ion Cannon shots, then lit up what remained with their capital ships.

Mike had terrible luck with his squadron of VSDs and Interdictor, while Frederick accounted for an MC80 and Brian swept in from a flank, but in the end it was a stirring Rebel victory. So much for "faith in your friends" being the Rebel weakness ;-)

All in all a fun evening's entertainment. Drew Bergstrom's snub fighters are fantastic models and suit the "fleet scale" to a T. Add in the fact that they're so easy to paint and they are a must for any Star Wars fan. The rules are simple but provide a fast-paced and, with the additions from the Web, semi-tactical game. Let's face it, the whole point is seeing the fleets face off. The only problem is now I need more variety of ships -- perhaps an order from Odyssey Slipways is in the near future...

Cheers

Dallas