Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed

Tonight my brother and a couple of his friends came over and we broke in my Death Star Table. The table is not quite finished yet, I have some detailing to do and some warping issues with the cheap foam core I used that I'd like to work out. It was good enough to play on though so we gave it a shot. We just played a regular dogfight since I haven't worked out all the trench run and turret rules yet. 

 Dan and I played Empire 

 Dan deployed Darth Vader and his wingman on the opposite side of the trench and had to make his way over to the fray. 

 It took us about 3 turns before we were all in firing position. 

 ...and they wasted no time taking out my Backstabber TIE. Fire doesn't burn in space, but it does burn in my mancave. 

 Dan, gingerly traveling over to help. 

 The Rebels, played by Nicholas, the Strongest Boy Alive and his friend "Fish" if that is his real name. They went with one X-Wing and two Y-wings. I thought that was an interesting combo. They were were all decked out with astromechs and ion turrets. 

 Nick and Fish really did a pretty good job of utilizing the ion turrets often stayinrg out of our firing arc and whittling away at our TIEs with their 360 degree firing arc.

 Dan and I kept rolling criticals like nobody's business, bypassing the shields of the Y-Wings and crippling them a lot faster than they normally would be....(this is what we will call a 'house rule'....meaning that I misinterpreted the rules and made everyone just go with it, 'cause I it's my game)

 It was another good battle. It came down to Vader and one Y-Wing...

...of course we all knew how that was gonna go.

I'll say it again, I love this game. It really is a blast and there is a great back and forth that keeps things interesting the whole time. You never feel like one side is ever rolling over the other. Another fun game in the bag. 

Friday Night Game Night! X-Wing going on two, count them TWO Tables!!!

On Friday night we had another one of our monthly game nights and we got to break out X-wing. We ended up having 8 people all together so we split up and played on two tables thinking that 8 players on one table might bog down the game. I had enough stuff to field two 100 point battles....with some ships left over. This tells me that I've spent far too much money on this game already.

 On table one (numbered as such, simply because it was the table I was on) we had a dogfight in an asteroid field between Wedge Antilles and a small faction of Red Squadron taking on Darth Vader and several TIE fighters. 

 Table two saw an atmospheric battle in which the Rebels, led by Luke Skywalker were tasked with destroying three atmospheric mining refineries. 

 We engaged pretty rapidly on the first table and were doing a nice job of picking off TIE Fighters. 

 Things went very badly for the Rebels on table two. They used their 100pts. to really power load 3 fighters and then went up the middle in a tight cluster. The Imperials took that opportunity to pincer in from each side  bringing a lot of firepower and lighting them up. 

 Luke ended up all by lonesome real fast. 

 After managing to destroy all the TIEs on the left side of the table all of our X-Wings started to cautiously make their way over to engage Lord Vader. 

Luke bought the moisture farm. 

On the Asteroid table we ended up bringing all four of our X-Wings into firing position on Darth Vader, but it was the Rookie Pilot that ended up taking him out which was a fun way to end things. 

Table two's Rebels really should have been given enough extra points to buy at least one more fighter, since they had to divide their fire between fighting and bombing, but all reports indicate that they also should have spread out and focused on the refineries rather than going up the middle and engaging the Imperial fighters. Hard lessons learned. 

A good time was had by all. We changed the history of the Star Wars Universe on both tables by killing both Luke and Vader, so I'd say that it was a productive evening. 

In space no one can hear your reaction to Disney buying Lucasfilm...

So I pulled the trigger on buying a bunch of the new Fantasy Flight X-wing stuff and tonight at my wife's family Thanksgiving dinner we got to fire it up for the first time. The players were my brother and our cousin chase on the Empire side and cousin Cody and I as the Rebels.

 We played 50 pts. on each team and we thought for certain that Dan and Chase were going to bring out Darth Vader but instead they laid out 3 Academy Pilots and a Black Squadron pilot all in standard TIE Fighters to take on Cody as Luke Skywalker and me as a Gold Squadron Y-Wing. 

 Cody doesn't show up in most of these early pics because he got into an awesome flanking position coming up behind all the TIEs

                                      

 Two of Dan's TIEs lure me into....

...this mess. Dan's two TIEs both pulled Koiogran turns so my keen Mongo piloting skills landed me in this spot with three TIEs' guns trained on me.  

I couldn't land any shots but luckily my Y-Wing wasn't taking too much damage.

 Somewhere in the distance Luke was considering whether or not to join the fight. 

 I pulled off my own Koiogran turn and managed to get into a little bit better of a position. Our point build didn't allow me to take Ion Cannons unfortunately which I understand to be the real bread and butter of the Y-Wings.

 Hey look Luke decided to show up for the party. I'm glad he did, because that's when the chipping away at the TIE's finally began....no thanks to me and my Y-Wing. 

 Behold the mini-van of starfigher combat. With 3 shields and 5 Hull strength the Y-Wing can take a real beating though. Another handy thing was the ability to move 1 straight length. That threw the TIE's for a loop a number of times as they would fly right past me and into my firing arc. I was like the little Y-Wing that could. 

 Luke and a TIE have an "in space" stare down. 

 Now you see it...

 ...Now you don't. 

It worked out well for us, as the  Empire pretty much decided they would consider it a moral victory if they could just take out my Y-Wing. So while I gingerly drifted through space taking a harder beating than Andy Dufresne took from "The Sisters" in the Shawshank Redemption, Luke was able to go around sweeping up the TIE's one by one. 

 Luke taking out the final TIE, while I limp away from the battle with 1 single Hull point remaining. 

 It's cool, I had Luke tow me back to base.

I got to say this game is fun. It's just fun. The weaving in and out of the other starfighters just really worked for me. This was pretty light in that we were using 4 players and only 50pts. a side, so I really can't wait to break it open with more ships and  power-up options. The game is definitely an investment, but if you approach it with the mindset of a miniature tabletop gamer, it ends up looking a lot more reasonable.  

The Battle of Hoth

After filling our bellies with pork and assorted snacks, we were met on the field of battle. I should have known things weren't gonna go great for me when Chal asked, "Who wants to play the Empire side?" and I was one of the poor saps that was too slow to yell "Me!"...

 

The Empire Forces move into position.

The Empire Players.....smug smarmy bastards.

Rear Admiral Rob comes shooting out of the gate bringing the first snowspeeder out on the batlefield. This is the complete opposite of Rob's typical strategy of "I'll go back here and hide and you go fight those guys up there"

"Should we have let Rob Antilles go out there?"

"I don't know, he said he knew what he was doing"

Doctor Merkury follows Rob's lead and brings the second speeder out to the field.

Evan follows up bringing the third speeder to the formation. The speeders all immediately start laying down fire on the AT-STs in the hopes of slowing them down.

"You know the only thing protecting us out here is this trench and it's only made of frozen water right?"

"Yeah, it's better not to think about it"

 

FOREGROUND: Interior shot of Echo Base and Han and Chewie preparing the falcon for escape.

BACKGROUND: Doctor Merkury (Left) discussing colonoscopy options with patient. The patient went with the "Wide Awake, Inverted Plumber's Snake"

The first AT-ST was knocked off its feet, but not destroyed right away.

This was the first of many snowspeeder casualties

The Snowtroopers advanced over the hills just in front of the Rebel trenches.

More snowspeeders prep to join the battle.

"Still just nothing but frozen water here protecting us."

"Seriously man, stop talking about it."

The first AT-ST goes down.

Chal (center) from Iron Ivan Games ran the battle using Iron Ivan's upcoming Zero Sum Oblivion Sci-Fi rules. The rules use most of the same core mechanics as other IIG games (D10 based, Roll to hit, Roll succesful hits vs. armor to wound, deal out casualties, test morale if needed) but with a unique activation system allowing players to push troops to their limit to advance the battle.

Troop carriers waiting inside the wings of Echo Base as reinforements. When they eventually arrived on the scene the only thing they reinforced was the fact that rebellions are undertrained and poorly equipped to fight an organized army.

.....smug sons 'a bitches.

About three turns in we took a cake break.

Doctor Merkury's lovely lady, Andrea, made this awesome severed Wampa arm birthday cake complete with licorice muscle tissue and chocolate claws. It not only looked good, but it was delicious. I kept some that I'm gonna stuff into my facehole later tonight.

Back to the action. The snow speeders were tearing down AT-STs at an admirable rate....

...But they weren't coming down nearly as fast as the rebel troops and emplacements. We were getting hammered.

And we never even made a dent in the AT-AT walkers.

The Empire continues to close in.

"Mongo no understand tiny plastic man"

Our figurative hopes and literal snowspeeders start crashing to the ground.

"Is it just me or are those things getting closer?"

"Yeah, it's better not to think about it"

"Let's just keep throwing snowspeeders at them and hope that they stop bursting into flames."

A shot of the mounting pile of scrap accumulating on the battlefield.

"Look at my pretty hat made of fire"

Death Mountain. This is actually how stuff was getting taken out. Right in the same spot....I don't know why we kept moving over that spot.

"Okay, they're definitely getting closer"

"Stop talking about it!!!"

Luke Skywalker's snowspeeder was taken down. He was our last hope. Chal declared that Luke was magically teleported back to echo base because special characters can't be killed in vehicle hits (and secretly I think becasue Chal was afraid that Luke was gonna use his lightsaber to gut all three AT-ATs like so many trout). That was fine by me since Luke immediately got in his X-Wing and went off to Dagobah to begin his Jedi training, ultimately scoring a win for the Rebellion.

REBELS WIN!!!!!......eventually, in the larger picture kind of sense.

"Did you die of shame from our force's poor showing on the battlefield?"

"Yep, died of shame. You?"

"Yep, dead of shame"

After the Rebel Victory we let the Wampas out just for the fun of it.

The Wampas killed 8 stormtroopers out of 16, and the stormtroopers killed all three Wampas, but while that was going on, Han, Leia, Chewie, C3-PO and R2-D2 all escaped in the Millenium Falcon meaning that technically the Wampas won the fight

WAMPAS WIN!!!

 

But in the end, and as always, the real winner was David HasselHoth.