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.

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.
   

Be Careful What You Wish For

Saturday there was no archery, so I was free to do something else instead of shooting sticks at round things.

Serendipitously, one of my MIB colleagues (Steve Jackson Game Men in Black game demonstrators)  was over from the States.  So, after an exchange of emails and messages on Facebook, we arranged for David to come around and play a game of Ogre/GEV.

I suggested we played my Escalation scenario (now subtitled: be careful what you wish for), which I had demoed around various wargame shows three years ago.  Yes, it was as long ago as that.  Running the scenario would be a good test of the game as I would be playing against someone who knew the rules rather than introducing new players to the game.  It's a bit ironic really, given I haven't played for nearly two and half years I was a bit rusty and forgetful, but David rocked.

What I learnt is that I'm going to have to think about how I word the victory conditions; mostly down to the fact that the scenario is unbalanced and is not designed to have a clear winner, but rather to demonstrate how the Last War progressed i.e.: how the GEV green map ends up turning into an orange Ogre map.

I also need to add another howitzer to the nominal attackers side, perhaps even some more infantry, and I think change the GEV mobile command post to a slower tracked mobile command post, as I think it would add more tension to the game.

And courtesy of David a picture of the start of the scenario, before things got all gnarly.

  

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.
  

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.
  

Weekend Games

For a change we weren't playing board-games with our plush toy kittens, who were left behind to sulk in the bedroom, as we went to visit our friends John and Rita on Saturday, and hang out with their friends.  This meant drinking Ginger Beer and snacking on finger foods, and chocolate cake for dessert.  All rather fabby.

The first game we played was Cthulhu Wars from Petersen Games written by Sandy Petersen, which is a board-game where the Great Old Ones vie for dominance over the Earth.

To say the game looks lush is a bit of an understatement as the miniatures are quite breathtaking, asking to be painted level of detail.  In fact John had bought a second set of figures to do this very thing himself.  The game plays well enough, but the map reminded me of Risk, but with different rules.  Most of those rules are very good, but I have a particular dislike for games where players are forced to make decisions on a countdown timer.  Call me an old fusspot if you like, but I'd prefer to roll dice against an attack than squabble with players over what is a fair allocation of points to be lost.

Apart from that minor quibble, which I would house rule, we had a fun game.  I lost, coming last, and Susan won, which was nice for her.

After finishing we played a quick card game, and then went onto to set-up A Study in Emerald from Treefrog Games, based off a short story by Neil Gaiman of the same name.  Joanna knew the rules for the game and explained them to us, and by the end of her explanations all of us were feeling like our heads were about to explode.  However, once play started and we got past the first round the play was very straightforward, with some nice nuances of play.  In the game one doesn't necessarily know who is on one's side, and this means decisions become more complex as a result.  I lost, but was on the winning side – the Restorationist's i.e: the humans who want to restore the world to the way it was before the Old Ones took over.
  

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 did 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'd done a reverse turn, leaving 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.

X-Wing: The Force Wins

 

The last position, face-to-face Luke Skywalker destroys the Imperial TIE fighter to win the game.

We played our first game of Star Wars X-Wing last night, which my partner had bought me for Xmas.  My partner is not really a gamer in any shape or form, and straight-forward conflict games are not her thing (though saying that she will occasionally talk about her Scorpion mech pilot and her coffee making machine customization, so maybe after 17 years together something has rubbed off on her?).

So we did our usual split the game up with three players, where the third player is represented by our plush toy kittens, and we each take alternate turns to move the opposition, thereby not playing against each other directly.  This makes for an interesting game dynamic one turn you're running the third party I know what you're doing and what you will get to do this turn, but the next turn the tables are reversed.

By the time we watched the introductory videos on Fantasy Flight Games website, got all the pieces sorted (as in recognize the bits & pieces we had to organize) it took us about 90 minutes to play to the end of the game.  Most of this time was faffing as we worked through the moving and combat and special rules etc.  I really enjoyed myself and I think Susan did too.  She thought that the rule system would make for a great Battlestar Galactica fighter game too.  On reflection yes, but I think Battlestar Galactica would probably be best served by the new Star Wars Armada rules (caveat they're not out yet and I know nothing about them other than they represent fleet actions).

The kittens played Luke Skywalker in his X-wing, while me and Susan flew TIE fighters.  We lost to the plush toy kittens.  Not really surprising as we lost to them when we play Dalek Risk too.  In short a fun game.  The X-wing is a tough little cookie, but lumbers around while the TIE fighters are nimble, but fall apart if you look at them too hard.
 

Dalek Invasion Earth

Well today I managed to persuade my beloved non-wargaming spouse to play a game of Risk: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which I had been given for Xmas.  In the excitement to set-up the game board and play I had forgotten that there were already rules for two player games; after I had dealt three factions out, with the third being nominally controlled by the plush toy kitten's.  They represented a neutral Dalek faction that would attack with each of us controlling their forces on alternate moves.

What is nice about the new editions of Risk is that there are ways to end the game in a reasonable period of time.  In this case the game ends on the eleventh regeneration of the Doctor.  You track his regenerations by using a Clara token that progresses each time a player's turn begins, with some of the slots making you roll a D6 to see if he takes another regeneration if you fail the roll.  So games can theoretically be much shorter than eleven rounds.  Ours was over in two hours, which was mostly down to having to read the special rules, refreshing my memory on how the game plays and taking the pictures for the blog.

The other twist to this version of Risk is the TARDIS moving randomly around the board and wherever it lands no movement or fighting may occur.  Other bits of chrome are the Mission cards that give one bonus Daleks for conquering certain territories, and Power cards that can either reduce or increase the number of Daleks one gets at the beginning of your turn, on top of the usual amount that one is entitled to.  One of the Power cards allows you to move the TARDIS to another territory.  However, after counting the cards at the end of the game the odds are you will lose Daleks more often than you will gain them.

As usual every territory you successfully invade gets you a card that you save up and cash in for more Daleks, based not on sets, but on the number of stars on the card.  More stars equals more Daleks.  Our game ended with the plush toy kittens having the most territories, but if the Doctor hadn't regenerated then my partner was about to hand in a heap load of cards and sweep all who stood in their way off the board.

Of course I know that the rabid Dalek fans who are reading this really want to know if the miniatures in this game fulfill their need for 15mm scale Daleks for wargaming.  The answer is yes, but I would want to replace the plunger arms with pins as the moulded Daleks do not have plungers on the end of the arms.

As you can see above the small Daleks are very compatible with my old white metal ones from thirty years ago.  The mid-size ones appear to be a good match for 20mm games, and the large for 28mm wargaming.  However, do note that two of the five factions are mouldings of the New Paradigm Daleks and they suck.  More details on contents here and where to buy it here.