Several Fighters Have Broken Off...

I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas and received all kinds of new goodies. For me, I received a few things I'm really excited about: a new camera and some more X-Wing miniatures. The camera is a Canon Powershot SX160is and in short, it rocks! Tonight the boys and I played a game of X-Wing and with no messing with settings it took clear pictures despite my sometimes shaky hands in somewhat poor lighting. Got it at Wal-Mart for less than the camera I was going to get. With a good camera hopefully I will feel more inspired to post more often as I'll be able to show what I'm talking about.

For the figures I received one each of the Wave 1 expansions for X-Wing: a TIE Advanced, a TIE Fighter, a Y-Wing, and an X-Wing. The reason for the extra TIE and X-Wing is that the expansions come with pilot and upgrade cards that aren't in the core box set. That and everyone knows that TIEs work in flights of three and Rebels in wingman pairs. Today I finally got an opportunity to get them going in a game. It was a throw everything on the table and see what happens. To keep things simple and get an idea of the effectiveness of the TIE Advanced and Y-Wing I kept the pilots to the highest non-named cards with minimal upgrades. The Imperials has a Storm Squadron pilot in the TIE Advanced with concussion missiles as well as three Black Squadron pilots with no upgrades. I flew two of the TIEs while Phillip flew the TIE Advanced and the third TIE. Zachary flew the Rebel scum with a Gray Squadron Y-Wing with the ion cannon and two Red Squadron pilots both with proton torpedoes. The X-Wing leader had an R2 astromech droid. Something I wasn't paying attention to was that all the pilots cards had a Pilot Skill of 4 which meant that the Imperials would always go first but damage was simultaneous. As you'll see in the end-of-turn photos, Phil zeroed in on the Y-Wing with single-minded determination and charged up the middle, Zachary split his fighters trying to spread us out, and I came up the side and did a lot of circling around until I could get on the tail of Zachary's left-side (from his perspective) X-Wing. Without further ado, here are the turn-by-turn pictures:

Initial Deployment

Still closing

First shots fired, mostly just stripped shields from Red 2 and the TIE Advanced. First use of the Ion Cannons as well. Rebels scored the first hull hit against one of my Black Squadron TIEs.

The furball begins

My TIEs setting up for a pass to circle around and get on Red 2's tail. Phil and Zachary trying to line up shots.

Allllmost there, get a cheap shot on Red 2.

Zachary knocks out Phil's TIE, I biff on the attack against Red 2.

To be vindicated in the next turn with three solid hits on Red 2. At this point Phil has the Y-Wing down to its last point of damage left and I try to coach him on how to get in the slot and predict Zachary's movements so he could stay on the Y-Wing's tail.

This was one of those moments in wargaming where you're left scratching your head. Phil had the Y-Wing directly in front of him, but even with the re-rolls from his target lock rolled all blanks on the attack dice. Zahcary rolled a blank die for his dodge roll. End result, Y-Wing buzzes the TIE Advanced as it passes by, presumably with the pilots making rude gestures at each other.

The Y-Wing was eventually shot from behind by Phil, removing it from the game. At this point Zachary decided to call the game. He was outnumbered and all three Imperial ships were in position to get on his remaining X-Wing's tail in the next turn.

Overall a fun game, though I think Zachary forgot that his X-Wings had proton torpedoes. I think next time I'm going to load the Y-Wing out with torps and keep the dog fighting to the X-Wings. Once again, X-Wing provided a fun, easy to play, game that is ready upon opening the box. Next time though I'm not bringing the laptop out with the Star Wars Soundboard open. It created too many distractions with Zachary and Phil chaining together sound effects instead of setting their next maneuver.

In unrelated news, I did get some painting done today. Sprayed the base coat on my next batch of Dreadball figures as well as some incremental work on some Heavy Gear figs and parts of my second Kraken for CAV2.