Star Wars Campaign: T3, Sector 5

The Imperial mission was easy: Verifying the rebel presence in the system station and wipe them out.
The Rebels had 2 options: flee or try to destroy the Corellian Corvette.

Special rule: The Rebel squadron will scramble randomly from any of the space stations.

2 stations with Rebel activity have been reported

3 Tie Advanced squadrons were sent to investigate each station

3 squadrons are launched from Station Alpha and 1 from Station Beta. Tie Interceptors are launched to intercept

2 squadrons of B-Wings are properly wiped out.

 The Rebel suicide action was going bad. The Imperial fighters were capable pilots and destroyed the main bombers. The last chance for the Rebel to justify their loses were to get the corvette before any imperial reaction.

Unfortunately for the Rebels, both side activated and the imperial wiped out the last Rebels

The Imperial firmly hold the space

 Sector victory for the imperial. They advance on sector 5. There is little room available for the Rebels on that Sector.

Xwing games report - Capture the crates

Earlier this month, the Wargame society in HK had its general assembly.

The society is very healthy club in Hong Kong with a good player base. It host many competitions on different games to bring a great variety in gaming. The General Assembly is the opportunity to all gather and for me to lament on how little time I spent gaming in the last 12 month. Before using the afternoon to play. we lunch over a traditional curry, quick speeches from the board and auctions from the members looking to clean up their shed or buying new toys.

This year, we planned with Jeroen, another X-Wing fan, a story-based X-Wing game. The idea was to depart from the usual dog fight, and add in objectives and asymmetric play.

Setup: 2x X-Wing mats
Points: 100 pts each + 2 free transports
Restrictions: No more than 1 named pilot.

The game:
There were 3 crates in the middle. Each transport can carry only one crate. To capture a crate, the transport has to be within a distance of "1" (distance "1" on the shooting ruler) and spend the whole turn doing nothing (no action, no shooting).
The victory is determined as follow:
- whoever has the most crates wins.
- in the event of a tie (same number of crates on both side), whoever has lost the most points lose.
The game stop when one player has secured the most crates, or in the event of a tie, once no more ships of one side is on the table. Players can leave the mat by exiting through their deployment side. Spaceships are then assumed to have hyperspaced away.

I played the Rebel and Jeroen, the First Order. We used 2 different strategies. Quantity for the Rebel and Quality for the First Order.

The First Order on the move. Note Kylo Ren speedy moves

Jeroen had 3 starfighters, including Kylo Ren, all maxed up with options

Quantity as a quality in itself

I had Luke Skywalker, 2 X-Wing, 1 A-Wing and 1 Z-95

At the beginning, Jeroen got himself surprised by the speed of Kylo Ren, who within 3 turns ended up in the middle of the Rebel force. It seemed that Kylo Ren really wanted to kill Luke Skywalker and threw away all caution. Kylo Ren blew up, leaving his force leaderless. Nevertheless, as the Rebel fighters were focused on Kylo, they ended up in the worst position possible to chase Jeroen's transports and the F.O. captured 2 crates. The score is then 1 crate in Rebel's hands and 2 crates in F.O.'s hands. Will Jeroen hyperspace away?

The YT-1300 has 1 crate, but the F.O. quietly capture 2 crates and prepare to turn away

The Rebels decide to use the YT-1300 low initiative to block the way of the other transports, risking to lose it

With the First Order  still very dangerous, the Rebels resorted to their trademarks: tricks and the use of seemingly  YT-1300 to block the path of F.O. transport. The trap worked and the Rebels gained enough time to destroy one transport and captured back its crate, winning with two crates vs. one.

It was a fun game with a different strategy to apply: Choosing between Shooting fighters, protecting transports and shooting other's transports.
The F.O. almost won. The F.O. shuttle ran away with 1 hull points and without the YT-1300, Jeroen would have escaped easily. Kylo Ren sacrifice had enough disorganized the Rebels fighters.

3-D printing transports for FFG Xwing

Ah, X-Wing video game serie.

I remember when I bought the video game. It was back in 1995, it was the Imperial Pursuit complement, then forcing me to buy the actual game (because I didn't know you needed a game to play an add-on).
The long days optimising my 40 Mb (yes Mb!) hard drive and 2Mb memory just to play that game (12 Mb all together, it was massive!). The days of the 386x.

All this purple. A good old memory.

X-wing is a key period of my teenager's period, with so much fun fighting for the Rebel Alliance against the evil Empire, piloting my fighters, learning to love the agile A-Wing and to despise the slow sitting-duck Y-wing.
I was spending time on Mel's products and found he had designed the DX-9. In the video game, it was one of the main elements either in convoy attack, or capturing spaceships.
As I am the RPG-type of gamer, I like to build my armies with a backstory and playing scenarios instead of pure dog fights. The DX-9 will help me make objectives. At least, that was the excuse I used to promptly click buy, and ended up with 3 models.

size comparison

My excitement was still high when I received them less than a week after, and after an hour of pimp-my-ride, they were ready for a game this Friday.

final version, painted

After this Friday, I will know if they are as hard to kill as in the video game.

Stay tune.

Cards and details to play in FFG X-wing: Here

Building Space stations (Modular Space Station Pack)

Remember, a while ago (here) I acquired Modular Space Station Pack.

In situation

Well, I finished them but never had a chance to take pictures of them. I am fixing that mistake now.

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Space stations : Building station with Dropfleet Commander Modular Space Station

Space opera mood.

I have received my kickstarter and bought a  Dropfleet Commander Modular Space Station. They may be good addition to my Star Wars universe by bringing some extended architecture.

I spent about 3 hours last night playing with the kits, building,  Deep Space Manufacturing Facilities
Golan Battle Platforms, Space Colonies and Research Facilities.

And I know, I still need to finish writing the last Darker Omen episode.

Here are some stations under construction.

It is a good kit, with a lot of different variation possible. The stands are great and stable. I really think there are good value.
Below are the stations done in few hours, with enough material for at least 2 to 3 more stations.

Factory platform 2

Factory platform

Defense platform

Defense platform

Battle station

Battle station, another angle

Research station

Research station

Space Colony for rich people

Space colony for poor people

Not finished platform