100th post and X-wing Battle Report

Hooray! 100 posts! Many are due to the phoenix like nature of this blog, but a goodly amount of from this year :) I clocked 1200 page views in November which is pretty encouraging. And what better way to celebrate this occasion than to have a special guest write the post!

As noted in episode 9 of my vlog, I was unable to attend our club (Leicester Sabres) for our final game of our x-wing league before Christmas- The Battle of Yavin/ Death Star Trench Run re-enactment. However, Ian King from our club kindly wrote the whole thing up. We wrote a little scenario which you can view here (its a dropbox pdf file - if you want it let me know and i can email it too you). Basically the majority of the rebels start on the yavin map and have to make it across that board to blow up the Death Star. Whilst all of this is going on, the empire are saturating the board with all types of tie fighter shenanigans. Points can be scored on both sides for ships being alive at the end and killing named characters. And obviously killing the Death Star. Here is Ian's p.o.v of how it went:

Battle of Yavin

The TIEs deployed first; bombers on the centre-right, Advanced on the centre-left.

Rebels deployed on the far left (My POV).

Turn 1

The TIES all swept left to intercept while Red Leader (Garven Dreis) and the 2 red Pilots burned hell for leather up the flank.  Meanwhile Skywalker, Biggs and Wedge flew onto the map on the far right.  A volley of Imperial Missiles and Target locked TIE advanced left Dreis on a single hull point remaining for the loss of a couple of TIE shields and superficial damage to the bomber ace.

3-0 to the Empire (all three bombers are alive!)

Turn 2

Red leader and posse continue to hit the afterburners on the left while the rest of the rebels slowed slightly to engage on the right.  The TIE bombers pealed off to target lock Biggs while the Advanced squadron jiggled for a shot on the now overshot Garven Dreis. Stuttering blaster fire brought down Dreis while Wedge's fire into the bombers did only superficial damage.  Biggs disappeared in a cloud of far too many cluster missiles.

7-0 to the Empire

Turn 3

a big mess of bombers

The Red Squadron pilots flew off the board while Luke and Wedge decided discretion was the better part of valour and kicked it into high gear.  Unfortunately for Wedge I had predicted this "It's a trap!" (Wrong film I know!).  My bomber ace being able to fire missiles at any range is really quite useful.  Wedge disagrees! Or he would if he was still alive heh, heh, heh!  In other news I remember to use my camera.

9-0 to the Empire

Turn 4

dont let him escape!

Luke nearly makes it off the board while my TIEs fly recklessly through rocks to try to nail him.  A volley of Flechette torpedoes later and a very stressed Skywalker leaves the board, down just a single shield.

9-0 to the Empire

Thoughts: Tim did very well to interpose asteroids between me and his ships which kept several of them alive for a while longer than rebel scum have any right to be!  Unfortunately his full-speed-ahead approach meant that the Rebels would now have to destroy the death Star to win as all of my bombers and both named pilots survived.

The Trench Run

(for a map see below)

Early Turns

the death star map, with added turrets!

Gold Squadron decided to take the direct route into the trench right next to the exhaust port.  Despite a traffic jam on the way in they were able to shoot down two TIEs, including backstabber for one loss.  As they pulled into the trench however they realised they were too close and had to turn away from the exhaust port in the hope of K-turning back later.  Unfortunately all were shot down before they got their second try.

11-1 to the Empire

y-wings trying to shoot backwards

Turn 4

The arrival of two red squadron pilots reaped a harvest of TIEs with Mithil and another generic being shot down.

11-2 to the Empire

Turn 5

Luke arrives and starts to move towards the trench.  A red squadron pilot kills Vader.

11-3

Turn 6-7

just like shooting in the desert

As the remaining TIEs are mopped up Luke flies into the trench and using deadeye (no target lock)  shoots his torpedoes straight down the exhaust port

BOOOOM!

13 - 11 Rebel Win!

the routes taken by the various attempts to blow up the death star!

Thoughts: The Ion cannon turret was awesome stopping rebel ships from lining up on the trench properly.  With the benefit of hindsight Gold Squadron should probably have used half their torpedoes to take it out.  But the right event happened in the end!

So there we go. Thanks to Ian for the write up. He put a lot of effort into the whole thing, especially with coming up with the secnario. I think that potentially it could be quite cool to re-enact the Battle of Hoth sometime in the new year, we'll see.

Before the end of the calendar year, I'm intending to post a 2015 review as well as a 2016 targets thing. I've just read one on the burning eye blog, it seems like a good long term way of matching my goals and ambitions as well as providing a reflective narrative. My next video blog probably won't be until after Christmas now, due to family commitments etc but I be blogging over this period. Comment if there Is anything you'd like to see more of or are interested in.