Darksun Life vol. 8 : The Lost Fleet Review

Good Evening.

Action shot!

This Monday, please enjoy my review of the Lost Fleet Series. Should you be particularly interested, please comment and i'll send you one of them!

X-wing epic battle report

So, continuing our series on X-wing and as promised from Thursday, here is a review of the big epic game we had on Wednesday. we had about 320 points a side. the epic ships were loaded out the same, with 3 different cannons and a few other things:

Ian led the forces of order with Jonathan and I have to confess somebody who's name escapes me! 

They had:

1 imperial raider, kitted out with three sorts of cannons and some imperial crew (including the guy who lets you drive over asteroids)

-1TIE Punnisher, Redline with munitions, plasma torpedoes, cluster missiles and free target lock sensors upgrade thingy. 

-Captain Jonas in a TIE Bomber (re rolls for allies with secondary weapons) munitions, plasma torpedoes, ion pulse missiles.

 -PS4 bomber with the same loadout as Jonas.

-2 Black Squadron TIEs with Wingman. 

-A PS3 Defender with ion engines. 

-Kir Kanos (exchange evade tokens for hits) in an interceptor with title, shield and hull upgrades. 

(This is mostly quoted from the text conversation)

Opening engagements

I flew he rebellion with robin and Andrew, with roughly something like

-A tantive, also with three cannons, Han, leia

-B-Wing: Dagger Squadron Pilot (Heavy Laser Cannon) 

-B-Wing: Dagger Squadron Pilot ("Mangler" Cannon) 

-Y-Wing: Gray Squadron Pilot (Twin Laser Turret ) 

-K-Wing: •Miranda Doni (Plasma Torpedoes; Plasma Torpedoes; Tactician) 

-A-Wing: •Jake Farrell (Outmanoeuvre ; Proton Rockets; Autothrusters ) 

-Z-95 Headhunter: Tala Squadron (Cluster Missiles) 

-Z-95 Headhunter: Tala Squadron

Roughly the same points, but crucially two intentional things that I'd done. Firstly, I deliberately out everybody ps4 or higher. So that even if they got cleared of by the imperial raider they'd get to shoot. Secondly, and for a lasting effect- I made a strong  initiative bid. With the choice on initiative, we gave it to the imperials. Perhaps a little to tactical for the level we were playing at, but it meant that the raider and half their ships were down before we placed anything. Meaning we refused flank away from the raider. Good for us, but probably the wrong decision for the game. My competitive nature got the best of me there. 

So we set up, concentrating all of forces in the centre, and left of centre.  The imperials set up in the centre, and to the right of Centre from our perspective. 

First Engagement

In the first two rounds, we decided to rush the imperials and see if they would blink. With the imperial raider cruising towards us, our plan was to try and use our superior firepower to take a couple of ships out before battle was joined. So all of our ships went as fast as they could without pulling red manoeuvres.

Before

Over the next couple of turns, the forces of the imperial side took the bait and joined battle, much to the silent curses of their admiral as he continued to move at a glacial pace towards the battle. This resulted in an almighty dogfight in the centre of the board, with Miranda and Jake quickly into the flank and rear. There is a lot of space on a 6x3 board!

After

The clinching factor was that the tantive was able to engage relatively early on, and start throwing 5 dice attacks at ships. Because the imperial fighters were preoccupied with our fighters, I was able to cruise along our back line at about range 4 from the fight and destroy a ship a turn. This tipped the balance in our favour, until then it had been touch and go. 

I rolled this, and then used han solo crew to pump it up

Seeing his comrades fall into our carefully placed trap, their Admiral placed all power to the engines in an effort to save his fellows. Unfortunately for him, due in part to unlucky imperial dice rolls, by the time he got there, we had cleaved our way through the imperial fleet like a lightsaber through butter. This meant that the imperial raider and a tie defender were facing the tantive, a bwing, Jake and Miranda. 

This was where we called it. A victory for the filthy rebel scum. The club only goes on to 10pm and any longer and we would have overstayed our welcome. In the next turn we would have probably lost the bwing (I'd advised putting it in a very risky place where it was going to get run over!) and potentially another ship. But the rear of the raider was halfway dead from one round of shooting! 

Closing Shots

All in all a great game. Next week we are playing 100 point dogfights, and then in the final week before Christmas I'm thinking about a narrative mission, with side tables. Robin has suggested one as a potential as well. If you want to come along and join us, please let me know! The more the merrier!

X-wing battle report

So this happened......

A bit of tease, I'll be posting properly about it before the weekend :) check back for more action shots and great tales of dice rolling

Darksun Life Vol 7 - B-Wing Repaints

So, Another week, another Vlog. Sorry its a bit late! real life got really busy over the weekend!

Anyways, check out the video below:

(sorry its only the link, for some reason it wont upload the embedded video)


As ever, comments, feedback are welcome! Im hoping to guest Vlog Aaron next week on Hobby stuff! And later this week I will be updating the Leicester Sabres X-wing league story with a couple of reports.

X-wing league review

Just a quick one today. Ian and I have been learning people from our club (Leicester sabres) to play X-wing for the last 2 weeks. Since BWX I'm keeping my hobby passion going with X-wing and the idea is hat we use these four weeks to teach other club members how to play X-wing. 

Last week we had four people, and they got to play two games each, with Andrew ending up 2-0, Jonathan 1-1, Tim 0-2 and somebody else (Mike I think!?) going 1-1. This week we gave them prebuilt 100point lists, that were hopefully balanced against each other. 

Tim played Andrew, whilst we had a new participant called robin. Over the course of the evening he battered Ian's fleet into oblivion. On the other map, Andrew and Tim had picked quite different lists:

Andrew

-Green squadron a-wing, with Ptl and wired(title)

-naked bandit z95

-warden k-wing, with lasssult missiles, plasma torpedoes and extra munitions

-Jake Farrell with outmanoeuvre, swarm tactics, (title), proton rockets

Tim

-ps4 interceptor with adrenaline rush

-ps7 interceptor (tur fenur?) with adrenaline rush

- two ps4 tie bombers, each with plasma torps, seismic charges and extra munitions.

So two fairly balanced lists, that begin to show of the possible combos and mechanics of the game. 

They played for 75 mins- at 60 mins it was on a knife edge so we let it roll. As time was called going into the last round, Tim was ahead by 3 points. Then he swooped his bomber right exactly where it needed to be to down the k-wing (who had 1 hull left!) however Andrew had other ideas, sending Jake in close to blow the bomber apart. That left Tim massively behind, with one shot left. Ps7 interceptor trying to down the k-wing at range three. Could he do it and seal the win? YES! Moments later he shot the k-wing out of the sky, and sealed a 7 point win 58-51. 

A thrilling game. Next Wednesday we are having an epic sized 300 points a side game, with both the raider and the rebel corvette. We are hopefully having supporting wings of bombers and fighters. Lots of different players in each side, I might even work out some objectives for each side beyond just "kill each other." Tune in next week to find out how it went!

X-wing repaints series. Episode 2: B-wing repairs

So recently, whilst playing my friend Aaron I broke one of my B-wings! Not just true model, but the peg. Right by the engines. Disaster. Especially because they are one of my favourite ships to fly! But also because I figured it would be a total pain to fix. 

So that was about a month ago. On Sunday evening I thought to myself, "I can fix that, I have the skills to fix that!" So I thought I'd give it a go. 

The snap was right in between the engines, and it wasn't a clean break. There was no way I could just whack a bit of superglue on it, it needed pinning. I don't know if you're aware of the X-wing pegs, but they are thin and comparatively brittle. Putting a drill into this made me nervous, because I'd only get one go with the bit that had snapped off. 

To get my eye in I decided to drill into the back of the b-wing first. This was comparatively easy, the drill went straight in-between the engines. My tip here would be to apply even pressure and work slowly, you don't need to rush it. I probably drilled 0.5 cms at least into the back of it. The key here is to go deep because you aren't going to be able to go deep into the peg. So you need that on the ship. 

Next, I drilled into the back of the peg, where it had snapped. This was more difficult, I had to take it really easy because I didn't want to snap the peg through drilling in the wrong place. I filed down the peg as best I could and then made sure that where I was drilling was the centre of the peg. This was tricky, the drill slipped a couple of times before it went in. 

The advantage with drilling into a peg is that it's clear, so you can see where the drill bit is. Make sure you are careful here, I was mentally telling myself that I only got one shot at this. I find it helpful to trial the paperclip out, see how much it goes in, if it's loose etc. 

What I did next, and the bit I think that has probably made this while exercise work is use green stuff. I put a little bit in each end, before dipping the paperclip in super glue. The green stuff makes the join secure when you out the paperclip in (you have no idea how much I'm trying to avoid innuendos) and the superglue cements the join.  

I having cemented the b-wing end, I assessed how much paperclip I'd need to make the join, and then cemented the other in. 

One of the joys about doing this was that I was able change the angle that the ship is flying at. I'm really pleased with this because I'd always wanted to do that with one of them but I'd never been brave enough! So I'm glad I was forced into it. Now I just need to finish painting it!

X-wing Mat Unboxing video - Darksun life vol. 6

So, I've finished my latest vlog. It's a custom design that I got printed at an Italian printing company. I thought I'd do a vlog review of the mat, check it out here:

I found a design from http://www.thewolvesglade.co.uk/blog/ all credit goes to guy there. They are his designs, and it's his idea to go to that site!

The Italian printing site is: https://www.pixartprinting.co.uk/wide-format/printing-banners-mesh/

Next week I'll be showing of the yt-2400 in that video :)