Bolt action league results

So last night I won my bolt action league! Here is the proof: 

I went 7 wins with 1 draw and 2 losses over the last couple of months. Very pleased with the overall result obviously, but also since I've not really played bolt action prior to this term, exstatic to have a the juggernaughts trophy for a short while. 

You can watch my latest vlog about bolt action here:  

UK Xwing Nationals Tournament Part 1 - Darksun 27

Here it is! Part 1 in all its Glory :) Which of course, means that there will be a part 2! coming hopefully later this week! Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for more vlogging goodness here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9yiSXV2P-tTpPb1b2n30PQ

Battle Report Double Trouble Round 3 - Darksun Life 23

Watch out! You're playing the TO!

So, final game of the tourney and who do I end up facing but Alex Brown and Dave Weston. Their respective blogs (http://fromthefang.blogspot.co.uk/ and http://www.40kaddict.uk/) are part of the reason that I blog and I've never played either of them before, so it was a really cool suprise!

My partner Mathew had some very nicely painted Tau, and we did pretty well, executing our plans and our oppenants forces with a bit to much enthusiasm. Anyways, enjoy the vlog!

Battle Report Game 2 - Darksun Life 22

"Drop me near them, I want to hit them with my Grav Cannons!"

Yeah. The heading pretty much says it all. In a continuing theme for these Battle Reports, my Grav Cents spent most of the game in combat with Grots who repeatedly refused to break and run away. I mean, I can't be bitter because we did pretty well all things considered. But those were some mighty, mighty grots.

Double Trouble Round 1 Battle Report

"Don't get cocky kid"

If only I'd listened to Han Solo before this game. It may have gone better... opps, spoilers! Thanks to Rob, Ian and Matt for a great game :) Tune in over the weekend for the 2nd installment!

Don't worry! It's on its way! Battle report updates

Apologies for the delay in posting my battle reports from double trouble. I've decided to go down the vlog route, but break it up into a mini-series and have a 2 min vlog for each game. Which means more editing, more topping and tailing, more introductions. And more time! 

I've got some time on Friday night, so I'll or ably work on them then and "release" them over the weekend. How that's ok with you guys :) for now, I'll leave you with a picture from my second game :)

 

Deathwatch Killteam review

Last week at club I played Deathwatch: Killteam. Read on to find out how I got on.....

Ian had brought Killteam with him, and I'll be honest the models are beautiful. As much as it pains me to say it, games workshop are doing an excellent job with the quality of thier miniatures, and the ruleset isn't that bad either. The game plays basically like how Soace Marines are in any of the books you read. Ian described them as being are superhuman "movie marines". 

The way that this is borne out in the basic game is that the marines go first, and shoot twice. So each turn looks roughly like this:

• Space marines move
• Genestealers move 
• Space marines shoot
• Genestealers shoot
• Space marines shoot again

This means that as a marine player you can wade through hordes of cultists and stealers as you achieve your objectives. Having only played the one game, I'm not going to go deep into the rules, but they are very simple. They've removed "to wound" rolls entirely, if you hit, that's a wounding hit. 

The game plays very fast, with the phases cycling through very quickly each turn. What's interesting for the tyranid player is that you get cards to lurk with every turn, similar to space hulk. You draw from a deck every turn and place those cards facedown, not revealing them until after the space marines have moved. It's tough to bring down a marine, and I found that they were taking out smaller groups of 6-7 cultists with ease. The cool thing is you can leave one card lurking for another round, especially as you can only place what models the game comes with. 

This creates a balancing element, as you can never have to many purestrain genestealers running around. It's nicely balanced though, as the marines are so tough you might cycle through the same models every round. 

The thing that I realised very early on was that I needed to swarm the marines to stand any chance of killing one. You need at least 5 or 6 to 1 to stand a chance of taking one down. And that's after thier attacks! So you probably need 8/9-1!  It feels very cinematic, games workshop have got that bit spot on. There is desperation on both sides and it really turns into a swirling blood bath!

Springing the trap is all important. The cards that give you cultists also give you abilities such as "attack twice" and combining these factors is the only way to take down a space marine. Even with that ability and all of these guys I was only able to take down 1 marine. They're tough!

Overall, I'd reccomend playing this game if you get the chance. It's fun, fast and cinematic. I don't know that I'd buy it, as £118/$160 is quite a lot, and I don't play tyranids. But if you have always planned to do a cultist army, then the models are amazing, and if you've got a group together you could play through the missions quite nicely. If you can, give it a go!

Weekend warlords X-wing April Tournament

Hello readers! If you aren't too bored of reading about X-wing, you could read about how I got on in the spring tournament at Weekend Warlords. Hopefully, you can read and understand this bat-rep, even with only a little knowledge of the game :) I've tried to keep it quite narrative. If you are bored of X-wing, the head over to this post for details of how you could win a free Space Marine Demi Company from a fellow blogger! 

Anyways, if you've stuck around I was heading into this tournament thinking about what to take for regional season. Jumpmaster 5000s are the new hotness and I suppose I wanted to see if:

A/. I can fly them. 

B/. They're any good. 

C/. If I like flying them. 

For my readers who don't know what a Jumpmaster is, one of its pilots (Manaroo) rescued Boba Fett from the Sarlec Pitt. In game terms for X-wing a certain combo  of cards allows you to fly three of these things and they all have torpedoes that have like a +90% of getting four hits when you shoot. That you can field three of these things mean you could potentially cause 12 damage in one turn, if your oppenant doesn't dodge anything. 

So I flew the following a triple Jumpmaster list, running 1 with Boba Fett (crew) and 1 with Intel agent. Boba Fett is great because he can cause your oppenant to discard an upgrade card (even the Emperor or Darth Vader!), although it's only 1 use. Intel agent is super great because every turn you can look at opposing ships movement dial before you do yours, meaning that you could in theory get in thier way. 

My first match was against mr YV-666 himself, Shane Hibbard. Shane was running a Jumpmaster with two YV-666s, one with Boba Fett crew and one with Zuckuss crew. His Jumpmaster was relatively similar to mine, but with the addition of a recon specialist. It was a somewhat of a grudge match, with our last game being the final of previous store championship we'd both attended. The  photo above is a shot of how I made a mess of the first engagement, and flew straight into the guns of all three of his ships. Had I engaged a turn earlier I think I could have maybe taken a ship off before it got to shoot, but as it was I lost one (the right hand one) straight away. I did shoot down his right hand YV-666 a turn later but this left me massively out gunned. 

I flew around for a bit, but could dodge enough of the attacks. The 180 degree arc on a YV-666 is really hard to dodge! I lost my second Jumpmaster and then tried to engage his Jumpmaster with my one remaining ship as the YV-666 arced round to get back in the fight. It worked for a bit, but eventually he cornered me and killed me. I lost, getting half points for one YV-666 and full for the other one. 

Result: Loss 48-100

My second game was against Dan. He was flying an elite tie swarm, with the following pilots:

Youngster with expose

Zeta leader with wired

Howlrunner

Omega ace with push the limit 

Epsilon leader 

Basically, and somewhat hilariously, youngster allows the other ties to expose themselves all the time. This combos well omega ace, as you can end up with 4 Crits. So that meant that youngster and his non safeguarding appropriate upgrade was my primary target!

The game went well, although I made a total screw up of the first engagement, misreading he game completely and barrel rolling my central ship into the path of the oncoming swarm whilst the others simply slow rolled. I did save that situation thou, and managed to take youngster out straight away. This stopped the rest of the ties exposing themselves to my pilots constantly. 

Over the next couple of turns, I did a really good job of blocking the ties, indeed 3rd round of engagement I got his 3 remaining tie fighters to all bump, meaning they had no action and less shots. Over the next few turns I whittled his forces down in a swirling mid table dogfight, launching torpedoes and bumping as best I could. I rolled out winner of this one and decided to eat a cookie to celebrate. 

Result: Win 100-65

My third game I played against jumpmasters! Nothing less than I deserve running them myself, I'm sure you agree. James had 3 Jumpmasters, all with torpedoes and astromechs, and he was at 100 points which gave me initative. I set up on the left hand side, and James set up opposite to joust me. 

The intial engagement worked well for me, I blocked 2/3 of his ships with a long 3 speed and barrel roll. I felt pretty good about that. However, next turn my Boba Fett Jumpmaster was targeted by all 3 opposing jumpmasters and went down to 2 direct hits. From being on full hull to dead in one turn! That was painful. 

This eventually left me with 1 vs 2 (mines on the left) and playing catch up. I had a set of torps that I never got to fire. In the end, I managed to bump my way to staying alive, only taking shots from one at a time. With my bump master alive on 1 health, I did get some MOV, but I lost the game to go 1-2 after 3 rounds. 

Result: Loss 49-83

Game four saw me play another triple Jumpmaster list! I once again had initative against Adam's wolf pack. Very similar to James list, this time I tried going to my right, and trying a slightly different approach. 

I weirdly barrel rolled my boba who was in the centre in front of a rock on the corner of the board, whilst my other two were slow rolling in the bottom right. I then turned in hard with Boba and barrel rolled to get in the way and made all his ships rash into each other. This allowed me free reign cutting in from the side and got a good crtical hit, reducing a rival jumpmaster to Ps0. 

This put me ahead in the shooting race, which is always really important in the knife fight. Whilst my white and green Jumpmaster with Boba Fett went down I was able to keep ahead in the arms race and ended up with a victory. 

Result: Win 100-51

I went into my final game 2-2. Could I claw out a victory for a 3-2 finish to the day? I was playing Matt, who had Tycho with rage and proton rockets, the PS3 Ghost (with dash, lando a dorsal turret and some other bits) and zeb in the attack shuttle. That allows the ghost to fire twice as the shuttle crew man the guns on the main ship. And Tycho is a beast anyway. 

I slow rolled for a couple of turns, seeing the lay of he land from my left hand corner fortress. The ghost had started opposite me, and i thought about chasing it down, but I knew it could outrun me. Tycho crept into the mid right of the star map, with both of us sizing each other up. I then broke out of the corner and went for a Hail Mary block on Tycho. It didn't work! 

However, I couldn't complain as he was still in a position to receive fire from all three jumpmasters (2 turrets, 1 torpedo). I was very fortunate with the red and green dice rolls, and Tycho went down straight away. By this time, the Ghost had k-turned and was heading into the centre of the board. The next turn (second round of engagement) I got a decent block on the ghost, denying the action  and took 8HP off. Plasma torpedoes really love 0ag ships with lots of shields. At this point Matt conceded, and it was all over very conceded

Result: Win 100-0

My final win did wonders for my MOV, and meant that I finished 6th! I got some nice swag, including some ion tokens [Edit, thanks John!] and a nice alternative art card for veteran instincts. 

As ever, an absolute blast at weekend warlords! Ash and the team are always great, and I love seeing the guys that play there. They make me feel really welcome, and they have a real community. What a game store should be like. Just that they remember my name means a lot :)

I mentioned at the start that I was looking at 3 key factors. I will be reviewing my thoughts on this later this week, so tune in weds/thurs for that! Thanks for reading! 

Darksun Life 14 - Store Champs Vlog report

A vlog! you can watch it here! just click on my face above :) if you'd like to read the blog version of this video, its available here

Titan Games Battle Reports: Store Championship

So, this is a write up of last weeks store championships that I attended at Titan Games in Lichfield, with the review of Sanctuary following in the next week. If you'd rather watch the Vlog, go here.

As a reminder, I ran 4 Scum Y-wings with Twin Laser Turrets (TLT) and Unhinged Astromechs. The Twin Laser Turrets shoot twice a turn (at ranges 2-3), but can only cause 1 damage per shot, and the Astromechs make all my 3 speed manoeuvres green. For thems that don’t know, these cards pair really well because it means you can keep your speed up to keep out of range 1 to allow you to shoot twice, and also gives you a whole bunch of different ways to clear stress.

In my first game at Titan, I played Josh, who was fielding 4 tie fighters (two of which were First Order Ties) and Whisper with a whole bag of tricks. I placed my rocks centrally, and deployed on my left. He deployed slightly of centre with the ties and then put whisper on my right. I sped up the board, winning the first engagement and taking a Tie fighter off. At this point, Whisper was avoiding my 4 turrets and coming the long way around. The phantom didn’t get into the fight until quite late on, and by that point I’d chewed up most of the Tie fighters. Whilst I wasn’t very good at dodging Whisper’s de-cloaks, the three remaining Y-wings were too many shots for the Phantom to deal with.

Result: Win 100-25

My second game was against Oliver, who had Soontir Fel, Omega Leader and Vader. They all had lots of tricks and I was a little worried about this match up. I think my lists strengths and weaknesses are magnified against aces. This time I went to the right and swooped up the flank to take Soontir head on as the other two came round the back. Soontir actually dodged a whole round of shooting from me, which was frustrating. However, because rocks, his green manoeuvers were predictable, and I blocked his escape as I knew he needed to clear his stress. That meant that I was able to kill him with primary weapon attacks that turn. Vader followed a couple of turns after, and then Omega Leader shortly after.

Result: Win 100-0

My third game was against Brian. Ah yes. This was, and remains one of the best games of X-wing I’ve ever played. Brian had Kavil in a Y-wing with a TLT, a YV-666 with Boba crew, Gunner, tactician and the Nashta Pup (free z-95), and a Scum TLT y-wing like mine. I got good asteroid placement this game, limiting where he was able to approach me. Brian had initiative, and placed in the top right. I placed in the bottom left and sped up my left flank. I then faked a little at going straight to but actually turned into the board, leaving the YV-666 to face a broadside from all 4 Y-wings. Second round of engagement I burned the YV-666 down, for no loss and was feeling confident. I now only had 2 Y-wings and z-95 to deal with.

We both regrouped, and the re-engaged across the bottom of the map. After the dust had settle, I had 2 Y-wings left against just a z-95. The following turn, my Y-wing with 5 hull left got one shotted by the z-95 and I started to get concerned. I was even more concerned when the z-95 started pursuing my y-wing and dodging most of my shots. I managed to break out from his pursuit, and regrouped. We were both now on one hull. Somehow id traded 7 hit points for 3. I could have played for time, but there was a lot of time and that wasn’t what I wanted to do. We came in for a final joust, he hit me once, I rolled an eyeball and burned my focus. I fired back with the TLT and killed his z-95! I was elated. And drained! Great game, Brian really made me work for it and taught me that you shouldn’t just give up.

Result: Win 100-75

My final game of swiss was against Mike, who had Wes Janson, Biggs and Keyan Farlander (Fire contral system, opporuntist, Heavy laser cannon). Keyan and Wes combined to give a 5 dice target locked and focused attack from Keyan. This meant one of my Y-wings didn’t even get to shoot before it died. That woke me up a bit! However, I got good shots back at Biggs, taking him down to his last hull with the three remaining Y-wings. After Biggs died, I realised that whilst Keyan was scary his 1 agility was no match for my TLTs and took him out. 

Result: Win 100-50

This meant that I was 4-0 and top player after Swiss (they only did four rounds, which I didn't mind, I mean we all have homes to go to!)

I don't know if you can see from this picture, but my MOV was 650. Comfortingly, I didn't just scrape through. But there were a couple of times when I was trying to avoid getting shot to save points. Thats something I've really learnt in the last few months actually. 

So I headed into the top 4 cut, playing a really great guy called Anthony. He had Kath scarlet in a firespray, with a mangler cannon and IG-88A, with HLC, advanced sensors and some other stuff. If the third game of the day was the most exciting, this was the toughest. I did not fly very well at all here. I got a decent rock placement, but just went straight up my right hand side and let him crash into my left flank, getting inside range 1 and everything. After the first engagement, I had two y-wings slightly dinged up vs IG-88A, who was mostly ok. Regenerating shields for fun as he killed me. 

As we swooped around and I tried to get a two vs one engagement, I went for a really dumb block attempt with one of the y-wings. Just read the board and game totally wrong. He just did a super obvious move and killed me. Which left me a half dead Y-wing against a half dead IG. I ran away thru the asteroids, and was left on one hull. I was facing towards the board edge and only had one option, turning into to the left. He was in a reasonable position to turn and catch me in arc, killing me. 

However! This was not what happened. Anthony had to go they an asteroid to get me, which took him down to 1 hull and then he had chosen to sloop with his ship, meaning I wasn't in his arc. But I was able to TLT him, and duly killed him. Winning the game on 1 hull and progressing to the final. 

Result: Win 100-75

Which meant I made the final! I faced Mike from round 4. I got a reasonable deployment of rocks, and set up on the left. Mike set up to joust with me, so I decided that I probably shouldn't joust with him! I broke to the right, and made him follow me thought the rocks. This really benefitted me, because his fleet went from flying next to each other to conga lining through asteroids towards my ships. 

I timed my starburst just right to catch all four TLTs at the correct range, removing Wes and Keyan without loosing a ship. This meant that Biggs was faced with having to deal with all four by himself, and at that point Mike called it. 

Result: Win the store championship!

So I rolled out winner for the whole day, which was a nice suprise. The first time I've ever won a wargames tournament! A really enjoyable day, thank you to all my opponents and to Titan for hosting a great, smoothly run event. Hopefully at some point in the next week I'll do a report on yesterday's store championship as well. Thanks for reading!

Battle Report: Howling Griffons vs Eldar

Earlier this week I played a guy called Ross at our club (Leicester sabres) for the first time. He had a lovely looking Eldar army, and I took my howling griffons. I didn't have as many bikes as I thought I would, partly because I don't own as many painted bikes as I thought I did!

My army consisted of:

Librarian: Psyker (Mastery Level 2); combi-grav; Space Marine bike 120

2 Space Marine Bikers: 2× grav-gun; + 1 Biker Sergeant (combi-grav; melta bombs) 108

4 Scouts: + 1 Scout Sergeant 55

• Land Speeder Storm: multi-melta 50

9 Tactical Marines: meltagun; lascannon; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant (combi-melta) 180

3 Space Marine Bikers: 2× grav-gun; + 1 Biker Sergeant (combi-grav; melta bombs) 129

9 Sternguard Veterans: 2× combi-melta; 2× combi-plasma; + 1 Veteran Sergeant (lightning claw) 275

• Drop Pod 35

Drop Pod 35

Drop Pod 35

2 Devastator Centurions: 2× grav-cannon and grav-amp; + 1 Centurion Sergeant (grav-cannon and grav-amp; omniscope) 250

1 Thunderfire Cannon: + 1 Techmarine Gunner 100

Inquisitor Coteaz 100

Inquisitorial Henchmen Warband

• Acolyte 4

• Acolyte 4

• Acolyte 4

• Death Cult Assassin 15

1,499 points

Not completely optimised, partly due to the lack of bikes but also due to my wanting to try the acolytes. I could even put them in a drop pod if I wanted to! Great for siezing objectives. Especially in a hammer and anvil set up. But we played kill points. And Ross had two wraightknights. So they weren't a lot of use!

A rough breakdown of Ross' list (I think) was as follows:

• Farseer on a jetbike
• 2x small squads of jet bikes each with a warlock
• 2x 3 man jetbike squad without a warlock
• 3 hornets. 
• 2 wraightknights 

So pretty min maxed. He got a bunch of psychic powers (including guide and eldritch storm) and I got psychic shriek for both, with the Coteaz getting preseince and the librarian getting forewarning (4+ inv) to round things out. I went into the game reasonably confident. It wasn't going to be easy, but at least it wasn't to difficult!

I was lucky enough to get first turn, and with a drop pod army took it!  Ross had mainly castled on to one side and I decided that I had to grab first strike, a wraithtknight and something else in the first turn.  So I went after his castle with my sternguard and centurions. And actually did reasonably well! 

All three of the units of jetbikes (including the farseer one) on this side of the Board failed thier moral check following my alpha strike. However, he rolled his flee numbers the right way around and they all stayed on the table. I killed a hornet and got this wraightknight down to one wound. 

In Ross' first turn he used the wraith knights to "D" off my grav centurions despite thier 4++ and the rest of his army took a big bite out of the sternguard  and the bikes who were with the librarian. I was also then charged by both wraightknights (one into a squad of bikes, and one into some sternguard). For the record "charged by both wraightknights" is not a experience I'm looking to repeat in the near future. However, to my glee the squad of four bikes (read, "my right flank") held a wraithtknight and that flank up for 3 successive combat phases. For thems that don't know what that looks like, here's a quick picture:

In my turn two I used what grav I had left to drop the other wraightknight and try and add further pressure onto where I was pushing in his deployment zone. I killed some more jetbikes, and thunderfire cannoned the life out of the farseer/warlock/jetbike.   My drop pod with added acolytes turned up and stayed out the way. Literally nothing for them to do. 

In his turn two Ross was beginning to consolidate and push back. My scouts got pinned down and then killed by the farseer, and the hornets continued to do nasty things. My inability to finish of the farseer and warlock was beginning to cost me dearly. 

Over turns 3&4 I didn't actually score a kill point, whilst the purple Eldar continued chipping away st my forces.  I made a bad call with my librarian, forgetting that I was withdrawing to leave the scouts to die so that I could have a go at the other wraightknight. I doubt it would have affected the result but it did mean they were in range of both hornets and able be brought down by them at the bottom of turn 3. 

Despite my thunderfire cannon being great value for money and a constant threat, my back line very quickly collapsed when the other wraightknight got in there. This a shot of the wraightknight charging into what remained of my flank:

And this one combat phase after the previous shot. 

This one tactical marine was pretty much all I had left by the bitter end :( poor guy. Oh, plus a 1 hull point left on a drop pod. The game ended as follows:

Me: 5 kill points and first strike. 

Ross: 10 kill points, slay the warlord and line breaker

After game thoughts

I didn't make a few key decisions in the early game that could have helped me in the longer term. The hornets were much nastier than I thought they'd be for example. I also probably should have put the tactical squad in a drop pod and suicided after one of the hornets on turn 1. Tbh that's all my sternguard ended up doing. 

Ross was a real pleasure to play against, I was worried I might be bringing to powerful an army but I think we were quite balanced on paper. We both hadn't played in a while and I think myself I particular was a little rusty. 

Army list changes

I think overall I'll need to go back to the drawing board and make this list a bit leaner if I'm going to use it again. Add more bikes maybe, or strip stuff out so I can put wyverns in. We will see!

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. 

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!