TIE Swarm in Action

2 games 1 win 1 loss. Loss went to last 5 minutes and win was convincing with 5 TIEs left active and opponent conceding with just a damaged Ptype pilot left.

Observations
Lots of dial spinning required
Good fun to play
Not that much green on the dial to mitigate K turn stress
No 1 bank or 1 forward, found myself idly looking for this several times!
Hard for opponent to take down the TIEs quickly
Need to prioritize high value targets, lost the first cause Keyan Farlander managed to stay alive
Not too hard to maneuver as a group
Watch out for asteroid placement and where that turn into combat is going to take place.
Play the long game, TIEs win by accruing lots of small damage on ships
Great fun blocking with 1 turn

X Wing Tie Swarm

Here's the Tie Swarm list I intend to fly down the local club tonight. Will do a follow up post as to how it gets on.

Tie Swarm List V1.0

• Howlrunner is a no brainer
• Threw in Mauler as he brings an extra Red at range 1 
• Avoided any upgrades so i can concentrate on crashing them into each other without worrying about using upgrades
• Plan is to deploy 3 APs up front and have Howlie and Mauler and 4th AP in the second line
• Backstabber is my flanker
• 99 Points so it has a stab at initiative (could just throw Vet Instincts on Howl)
  
  

X Wing: First game with TIE Interceptors

Managed to get a game of X Wing in against Phil No Pain Saturday night. Been itching to get X Wing back on the table for ages and in particular to try out flying the TIE Interceptor.


Have had a crush on the looks of this ship since seeing Return of the Jedi as a kid and have had four models kicking around but just hadn't gotten around to fielding them. The number of actions these babies have on their card, great Attack and Agility and their super nimble maneuver dial looked real fun but with only 3 hull a piece and relatively high cost the question was how long would I be able to keep them alive.


So as this was Phil's first game we picked his list together;

Han Solo + Gunner
Biggs Darklighter
Dagger Squadron Pilot
[100pts]

Nothing fancy there. Han is solid at dishing out hits and the 360 fire arc would mitigate my maneuver advantage. The Dagger and X wing both kick out 3 dice each and add a lot of defense. Squadron has 14 Hull, 12 Shields and 9 Attack Dice, ouch.

My first stab at a TIE Interceptor list;

Avenger Squadron Pilot
Sabre Squadron Pilot + Push the Limit
Sabre Squadron Pilot + Push the Limit
Turr Phenir + Expose + Stealth Device
[100pts]

Sabres with PTL looked pretty solid, being able to take two actions a turn for a stress token is sweet when combined with a maneuver dial with so many green maneuvers. Turr sounded fun with his free, boost or barrel roll action after an attack and I slapped on Expose so he could dish out an extra red dice and mitigate the loss of a green with the stealth device. The list kicks out 12 Attack Dice but with only 12 Hull it has to work twice as hard as the Rebels who have 26 total Hull and Shields.

So what happened...

The game of 40k that was instead X Wing

Between work and being daddy day care I didn't have time to prepare for a game of 40k so Tom and I settled for X Wing instead.

Clover Fett

X Wing has fast become my fave minis game. Besides having a really tight rule set, and lots of variety in builds it's simple to just get this out and play. Don't need to worry about  terrain, getting down the 6 x 4 table, dice, measures, writing a list and then finding all the minis. Also X Wing plays quickly (about an hour) which is perfect for a weeknight.

Another good thing is X Wing scales to however many players you have. 1 on 1 with a 100 points and a bunch of ships each is cool, or if there's a bunch of you you could go up to 8 Imperial players all flying an academy tie vs 4 players with an X Wing each.

Short story Rebels won, tabled the Imperials and only lost their Rookie Pilot. Han was my MVP. Completely forgot to use Garven Dries ability to spawn additional focus, forgot to set up the Rookie close enough to Han to make use of Swarm Tactics and also most importantly forgot that the Fire Spray can fire it's primary to the rear arc (sorry Tom I'm blaming the wine and being spangled from sleep deprivation).

Han hot dice Solo (3 crits and a hit) and a Fett sized gap

Well I enjoyed it and can't wait to get my hands on the wave 3 ships Friday

Oh and those big ships are hard to maneuver....

Lock S foils in attack position...X Wing launch

Finally after over a year of waiting (we first saw preview copies on You Tube for Gen Con 2011) I have X Wing!

Now I had previously ordered a copy of the base game from Maelstrom but when I heard it was finally out in the UK on Tuesday I got so excited I had to call Inner Sanctum Collectables (ISC) our local game store to see if they had stock.

The lady was unpacking the box as I spoke and yes she would hold me back one of each of the expansions (X-Wing, TIE Fighter, TIE Advance and Y Wing). "Did I want a copy of the base game as well?" she enquired, to which I said no I have one on order thanks.....

Of course I left ISC with a copy of the base game as well, hell you know how long it can take Maelstrom to deliver and besides we were off to Sons of War on Wednesday, what better place for a trial run.

 I won't do a detailed review here, just some quick observations. The sculpts are great and the paint job is adequate/nice enough. It's refreshing to just open the box, punch out all the counters and play without having to glue the models together and undercoat and (eventually, 3 months later) paint em. I think it's good value for money but then I still buy GW crack so YMMV, you certainly get plenty of counters and of course cards (it's FFG course there's cards of all sizes) only addition I'd make is an extra red damage and green agility dice would have been nice (you get three of each but we found quite often you need to roll 4). Course the second base game will sort that out.

So is it any good?

Well if you like Star Wars (hell what self respecting geek doesn't?) then I'd be surprised if you didn't  love this. We were doing Star Wars impressions and humming the theme tune after 5 minutes. The models and cards and nice touches like the double sided Red/Green laser blast range finder all made it feel suitably Star Wars.

It plays like Wings of War (but on speed) the fact you only plot 1 move blind at a time means less analysis paralysis and you never feel like you're all randomly swinging around the table hoping someone will fly across your guns. The rules are simple, short and slick. Pretty much everything is tracked on the table or on your ships card. About 3 turns into our first game we'd stopped looking at the rules it's that simple.

Our first game was me Luke Skywalker Vs an Obsidian Sqd. TIE Pilot and named TIE Pilot "Night Beast" (Grrr..) played by Tom. Tom managed to whip me pretty quickly and I was wondering if the 2 on 1 approach the game has was unbalanced, but then we swapped sides and Tom managed to beat me and Mick wit the X wing so I think I just had my targeting computer turned off!

in the end we played 3 games and I reckon they were all about 30 minutes but felt even faster, turns in this game are quick and there was minimal downtime.

When we meet on the 6th of Oct. plan is to break out X Wing in the evening and I reckon throw in the Squadron building rules. I'll post again then with some pictures and more thoughts on game play.

Until then, may the force be with you.... (or at least take a focus action)

Stay on target....

Or actually swerve off target from 6th Edition 40K into Fantasy Flight Games new X-Wing miniature game.

It's basically Wings of War with X Wings and Tie Fighters, what's not to love?

I have put a pre order in with Maelstrom for the starter set, but I'm sure I will soon be adding all the expansion ships as well if it plays OK.

Prices are nice £25.19 for the 3 fighter starter and £10.79 for the single fighter expansion packs seems reasonable if the quality is as good as they look on the website. Not going to need a lot of minis per player...

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=174&enmi=X-Wing