Monday, August 11, 2014

Our first taste of Epic X-Wing!

o/

Well, the WHFB game fell thru so my GF, our friend Chikar (who had never played x-wing before) and I were quickly roped into an Epic rules, 300 point game of X-Wing. My apologies to Imperial Recruitment but we fought along side Billy and his CR90 (in its battlefield debut). Also, my apologies for the photos, they're kinda rough. We had cell phones all around, but notta real camera in sight and it shows in the photos. As such these are in in the best order that I can recall, as many, many photos were deleted after inspection of their quality.

Turn one was mainly maneuvering into position, and turn 2, Chikar started off by 1-shotting an Interceptor with his E-Wing! As you can see here, over confident, that same E-Wing is about to bite off more than it can chew...
They're going for the Bait--uh, I mean Billy. Of course Billy set the corvette's auto pilot to forward 2 (for the WHOLE game...), and apparently went to see what was in the fridge rather than do something useful like ram the block of TIEs meandering around in front of the CR90. Against the Phantoms, the Corvette's shooting was entirely ineffectual.
With my outer rim smuggler and Tala squadron pilot, I quickly found out that the 'cheese squadron' (so-named by the other Imperial player) was all but impossible to hit! As the Phantoms had oh, I dunno...we'll say at least 6 dice to defend! WTF? All I managed to do was whittle off the shields from one of them before giving up on them. Though, they were largely ignoring my 2 ships in favor of gutting the CR90.
Thus starts the Falcon's multi-turn run of hauling ass to engage the 'regular' TIE fighters.
Whilst moving first, the Rebel ships on the other flank are easily out maneuvered. Luckily the hawk had a turret.
The CR90 is on its last legs, and the YT is on the edge of range of the regular ties, whilst still firing behind at the phantoms with its turret (and still, to no avail).
The CR90 goes BOOM! and the Headhunters follow suit. The Hawk quickly pops whilst the YT makes a run for the table edge. Sadly, hopelessly out gunned, it never makes it...
It was fun (untouchable Phantom squadron aside) and while it was his first time at the helm of the CR90, I was thoroughly unimpressed with it. I think a GR75 would have worked much better for us. That said it could be inexperience with the ship, or well...its just Billy (if you knew him you'd understand).

Trying to split 50 points each or so to myself, my GF and Chikar was a mistake. Apparently had I taken Han solo and buffed the Falcon all to hell, I could have easily taken down the Phantoms according to my opponent. In a normal sized game you're only likely to face 1 phantom which is a good thing, otherwise X-Wing could quickly devolve into a 40k-like game of: 'I have more broken models than you, I win!' which has been my complaint here of late. The guy using them admitted it was a 'dick list' but then again he was expecting to face experienced players (though unlike his team mate he didn't switch lists when he found out...). Oh well, its all still just a learning experience at this point, and I was ignored till the CR90 was all but dead. Still, if anything it convinced me to shove the CR90 waaaay down on my list of X-Wing priorities.

Speaking of new toys, Rob gave me an early birthday present in the form of the Millennium Falcon! So awesome! I can't wait to convert it into a different YT-1300. I've been checking out various paint jobs and conversions online,so am pretty sure that I know what I want to do (conversion wise anyways, paint, not so much), but I'll leave that for a later post.

6 comments:

greggles said...

I think I actually like the epic sized ships more as "movable obstacles" then actual playable ships.

They just look so lovely on the battlefield regardless of whether you use them or not!

eriochrome said...

Trying to crash into that phantom squadron would definitely been the best thing. I have not gotten either of my epic ships out of dry dock yet but they both seem pretty pricy for what they bring to the table top. A corvette set for combat costs like 10 ties and they seem like they will eat it alive throwing 20-30 dice at it a turn when it has no defense dice.

Da Masta Cheef said...

Yeah those Phantoms literally tore it apart in no time flat! It was really kind of disheartening to watch.

Imperial Recruitment said...

Phantoms are great.

Da Masta Cheef said...

Heh, as long as you're the one using them!

Imperial Recruitment said...

Come to the dark side. We have Phantoms.