Monday, June 17, 2019

Amateurs at War...

o/

Confusion? Check. Collisions? Check. An actual battle plan? Yeah-no.

The other day I was perusing the various gaming blogs that are out there and came across this one. X-wing! Ya know, that game we all used to play all the time until everyone suddenly stopped for reasons I don't quite recall. The final nail in the local X-Wing coffin was the new edition. 

I have no idea how it plays as compared to the original, and nobody I know is/was willing to shell out close to $200 for multiple conversion sets to bring their collections 'up to date'. That combined with the vast majority of the 'new releases' being old ships with current cards/tokens and a corresponding price increase, doesn't help. Yeah, no thanks. 

Both sides on the initial turn.

Anyways, the old edition works just fine and we have a bucket load of ships for it, furthermore we watched most of Rogue One the other night when we stumbled across it whilst flipping thru channels. Thus, when I asked my Beloved Wolfy if she was up for a game in lieu of going out to the FLGS, she was all for it!

To hell with space slugs! What the hell is THAT?!?!

I put together a few 'new' lists using a site that didn't update to the new edition, though admittedly I had to flip thru old blog posts on here to remember just what all we had. I used one of the new Empire lists, trying out the TIE shuttle for the 1st time, whilst Wolfy opted for an old Scum and Villainy (she doesn't qualify as the former) List. 

Baxter and I contemplating our next moves...

Bax had to be removed a few times as (1) he was in the way, (2) we couldn't see thru him and (3) he would suddenly start swiping his paw at and/or trying to chew on random ships and tokens! Luckily photos taken for this post allowed us to return the displaced-by-kitty ships back in their approximate locations afterwards.

Dis planet iz mine!!

Needless to say we were rusty. I opted for the simple old wipe each other out game. Bad idea as it turns out, we ought to have just gone for our Wolfy's hit and run scenario or the like. Indeed she would later state that Women like a story in everything, doesn't matter if it's porn or a mini game, there ought to be a story. lol, that's my girl! 

As the game wore on, we were lucky to find that the TIE shuttle was equipped with a pizza oven, as it was already too late to cook dinner, and the game's end was still nowhere in sight. 

Needless to say, due to some really good rolling on both our parts (which was noted as being uncharacteristic for me by my opponent...), along with some really, really bad positioning, the game seemed to go on forever without inflicting any actual casualties. Unlike back when we were playing regularly, and ships started dropping on turn 2. 

The first ones to finally go BOOM!!!

Instead the first ships were lost in turns...8, 9? I don't know, it was somewhere around then. Damage was being inflicted, make no doubt, just not enough to finish anything off. Seriously, you know its bad when Z-95s seem resilient!

Both of our lists looked a lot like this for entirely too long a time...

Seriously, the last half-a-dozen turns or so, every ship on the board was limping along on their last hull point and yet they still wouldn't die!!

Captain Jonus, expertly beaching his shuttle on an asteroid like a whale on the shore, and taking a point of damage for his efforts. 

Indeed, it was daylight when we got going and just after midnight when the game ended and the Empire ran out the white flag for a table edge. 

The final four, circling that rock in a Top Gun-esque duel that went on for far too long before one of us had the bright idea to utilize a K-turn.

Resulting in the final fight and...

...the Empire's flight from the board!

Anyways, despite the never-ending nature of this particular game, we had a lot of fun, and hope to play some more soon. Maybe even try and resurrect it locally much like Battletech. Given that none of us have to actually buy anything is just an added bonus!

9 comments:

neverness said...

Ah, it's good to see Wolfy in a battle report again! And Star Wars too!
You're right, it has been a good while since we've seen this locally! For awhile there, it seemed like the only game being played. Weird how a new edition can kill a game even though players could just agree to keep playing the old one. I've seen similar things happen with RPGs too.

What really kept me from getting into the game at the time was the bloat. SO many new ships coming out, and of course most of the new ones were getting strange ("What movie was this in?" "Um, It's from a video game.") and power-creepy too. I just took a pass. And I'm a huge Star Wars geek, so that pass was a tough one to make!

Da Masta Cheef said...

We easily have enough to host up to aa 4-player free-for-all with our collection alone! So no purchase necessary for you to play...ever!

So come to the Dark Side! (and yes) we have cookies....

neverness said...

...Cookies?

WestRider said...

This was one I never got into. It's always looked like a pretty cool game, but good spaceship games tend to require a specific variety of foresight that I'm really bad at, to keep track of where things can end up with their limited turning potential.

Monkeychuka said...

Its a decent game but the fully painted ships put me off. Not much hobby incentive to re-paint an X-wing as an X-wing. And painting it as anything else is blasphemy!

Da Masta Cheef said...

@Neverness: yes, cookies!

@WestRider: Even when you're good at it, flying into another ship is inevitable. In fact, blocking elite enemy fighters with my preferred 'wall of trash' lists is one of my favorite tactics! That said it was mitigated here as Wolfy also took one of those lists, thwarting that.

@MonkeyChuka: Then pardon my blasphemies as most of our Rebel fighters are highlighted in purple! Also as you can see, a few of the TIEs are sporting red, the Scum are into metallics... {:-D

WestRider said...

It's always been less "flying into another ship" and more "flying right past them at just the right distance and speed for them to get right on my tail."

Also, they should put Baxter (or at least some cat) in the next movie, at this scale :3

Da Masta Cheef said...

Oh that's easy to fix, just fly fighters/ships with turret options.

Also Baxter is a lousy actor, but that said we'll be happy to hire him out for an exorbitant fee!!!

WestRider said...

Depends on the system. That's really not an option in BFG, which is where most of my experience is. I had the same issue with WHFB, with the restrictions on moving the ranked up Units.