More X Wing

The battle for Hoth continues as Rebel Transports attempt to escape!

Gaming day has rolled around again on what is a damp and very humid day.

Practice continues for the big game which I'll post some details about in the next day or two.

As such, on my arrival, Rob and Mark were setting  up a game to use the Rebel Transport. I suggested they play the first mission to get the hang of the Transport.

For Mark... the game didn't matter. It was all about trying out this bad boy...

.. the Tie Defender!

The mission started with the Transport just trying to survive. Here's a couple of pics as I suspect either Rob or Mark will blog about the details of the game.

[Spoiler Alert]

The Rebel Transport gets blown to bits and Mark wins. Rob had my problem from last week - just couldn't get the X-Wings into good positions, so they spent a number of turns not shooting, which is always bad.

[Spoiler Alert ends] :)

I was up next and would face Rob since he's been slack (a.k.a working and studying too much) and not turning up to gaming....

We decided that we'd try the second mission in the Hoth campaign. I'd have 200pts of Imperials to play with. Awesome I thought..! Until Rob read the bit about having to split the force into 5 groups each within a certain points level. Cue lots of head scratching and brain not working, but I eventually got it sussed.

In all honesty, I was only really playing Imperials to try the other new bad boy...

... the Tie Phantom.

So, we deployed. As I had purchased some expensive ships... the Tie Phantom faced this Rebel force all by himself...

And 3 X-Wings hitting with all their shots promptly blew the Phantom away in the first turn (even with him still being cloaked!). This was going to be a fun game I thought as turn 2 came and went with me being able to do nothing.

I started to panic a little as the mission rules meant I was going to be feeding in my Tie's piecemeal. Never a good position to be in as an Imperial player. Especially since 2 groups would not come on until turn 6 & 7 of an 8 turn game! How was I going to destroy the Transport before the end of turn 8!?

Anyway, turn 3 saw my first wave of reinforcement arriving.

They somehow manage to survive and the Tie Defender chases after the Transport as more reinforcements arrive in turn 5.

By now, I'm completely ignoring the X-Wings and just shooting at the Transport. I've hardly scratched it though and those X-Wing's are all over my forces. I figured I had no choice but to just take the punishment from the X-Wings and hope I could deal out more to the Transport before being destroyed!

More reinforcements arrive...

But Rob pulls a dastardly trick and turns into my Tie's destroying the second Tie Phantom before it has a chance to do anything! So I didn't get to try them out at all... thanks Rob! :)

Still, I've started to hurt the Transport pretty badly in the last few turns and the larger moves means it's not getting as much energy to replace shields.

This is pretty much how the game ends in turn 7 as the Imperial Tie's finally destroy the Transport!

A very close run thing! I'm not sure either of us could have done much differently. Although not sure my force selection was really the best...

Anyway, Mark and I played next. We decide to do the easiest thing possible (it's too humid to think) and just replay the mission with the same forces....

The Rebels set-up...

The Tie Defender attacks the Transport...

Imperial forces race towards the Transport..

And finally, in turn 7, the Tie Interceptor hits with all shots finishing off the Transport.

The game was pretty much a repeat of the first. My Tie Phantom that deployed at the start actually managed to pull off a cool tricksy move only to crash into an X-Wing and get blown away for his troubles...sigh... The second one did get to shoot at least once at the end of the game...

The first few turns were tough work for the Imperials as Tie's are being destroyed by the X-Wing's firepower, but eventually a few get through to the Transport. A couple manage to put critical hits on the it which have some flow on effects to the X-Wings. Slowly the tide turned and I got my win. But only just. Again.

The Tie Defender and some lucky die rolling definitely saved my bacon in this one. A very close game again.

Initially I had thought there was no way I could win this, so I was a little surprised in the first game that I actually did win. Once I could concentrate on the Transport though, it was all downhill for the Rebels. Mark played the Transport slightly differently and kept it moving slowly to constantly regenerate shields, which whilst annoying, still didn't seem to help. Seems it's actually a very tough mission for the Rebels. I'm not sure at all as to how they could have saved the Transport from destruction!

All good fun. Roll on next Sunday!

Finally, welcome to a new follower - Ptr. Ptr has a very nice blog with some awesome looking scratch built scenery. Check it out here.

Thanks for reading :)