Hi everyone,
It's been a little while since we've played X-Wing -- and we had a chance to play against our friend Mr. M over at Game Kastle in Fremont this weekend.
Mr. M was using the Scum faction -- which we'd not ever played against.
We spent a while chatting with Mr. M about our upcoming 40K Campaign -- and our plan to play some GW Battlefleet Gothic [we'll be blogging about this soon....] we realized that X-Wing was going to be the game to play. But, RATS, we hadn't brought along our X-Wing models.
So.... We went with the idea which we'd seen work so well when we played in our first (and only) tournament up at Gator Games. (Here's a link to the blog posting where we describe our fun time being schooled by X-wing masters....)
1) We quickly bought two Phantoms and a TIE figher. [We wanted another TIE fighter to use in our Death Star Trench anyway. And, we had wanted to try out two Phantoms.
2) We set up Echo and Whisper with the Advanced Cloaking Device -- just like the guys at Gator Games has done. (That thing is only 4 points, but allows for a crazy amount of movement flexibility!)
3) We also set up Howlrunner figuring that the Range 1 bonuses would be pretty nice with the TIE Phantoms.
4) We ended up needing to give them every add-on we had (to get to 100 points).
The Battle
Mr. M set up a force of a Z-95 Headhunter, a Y-Wing and a pair of Interceptors. And, he came after us early in the battle. We were a little bit worried that he would be able to cut-off Echo or Whisper and take out one of our Phantoms very early.
We had a little bit of luck though and got multiple fighters lined up to fire on the Headhunter and were able to take it out of the battle.
And, a little while later in the meeting we were able to line up all three of our fighters on the Y-Wing. This is what we had needed to really cause damage there.
At the end of the battle, Mr. M was down to one Interceptor -- and we had lost Echo. But man-oh-man was it difficult to take down that Interceptor!!! Howlrunner would try to shoot at the Interceptor -- would fail to cause damage -- and then Mr. M would have one extra evade to help for when Whisper fired on the Interceptor. Turn after turn!
Finally, we lined up shoots and simply had Howlrunner pass on his shots -- and only had Whisper fire. This worked - but worthy of note to see how challenging that Interceptor can be to deal with.
Here's a look at that challenging rule on the Interceptor card which Mr. M had at the end of the battle....
And, an acknowledgement for our opponent: We have played quite a few battles -- have had some people helping us with how to build an Empire list. And, have had some trial and lots of errors dealing with asteroids. Mr. M on the other hand (pretty sure) has not played very many times - but dealt with the asteroids with no issue! We still managed to fly into one despite our practice :) Pretty sure this means that when we play Mr. M next time we are in for some trouble....
- Three Phantoms better than Two?
We also did some reading on where the TIE Phantom came from.... Didn't realize that there was so much drama around making cloaking devices using Stygium crystals -- or that the Rebels had stolen a TIE Phantom only to have the self-destruct blow it apart. There is a pretty nice write-up on Wookiepedia -- Link here.)
And, though we won our first battle, it was not without some errors on our side. We weren't sure what to do when there was the potential of re-rolling misses (the help from Howlrunner and the help from a target lock). Got it clear now that you only get to re-roll an individual die one time. Pretty sure we got this wrong at least once in the battle -- so likely things were a little bit worse for Mr. M that they should have been.
Mr M mentioned that he is thinking of ways to modify his list -- not put quite so many points into his Y-Wing, for example. Our plan is to play the same list so that we can have a clean rematch next time.
But, one thing we're wondering is whether 3 Phantoms (drop Howlrunner) would be an even better list than 2. Fluff-wise this seems a little bit odd -- because it sounds like TIE Phantoms are supposed to be very rare. But, it might be fun to try :)
It's been a little while since we've played X-Wing -- and we had a chance to play against our friend Mr. M over at Game Kastle in Fremont this weekend.
Mr. M was using the Scum faction -- which we'd not ever played against.
We spent a while chatting with Mr. M about our upcoming 40K Campaign -- and our plan to play some GW Battlefleet Gothic [we'll be blogging about this soon....] we realized that X-Wing was going to be the game to play. But, RATS, we hadn't brought along our X-Wing models.
So.... We went with the idea which we'd seen work so well when we played in our first (and only) tournament up at Gator Games. (Here's a link to the blog posting where we describe our fun time being schooled by X-wing masters....)
1) We quickly bought two Phantoms and a TIE figher. [We wanted another TIE fighter to use in our Death Star Trench anyway. And, we had wanted to try out two Phantoms.
2) We set up Echo and Whisper with the Advanced Cloaking Device -- just like the guys at Gator Games has done. (That thing is only 4 points, but allows for a crazy amount of movement flexibility!)
3) We also set up Howlrunner figuring that the Range 1 bonuses would be pretty nice with the TIE Phantoms.
4) We ended up needing to give them every add-on we had (to get to 100 points).
Here are the models from our list -- Whisper, Echo and Howlrunner
The Battle
Mr. M set up a force of a Z-95 Headhunter, a Y-Wing and a pair of Interceptors. And, he came after us early in the battle. We were a little bit worried that he would be able to cut-off Echo or Whisper and take out one of our Phantoms very early.
We had a little bit of luck though and got multiple fighters lined up to fire on the Headhunter and were able to take it out of the battle.
Mr. M's forces heading at us. Worried that it was a good idea - but we split up our units in three directions early on....
And, a little while later in the meeting we were able to line up all three of our fighters on the Y-Wing. This is what we had needed to really cause damage there.
We got really lucky and managed to have all three of our ships lined up against the Y-Wing...
At the end of the battle, Mr. M was down to one Interceptor -- and we had lost Echo. But man-oh-man was it difficult to take down that Interceptor!!! Howlrunner would try to shoot at the Interceptor -- would fail to cause damage -- and then Mr. M would have one extra evade to help for when Whisper fired on the Interceptor. Turn after turn!
Finally, we lined up shoots and simply had Howlrunner pass on his shots -- and only had Whisper fire. This worked - but worthy of note to see how challenging that Interceptor can be to deal with.
The very challenging chase of the Interceptor underway..
Here's a look at that challenging rule on the Interceptor card which Mr. M had at the end of the battle....
Check out that rule - if you miss, your next shot is even harder!
And, an acknowledgement for our opponent: We have played quite a few battles -- have had some people helping us with how to build an Empire list. And, have had some trial and lots of errors dealing with asteroids. Mr. M on the other hand (pretty sure) has not played very many times - but dealt with the asteroids with no issue! We still managed to fly into one despite our practice :) Pretty sure this means that when we play Mr. M next time we are in for some trouble....
- Three Phantoms better than Two?
We also did some reading on where the TIE Phantom came from.... Didn't realize that there was so much drama around making cloaking devices using Stygium crystals -- or that the Rebels had stolen a TIE Phantom only to have the self-destruct blow it apart. There is a pretty nice write-up on Wookiepedia -- Link here.)
And, though we won our first battle, it was not without some errors on our side. We weren't sure what to do when there was the potential of re-rolling misses (the help from Howlrunner and the help from a target lock). Got it clear now that you only get to re-roll an individual die one time. Pretty sure we got this wrong at least once in the battle -- so likely things were a little bit worse for Mr. M that they should have been.
Mr M mentioned that he is thinking of ways to modify his list -- not put quite so many points into his Y-Wing, for example. Our plan is to play the same list so that we can have a clean rematch next time.
But, one thing we're wondering is whether 3 Phantoms (drop Howlrunner) would be an even better list than 2. Fluff-wise this seems a little bit odd -- because it sounds like TIE Phantoms are supposed to be very rare. But, it might be fun to try :)
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