First Gaming of the Year

 Happy new year folks. It's been a weird couple of weeks here at the casa. A week before Christmas, my wife reported that she couldn't smell anything. "Damn damn hell shit and damn!" I think was my response. We got get tested for the bug which of course came back positive. The rest of the family + my mom got tested as well and we all came back negative. We're 99% sure Wifey got infected by Mom who had been sporting a hacking cough for a couple weeks with no other symptoms. They were together for about 3 hours one Saturday just prior, baking. We had a frustrating Christmas but it quite obviously could have been a lot worse! Yesterday, Wifey finally got a negative test result back. The rest of us continued to test negative the entire time. Her symptoms never expanded much beyond the small and taste thing, thank the Lord. I did get shot #1 of the Moderna vaccine at work during the week, so that's awesome.

My gaming got back underway yesterday with some X-Wing. I know, not terribly impressive, but always fun and with a large enough ship collection, always something different. 

For this game, I used the Galactic Republic (think much-maligned prequel trilogy) and Ziggy pushed the Empire, including a tricked-out Vader.

That's me with the Y-Wing, Jedi Starfighter and two Clones. One of my favorite selections with the Republic is having R2D2 pilot the Y-Wing, with C3PO riding shotgun as a crewman. It's not a bad loadout and terribly amusing for someone like me.

The clone fighters' fragility again proves itself, though they weren't pushovers. Each got in a good hit or two on enemy ships before becoming one with the cosmos.

So R2 and Plo Koon had their hands full with four enemy fighters, what's a droid to do? Kill stuff.

 R2 hammered the TIE Interceptor and it went away. For those of you who aren't X-Wing players, Soontir Fel, the Interceptor pilot, is one of the best of the best. It felt good to take him out with a pair of droids.

No picture, but R2 took out another TIE shortly thereafter. General Grievous should have hired R2 as a mercenary a long time ago!

Unfortunately, it was not all fun a games for the droids. 

The low-maneuverability Y-Wing couldn't play keep-away for long and when Ziggy decided to stop chasing the Jedi and simply finish off the Y-Wing, it was game over. Vader takes the last shots of the day and the droid ship falls apart. Feh.

A darn entertaining game for sure. Ziggy's first game using Vader convinced him right away that a high-end, force-wielding, ultra-nimble ship is always worth the points. Plo Koon was fun for me, but matched up against two opponents with better initiative, he was very hamstrung and unable to arc-dodge effectively.

We're getting in that game of Batman with Wayne today. At last! A fortnight late :)