Gaming and Painting and Coughing

 I've been under the weather the last few days. I've been hard at work watching Mythbusters and assembling miniatures while coughing, snotting and aching. Feeling much better today, though the congestion will be with me a while I suspect.

Zig and I pulled out X-Wing on Saturday. It had been a while for both of us. We used the updated "2.5" rules by Atomic Mass Games. Some minor changes but nothing game-changing.

I put my Galactic Republic Jedi + Clones out there, including young Anakin, Obi Wan and Yoda. How's that for a triple-crown?  Ziggy's Separatists had difficulty finding the fire button and it ended up as a pretty one-sided affair. Either way, it was nice to play the game again.

I finished up some oddball miniatures I had on the table. Some cultists, a vampire, a sweet truck, a creepy guy in a big hat and a piece of steampunk machinery. 

Fun stuff to paint for sure. The machinery objective is from the out of production Spartan Games Dystopian Legions game. It's been on my paint table's "back lot" since March 2016. Holy shit, that's longer than my father's been deceased!

And here's a quick pic of the eleven Malifaux miniatures I assembled over the last two days.

Fairly vanilla "guys and girls with guns" in very dynamic Malifaux poses that I hope to put to use in a pulp game that's been bouncing around inside my noggin for a few weeks. Wyrd makes some fabulous models. Holy crap they're good. 

X-Wing and a Convention!

David and I got together yesterday (Saturday) for some X-Wing. He's been working a particular list out against different opponents. He's been making minor tweaks as it goes, but it's essentially the same thing. The first time I faced his Imperial flight of five TIE Advanced, I got thrashed. I don't have that list handy but it was a First Order list including two Silencers and two TIE/fo by the looks of things.

His List:

TIE Advanced v1 - Inquisitor - 39
    Inquisitor - (36)
        Heightened Perception (3)

TIE Advanced v1 - Inquisitor - 39
    Inquisitor - (36)
        Heightened Perception (3)

TIE Advanced v1 - Inquisitor - 39
    Inquisitor - (36)
        Heightened Perception (3)

TIE Advanced v1 - Inquisitor - 39
    Inquisitor - (36)
        Heightened Perception (3)

TIE Advanced v1 - Inquisitor - 39
    Inquisitor - (36)
        Heightened Perception (3)

Total: 195

Five extraordinarily maneuverable ships that can all perform multiple actions. Stress doesn't bother them much at all. All have one Force point which is terribly useful. David's also very good at flying swarms - he's been doing it since the game was released and still watches tournament video to see how the pros do it.

After some analysis looking for weaknesses, I targeted their universal 3 initiative and low toughness - just four hits each. They're hard to hit for sure, but any hits would be telling.

With that in mind, I put together a Resistance group that I thought would give him fits and I was right. I smashed him and his list's weaknesses were harshly exploited. This is the list which was designed to have better initiative, heavier firepower and more resilient ships. It was outnumbered but it didn't matter.

Fireball - •Kazuda Xiono - 46
    •Kazuda Xiono - Best Pilot in the Galaxy (39)
        R5 Astromech (4)
        Advanced SLAM (3)

T-70 X-wing - •Temmin Wexley - 52
    •Temmin Wexley - Snap (52)

T-70 X-wing - Black Squadron Ace - 46
    Black Squadron Ace - (46)

T-70 X-wing - •Ello Asty - 54
    •Ello Asty - Born to Ill (54)

Total: 198

David made some minor teaks and was ready for another session with Inquisitors Five. I put together a couple of list during the week and selected another First Order list this time. It was not put together with the intention of fighting David's Inquisitors. 

TIE/sf Fighter - •“Backdraft” - 44
    •“Backdraft” - Fiery Fanatic (38)
        Passive Sensors (2)
        Cluster Missiles (4)

TIE/fo Fighter - •“Midnight” - 44
    •“Midnight” - Omega Leader (42)
        Fanatical (2)

TIE/fo Fighter - •“Null” - 30
    •“Null” - Epsilon Ace (30)

TIE/fo Fighter - •“Longshot” - 31
    •“Longshot” - Zeta Ace (31)

TIE/ba Interceptor - •“Ember” - 51
    •“Ember” - Dying Flame (48)
        Elusive (3)

Total: 200

Here we are a turn or two in.

We traded kills and it was soon down tow 4v4. I set up my second kill with this situation. He'd isolated a single TIE (green circled) and I gave it a juicy target - the easy-to-hit TIE/sf. David had to assume I'd go super-defensive with it since it was also stressed and couldn't execute any wild maneuvers. It would be easy for David to guess where that ship would be. I was confident to use it as bait because it wouldn't die with but one attack. I did him a favor and pushed it forward super slowly, but spun the turret to the rear and acquired a target lock on the enemy ship. The red TIE interceptor turned in tightly to be a second set of guns on the problem. David used Heightened Perception to fire first with that ship. The shots were ineffective and did me a favor of burning his Force for the turn so he wouldn't have it to use defensively.

Two shots later, another Inquisitor was off the board. David's remaining three scattered and time expired as we were re-grouping.

Finally off the schnide with the First Order! A solid victory against a very worthy opponent. IMHO, I think David was a little off his game yesterday, there were a couple of mistakes that I was able to exploit with great effect. I finally managed to use a ship like the Interceptor properly with a good supporting cast. That speaks more to my usual inability to fly properly than anything. The supporting cast TIEs all have very good special rules that ALWAYS work, regardless of actions or stress status. 

There, I've officially bored you to pieces with some in-depth X-Wing analysis! It gets put on the table a lot because of the quick setup and play-time but dadgum is it a good game.

In completely different news, I'll be heading off to Southern Front game convention in Raleigh, North Carolina September 17 & 18. https://www.trianglesimsociety.org/?page_id=546 I'm going to run a Star Fleet Battles scenario on Friday evening. Most of the gaming will have a historical focus. I've been to this con once before to play in a FOW tournament, many years ago. I'm really excited to be going back.

Recent Goings On

 Haven't posted in a bit. Just doing a bit of a recap of the last couple weeks. Mark, Ziggy and I got together for games of Swordpoint (Italian Wars-flavored armies) and Rank and File Napoleonics on Memorial Day weekend. Both games were a lot of fun - certainly different fare for us given our sci-fi and moderns tendencies.

Armies line up preparing for battle

A couple of turns into the proceedings

An amusing situation developed on my right flank. I had sent light cav around. Mark set up some gunners to block them but expected them to be bowled right over. He had a large group of halberdiers right behind the gunners, set to crush my cav after the gunners fall. Turns out the gunners were more than capable of of handling the light cavalry and my poor dice rolls all by themselves. The Halberdiers ended up being in a terrible position for the rest of the battle and this really hampered Mark's chances.

Swordsmen and spearmen clash in the center. The two units were very well matched and for a smaller engagement on the table, was quite enjoyable to watch play out.

My second unit of cavalry charged into some greatswords while my pikemen and Mark's cavlary duked it out in the center. The pikemen went haywire and absolutely thrashed the cavalry!

In the end, I won with my "Ventian" army, but the "Spanish" performed well and I'm excited to see these two groups get back at it again. I was happy with the Swordpoint rules. Not a bad addition to the collection at all.

Ziggy arrived part-way through the first game. We left the terrain exactly where it was for game 2 since it was also a 20mm affair, this time Naps, Prussians and French. Ziggy commanded the Prussians while Mark and I split the French. Mark was going to have to leave a bit early so it just made sense.

The armies arrayed for battle.

I was hoping to lay waste to the Jagers  on the left flank, but the skirmishers turned heel and fled behind the house!

And there they go. The French cavalry has just smashed into the Prussian line!

And then an almighty scrum develops!

My horses had to back off, leaving the French with just one infantry unit at the line! Not looking good for us.

But the Chasseurs rally and spur their mounts forward one more time! The infantry has held up amazingly well, frustrating their Prussian opponents tremendously. In the foreground you can see that the godforsaken Jagers are about to sack a second cannon. - they'd bagged another earlier.

The battle at the line continues

The, painfully for Ziggy, morale tests start to fail. Units begin falling back and French momentum increases. It's a snow-ball effect and in the blink of an eye, it's over. 

A tremendous game with a huge swing half-way through. Ziggy was running us ragged in the early turns. Mid-way through, Mark left and all of a sudden the luck changed. My dice woke up and Zig's cooled off. R&F always delivers a fun game with simple mechanics. We did make one house-rule change from the last game Mark and I played though. We reduced the morale effect that casualties have upon units. Instead of a -1 modifier for each stand lost, we changed in to -1 for every TWO stands lost. Units stick around longer and there is more fighting and less running away. It was a solid improvement. The skirmishers were a fun addition and the leader models got their first outing. A wonderful day's gaming for sure. Thanks both of you, Zig and Mark!

So, what else has been gong on? Some painting, so starters. I picked up some interesting models to start a Stargrave crew and painted them up last weekend.

The Bat-Guy and reporter are Warlord minis from the Judge Dredd line. The other two are Reaper Bones. Much of the appeal of games like Stargrave/Frostgrave is finding and painting up an interesting selection of figures. I've got a handful more incoming from Gamekastle and will leverage some of the Infinity collection for others.

I also scratch-built a 15mm house just because I felt like it. I have some similar buildings in the collection. 

With a few 15mm minis for scale. Simple, I know, but it scratched the itch.

David and I had a mini games-day for some of his Boy Scout troop yesterday. We played Rink Racers, King of Tokyo and X-Wing. Eight hours of goofing off and rolling rice - not a bad way to spend a Saturday!

We kept X-Wing very simple and focused on the basic basics - moving and shooting. It was a great time.

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 :)

Just an Update

 Not much going on here. I've played a bit of X-Wing the last couple of weekends with Ziggy. Pics or it didn't happen, right?

I ran a Rebel list last Saturday and First Order the Saturday prior. The FO list work well - high initiative, high quality, low survivability ships. We were fit to be TIEd! Ziggy's been flying Empire lately so it really was a boatload of TIEs on the table. My Rebels fared badly against his TIEs though. The E-Wing, a very high-end ship, suffered from shitbox dice rolls and died swiftly and noisily. The spacetruck Kashyyk ship was pretty bad-ass though and gained many props from both of us - we were rather impressed with it.

I also had this lovely lot arrive a week or so ago:

So yeah, we'll be playing more toy boats next year!

Mikey made it home today after his long hospital stay. I guess now the hard part really begins for him with his wife now gone. Funeral is this Sunday. I'm sad.

Painting and a Game

I managed to get in a game yesterday - my first in almost a month. Ziggy and I played X-Wing. He's flying out today for the Middle East for 3 months or so. We needed to get in one more fight before he left. AS it turns out we both put together Rebel lists. The resulting intra-faction engagement was tense and closely-fought.

 During setup.

 A couple turns in.

It was one of best games of X-Wing I've ever played in. Our lists were well-matched and it was difficult for either of us to get a real advantage over the other. Midway through, I was down, 4 ships to 2, and managed to crawl back to 2-2 before I lost a third ship at which point I conceded. I really liked the U-Wing. It was my first game with it and it has some very nasty tricks in its collection - very impressed with that ship. The A-Wings are still a favorite of both me and Ziggy. It got a massive improvement with the switch to second edition and is now a top-tier fighter that doesn't just look cool but is well worth taking.

In other news I added a couple of great toy cars to the Batman street scenery collection.

A Beetle and a Ford Bronco. So happy... so many of the toy cars in this scale are Lamborghinis and Porsches. It's nice to add some more "middle class" cars to the collection.

A lastly, I've knocked out the rest of the Marvel Crisis Protocol terrain pack for Wayne.

With and without the flash. I'm not daring enough to attempt the pedestrian displays on the street lights. I don't want to do an ugly job. Just a few Squat artillery pieces, some aircraft and bunkers to go!

X-Wing Saturday Evening

X-Wing came was selected as the Saturday evening "game of the week" this weekend. Ziggy used a new Rebel list while I pulled out a Republic squadron I'd used before.

This Republic group is nearly a swarm. I reckon you need 6 or more for a proper swarm. Three Naboo Starfighters and two V-19s. All unnamed schlubs with topedoes and missiles. It's a decent and very fun group, but certainly fragile with a total of 25 hit points and Agility 2 all around. Pilot Skill 2 on all ships is another red flag.

Ziggy used a pair of fairly basic A-Wings (still very good) and high-end B- and Y- Wings.

The B-Wing goes full "joust-mode" and lines up on a Starfighter from the get-go. My ship gets hammered and gets saddled with two Jam tokens. In retaliation, the B-Wing eats two Plasma Torpedoes and its plentiful shields are quickly dropped.

The B-Wing quickly reverses its course and lines up a second shot on my damaged Naboo fighter. My ship is destroyed, and amazingly all the other seemingly easy shot opportunities from my other units at the B-Wing are fruitless. Gah! All that work to eliminate the best ship in the enemy group before the rest of the posse got in position, wasted.

Ol' number 17 (my right flanker) managed to catch up with that troublemaker a moment later and put him out to pasture. Elsewhere, the A-Wings caught up with one of the V-19s. Miraculously, my ship survived the barrage of rockets and blaster fire.

We them had a good old-fashioned twisty-turney for a while. One of my Naboo pilots chased the Y-Wing from a safe distance. The Y-Wing was equipped with an Ion Cannon Turret which was only effective out to medium range. I didn't get pictures of it, but the Y-Wing had dropped two Proton bombs, both of which had been terrifically placed and causing damage to my ships.

Moments later, one of the A-Wings fires its last Cluster Missile, catching a V-19 and Starfighter and destroying both! Curses! Those rotten Cluster Missiles had done nothing but disappoint Ziggy all evening and the very last one he had made it all back in one shot.

We ended the game there. It had been an excellent battle and not at all what I'd expected. My little trash mob performed well until luck finally caught up with it. Ziggy's become a big fan of A-Wings to my chagrin. Still, I like them better than the XXX flight he's used so often.

Some Saturday X-Wing

Ziggy and I got in a round of X-Wing last evening. I'd gotten around to picking up the Rebel Conversion Kit a couple weeks ago so I was excited to try out some different ships and combos. The group I used was this:

The YT-2400 used to be a poor-man's Falcon, now in 2.0 it's a whole different ship. It's guns are tied for the strongest in the game and its maneuver dial is excellent. Two very maneuverable A-Wings and a "point filler" Headhunter borrowed from my Scum and Villainy squadron rounded things out.

Ziggy's group was oddly similar - a Ghost escorted by two A-Wings! He also had a Sheathipede utility shuttle docked in the Ghost.

The engagement was a great twisty-turney, especially with the flock of nimble A-Wings. The big ships spent an lot of time running over obstacles and getting in their own way. They were still threatening enough to keep the little buys wary and away.

After a while though, I did manage to kill of the shuttle and one A-Wing, while Z had gotten one of my A-Wings. The final turned ended up like this with his remaining small(the blue one)  headed towards my group.

Some fortune and a bit of Boost resulted in my A-Wing and Headhunter finishing off their target.

We called the game there. It had been hard-fought and there were plenty of amusing and dramatic moments. The A-Wing is an excellent "gnat" and will be back for sure. We were both impressed by it - you just have to learn how to drive it properly. Flank, arc dodge, use obstacles and overall, just DON'T GET HIT!