A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

It is a period of civil war. Rebel
scout ships, searching  for a new hidden
base, have found a likely asteroid from
which to hide from the Galactic Empire.

During routine patrols, the Empire spies managed
to identify the location of the Rebel’s
new base, the “rock”, an
armored space station located
within striking distance of the Death Star.

Trying to hold off the Empire’s attack,
until Rebel reinforcements arrive
the “rock”, only just completed,
stands alone trying to restore
freedom to the galaxy….

It has been sometime since we have journeyed into space on Wednesday nights and with Andrew MIA the two Dave’s decided to have a game of X-Wing.

Briefing:

Somewhere in a galaxy far far away a Rebel base has just been discovered on a large meteor (I have the model so why not use it).

As the local Imperial leader you have intelligence (hmm…. I am often prone to overstatement) that the base is about to become operational and will pose a threat to the sector.

The Imperial mission is to destroy the base before Rebel reinforcements arrive, the Rebels is to ensure the survival of the base.

The Imperial player has 100points of ships available for the mission, and an intercepted message informs them that about half of their number is on their way to defend the base.

In trying to sort out the points cost of the base I thought of using this:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/642673.page

But then I saw the quote underneath – “There are three kinds of people in the world those who understand maths and those who don’t”, which described me quite accurately, so I gave up and dreamed up these stats for 50 points using a very sophisticated method of “pick a number and see if it works”:

Initiative = 1, Hit points = 4, Shields = 8, Attack = 4L, 5M, 6S (shoots all round and automatically fires at all ships in range within the turn). After the first game we also gave it one defense dice which evened the contest up a bit.

The game will determine if this is balanced or not.

The objective, time permitting, was to reverse roles and have the rebels attack the Imperial base and determine the winner over both games.

The First Game

The first game began with the Imperials going straight for the “rock”. The rebel fleet, in this case Han Solo and Chewbacca with the Millennium Falcon, arrived on the second turn but took three more turns to come in range.

The “rock” was suffering heavy casualities but was also doing significant damage in return.

Eventually the weight of number told and the “rock” exploded and the Imperial “bad guys” won a narrow victory.

The Second Game

Both Dave’s felt that only a little more tweeking was required to give the “rock” a better chance of survival. We decided against extra shields, cards, or hit points and opted for a single defense die. In addition we had the rebel fleet arrive from the long end rather than the short table ends so that it would get into the fight sooner. In the end this didn’t make much difference as the shorter distance was off-set by rolling abysmally with the arrival dice (from turn 2 needed a score of six with +1 being added each turn).

The Imperials used much the same tactics and again caused some early concerns as the number of shields were gradually being whittled away.

With the Millennium Falcon’s final arrive this caused the need for some of the Imperial ships to  defend themselves and thus  transfer their fire to the more immediate threat.

In the end it was a narrow victory to the Rebels as the Falcon moved in between the Imperials and the “Rock” to limit the fire it was receiving.

Two fun games that helped us work out the stats for the “rock” if we use it in future games.