Punishment Raid - A X-wing Scenario

This scenario is also available at

• the FFG Mission control tool, and
• as google doc

Background

During the height of the Rebellion against the Empire, multiple battles and fights took place along the galaxy. One of those battles was a reprisal bombing against the religious and civilian settlements on the Mkbuto islands on the Mon Calamari home planet Dac. This scenario revives this historical moment.

In this scenario:

• The Empire player will have to lead his forces from space (upper left corner of the battlefield) and into the planet atmosphere through a gap opened in the planetary defense array by the turbo laser coordinated attack of the Imperial Fleet (bottom right corner of the battlefield).
• The Rebel player will command the fighters sent from the planet surface (bottom left and center parts of the battlefield) into the upper atmosphere and close space to intercept the bombers.

May the Force be with you.

Forces

Waves 1 to 3 (no Phantom, Defender, E-Wing nor Z-95 Headhunter) without large ships (no YT-1300, Firespray 31, Lambda shuttle, YT-2400 nor VT-49 Decimator).

Empire

Between 95 and 100 points; however, at least two TIE bombers are required.

All TIE bombers are considered to be fully loaded with Air to Surface Strike Ammunition (ASSA), therefore they cannot equip any secondary weapon (missiles, torpedos or bombs). The ASSA are locked until they arrive to their intended target on the planet surface and are of no use or relevance for the entry into the planet atmosphere.

Rebel

Between 140 and 150 points. To simulate the historical progressive mobilization and answer  of the defenders to the imperial attack, roughly one third of this force will deploy on round 1, with each one of the other two thirds deploying at the end of any End Phase (it is not possible to deploy those two thirds together on the same End Phase).

Objective

The Imperial player forces enter the battlefield from the upper left corner (Entry Zone) and have to leave the battlefield through the bottom right corner (Exit Zone). The Rebel player has to avoid it.

For each unnamed TIE bomber that leaves the battlefield through the Exit Zone, the Imperial player gets 3 (three) Victory Points; 4 (four) Victory Points for each named TIE bomber.

For each unnamed TIE bomber destroyed or which does not leave the battlefield through the Exit Zone the Rebel player gets 3 (three) Victory Points; 4 (four) Victory Points for each named TIE bomber.

For each other fighter destroyed, 1 (one) Victory Point is awarded.

Set Up

1. Empire units deploy on the upper left corner of the battlefield (Entry Zone), on a L-shape deployment zone which extends 10cm (range 1) from the border into the battlefield and which is 20cm (range 2) long on each side of that corner. All Imperial units deploy at the beginning of the game.
2. Rebel player places 6 (six) satellite tokens on the lower half of the battlefield. Each satellite cannot be within range 1 of any other satellite or border.
3. Rebel player places 2 (two) debris tokens (if there are no debris token available, use two copies of the big asteroid token which comes with the base game or something with a similar size). One debris token goes into the upper left quadrant of the battlefield, the other debris token on the upper right quadrant. Each debris token cannot be within range 2 of any other token (satellite or debris) or range 1 of any border.
4. Rebel player places one third of his force on the left and centre part of the bottom border of the battlefield within range 1 of the border (Rebel Deployment Zone). No Rebel starship can be placed on the Exit Zone of the Imperial player, nor within range 1 of this Exit Zone.

Special Rules

Gravity Pull

In the Activation Phase, right before step 6 (Perform Action) the active ship will move towards the planet surface (bottom of the battlefield) except if the active player declares that the first action of the active ship on step 6 is going to be the “Compensate” Action (even if the active ship has more that one action planned for step 6, e.g. Push the Limits, the “Compensate” action has to be the very first action on step 6). To make a Gravity Pull, perform a barrel roll for the active ship towards the planet surface on the side of the base of the active ship more closer or orientated to the planet using the long edge of the template as if the ship were a large ship instead of using the normal short edge of the template.

Compensate [Action]

The Compensate action is the only way an active ship has to avoid the Gravity Pull of the planet. The action has to be executed immediately after the movement of the active ship; therefore it will be the very first action performed on step 6 of the Activation Phase.

Debris

Debris tokens follow the rules for Debris Clouds given in the YT-2400 and VT-49 Decimator which are reproduced here for the sake of completeness.

Debris clouds are obstacles for which:

• when a ship executes a maneuver in which either the template or the ship’s base overlaps with the token, the maneuver is executed as normal but a stress token is assigned to the ship after the “Check Pilot Stress” step, and
• the player rolls one attack die, on a [critical hit] result, the ship suffers 1 critical damage.

Satellites

Satellite tokens are obstacles which behave as Debris Clouds with the difference that when

• the player roll the one attack die, on a [hit] or [critical hit] result, the ship will suffer the corresponding 1 damage or 1 critical damage; also this will destroy the satellite which will be replaced by a Debris Cloud token (in case they are not available use an asteroid token or something with a similar size to represent it).

Rebel Wave

After the initial deployment of the first one third of the Rebel forces, the other two thirds will be deployed at the end of any End phase, however:

• each further one third of the Rebel force will deploy in its own End Phase (it is not possible to deploy those two thirds together on the same End Phase),
• those further Rebel units have to deploy within the boundaries of the Rebel deployment zone (bottom left and centre part of the battlefield), and
• they cannot deploy below range 2 of an enemy unit.

X-Wing World Champions

I was listening to episode 8 of the NOVA squadron Podcast where they interviewed the X-Wing World Champion of 2012, Doug Kinney, when I realised that I was not really aware of how had won the World Championships any year, what they fly and so on.
To try to fill this vacuum in my knowledge this post :)

X-Wing World Champions

1. Doug Kinney (2012)
2. Paul Heaver (2013)
3. Paul Heaver (2014)

X-Wing World Sub-Champions

1. Nick Stanton (2012)
2. Dallas Parker (2013)
3. Morgan Reid (2014)

2012

Doug Kinney's list:

• Darth Vader (Swarm Tactics)
• Howlrunner (Swarm Tactics)
• 1x Obsidian Squadron
• 3x Academy Pilot

Nick Stanton's list:

• Wedge Antilles (R2-D2)
• 1x Gold Squadron (Ion Cannon)
• 2x Rookie (R2 Astromech)

(courtesy of BGG)

Video at youtube by team covenant

2013

Paul Heaver's list:

• Biggs
• 2x Dagger Squadron (Advanced Sensors)
• Rookie Pilot

Dallas Parker 's list:

• Howlrunner (Stealth, Determination)
• Dark Curse
• 5x Academy Pilot

(courtesy of HERO's Gaming blog)

Video at youtube by team covenant

2014

Paul Heaver's list:

• Han Solo (R2D2, C3PO, Predator, Falcon, Engine Upgrade)
• 3x Tala Squadron

Morgan Reid's list:

• Whisper (Adv. Cloaking Device, Rebel Captive, Fire Control System, Veteran Insticts)
• Howl (Swarm Tactics)
• 3x Academy pilot

(courtesy of team covenant)

Video by FFG.

Erasmus Campaign revisited - Star Wars X-Wing

Seems to me that I am a bit overdue with further posting in this blog, but those last months have been a bit busy.
However, we keep playing X-Wing in a more or less weekly basis. So far I have played the Erasmus campaign once as the Rebel. Although I was able to win the first mission I utterly lost the campaign. You can read a chronicle of our spoils here.

Now, I am playing it again but as Empire :) :)
So far we have managed to play the 1st mission, Satellite Malfunctions
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Mission Setup

Rebel: 
Points: 50, but a maximum of 2 ships
Ships: Any non-unique ship
Upgrades: Any non-unique droids, weapons upgrades, missile upgrades, and Pilot upgrades (if able to)
Setup: Anywhere in range 1 of the Rebel table side. Rebels place their ships first.

Imperial: 
Points: 50
Ships: Any non-unique standard Tie Fighter
Upgrades: Pilot upgrades (if able to)
Setup: Anywhere on any table edge (right, or left, or center), as long as it is range 3 away from the Rebel player's starting side. Rebels place their ships first.

Iniative: Rebels
Asteroids: Imperials place asteroids, but cannot be within range 2 of a satellite or range 1 of each other.

Two satellite tokens are placed by the Imperial player anywhere in range 2 of his side of the table. This means only range 2 and not in range 1. It also means left, center, and right sides. No sticking it in the corner!

Special Rules

·Echo System Satellite: The satellite has 5 hull points and can be targeted by weapons systems.  It cannot be critically hit and does not have any evade dice when fired at.

·Protect Action: Imperial ships may perform a PROTECT action when within range 1 of the satellite token.  When performing a PROTECT action, the Imperial player places one evade token on the satellite.  When attacked, the satellite may spend this evade token to add one additional success to its defensive total.  Note, this is the only way for the satellite to earn evade results.

Objectives

Rebel Victory: Destroy both Echo Net satellites.

If a Rebel Victory is secured, then they are allowed to add “Dutch” Vander (unique Y-wing pilot) to the Ships options for any future mission. If Dutch is killed in any mission, this option is no longer available.  Dutch is the leader of Gold Squadron of Y-wings and success in the Erasmus system brings Gold Squadron to the fight.

Imperial Victory:   The Rebel ships must be destroyed or driven off to ensure the Echo Net satellite is secure.

If the Echo Net system is secured, then the Rebel activity draws Maarek Stele's attention to the Erasmus system. Maarek Stele becomes an option for the Imperial Ship options for all future missions. If Maarek Stele is killed during a mission, he is no longer an option. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
How we played it :)

Rebel:
Two Rookie Pilots with Proton Torpedoes (25p each)

Empire (me):
Two Academy Pilots (12p each)
Two Obsidian Squadron Pilots (13p each)

As imperial, I placed both, the Satellites and the Asteroids. As the Rebel player has placed his two ships on the center of his side of the board, I decided to put the satellites slightly towards the right part of my side, spaced 10cm (1 range) and then proceeded to place the asteroids as crowded as possible between the satellites and the rebel fighters.
[Note: as satellites we used two bomb tokens as I have forgotten part of my tokens at home :( ]
The two academy pilots deployed just behind the satellites and the idea was for them to stay there, flying in circles, to Protect the satellites.
The two obsidian squadron pilots were deployed on the lateral of the battlefield, perpendicular to the line Rebel fighters ---- Academy pilots.

The Rebel player decided to move straight ahead with his two rookie pilots, whereas I bank to the left with the two obsidian squadron pilots to cover not only this movement of the rebels but also to be able to pursue them in the case they would have bank or turn to their left to bypass the asteroid field on the side opposite to my deployment.

Prepare to die Rebel scum

The relative position of the ships made it possible for me to fire with the two of them at the same rebel fighter, whereas the rebels were not able to do so [evil grin].

Just there :)

On the second round, the rebels decided to split their formation, heading each to one different side of the asteroid in front of them; the Obsidian pilots just beard to their right to keep on the back of their targets.

Right behind you...

Not being able to fire back, the rebels were easy prey for the obsidian squadron :)

in space nobody can hear you

The lone rebel pilot tries to go for the satellites with the obsidian pilots in hot pursuit and the academy pilots turning to confront him.

between bad and worse

Some nice manoeuvring amongst the asteroids leads to a packed space :)

out of my way...

After a round of running and a K-turn, the rebel lone fighter faces all the enemy TIEs which try to Protect the satellites.

Alone against the odds

Rebel without fear

However the concentrated fire from the imperial fighters was too much for the rebel scum...

Another one bites the dust

In retrospective, the placement of the asteroids relative to the rebel fighters and the fact that they decided to fly straight ahead allowing the two obsidians to rain upon them from the side was probably the decisive factor of the game.

Last time I played it as Rebel I tried to focus on flying to the satellites ignoring the imperial fighters which were chasing me all over the board, all of them; which resulted in their failure to protect the satellites. I tried to avoid that error by letting two fighters protecting them all the time, which at the end resulted in a victory for the empire :)

The rebel player also was sharing this opinion concerning the placement and route of his ships, maybe if he would have made them fly to their left side towards the opposite side of the board the obsidian pilots would have a more difficult task.

Anyway, we really enjoyed it. We like this campaign as it allows you to introduce new players in a soft and progressive way which makes the game easier to approach. Currently there are too many different ships and upgrades for new players to get everything in their heads straight away.

Next, mission 2...

Starwars X-Wing - Some thoughts and Tech details (Part 1)

In the aftermath of playing the Erasmus Campaing (cf. previous post about it), I was trying to design some own scenarios for X-Wing which were able to tell a story. My idea was to put more focus in an interesting scenario than in a balanced one.

However, while I was pondering how to implement my not-so-clear ideas into a working set of scenarios and their story line, I ran into several questions concerning dimensions and time (read game rounds) involved in a typical game; such things like how many rounds will take a certain ship to go from point A to point B and similar technical issues. As I was not having my core set with me, I tried to find some of the info I needed on the web, however, I was not able to find all the info I wanted out there so later, when it was again possible to me, I measured it myself, make some pictures and thought a bit about the metagame issues involved.

Before I go amok in this post, let me warn you. I am not a guru nor an expert on the game, on the contrary, I am a beginner, maybe very enthusiastic, but still a beginner; so look to whatever I say with this in mind. Maybe some things I say are sound, maybe some are silly or obvious, maybe totally wrong. If you do not agree or have a (better / different) opinion, please, be my guest, let a comment and discuss it :)

Ok, let's take a look to the dimensions of the game components.

Normal ship base
The normal ship base is 4 cm by 4 cm, which is exactly the same as the length of the maneuver template straight 1. Each straight maneuver template is also exactly 4 cm longer than the previous one. So the maneuver template straight 5 is 20 cm long, the straight 4 is 16 cm long and so on.
This implies that any normal ship will move a minimum distance of 8 cm (4 cm for the template plus 4 cm for the base), a maximum distance of 24 cm (4 cm for the base and 20 cm for the straight 5 template) and always in 4 cm (or one ship base) increments (due to the increment of 4 cm from one straight template to the next one).
How translate this into useful information for you?
Well, it depends on your ability for eyeballing distances on a boardgame table, of course, but if you look to the gaming table and you see where you normal 4 cm base ship is, it should not be too difficult for you to guest a distance based on the size of the base of the ship. My point being that your reference template (straight 1) is already on the table in the form of the base of the ship.
This also applies to the barrel roll action, although in this case you do not need to eyeball any distance as the barrel roll is an action which can only be performed if legal and as the rules say and the FAQ confirms, measuring distances is not allowed during the Planning phase (cf. page 6 of the rules); however barrel roll take place during the Activation phase wherein not nothing is said about pre-measurements. Also, on page 8 of the rules says that you may measure the barrel roll before committing to it.

Range ruler
The range ruler goes in 10 cm increments. So, range 1 goes from 0 cm to 10 cm, range 2 from 10 cm to 20 cm and range 3 from 20 cm to 30 cm.
Target Lock allows you to measure the distance (read range) to a target before committing. Also, in the Combat phase, you can measure the distance (read range) to any other ship before declaring it as target (cf. rule book page 10, right column).
If you try to remember that distance from the Combat phase for your next Planning phase, you will have a very good (read accurate) guest of the real distance in centimeters between those two ships, which you can use to choose your maneuver.

Large ship base
I just opened my Slave I expansion pack only to measure the base, which, surprise, surprise, is 8 cm long. Same story than with the normal base. Do you have a large ship on the board ? then, look to its base and start guessing how much afar another ship is.

Some meta-gaming thoughts / facts
The standard playing area is 3' to 3', or 90 cm to 90 cm.

A normal ship touching one border is 86 cm away from the other border.
The maximum distance this ship will move is 24 cm per round with a straight 5 (if able to use this maneuver of course, currently only the A-wing is this fast for the Rebels, whereas  only the TIE bomber is not so fast for the Empire). If you move straight ahead at this maximum speed, the front of the ship's base will be at 28 cm from the starting border at the end of round 1 (4 cm for the initial position of the base, 20 cm for the template straight 5 and again 4 cm for the base), at 52 cm at the end of round 2, at 76 cm at the end of round 3 and at 100 cm (and totally outside of the playing area) at the end of round 4.
At a speed of straight 4 (maximum speed of the TIE bomber and all the Rebel-Wings except the A-Wing), a ship will move "only" 20 cm per round; therefore it will be at 24 cm at the end of round 1 (4 cm for the initial position of the base, 16 cm for the template straight 4 and again 4 cm for the base), at 44 cm at the end of round 2, at 64 cm at the end of round 3, at 84 cm at the end of round 4 and at 104 cm (again well outside the playing area) at the end of round 5.

A large ship touching the starting border is only 82 cm from the other edge.
The YT-1300 (aka Millennium Falcon) and the Firespray-31 (aka Slave I) can move at speed straight 4 (which we know is 16 cm long), which amount to 24 cm per round which is as fast as a normal ship at straight 5 speed (!).
Therefore at the end of round 1, the front of the ship base will be at 32 cm from the starting border (8 cm for the initial position of the base, 16 cm for the template straight 4 and again 8 cm for the base), at the end of round 2 it will be at 56 cm, at the end of round 3 at 80 cm and outside of the playing area at the end of round 4.
The Lambda Shuttle moves "only" at a maximum speed of straight 3, which amounts to 12 cm for the template and 8 cm for the base resulting in a total movement of 20 cm, again as fast as the second best speed of a normal ship, the straight 4 speed.
Therefore the front of the Lambda's base will be at 28 cm from the starting border at the end of round 1, at 48 cm at the end of round 2, at 68 cm at the end of round 3, at 88 cm at the end of round 4 and outside of the playing area at the end of round 5.

In short, flying at maximum speed from one side to the other takes 4 rounds for the fastest ships and 5 rounds for the second fastest ships; the size of the ship (normal or large) does not matter.

I tried to make a nice table with the straight forward movement of the ships but the outcome does not look so nice :( although the info there is fine.

For normal ships (4 cm base) the movement table looks like this

Round	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Template
1	8	16	24	32	40	48	56	64	72	80	88	96	104	112	120
2	12	24	36	48	60	72	84	96	108	120
3	16	32	48	64	80	96	112	128
4	20	40	60	80	100	120
5	24	48	72	96	120

For Large ships (8 cm base) the movement table is

Round	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Template
1	12	24	36	48	60	72	84	96	108	120
2	16	32	48	64	80	96	112	128
3	20	40	60	80	100	120
4	24	48	72	96	120

On the tables, the starting position of the ships is NOT taken into account; they only show how many centimeters will a ship move in a straight line if it keeps doing the same maneuver every round. I stopped the table at 120 cm as it will be more distance than the length of any gaming table.

Hope you find it useful.

I will post this now, but will keep adding things in the next few days.
Happy gaming !

Sentinels of the Multiverse Vengeance - Unboxing

Finally released, finally here:
The last expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse, a box called Vengeance.
Obviously we have not played yet, so here there will be only some pictures of the box and the contents as well as a few technical details.

Vengeance, as opened. 

Vengeance, display of contents

Vengeance, cards

According to the back of the box, the expansion consists of:

339 63mm x 88mm cards

• 9 Hero Character cards
• 5 Hero decks of 40 cards each
• 5 Vengeance Villain decks of 20 cards each
• 2 Environment decks of 15 cards each

5 102mm x 153mm Vengeance Villain Character cards

12 76mm x 89mm divider cards

1 Rule book

Technical details

The box measures are 29cm x 20cm x 8cm. The inside is divided in three parts as you can appreciate in the previous pictures (sorry for the reflections, it was sunny outside ;D )
The cards, according to the back of the box the cards are 63mm x 88mm, however in my experience this is not 100% accurate.
For my copy of the base game (Sentinels of the Multiverse Enhanced Edition) I was able to use the Ultra Pro-Fit 64mm x 89mm sleeves, which however where too narrow for the cards of the Rook City expansion.
However, the cards of the Rook City expansion and, as far as I know any other expansion including this last one, Vengeance,  fit perfectly in the Swan 65mm x 90mm sleeves.

That is all for now, I'm afraid :)

Happy gaming !

Star Wars X-Wing revisited and Erasmus Campaign

Long time ago...

actually only more than one year ago I got my copy of the core set of the Star Wars X-wing miniatures game and wrote a more or less I-hate-you-maybe-could-like-you post bzw. review about it.
That day I played three or four games, but only the first two scenarios of the Core Set book and only with the one X-wing and the two TIEs from that set.
I did not play again...

...until one week ago :)

A friend of mine has been collecting (more or less) the game and so far he has two models of the "basic" starships, namely the X-Wing, Y-Wing, A-Wing, the TIEs, advance TIE, interceptor and I think he also has some of the big ships, anyway, the point is, he has more models than the ones on the core set alone.
He has also been trying to get us to play the game. He actually managed to play a four people scenario (I was not there) and it seemed to be better than my experience so far.

Two weeks ago we were talking about free time (lack of), games and things and stuff and we find ourselves talking about X-wing and how disappointed I was with the game.
He has found a very nice campaign on the web, the Erasmus campaign at a web called themetalbikini.com although the original one is still being discussed at BoardGameGeek.
This campaign has revived my interest in the game. The idea behind is very elegant and remembers me of something I found once, long time ago when I was playing AT-43. Basically the idea is you start small and slowly build up the game.
The campaign has four scenarios and the first once is only 50 points each side, no named pilots, no bi ships, so basically Wave 1 fighters.
We did that one week ago. It was great !
The first mission resembles the scenario 3 from the core set. In the core set, the empire starships have to "read" some satellites, in the Erasmus mission the Rebels have to destroy two satellites which the empire fighters can "protect" (special action for the mission).
It was a blast !
You can find some pictures and a nice narrative on the blog that this friend of mine has just created to follow not only this game but also future games.
Yes, future games. We are going to keep playing :)

So far we have played the first and the second mission of this Erasmus campaign.
The second mission is kind of weird. There are like three versions around, the one in themetalbikini and when we looked it up in boardgamegeek the one there, which have been updated recently.
The apparent problem with this mission seems to be that it is very difficult for the Rebels to win. The idea is similar to the shuttle mission from the core set and have the same problems.
A shuttle starts on one side of the board and moves towards the other side at a maximum speed forwards of 2, so in more or less 5 to 6 rounds will be out of the board and in safety.
One force (Empire, for example) escorts the shuttle and deploy on the same side where the shuttle starts.
The opposing force (Rebels, for example) has to attack the shuttle and deploy on the border of the board towards the one the shuttle moves and they get there their reinforcements !!!
That is insane. For the defending player there is no motivation to finish off any attacking enemy fighter as immediately a new, fresh fighter will appear right in front of the shuttle.
I think this kind of North to South engagement with reinforcements is broken in design.
In my opinion a far better idea will be to make the attacking force to deploy not opposite to the shuttle but perpendicular to it, so instead of a North - South deployment, it will be a North-East (or North-West) deployment, with the opposing forces on 90° of each other. Of course, the attacking force should be limited to deploy closer to the middle line of the table, let say, in a range of plus, minus 2 from this line.
With this deployment, if the defending player manages to destroy a ship early in the game, the reinforcements will appear not in front of the shuttle but on one side, so the defending player should also consider to move the shuttle sideways and not only run forwards, but if this players destroys an attacking fighter later in the game, the reinforcement will appear behind, which sometimes can be a bad thing, but here means that the attacker will have to speed up to catch the shuttle.
We did not try this scenario, but I will not mind to do it.
The patch we used was to forbid the deployment of reinforcements below range 3 of the shuttle, but still, it does not feels right.

We are going to play the third mission next week. This mission is similar to the second mission of the core set, wherein Luke is trapped in the middle of the table with some hyperspace problem and has to survive some rounds and then escape.
The Erasmus mission actually has a named pilot of the Rebel Alliance in the middle of the board with some asteroids lying around who has to run away from the empire forces into safety (out board).
You would say that this is stupidly easy, just pick up the best pilot of an A-Wing and run like hell. Well, that will work for an isolated scenario, but this is a campaign, so you "win" this named pilot if he survives the scenario for the final mission of the campaign, which coincidentally is a full combat mission, so maybe your very fast rabbit is not the kind of guy you will like to have in a heavy fight and being a progressive campaign, he will be the only named pilot you will have there (except Vander if the Rebels also won the first mission and he didn't dye in the second, which is my case :C )

Anyway, I thought it will be a nice idea to re-evaluate my previous post concerning this game. It seems to be that with more ships and good scenarios (and maybe the proper opponent) it can be a lot of fun.
So far I am playing again and I just ordered some more miniatures, nothing big, a second core set (very nice deal, an X-wing and two TIEs plus all the rest for the same price than the three fighters per se) (yeah, I know, the special pilots are not there, but their cards are already available on the web, so how cares), a third X-wing, a Y-wing and two adv. TIEs, which is roughly 100 point per side (actually only 86 on the Rebel side, but still enough for me).

I decided to stick to the Wave 1 ships, get to know them, play some more scenarios, maybe design a campaign together with this friend of mine and how knows?, maybe I finish buying all the rest of the stuff. The models look awesome anyway.

By the way, if you have any ideas for a campaign, a scenario or maybe already done some of this or know a place where to find some nice ones, it will be great if you drop us a comment with the info :)

Star Trek Attack Wing - Unboxing

Last year I was, for sure, very brave and good, so Xmas time was full of nice presents for me :)

One of them was the core set of Stark Trek Attack Wing

The game comes with three different ships, one for each initial faction on the game, the humans, the romulans and the klingons.

Five cardboards with all the tokens and movement templates are also in the box. I must said that I still did not play the game, only read the rules and listened to some podcasts about it, so I cannot give an opinion on the actual use of some of the tokens.

 As you can see, the humans got three possible commanders  for their starship whereas the klingons and romulans only two.

Also in the box is the ruler for range measurement, the dices, cards for the three factions and damage cards and the planet token, a huge piece of cardboard which could be great as Death Star for the X-Wing.

There has been already too much discussion on the web concerning the quality and merits of both games, this and the X-Wing. One of the main critics to this one being the poor quality of the models.

I have to say that I am forced to agree on this. The ones on X-Wing really look like painted miniatures, you know, with the shadows and dirt and this feeling that they are almost real. The ones in this game have a monochrome plastic color with some highlights in other colors, they really look like toy starships.

As I was taking a look to the components, a non-geek, non-gamer friend was present and when confronted with the two boxes, the Attack Wing and the X-Wing, there was no doubt which ones qualified as "toys" and which ones as "models". This friend of mine was scared about touching the ones from the X-Wing, they looked more delicate to handle :)

This will be my only critic concerning this game, because even if it is true that it is heavily based on X-Wing (no surprise here, Wizkids got the right for this particular game system and design from Fantasy Flight Games), they are really two different games.

Before I continue, I must again said that I barely played X-Wing and that I never played (yet) Attack Wing. However, from what I experienced on my few X-Wing games is that the game seems to be designed to involve several ships, and by several I mean two or three squadrons on each side, so we are talking about two imperial squadrons each one having two Tie Fighter and one advance Tie Fighter (like in Star Wars, the movie, when Darth Vader goes rebel hunting) and maybe one rebel squadron consisting of two X-Wing and one Y-Wing. Of course depending on the final points. My gaming groups was playing even four players games and seems to agree with this. Several ships are the scale of this game. Some people on the web also seem to support this idea.

Attack Wing includes not two but three factions with specific rules for it already on the rule book and the scale seems to be focused not on several ships but on one or maximum two ships per side. The included missions seem to reinforce this impression as they are based on sending crew members outside of the starship (away teams) to pursue the mission objectives. Also the crew aspect seems to be a heavy component of the game play. Again, not direct experience here, only my first impressions based on the rule book and what I was able to find on the web.

Hope to be able to find time to play soon to test the game. It looks very nice.