The Metal Mailbag- Robert from Edinburgh (Scotland)

This will probably become another one of those recurring TheMetalBikini.com things, so if you've got something on your mind, spill it and if I think it's particularly compelling, well-written, silly, or whatever, I'll likely post it. Consider the gauntlet tossed, yo.  

Unofficial, hyperbole-filled image created by me to prove a point. Not to be taken seriously (yet)

I've gotten several emails like this one since I started writing articles to post here on TheMetalBikini.com because well, this game has, nearly since it's release back in September of 2012, had major issues meeting consumer demand. 

This email though, was particularly well done and as it echoes what I think a lot of folks are going through that weren't instant adopters of the game the moment it came out, so I thought I'd share it with y'all, then give a few thoughts of my own on the subject. 

Hi man,

I love the site and it's seriously whetted my whistle for X-Wing. However I've run into a problem that a lot of new players around my area seem have run into. I went onto several of the online dealerships and into my LGS to try to get a starter pack and some more ships but the common thread seems to be a total dearth of anything. I heard about wave three so I figured I'd wait until then, but I heard a worrying rumour from around the local scene. The LGS and online stores are emptied of their stock within a day of it coming in by a small number of individuals! It doesn't help when I go on the forums and people casually talk about the gigantic size of their little fleets and the hundred and fifty dollars of wave three they've ordered. That's cool but it does make me feel as if I'm locked out of the game in some way. I want to play it but the fact that (being a somewhat cash strapped PhD student) my moments of liquidity don't coincide with the rush to buy stock as it comes in means that I never seem to actually be able to get any models beyond the starter set. People are willing to lend me models in the store which is very community minded of them… but it isn't really the same.
Just a thought from a frustrated newbie. I've been wanting to articulate it for a while but I figured that putting it up on the official forums might lead to rage. Probably best to pass it by someone with a keener eye for editing than me to remove any ranty bits!
Cheers man, and keep writing the articles!

Robert Lyon
MEng (Electrical Engineering), PhD Student
Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh

First, there's no way somebody with only an Associate's Degree in Electronics (that'd be me) is going to do any editing on a letter written by a dude that's working on getting his Ph-friggin'-D in Electrical Engineering. Holy mackerel. 

Secondly, Robert is Scottish. This becomes fairly integral to this article later on, but for now keep in mind that alone probably makes him smarter than me. Any country responsible for producing the author of one of my favorite books of all-time has to be up there in the smarts department. I actually don't know for sure if he's Scottish, but he's at least sending emails from the Scottish University of the Year 2011-2013, where apparently they've either won the award multiple times or time runs differently over there. Wait- wasn't Desmond Scottish too? Hmmm... 

Also, Rangers had three Yanks playing in their starting XI after the transfer window the season before they got Administrated into temporary oblivion, but it still doesn't change the fact that they're like they were like the only side outside of MLS that had three effin' Yanks in their starting XI. I mean hell, I was raised Catholic, but even I had to tip my hat to 'Gers on that one. 

Ok, so anyway, yeah- the shortages. Right. 

The manufacturing engineer in me says you get away with something like that exactly one time- the first time (and even then, you get away with it, but you'd still get bitched at for sure). After that, it's really pretty inexcusable because you're just leaving money on the table, which is of course, as un-American as you can possibly be.  

I mean, sure, some folks still extend them the benefit of the doubt, but for Christ's sake- how in the world could FFG have not made enough stuff for Wave 2? Every single ship from Wave 1 was sold out of most online retailers by Christmas, for cryin' out loud! Yeah, yeah, yeah- they had probably put the order in months ahead of time and maybe they couldn't change it. Whatevs, man. Chinese manufacturers aside, that's still absolutely crazy if you ask me. If you recall, Wave 2 was already significantly delayed once to begin with. To ask your customers, especially your new or prospective customers to put up with a delay, then still not be able to meet demand? That's really pretty ridiculous. 

Full disclosure, FFG says that more Wave 1 and Wave 2 stuff is being "re-printed" or re-released or whatever, so it's coming, but as FFG seems to have a reputation for blowing release dates, who knows when that'll actually happen (don't get me wrong- I want this to be one of those times they hit their projected release). For Christ's sake- there is a Y-Wing going for $27 on eBay right now. Let that sink in for a moment- there is a Y-Wing. On eBay. Going for $27 with 16 hours left at the time of this writing. What in the hell's going on here? 

This segues into my next point that Robert brought up- people buying too much stuff. 

Now, I'm not going to get on a soapbox and tell you to deny that weird, OCD impulse in your lizard brain that says, "BUY STUFF" (don't act like you don't have it; in all likelihood you're a grown, adult male buying little toy spaceships- you have that impulse just like I do). I'm also not going to begrudge people who try and buy something every time they use their FLGS' facilities as a "Thank you" for being a good host and providing tables and a venue for gaming and end up with a bunch of stuff; more than you need for sure. I will say if you're explicitly buying up X-Wing Miniatures stuff for the sole purpose of turning around and selling it on eBay because there's a 99.9% chance there's going to be another shortage, that's kind of shitty, frankly. 

Look- I'll be straight with y'all. I love this game. If that isn't apparent to you after reading all these goofy posts and card breakdowns and effort I've put into this site the past (almost) 4 months, I have undeniably and decidedly failed in the primary mission of this blog. I love the simplicity of the rules juxtaposed with the depth of the strategy. I want FFG to keep making it for a long time, so I try to do my best to promote the hell out of it on here. I don't want the game to die off because it's a great game that I really, really, really enjoy playing, thinking about, and talking about. That's at least half of the reason I put as much work into TMB.com as I do- I want everyone to buy stuff for this game, talk about it, and play it because I don't want it to go away. That's why I'm such an evangelist for this game. The other half is my embarrassing need for attention, recognition, and validation from strangers, but that's a whole other shrink session, er, I mean subject. 

I used to play a game called AT-43 which was produced by a company called Rackham. I really enjoyed it. It embodied a lot of the things I liked about playing 40k, but was way more accessible and easy to learn for "casual gamers", which in my book, were friends of mine who didn't have hundreds of dollars to spend on models, rulebooks, and paint. 

Of course, as you probably know, or at least have deduced from context, Rackham went out of business and AT-43 went away. Now, I know, I know, just because they went out of business, I didn't have to stop playing the game. Well, here's the reality folks- I did have to stop playing the game. When you can't get new people into the game (or start another army for yourself) without having to monitor eBay as a part-time job, and hauling that stuff into your local FLGS to take up space on their tables from paying customers playing a game they can't sell? Telling curious folks who stop by that this is probably the most fun squad-skirmish type game you've ever played, but they probably shouldn't bother getting into it because you can't really buy it anymore without a ton of legwork and effort when there are a ton of other games out there readily available and probably just as fun? Yeah. You stop playing the game. Or at least I did. Who wants to play the same army with no new units or books coming ever? 

I realize it's highly unlikely a company like FFG would stop producing X-Wing or go into liquidation like Rackham, but hell, I didn't think it was going to happen to Rackham either at the time, y'know? Back when it came out, people seriously talked about AT-43 being the game that would put a dent into Games Workshop's dominance of the futuristic miniatures skirmish game. Rackham didn't have their toe into stuff like boardgames like FFG does, but they did miss a lot of release dates and have distribution issues though, so there are a couple of similarities. 

I feel bad for the Euros and the folks in Oz because I get emails from these guys asking me if I know any online retailers in the States that are still selling Interceptors or A-Wings or TIE Advanced because, like Robert, they can't even get them from online retailers in their country, let alone their FLGS. That's nuts, man. It's like the total opposite problem miniatures games usually have- there are people who want to play this game but can't because they can't find anywhere to buy it. 

It's probably unlikely that anyone from the production planning department of FFG reads my silly little blog, but on the off-chance they do, please guys, please- meet the demand for this game. There's gotta be thousands of laid-off, out-of-work materials analysts from the U.S. automotive industry that'd love to manage your materials/ logistics/ whatever for this game. Hell, they're probably not even that far away from you. Get a couple of dudes who were forced into early retirement or just pink-slipped out of a Just-In-Time automotive parts supplier and let them manage the inventory for this game. I worked with some of those guys, man- they're hardcore, battle-tested, and they won't let you down. They're the kind of guys who can work magic like flying parts in on chartered planes from Mexico without having to pass Customs to avoid shutting down a customer. But do something, something different for God's sake, than what you're doing now, because right now, the folks running that part of your show simply aren't cutting it. 

So thanks for your email, Robert. Thanks for taking the time to write it, and thanks for the kind words about the site. I sincerely hope that the reprints comes sooner rather than later, you find some X-Wing Miniatures over the next few months, and I hope you get to play this game with your own stuff. 

Lambda Shuttle, Wait, What?

I'm still trying to decide whether or not I'll pre-order the Wave 3 stuff or wait and pick it up at my FLGS, and as such, I was looking at pictures of the ships and cards this evening, when I noticed something...

Now, I know what you're thinking- "Oh dude, those are just some mission-specific tokens. They're right next to the Tracking Tokens from the box set." 

Entirely possible. 

Although... 

The Slave I contents on TheWarStore.com specifically call out the fact that there are new rules and a new mention in the product description, which seems to be some rather canned text as very similar copy is repeated over on the Slave I page at MiniatureMarket.com as well. 

Ok, so what about the Falcon? 

Doesn't specifically call out new rules and a new mission like Slave I, but does say, "New rules expand the X-Wing galaxy to include large ships and modifications." 

The Lambda's canned text says nothing about any of that. From TheWarStore.com's product description page- 

"Noted for its tri-wing design, the Lambda-class shuttle served a critical role as a light utility craft in the Imperial Navy. Now you can use this utilitarian ship to strengthen your Imperial squad for X-Wing! The Lambda–class Shuttle Expansion Pack includes one large-base Lambda-class shuttle miniature at 1/270 scale, its maneuver dial, all necessary tokens, four ship cards, and a whopping twelve upgrades, which afford Imperial players an astonishing level of customization and control of their squads."

MiniatureMarket.com's entry is exactly the same text as above. 

So... if it's not some included scenario token, what could it be? 

Only thing I can come up with is it's the cockpit in escape pod mode. I remember reading somewhere- maybe one of those big Star Wars ship schematics books, maybe it was one of the sourcebooks for the old West End Games' Star Wars RPG; can't remember now, that the cockpit of an Imperial Shuttle could detach from the body of the ship and act as an escape pod. Maybe FFG included some rules for that? 

So what do you think? Am I off my proverbial rocker as usual? Whatever it is, it seems to have an Agility Value. Past that, I can't make out anything else. 

X-Wing Miniatures Sample Game, Part 3

I've gotten a lot of traffic from search engine queries like "Sample X-Wing Game Turn" and "X-Wing Game Turn Examples" and as I've kind of meant to do this for awhile but just didn't for whatever reason, I thought I'd post a series of articles this week outlining a complete game of X-Wing Miniatures for those folks who are interested in seeing a real nuts-and-bolts write up of an entire game. Note: This is not a battle report, per se, though if you guys dig on those, boy are you in for a treat in a few weeks...

In case you missed them, here's links to Part 1 and Part 2 in this series.

Ok, so yesterday saw the satellites scanned as well as the first few shots fired in this game. BC had stuck my Black Squadron TIE with a critical damage card, I'd burned off one of the shields on his Red Squadron X-Wing, Obsidian TIE was making a run for the border. 

After we selected our maneuvers, Obsidian unsurprisingly floored it revealing a Straight 5 and also unsurprisingly selected Evade as his Action. That was a no-brainer, really. Recall that all I have to do to win this thing is get one of my TIEs off the board after scanning those satellites. 

Black Squadron's maneuver was going to take a little more finesse. First, I'd incurred a Stress token since my last maneuver had been a red maneuver. Now, there's nothing saying that you have to immediately get rid of a Stress token once you get it, but you do lose your Perform Action step while you're actively Stressed, so I do not make it a habit to fly around Stressed if I can help it. 

Not only that, but I'd just been stuck with a face up Damage card that would Stress me if I pulled a Turn at any speed. In the rules, it says you can't perform any Stressful maneuvers if you're already Stressed and if you do, your opponent gets to pick which maneuver you perform from your dial. So not only should I be pulling a green maneuver, I need to be pulling a non-Turn green maneuver, and last, I had to pick something that wasn't going to crash me into BC because I was going to move before him. This really only left me a couple of options, and since I did not want to end up on the business end of BC's Red Squadron at Range 1, I opted to punt and pulled a 2 Bank to the right, then selected Evade as my Action. 

This ended up being a pretty lucky guess as BC opted to think outside the box and pull a Straight 4 even though he was still Stressed from his own K-Turn last turn. You can see exactly how that turned out in the image above- Black TIE had Red Squadron at Range 1 dead to rights and as such, opened fire on the X-Wing. 

The Attack value on a TIE Fighter's primary weapon is 2, but being at Range 1, I received an extra Attack die. I rolled and ended up with a "crit" and two "hits." BC grabbed his 2 green Defense dice since his X-Wing's Agility is 2 and rolled a wavy arrow and a blank. As I mentioned before, in X-Wing Miniatures, you mitigate "hits" before you mitigate "crits", so BC was left taking a "hit" and a "crit" as damage from the attack. This bros before hoes, I mean, hits before crits thing also applies to shields, so Red's last shield failed under the "hit", while the "crit" went against his hull, causing him to not only draw a Damage card, but also to flip it face up and observe the card text. His Agility was lowered by one permanently, but the card gave him the option of attempting to remove it in the Perform Action step in lieu of performing an Action by rolling a "hit" on an Attack die (there's several Damage cards with this type of mechanic). 

As Obsidian was out of Range of Red's guns, we moved from the Combat Phase to the End Phase, removing tokens that weren't persistent and we were back to spinnin' wheels. 

I knew I wanted to get Black Squadron out of there- only having two Hull left with an X-Wing breathing down his neck wasn't a place I really wanted to be in, especially with that face up Damage card limiting my movement. I knew I was going to pull a straight 5 with him and there wouldn't be much to worry about as BC still had his Stress token. Of course, that didn't stop me from playing it safe and declaring an Evade Action. Obsidian though... hmmm. I was pretty sure a Straight 5 would take him past my board edge and end the match, and well, I wasn't quite done playing yet. I had Obsidian pull a 3 Straight K-Turn. 

"You sure you want to do that?" BC asked. 

"Ah, what the hell, right?" I replied lying a Stress Token beside him. 

"Ooooook." BC said, revealing a 3 Bank left, a white maneuver that caused him to retain his Stress Token for at least one more round and denying him an Action. 

As no one had valid targets, the Combat Phase was foregone and we started picking up tokens in the End Phase. It was time to spin wheels again. 

Obsidian hadn't been hit yet, so I decided to have him move in on Red to Attack. Black was going to continue straight lining it towards the board edge as insurance in case BC managed to one-shot Obsidian. It was sort of the opposite line of thinking I employed at the start- now Black was going to escape with the satellite intel regardless of whether Obsidian could manage to take out the critically damaged X-Wing. 

Obsidian pulls a 2 Bank to the right and as I'm hoping for him to smoke Red, he declares Focus for his Action. BC had Red come around square with a 1 Bank to the left, a green maneuver for his X-Wing so he was able to pick up that pesky Stress Token and Target Lock the rapidly closing Obsidian TIE. 

Once again, the Combat Phase was upon us. 

Red had a higher Pilot Skill than Obsidian, so he would fire first. BC checked range and found Obsidian to be just a bit outside of Range 1 from his X-Wing. He picked up his 3 Attack dice and rolled a "hit", a Focus symbol, and a "crit." Wanting to try to get Obsidian off the board, he opted to spend his newly acquired Target Lock token and re-roll the Focus result. End result? Two "hits" and a "crit."

I picked up my three green dice and threw them- two wavy arrows and a blank. Had I rolled a Focus, I could have spent my token, but a blank result I could do nothing with. My wavy arrows got rid of the two hits, but the crit went on through, and I picked up my Damage card and turned it face up. Bastard! It was the dreaded Direct Hit card, which counts as not one, but two hull damage! My Obsidian TIE had gone from perfectly unmolested to on its last legs in just one volley of shots from an X-Wing. 

Still though, he wasn't dead. Time for me to return fire. I picked up my two red Attack dice. 

Two natural "hits", no Focus needed. BC grabbed a single green defense die (remember- his X-Wing usually gets two, but that face up Damage card lowered his Agility value by one) and rolled a blank. The two hits went on through and Red Squadron Pilot exploded. 

Per the scenario rules, as we entered the End Phase of the game turn, I removed the Action tokens from my TIEs and BC dropped a brand-spankin' new Rookie X-Wing on his board edge. 

As we spun wheels, I asked BC if he wanted to keep playing or not. It was getting late, and we'd done a lot of talking during the match, so he said we needed to wrap it up. With that, I picked a 5 straight for Black TIE which I was confident would take him off my table edge, triggering the win condition for me. With that in mind, I figured I'd get Obsidian in another fire fight. I needed to turn a little to get Rookie X-Wing in my firing arc, so I picked a 3 Bank to the left to cover the most ground possible. BC set Rookie's dial and we began revealing our maneuvers. 

As Rookie X-Wing is only Pilot Skill 2, he now had the first maneuver. BC revealed a Straight 4 which put him within Range 3 of Obsidian, so for his Perform Action step, BC chose to Target Lock. Obsidian revealed that 3 Bank Left and declared Focus, hoping to maximize his Attack. I didn't declare an Action for Black TIE as his Straight 5 took him off the playing area. 

As the Combat Phase started, I picked up my Range Ruler (sorry I've forgotten to include it in so many of these pictures- I was more focused on taking pics of the dice results for some reason) and found that Obsidian was Range 2 from Rookie. No extra die for me, I grabbed a couple of red Attack dice and rolled. 

I rolled a "hit" and an Focus result. I opted to spend my Focus token and turned the eyeball into a second "hit." BC grabbed two green defense dice and threw a blank and a Focus. Both of my hits landed, overloading the Rookie X-Wing's deflector shields. 

Now it was BC's turn to fire back. He picked up his three red Attack dice and threw them. 

I don't remember what his first roll netted him, but he did spend his Target Lock to re-roll his blanks and eyeballs. The picture above is the after picture, in other words. He managed a single hit. If I blew my roll however, it would be enough to send Obsidian to hell as he only had one Hull left, so when I rolled a single wavy arrow on my Defense roll, I was happy that Obsidian had managed to cheat death and would survive the match!

Whew, that was more writing than I kinda thought it would be! I think I'll just stick to battle reports from now on! 

Hope you enjoyed it though and found it useful if you're a new or prospective X-Wing Miniatures player!

X-Wing Miniatures Sample Game, Part 2

I've gotten a lot of traffic from search engine queries like "Sample X-Wing Game Turn" and "X-Wing Game Turn Examples" and as I've kind of meant to do this for awhile but just didn't for whatever reason, I thought I'd post a series of articles this week outlining a complete game of X-Wing Miniatures for those folks who are interested in seeing a real nuts-and-bolts write up of an entire game. Note: This is not a battle report, per se, though if you guys dig on those, boy are you in for a treat in a few weeks...

In case you missed it, Part 1 ran yesterday. This being Part 2, if you've not read Part 1... well, that's just daft. 

We last left our starfighters at the start of a new Planning Phase. I picked my maneuvers and set my dials, while BC did the same. After we both indicated we were ready, I revealed the dial for Obsidian TIE, who you'll recall had the lowest Pilot Skill of the ships on the board and therefore would maneuver first. I had selected another Straight 5 maneuver, then picked Evade for my Action, again hoping to scan those satellites and high-tail it outta there, hopefully without being blown out of the firmament. Black Squadron TIE revealed his maneuver next since he had Initiative over BC's Red Squadron X-Wing, also showing a straight 5 on the dial and also selecting Evade hoping to minimize any shots coming his way. BC decided to maneuver to engage Black Squadron revealing a Bank 1 on his dial, then choosing to Target Lock my Black Squadron TIE. 

The game's first Combat Phase began with Black Squadron, but BC's cagey maneuver had put him outside of Black Squadron's firing arc (probably can't see them in the picture above, but there are a couple of lines on the cardboard insert that illustrate a ship's firing arc), so the only shooting for the turn fell to Red Squadron. 

BC checked range and found Red to be at Range 2 from Black. Hoping to get one of my ships out of the way early, BC elected to fire his Proton Torpedoes which would get him 4 Attack dice (one more than he'd have been able to roll had he just used the X-Wing's primary weapon) as well as some other side benefits depending on what he rolled (for the particulars, click the Proton Torpedoes link there). His roll netted two filled explosion symbols, or "hits" as we usually call them (whole other subject- click to read The Combat Phase Explained! for more details), an unfilled explosion symbol, or a "crit" as we call them, and a blank. 

A TIE fighter has an Agility of 3 standard, which means I got to roll three of the green dice to hopefully mitigate the effects of BC's shooting. For every wavy arrow symbol the defender rolls on the green dice, he gets to cancel one hit result on the red attack dice. 

For my defense roll, I ended up with two wavy arrow symbols and a focus symbol (or "eyeball" in local parlance). Normally, this would mitigate both of BC's "hit" results (you mitigate normal hits before "crits"), but since I'd also declared Evade as my Action, I elected to use my Evade token to also mitigate the 'crit." 

Net result? No damage to my Black TIE. This turn's Combat Phase was now at the end as my Obsidian had no shot on BC's X-Wing. We entered the End Phase where most unused tokens get removed. In this case, it was Obsidian's Evade token going back to the pile. 

Spinnin' wheels again, I was definitely going to be in range to try and overlap those satellite tokens. This is where things were going to get tricky; if I didn't overlap the tokens, I couldn't try to scan them, so I took a long hard look at the table and tried to visualize the maneuvers I needed to overlap both satellites with both TIEs. I figured BC's X-Wing had plenty of firepower to one-shot one of my ships before it could escape, but it was unlikely he'd get both of them running away. We selected our maneuvers and concluded this turn's Planning Phase when I revealed Obsidian TIE's maneuver. 

Obsidian TIE started pretty much straight across from the satellite token he was going after. As BC's X-Wing seemed to be much more focused on taking out Black Squadron TIE, I decided go for the gusto and attempt a Koigoran Turn, which is the fancy pants X-Wing Miniatures term for a straight move that ends in a 180 degree turnaround. TIE Fighters can do a K-Turn at the end of a Straight 3 or a Straight 5. I wasn't entirely sure a 3 would get me on top of the token, and seriously considered selecting a 5 instead. I knew that maneuver would cause me to overshoot the satellite, but I could easily 'lap it on the way back. The problem was, it would be an extra turn that BC would possibly have time to destroy my other ship, then come after this one, so I decided to pull the Straight 3 K-Turn instead. 

Black Squadron TIE wasn't directly across from the satellite he was after, but again, after taking a long look at things, I figured a Bank 3 ought to get me pretty dang close, and hopefully even if I didn't end up on top of the satellite, it'd at least put me out of BC's firing arc. 

Probably should have mentioned this before now, but when you're selecting your maneuver in the Planning Phase, you can't pre-measure the maneuver you select- it's all your spatial awareness versus the other dude, as well as guessing what you think your opponent is thinking. It's a really cool mechanic that sort of makes a poker game out of the maneuver phase as a well selected maneuver can very literally set you up to win the game. 

BC indicated he was ready to go, and I flipped over Obsidian TIE's maneuver dial. 

What a stroke of luck! Er, I mean, what a great couple of maneuvers picked by me! Both maneuvers put both ships right on top of their satellites. Since a K-Turn is red on a TIE Fighter's maneuver dial, I had to place a Stress token next to Obsidian which meant he couldn't declare an Action this turn. Since Black had just pulled a white maneuver, I elected to Evade again in case BC was going to be firing on me. BC elected to pull a 1 Bank to the right and as he was well within Range 3 of Black, decided to declare Target Lock for his Action. 

Note: If you look closely, you'll see that Black ended up outside of BC's firing arc. While he would be unable to fire upon me this turn, the Target Lock Action only requires that the target ship be within Range 3- it does not have to be within the ship's firing arc. 

We entered the Combat Phase of the game turn and I elected to have Black Squadron Pilot Scan the satellite. Red Squadon had no valid target, so we moved on to Obsidian who also scanned the satellite he was overlapping. 

Moving into the End Phase, Black's Evade token left the board, but BC's Target Lock remained in play as it's a persistent type of Action, and Obsidian's Stress Token would be sticking around until he pulled a green maneuver. 

Spinnin' wheels again, I liked my chances of getting at least one of these TIEs off the board with the intercepted Rebel comm transmissions. I figured my best shot at this would be to fly Obsidian straight back towards my board edge and have Black try to engage the X-Wing. I didn't figure I'd kill it, but I thought if I could at least hold him up for a round or two, Obsidian would have an easy time escaping. That in mind, I didn't want to just pick a straight 5 for Obsidian because of his Stress Token. Instead, I picked a Straight 2 as it's the fastest, straight maneuver available to a TIE that's still a green maneuver. That sorted, I decided Black Squadon would pull a 3 K-Turn and attempt to engage the X-Wing. I set my dials, BC indicated he had chosen his maneuver and we moved from the Planning Phase to the Activation Phase. 

Obsidian performed his maneuver, which being a green maneuver, allowed him to discard the Stress Token he picked up last turn. With the Stress Token gone, he was free to select an Action in his Perform Action step. I chose to Evade again. Black then pulled his 3 K-Turn, a red maneuver, which Stressed him out and with the Stress Token attached to him, he was unable to declare an Action this turn. BC pulled a K-Turn of his own with Red; also a Stressful maneuver, but one that left Black in his firing arc and vice versa- the Combat Phase was upon us!

After measuring with the Range Ruler (forgot to take a pic, sorry!) Black Squadron found himself at Range 3 from his quarry and fired on the Red Squadron X-Wing. TIE Fighters have an Attack value of 2, so I grabbed two red Attack dice and rolled a "hit" and a blank. BC now had the opportunity to mitigate this damage with a his X-Wing's Agility of 2, but he was able to roll a third green die since I was using a primary weapon to attack him at Range 3. He produced a roll of three Focus results, so my hit landed upon his ship and removed one of his two shield tokens. 

Now, it was his turn to attack me back. His X-Wing has a primary attack value of 3, so he grabbed 3 red Attack dice and rolled them scoring a single hit and two blanks. Not the greatest roll in the world, he opted to spend his Target Lock token which allowed him to re-roll whatever dice he wanted, one time. He left the hit on the table and picked up the two blanks to roll again. 

This time, the results were more favorable. Net result? Two hits and a crit. I grabbed my three green Defense dice because of my TIE Fighter's 3 Agility and added another for being at Range 3 and being attacked by a Primary Weapon. I scored two wavy arrows and two blanks. As I'd declared a Stressful move, I had no Evade Action Token to save my butt this time. 

My two Evade results cancelled both of BC's hits, but that crit went against my hull which caused me to not only draw a Damage card to represent the damage, but also to flip it face-up and observe whatever the card said. 

As the card was a "Ship" critical damage card, my Determination did nothing for me. Nope, I was going to have to take a Stress token any time Black Squadron TIE performed a Turn maneuver at any speed for the rest of the game! Bummer for me! Still though, it was only 1 point of damage and a TIE Fighter has a hull value of 3, so I could take two more unmitigated hits, then I'd be done for. 

Since Obsidian had no valid targets, we entered the End Phase, discarded any remaining Action Tokens, and that game turn ended. 

Black Squadron TIE has critical hull damage, the Red Squadron X-Wing has lost only a shield, and the Obsidian TIE is about to floor it for the board edge. Which faction will emerge victorious? Find out tomorrow (maybe)! Holy mackerel this is taking up a lot more copy than I'd thought!

Stay tuned!

Cerebral LOLsy- More Funny Search Results

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