X-Wing Miniatures: Heroes of the Aturi Cluster Co-op Campaign - Mission 2: Tread Softly

Preface

Well, we screwed this one up a bit by not calculating the opposition correctly. We ended up with the correct number of mines, but the enemy ships for 6 players instead of just 4. This made the whole fight significantly harder, and it hit us hard. Read on for the details!

We did try a variation on something here that I think worked out nicely: We're using an alternate "Assist XP" system Tyler found where you simply keep tick marks for the number of times you place a harmful token on an enemy ship or a beneficial token on a friendly ship (or a friendly uses one of your tokens), and at the end of the game every 3 ticks is 1 XP. This way we don't have to spend all the extra time figuring out if the added marker mattered, as they would only matter about 1 in 3 times anyway. More on this at the end.

Players & Pilots

Dave: PS2 X-Wing with BB-8 and Stealth Device (4 XP floating from previous missions)

Josh: PS2 X-Wing with BB-8 and Stealth Device (10 XP floating from previous missions)

Martin: PS2 Y-Wing with BB-8, Ion Torpedo, Extra Munitions, and Twin Laser Turret (1 XP floating from previous missions)

Tyler: PS3 Y-Wing with BB-8, Twin Laser Turret, BTL-A4, and Squad Leader (4 XP floating from previous missions)

The Game

Setup

This encounter consists of 12 mine fields (three per player) spread across the middle of the field at range 1 from each other, providing a movement-limiting and target-rich environment. We faced off against 3 TIE Bombers in the Mine-layer squad (yes, we're proxying an Advanced and an Interceptor for the other Bombers, hopefully I'll fix that this month), positioned on the far board edge to the left of center, and 4 TIE Fighters on the right board edge on the far side of center. We chose to attempt to gain the bonus XP for killing the Mine-layers before they can replace any mines, so we set up directly opposite the Bombers, with Tyler on the right flank, Josh and myself next to him, and Martin on the left flank and slightly ahead of the rest of us.

Initial Setup

Our strategy was to creep up the left edge for a turn and then leap forward into the Bombers, buying time against the Fighters, and then turn in to engage them around turn 3-4.

Turn 1 - All Mine(s)

The first turn, everything went according to plan: the Fighters moved a 3-bank-left to close towards Tyler and Evaded, and the Bombers were positively peppy with a 3-straight towards our squadron and Focused. Josh and I crept forward on a 1-straight and Focused up to shoot some mines, Martin BB-8-rolled closer and crept forward 1-straight as well and Target Locked the minefield in front of him, and Tyler rolled forward on a 2-straight, using Squad Leader to give Martin an action (Focus) and garner an Assist tick.

Turn 1 - End of Activation

Shooting for the turn was also according to plan, with our combined firepower knocking out the first two minefields in our way. All of the enemy ships were out of range, so there was no return fire.

Turn 1 - End of Combat

Turn 2 - Combined Firepower

For this turn, the Bombers were out of range for their free Target Lock so they chose to creep forward 2-straight and Focus. The Fighters cruised forward a nice 4-straight and focused as well, ready to start swarming our ranks. Our counter was for both X-wings to bank out (2-bank and 3-bank) to face both sets of forces, Focusing for flexibility, Martin's Y-wing slid forward another 1-straight and established a Target Lock on the lead Bomber, and Tyler rolled left and came up behind us all to then Squad Leader a Focus token onto Martin for his upcoming shot.

Turn 2 - End of Activation

With his superior pilot skill of 3, Tyler shot first dropping a damage on the minefield with his primary attack and pulled the Focus off the lead Bomber with his BTL'd TLT shots. This set up Martin's Ion Torpedo shot, which rocked the lead Bomber pretty hard and ionized the whole group. The X-wings added a bit of additional damage to the lead Bomber.

Turn 2 - Concentrated Fire!

We weathered the return fire handily at range 3, rolling 4 green dice against their pitiful 2-dice attacks.

Turn 2 - End of Combat

Turn 3 - A Narrow Escape...

The Fighters decided it was time to close in for the knife-fight and rushed forward with a 5-straight, Focusing just off our right flank. The Bombers were nicely sizzling with ion energy, and while the pilots were tasting a distinctly copper flavor in their flight helmets, their ships drifted a simple 1-straight forward with no actions. Our X-wings rolled left and pulled forward, skirting out of the way of the Fighters and closing for the kill on those poor Bombers, while Martin BB-8-rolled out and forward 1-straight with a Target Lock on the farthest Bomber, and Tyler closed up our ranks again concealed nice in the middle, granting another Focus token to Martin with his Squad Leader ability.

Turn 3 - End of Activation

Combat this turn was pretty epic. Tyler fired first, finishing off the lead Bomber...

Turn 3 - Lead Mine-layer Down!

..Martin lands another massive Ion Torpedo hit on the second Bomber and ionizes the remainder, and the X-wings finish the wounded one off...

Turn 3 - Second Mine-layer Down!

...and while the return fire from the Bomber strips a shield off an X-wing,  the Fighters are just barely out of arc!

Turn 3 - Precision Flying

By the end of turn 3, we were doing OK with only one bomber remaining.

Turn 3 - End of Combat

Turn 4 - I've got a bad feeling about this...

This is where things go bad. The TIE Fighters execute a 5-Koiogran turn to re-engage us from behind, while the remaining Bomber drifts 1-straight forward again. Martin creeps his Y-wing ever closer, while the X-wings break formation, with me BB-8-rolling right and 1-bank left to keep the Bomber in arc and Josh pulling a hard 2-turn right, bumping into my front. Tyler BB-8-rolls right and slides 2-straight forward to wave goodbye to the last mine-layer.

Turn 4 - End of Activation

While we're all experiencing a really tight fit, Tyler lands some damage on the mine layer, and he responds in kind (stupid initiative! :P ) stripping the shields off Tyler. 

Turn 4 - Close Encounters of the Starfighter Kind

Martin lands a good range 1 primary attack, dealing a critical hit to Blind the last mine-layer...

Turn 4 - Blinded by the light!

...and I then follow up from the other side with a nice hard hit to finish him off.

Turn 4 - A solid hit on the last mine-layer

The Fighters split their fire between Tyler and me, managing to land a few hits on Tyler and reducing him to 2 hull points, while I manage to dodge everything by the skin of my teeth.

Turn 4 - End of Combat

Turn 5 - An Elite Arrives

This turn, an Elite Bomber (PS3, Assault Missiles) arrives, at the same location the mine-layers came from. I didn't get a picture of the start of Turn 5, so here's a Bomber I drew:

I'm not a graphic designer... and it shows!

The TIE Fighters close in on us with a 3-bank left and Focus for the shooting to come, while the Elite Bomber Target-Locked Josh and pulled 3-straight forward to close distance with him. Josh chose a smart 3-turn to engage the Fighters and luckily it took him just out of range of the Assault Missiles too, but he did bump into the side of the rear Fighter. Tyler and Martin closed in on the Elite Bomber, but I made a serious mistake and forgot that Tyler moves after I do because he's higher pilot skill. I wasn't able to BB-8-roll out of the way of the minefield directly in front of me, and I ended up taking a 3-dice minefield to the face...

Turn 5 - Minefields Suck!

... and get a Weapons Failure critical result. Ouch!

Turn 5 - End of Activation

Combat was annoying. Our dice hated us, the Bomber Elite punched a couple of shields off Martin, and the Fighters decided to rip me down to my last hull point. Not my most favorite turn.

I also missed the end of turn 5,
so have another bomber!

Turn 6 - Wait, What?

The Fighters decided we needed some humor at that point, so they decide to start a couple of congo lines with a 5-straight directly into Tyler and I:

Turn 6 - Gonna Need To Touch Up The Paint

On top of that odd maneuver, the Elite Bomber chose a strange option to jump out of our kill-box (I guess?) and pulled a 3-turn to his right, putting all of us out of his arc.

I pulled a 4-Koiogran turn to get distance on the Fighters, Martin BB-8-rolled outside a mine and pulled slightly forward with a 1-straight, Tyler used his BB-8-roll-out-and-2-turn-left to carefully position himself about 1mm behind the Elite Bomber, and Josh pulled a 2-turn right to keep the TIE Fighters in arc.

Turn 6 - End of Activation

Tyler managed to land another crit on the Elite Bomber, and Josh put some damage on one of the TIE Fighters, but the rest of us created a spectacularly awesome laser light show in space (but accomplished nothing else).

Turn 6 - End of Combat

Turn 7 - That bad feeling? Yeah, it was right.

On this turn, another reinforcement squadron arrives, and we had a hard choice to make: Run or Die. We chose the better part of valor, confirmed that we were in Friendly Territory, and made haste for the nearest board edge. Strangely enough, the Elite Bomber tried to 5-Koiogan, which we tried to shorten to a 3-bank, but he still ended up off the board edge. (After re-reading the campaign manual on Board Edges, I think we messed up and he should have gone all they way down to a 3-turn to avoid going off the edge, but we messed up enough in this game that I'll take a small victory at this point).

Turn 7 - Start of turn

The new TIE squad was very interested in Josh, so they closed on him with a 2-straight, while the original Fighter squad (still at full strength!!) was turning in towards Tyler with a 2-bank. Tyler and Martin both punched a 4-straight off the board edge, Josh pushed his X-wing out of everyone's firing arc with a 4-straight, and I dodged out with a 3-turn to my left. This put my 1-hull-point self just out of reach of the new Fighter squadron, and out of arc of the originals. Whew!

Turn 7 - Activation... and End

Turns 8, 9, and 10 - Run, you clever boy!

4-straight... Josh is clear... I gotta get there...

Turn 8 - Activation and End

4-straight... I'm gonna live!

Turn 9 - Activation and End

And then I ran off the board... and we failed the mission.

FAILURE!!!

Final Thoughts

So the reason we screwed up the setup and ended up with too many enemies on the board is a fairly simple error: Tyler and I have been running a side campaign with the two of us each running 3 ships (I'll probably do a write-up on some of those missions too), and we'd played this same mission previously in our side campaign at 6 ships. So we forgot that we're only running 4 ships with this play-through, and we fought an extra Bomber in the mine-layers and an extra Fighter in each of those two groups. I don't know how much it would have mattered though: we would have turned to engage the Fighters one turn sooner, so we might have been able to thin that herd a bit, only to get caught with our pants down when the Assault Missile-toting Elite Bomber showed up, or squarely in the sights of the final reinforcement group the moment they came on the board edge. 

We also split up a bit much after killing the first two bombers, so we didn't have 100% of our firepower on the Elite when he arrived and so he probably lived longer than he should have.

I also think this mission (and most of them, when I go look at them) is in-general more difficult with 4 players than it/they would be with 6, due to the change in firepower. The extra alpha-strikey-ness of the larger enemy groups is one thing, but when we need to clear a crapload of minefields off the table fast towards the end of the game, having the extra firepower lets us kill more than the 3 we add for each player while still dealing with the TIEs.

The Assist XP system worked out nice, I think we got a total of 4 assist XP across everyone who could (Martin with his Ion Torpedoes and Tyler with Squad Leader). I think we'll stick with it going forward, and it was so much easier to keep track of than possible assists.

We upgraded a little this week: Martin bought us a FFG Playmat! Thanks Martin!

X-Wing Miniatures: Heroes of the Aturi Cluster Co-op Campaign - Mission 1: Local Trouble

Preface

So a while back I got super excited about the X-Wing Miniatures Game from Fantasy Flight Games, and I've loved the sculpts and the basic game rules ever since I first got to play with them. But my gaming group of friends is very competitive and kind of small (there's 4 of us that can meet consistently), so playing my 100 points versus your 100 points, every couple of weeks, would get really boring and really antagonistic fast.

 But then I discovered the amazing wonder of the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster campaign from Docking Bay 416, which is an incredibly well-done implementation of two key details that were missing from X-Wing: automation of the opposing forces, and an experience point system to allow for more than just one-off games.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the Imperial ships is very clever and often does exactly what I would do as a player (and has actually taught me several new ideas to use next time I play Imperials), so it does a great job of providing a good enemy force for us to play against.

The campaign system allows for each player to play a specific pilot and ship, and to acquire Experience Points (XP) for actions such as damaging/destroying an enemy ship or assisting an ally in evading damage. This XP can then be spent on new abilities, making for pretty awesome 'super pilots' that are not balanced with the normal game.

The campaign makes up for the superiority of the super pilots and the limitations of the AI's tactics by forcing the players to battle against superior odds, and it very intelligently scales to support any number of players from 1 to 6, and even at multiple skill and XP levels.

What follows is a record of the campaign as played by my game group!

Players & Pilots

Dave: X-wing with BB-8 and a Stealth Device

Josh: X-wing with BB-8 and a Stealth Device

Martin: Y-Wing with BB-8, and a Twin Laser Turret

Tyler: : Y-Wing with BB-8, Twin Laser Turret, and BTL-A4

The Game

The battlefield consists of 6 asteroids placed near the middle of the field, and a simple setup for the opposing force.  We're faced with two groups of TIE Fighters: one of three, set up opposite the right side of our deployment zone, and one group of two, set up opposite the left side of our deployment zone. We chose to deploy all of our forces near the left end of our deployment zone to concentrate our fire on the smaller group of TIE Fighters, so Josh and I deployed in close formation near the left edge near the middle of our deployment zone, Martin just to the right of us and slightly forward, and Tyler to the right of all of us (nearing the middle of the map, directly opposite the smaller group of TIEs) on the forward edge of our deployment zone.

Our strategy for the early turns was to move slowly forward to engage the smaller group of TIE Fighters, while dragging the larger group through the asteroids, hoping that they would take a few points of damage in the process and possibly break up their formation into smaller chunks.

Turn 1 - A Slow Approach

This turn was singularly uneventful, as the TIEs powered towards us and we slowly crept forward, but nobody had range to establish a target lock or take a shot, so nothing much happened.

Turn 2 - Blood in the Vacuum

This turn the two-man TIE group split up due to an asteroid in their path, which proved to be a fatal mistake for one of their group, as he ended up in range 2 of most of our force and was gunned down quickly. This is where we began to discover the wonders of the BTL/TLT Y-wing combination which we would affectionately begin calling the Warthog Configuration, as the sequence of multiple attacks proved quite effective against the focused or evading TIEs by stripping their defenses and whittling them down to size very quickly.

When the TIEs were able to fire back, we were all at long range so their pitiful fire was no match for our defensive skill!

By the end of turn two, one TIE was down, and the other group had already begun to split up to avoid the asteroids, while we were still in tight form together, so our plan was working rather well!

End of Turn 2

Turn 3 - Knife Fighting In An Asteroid Field

As we were sticking with our plan of moving very slowly through the asteroids, this gave us lots of opportunities to exploit BB-8-powered barrel rolls, so the two X-wings were able to scoot just inside the asteroid in front of us and turn in to face our enemies, while the Y-wings continued their implacable 1-speed plod of doom across the map. 

The enemy TIEs turned in to attack us, but with our pilot skill advantage we were able to gun down another TIE (this time from the group of three) before he was able to get off a single shot. We did take one close range shot from his wingman, but even a close range TIE is no match for an X-wing with a fully functional Stealth Device! The other incoming fire was equally ineffective, and we managed another turn of destruction with no losses!

End of Turn 3

Turn 4 - The Menace Appears

While it did mark the arrival of our most fearsome foe, two TIE Interceptors directly behind the X-wings, this turn passed quickly with almost no damage done by either side, as the TIE Fighters maneuvered wildly to avoid our arcs of fire, the X-wings performed mighty Koiogran turns to re-engage the fight (sparking 15 minutes of great debate over how you pronounce "Koiogran" before we finally to just pronounce it "Immelmann") with the Interceptors, and the Y-wings began barrel-rolling and jockeying for position to maintain fire.

The dice gods were unimpressed by our maneuvering, and the 3 remaining TIE Fighters escaped this turn undamaged, but fortunately they were also unimpressed by the Interceptors and we lost only one shield (and a Stealth Device) on one X-wing.

Turn 5 - Divide and Conquer

This is where the AI makes the one major mistake that I'm pretty sure a human opponent would not have made, and the two TIE Interceptors divide to avoid running into an asteroid.

While we weren't able to capitalize on that mistake this turn, the Warthog was able to gun down another TIE Fighter and we dinged another Fighter with a point of damage, while getting one point of damage past the considerable defenses of the lead Interceptor.

We ended up perfectly positioned so that there was no return fire of any kind, catching the Interceptors completely off guard.

End of Turn 5

Turn 6 - Michael Bay Would Be Pleased

With the enemy split and heading in all different directions, we decided to divide our own forces and hunt them down in detail. The X-wings, still in perfect flying formation, broke off to engage one of the Interceptors, while Martin's Y-wing continued his 1-speed, BB-8 rolling madness into the center of the board (his poor co-pilot had to be blowing chunks all over the inside of that cockpit at this point), and the Warthog's perfectly-timed Koiogran not only sparked another 5 minutes of pronunciation debate but placed him ideally to have shots on both the Interceptor and one of the remaining Fighters.

The combined fire of two X-wings at close range is nothing to be laughed at, and the poor Interceptor who was on the receiving end never stood a chance of making it out of this turn. His separated compatriot joined him in the big Star Destroyer In The Sky mere seconds later under the combined weight of our Y-wings, and the TIE Fighter he was attempting to rescue died right in front of his very eyes. Not a good day for the Empire... but a great day for us!

End of Turn 6

Turn 7 - FEED ME, SEYMOUR!!

Turn seven saw the arrival of the last of the Imperial reinforcements, two TIE Fighters arriving opposite where the Interceptors had arrived earlier. While I'm sure they were expecting to arrive as the hammer to the TIE/I's anvil with us in between, what they saw when they arrived was four very alive Rebellion pilots and a large amount of grey-and-black scrap metal.

Nevertheless, they charged fearlessly into the battle, the X-wings continued their roll hard left and brought their combined fire to take out the last of the original TIE Fighters, and the two Y-wings maneuvered to bring their glowing gun barrels to bear on the fresh meat that had just been delivered to their grind house.

End of Turn 7

Turn 8 - Concentrated Firepower

The TIEs advanced, the X-wings kept turning left, the Warthog barrel rolled to one side and back just enough to put the enemy in his Range 2 sweet spot, and Martin's free-turreted Y-wing rolled out of the line of fire.

When the ionized smoke cleared, two more TIE Fighters had joined the scrap pile, and Grey Squadron emerged victorious on the field of battle.

End of Turn 8

Final Thoughts

BB-8 is overpowered and is almost the only astromech worth taking, the Warthog configuration Y-wing is crazy powerful at pushing damage through evade/focus defenses, and paired X-Wings with Stealth Devices in close formation can survive and put out some seriously awesome firepower.

Massed shots from TIE Fighters can be scary, as can Interceptors at Range 1 (we spent a good 20 minutes in planning our maneuvers for Turn 5 to avoid Tyler having to take the full wrath of two Interceptors in the face at Range 1, time well spent).

This mission was a fun intro to the campaign game, and I'm very excited and looking forward to playing the other missions over the next few months!