Battle Of Hoth

Last night I got a chance to play Battle Of Hoth, which is a new boardgame using the Battle Cry/Memoir '44 system and covering the Imperial assault on the Rebel base at the start of Star Wars Episode V. Keegan had the game and (as a bonus) had painted all of the figures. Daniel, Keegan and I took turns playing. 

It ises the same card system as the other games, but each side has their own deck. In additon you can choose a leader for each side and the chosen leader adds three cards of their own to that side's deck. Each side has their own troop types. Both have infantry, although that of the Rebels only had three figures to a unit. The Rebels also have snowspeeders and laser cannons, whilst the Imperial forces add probe-droids and the mighty AT-ATs. Each have their special rules.

Here you can see a lone Rebel infantry figure under attack by two lots of Imperial infantry and an AT-AT.

We payed four of the scenarios and some of those more than once. It plays very quickly compared to Memoir 44. mostly because it has a lower unit count and the board is smaller so units get stuck in much more quickly. 

This picture has all of the unit-types in it aside from the laser-cannons. The snowspeeders move quickly and have a lot of firepower at point-blank range, but can be a bit vulnerable. Probe droids are weak in combat, moderately hard to kill but, unless a scenario dictates it, they don't count for victory medals. 

AT-ATs are quite powerful in combat, and very hard to hit. However they are slow and can only take one hit. They could be killed by the first long-range shot directed at them, or resist shot after shot if the Rebels are unlucky. This one was brought down by three Rebel units playing the odds. 

There are several scenarios in the rules, starting with small couting skirmishes and then finishing up with the main assaults on the Rebel base. The rules also come with four mini-campaigns that link various of the scenarios together adding in special rules and advantages as one side gains or loses the upper-hand. So the designers have milked a lot of game out of one battle.

We played around eight games and the Rebels didn't win any of them. I don't know if the scenarios are weighted against the Rebels (Memoir 44 certainly doesn't pretend to have balanced scenarios) or if the Rebals are harder to play. Discussion on BGG suggests the latter - it just takes time to understand how to organise a Rebel defence or counter-attack, whilst the Imperials are fairly straightforward. The Memoir 44 approach of playing each scenario twice (swapping sides and aggregating the scores) is certainly the way to go here; can you lose as the Rebels less badly than your opponent? 

Having played it I can say that I enjoyed it, but I'm ot sure whether I'm desperate to own it. It is a lighter version of Memoir 44, which is no bad thing, but I'm not sure that, at this stage, it has enough depth to be worth getting. Maybe if more installments are produced covering other battles it might be worth getting. It doesn't feel like a game that's as versatile in terms of scenario design as either Memoir 44 or Battle Cry, but I can imagine if you're a Star Wars fan you'd find this a welcome addition to your game collection.

Update: I've added this image from Ralph showing a game in play, since it shows it better than the few photos I took:

Epic Duels

Catherine and I played Star Wars: Epic Duels this evening; first time we've had it out in years*.

Catherine decided to be the good guys, and stuck to Luke and Leia for all three games. I was the dark Side, but tried a different character in each duel. In the first I drew Darth Maul.

Darth Maul is all Attack, Attack, Attack - he has some cards which don't count as attack actions so can really pile on the damage if the opponent can't defend against it. That's how I started, and I had Luke down to half of his hits in no time.

I backed off to replenish my hand.

Leia shot down one of my supporting Battledroids, although to be fair they're really just speed-bumps at the best of times.

With a fresh hand of cards I went up against Luke again ...

... and finished him off.

We switched to a different board for the second game and I ran Jango Fett and Zam Wessel. They are non-Jedi and have lots of shooty abilities.

So I did lots of shooty stuff. Jango has lots of special cards reflecting the various weapons in his armour, and I tried them all.

The wrist-cables finished off Leia, but also cost Luke all of his actions for the following turn.

That gave me chance to replenish my hand and finish Luke off with missiles and an aerial attack which took me from one side of the board to the other.

In the final duel I played Count Dooku, assisted by some Super battledroids.

Luke took on the droids, and damaged one.

Count Dooku duffed up Leia a bit, then he and his droids made a rapid retreat so that he could build up more cards.

Luke went of the offensive and scored a few decent hits on Dooku. But Dooku fought back, seriously injured Luke ...

... and a battledroid finished him off to give me my third victory.

It's a long while since Catherine had played this game, and she didn't really know how to make use if the Luke/Leia deck. To be honest I'm not sure I know either (and I did volunteer to give it a try, but she persisted).

It's a fun game, though, with each character having a style all their own.

*2016 in fact. You can read about it HERE

A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Victor and I did another playtest of 'Challengers of the Great Beyond' last night, using his 25mm Star Wars figures. The pictures are Victor's, and seem to be fairly low-res.

He ran a Droid force, with loads of expendable squads, backed up by support weapons and the decently powerful General Grievous. I had some Clone Troopers, supported by a Jedi and a rogue/pirate of some kind.

The game was pretty short. After a brief exchange of fire which saw a lot of my troopers cut down (Victor's dice-rolling was outstanding) I charged into combat where the droid troopers would be at a disadvantage. Clone troopers took down one squad ...

... whilst my Jedi (called a 'Psi Knight' in the game) attacked another squad ...

... and eliminated them in a single round of combat.

There's no more photos after that moment. General Grievous attacked the Jedi, and killed him. I laid down some fire on Victor's squads, noticing that a few more casualties would push his force over their breakpoint, but couldn't inflict any hits. My own force morale was getting a bit shaky, so I threw my pirate into combat with a squad, and got him killed straight away, breaking my force.

After that we spent a bit of time discussing how force morale needed to work. At present squads and characters are kind of equal in how much weight is given to them; we felt that perhaps more emphasis needs to be given to characters, so a player can't just break a force by killing the cannon-fodder and has to engage the personalities as well. A few ideas were thrown around and Victor's gone away to think about them. In addition we started discussing extra character classes, as the game needs a few more low value ones to add flavour and variety. Some good ideas came out of that discussion as well.

More X-Wing

John and I played X-Wing again last night. Damo had to cancel at the last minute, and unfortunately he had certain key components such as some of the dials, and the playmat. But we improvised.

John had created two reasonable-sized forces - four Imperial vessels against three Rebels - so it was a fair bit for a novice like me to handle. I took the Imperials. All four ships were different.

The Rebels. John had some useless fighter the ID of which escapes me and which I blew up almost immediately.

Unfortunately his X-Wing and B-Wing were tougher propositions, and were loaded with special abilities I struggled to keep track of.

I did what I could to use the agility of my various Tie ships to their best advantage.

I even managed to launch a bomb, although we worked out later that we were playing the rules incorrectly.

Solid ships built like brick out-houses won the day. I'd taken down the extensive shielding on the B-Wing, and even dented the X-Wing, but the fragile Tie vessels fell apart one after the other. My last one did a runner rather than try to fight a losing battle.

I still enjoyed this game, but I would have been happier playing with ships that had the same (or very similar) stats. I was trying to cope with too many different special abilities on my own side, without trying to keep track of what my opponent could do.

X-Wing

I played my first game of 'X-Wing' last night, courtesy of John and Damo, who provided ships, rules and the numerous components that the game seems to require.

We played two-a-side; Damo and I were the Rebels with an X-Wing (Damo) and a Y-Wing (Me) whilst John took two Tie-Fighters and Caesar took a Tie-Bomber. Damo's X-Wing and one of John's Tie-Fighter has character pilots with extra skills.

Here we are, ready to go!

My Y-Wing. It flies like a brick, but my gunner could shoot twice, once with the main guns to the front, and once with the ion-cannon turret.

We approached ...

... and the shooting started.

In terms of mechanisms, you can see where some of the basic ideas for Gaslands came from; ships use movement templates, with some of them putting stress on the ship and others allowing you to remove stress. The Action mechanism is quite interesting, with each ship having a menu of things it can do to select from, allowing it (for example) extra evasions, a better chance of hitting or (in my case) to rotate the turret. With only one action allowed there's always a tricky decision to be made.

Anyway, after the initial pass of ships (in which I took some damage), Damo and I got our ships into a nice lined-up shot on Caesar's Bomber. We didn't achieve much, though.

Meanwhile John's decent pilot was giving my ship a right hammering from behind. A fuel leak saw me in danger of exploding, so I had to dodge for a bit to avoid being finished off. I got in some shots with the ion-cannon in the turret, though, which kept the rookie Tie-Fighter out of the game for a couple of turns.

Damo chased after Caesar's Tie-Bomber. Caesar was desperately trying not fly off the table.

John brought his decent Tie-Fighter up in support, and soon Damo's X-Wing was in trouble.

Between us we finished off the Tie-Bomber.

And then I forgot to take any more pictures.

Basically my Y-Wing was the next to go, finished off by the rookie Tie-Fighter. The two Tie-Fighters then teamed up to finish off the X-Wing, so it was a win for the bad guys.

Although there's a lot of chrome and components to the game, the basic mechanisms are surprisingly simple once you get going. It's probably not a game I'd consider buying - it's quite a financial investment, and lacks the DIY aspect of Gaslands, for example - but it was fun to play.

Return Of The Jedi

In 2002, MB Games released a neat little Star Wars tie-in boardgame called Epic Duels. Although it went out of print in 2004, it acquired a small following and minor cult status.

In its basic two-player form, the players chose one of a set of characters that come with the game. One chooses one of the six Light Side characters and the other one of the six Dark Side characters. The characters available span the original trilogy, and the first two of the prequel trilogy. Yes, it is possible for Anakin Skywalker to fight Darth Vader. Each character has one of two supporting minor characters - Han Solo has Chewbacca, for example, whilst Obi Wan Kenobi is supported by a couple of Clonetroopers. In addition each character has their own deck of cards, which is used to drive combat and their special abilities. Like a lot of good games the mechanisms are simple, and it is the unique card decks which drive the game and make for the different interactions. You win by killing the opposing major character; the other characters are just fodder, although the mechanisms do have a incentive for you not to just kill them straight away.

I'd not played the game for many, many years; certainly not since we came to Australia, and probably for a good few years before that. I'd taken it off the shelf a couple of weeks ago as a possible option for New Year, and it had been sat taunting me ever since. So last night I arranged to play it with Caesar's son Kaleb, who has started coming along to our Thursday evening sessions at the ripe old age of 10 (nearly 11 though).

We set up the suggested starting pair of Count Dooku vs Obi Wan Kenobi. I played the baddie.

As you can see the game is played on a square-grid. There are four board included with the game, each based on a scene from one of the films, and each offering some limitations in the way you can move or shoot.

The game also comes with 31 pre-painted miniatures. The quality of the pre-paint isn't brilliant but I've never bothered doing anything about it.

Obi Wan and Dooku got stuck into each other pretty quickly, but I had the cards to support the Count with his super battle-droids and the Jedi was soon worn down and defeated. Indeed it was one of the droids which finished him off.

In the second game Kaleb chose Luke and Leia, whilst I wet for a non-Jedi pairing - Jango Fett and Zam Wessel. The latter, minor, character has some useful assassination skills, and it was those which ended the game fairly quickly for the Skywalker twins. Kaleb got a bad draw of cards which gave him a ton of non-combat special abilities, but little in the way of defence. Zam Wessel simply shot Luke down, assisted by a few neat tricks from the bounty hunter.

Han Solo vs Boba Fett? Oh go on then. Boba Fett is supported by Greedo, of course. Han shot first, but Greedo survived just long enough to shoot better.

Chewie provides the heavy combat support in this pairing, but it wasn't enough to prevent Boba Fett knocking out Han with a long-range shot.

And so to the final duel of the evening. Kaleb had got the hang of the game now, and looked through the decks deciding who he fancied trying based on their card options. I just went with my heart - I wanted to be motherfuckin' Samuel L. Jackson or, as he's known in the Star Wars universe, Mace Windu.

Kaleb went for Emperor Palpatine, who is an interesting combatant with a few special attacks, plenty of defence, some evil card-discarding abilities and offensive firepower from his Royal Guard.

This was a long duel. Mace Windu has some great abilities, but needs to build up a decent hand to make the most of them. Whilst I danced around doing this, I got hit by evil force-lightning, and had soon lost plenty of hits. Eventually though, I got my act together, and was able to leap in for a trademark whirlwind attack, which destroyed both guards and severely injured the evil Palpatine. He rallied well, and I was soon on my last legs, but I finally put together another useful card combination which allowed me to zip across the board and cut the Sith down for victory.

I really enjoyed playing this game again after so many years, and I hope Kaleb did too. He was unlucky in a couple of games with his early card draws, but certainly got it together as the Emperor in the final game.

Other games were also on the go. We had to move into the posh office this week, as you can see.

Caesar and Peter played a couple of late-medieval DBA games - Burgundian vs Swiss first, I think, followed by Burgundian vs Henry Tudor's English. The first game saw the Swiss defeated entirely by artillery fire, whilst the second saw Caesar defeated when he realised that he wasn't playing HOTT.

Gary and Bryan tried out Team Yankee (a sort of 1985-era Flames of War) using 6mm figures. Unless Ralph is reading this, in which case they were using 28mm figures and I took this picture from a long, long way away.

My kind of teeny-tiny game.