I'm Excited

My gaming mojo is back, which means my life is back in balance.

When one hobby becomes your job, another needs to step up, but last year, the one hobby/job became all, every other interest just fell away.

Bad sign.

Away Missions is not even here, but already I am working on ways of making it work for me and my small gaming regime.

The Borg are apparently unbalanced, especially if played badly. It seems the designers made a balanced game, you just need to sort your priorities and learn from your mistakes. One reviewer actually played (as Feds) one of the game’s designers (as Borg) and the game ended in an engaging draw. Before that the reviewer and friends had little to no luck with the faction.

Easy fix.

The “Borg Challenge” is an idea that basically has no such issue. Both players play the much more straight forward Federation (Romulan/Klingon etc) vs the Borg and then swap, the winner is the Fed/other player who scores the most points. The Borg are basically the blocker that is there to trip you up. This will do two things.

Even the playing field, allowing an even game both ways.

Allow both players to “get” the Borg and how they work.

After a few games of this, the Borg can be played as a normal faction, but I feel until then, there is probably no point. The Federation, Klingon, maybe less so the Romulans, are much more straight forward, more easily grasped. The Borg are the special little snow flake.

It may even be possible to play three way or 1 on 1 with alternating Borg interference.

This brings me to another thought.

Avoiding Marvel Crisis Protocol.

To me, MPC is a game that is so far off my radar, it will never, ever be played, bought, collected. Not denial-just denied.

There are a few reasons.

The product. Even for a long term war-gamer, used to buying uninspiring bags of metal with potential and discovering (or not), that potential, I will not be buying a game that needs (1) assembling and (2) painting in (3) plastic. I dodged the cool Batman game out a few years back for the same reason.

The cost and collectability, which will have potentially no real limit. Not another one, never again.

The fact I have a serviceable, possibly even inspired*, home brew game that cost me nothing but time using a system that “seemed to write itself” and a bunch of super cheap re-purposed Heroclix (these were so cheap, most cost less than their new bases).

Most are decent, they clean up better and the clear bases are perfect.

I am “Marvelled out”, like a lot of people. Not even the new RPG excites.

Backlog. For once, attention is on the other things I already have that are calling to me. My hiatus last year sparked a desire to go with the bird in hand more than the one not. It is like I am re-discovering both old friends and fresh ideas.

My zombie like purchasing of various games, without much playing or time invested has given me both an new appreciation of these things and a need to check the cupboard before I get too keen to buy anything (I avoided the odd duplication, but did not once or twice).

Away Missions can claim a special place in my world and rightfully so, managing to not be that game, but excite me on every other level. MPC will never do that.

*The whole thing is based on a strength (number of dice) and skill/accuracy/penetration/speed value (type of dice) like 6x d6 with only the number of dice of the winner’s roll (being over the best roll of the loser or in excess of the dice that match the losers best roll), multiplied by an effect value (x1/4 to any value). The Hulk may have 10d8 fighting with a x3 damage multiplier, granny has 1d4 with a x1 dm, but an unwary Hulk may get caught out rolling all ten dice under grannies lucky 4 and she may land a surprising handbag swing-doing basically nothing but surprise/brag damage.

It is more likely the Hulk would remove her from this world at an atomic level, were he of a mind, but the system quickly and easily determines this and basically any other game effect from mind control to movement.

I can even aply a simple points systems to powers (# Dice x Dice type, so the above mentioned Hulk’s fighting would be 80 pts), and that led to a dice pool power, like Green Lantern’s ring or Dr Strange’s magic that has “X” number of points spent in different ways (60pt could be 6x d10, 10x d6, 3x d20 etc). It needs a lot of dice, but is fast and has basically no math. Throwing for example, may be another application of the Hulks 80 pt power.

Bare Bones. The Bones Part 3.

The Scum in Bare Bones.

So much variety, so many dirty tricks. The Scum lack a speed 5 ship, but have plenty of manoeuvre options including S-Loops and through Dalan, a BB unique Talon Roll.

The Scum are the true “middle men”, sitting between the two extremes of solid Rebels and flighty Empire, with a little of each and some bespoke surprises.

The Scum are also split into sub-factions. Black Sun Cartel, Tansarii Militia, Binayre Pirates, Hutt Cartel and general freelance mercs and bounty hunters. The Empire and Rebels may take one faction and freelancers (up to less than half their total squad points). Two Scum factions may also combine with any number of freelancers.

The backbone of the faction, the quirky Star Viper, solid Kihraxz and cheap, but hard to ignore Head Hunter, all custom paint jobs.

The Kihraxz.

The main Scum fighter is the Kihraxz, basically their X-Wing equivalent, but with some important differences. One of the main ones is the ability to field 5 basic ships, something the X-Wing and Tie Advanced cannot do (in BB).

Low Rent Thugs

100pts 5x Kihraxz; Cartel Marauders

The Z-95 Head Hunter.

Cheap enough to match an eight ship Tie Fighter swarm in theory, the reality is the 12 point option (Binayre Pirate) is limited to 4 by canon. Regardless, the ability to mix Missiles and Illicit upgrades means they can take on a ton of different facades.

Binayre Pirates

40pts Fire Spray; Kath Scarlett + Flechette Cannon

60pts 4x Z-95; Binayre Pirate + Flechette Torpedoes* + Black Market Slicer Tools

*The Binayre Pirates were actually fitted with Flechette Cannons as a cost expediency, but Flechette Torps will work much the same.

Binayre Pirates at work.

Star Viper.

The lethal killer butterfly that is the Star Viper brings some nifty moves, as well as Boost, making it one of the closest things the Scum have to an interceptor in BB. It may look fragile, but has the same constitution as the Kihraxz and some of the many pilots are interesting. The Black Sun quintet is solid, but Thweek (mimic) and Dallan (Talon Rolls) are even better.

Black Sun Rises

35pts Star Viper; Xisor (7) + Plasma Torpedoes

36pts Star Viper; Guri (5) + Advanced Proton Torpedoes

29pts Kihraxz; Black Sun Ace (5) + Glitterstim + Cluster Missiles

GA-1 Star Fighter.

Often called the Scum B-Wing, this is actually quite a different ship. It has a System slot like the B-Wing, but also Crew and Illicit. The B-Wing is a close quarters killing machine, the GA-1 more of a hardy support ship, the only Scum ship in BB without any ordnance.

It’s dial and other stats are similar to the B-Wing although it is faster (white speed 4 not red), it has 2 K-Turns, but neither are short and it can Evade. The pilots also quite different.

Run rabbit, run.

YT-666

The ship is ugly, slow and sluggish, but cannot be under estimated. The “party bus” takes three Crew, something the Scum have some decent options in. With Illicit upgrades, it can deploy Inertial Dampeners for a full stop three times in a row with a double application (Jabba) and it’s own full stop. A wide arc Primary, even wider with Eval and a high constitution.

Big Guns Blazing

50pt Aggressor; IG-88B (6) + HLC + ABC + Fire Control System

50pt YV-666; Moral Eval (6) + Heavy Laser Cannon + IG-88D + Dengar

Sharing is caring

Firespray-31

The ship that Boba Fett flew is also the ride of several names. Plenty of Ordnance and Crew options, even without its two Titles, the Firespray is a brute (see below and above).

JumpMaster 5000 (as printed)

Yep, leaving it as printed, which makes up for the lack of Title to some extent. It is a weird ship and in BB a powerful one. You see it has a limp, favouring left hand moves, even a white S-Loop no less, but suffers on the right. This is also the only ship in BB that can take a Salvaged Droid, limited to three named choices in BB.

Right Hand Man

43pts JM 5000; Dengar + 2 Plasma Torpedoes + Slicer Tools + R4-B11 + Bossk

56pts Firespray; Boba Fett + Heavy Laser Cannon + Thermal Detonator + Concussion Misslies + Inertial Dampeners + Latts Razzi

IG-2000 Aggressor

What an interesting ship. It is slow it seems, but a green 3 on a large ship with Boost, is basically speed 5. The dial is as green as a young spruce, it has an Evade, Systems, Bomb and two Cannon slots. The Cannons are interesting as some have a “hole” in their range, so the IG’s can have a close and long range option.

Auto-bots Are Go

50 Aggressor; IG-88B + Heavy Laser Cannon + Autoblaster Cannon + Fire Control System

50 Aggressor; IG-88C + Advanced Sensors + Seismic Charges + Mangler Cannon + Autoblaster Cannon

Away Missions....... What The Heck?!

Games fall into two categories with me now.

1) They need to be completed, learned played, although I am tending to stick now to games that are done, so completed is over.

2) Games that need to go, because quite simply there will never be enough time.

There is no third category.

3) New games that excite and become an almost reflex buy.

No third category.

So, Star Trek Away Missions by GF9, what the hell?

I was looking for an excuse to buy some cheap X-Wing 1e ships and starters, so I searched Star Trek on the site, thinking they might spit up an Attack Wing ship or two.

A box came up that looked suspiciously like an Attack Wing boxed set, but had figure, so I assumed a Heroclix spin-off or the like.

No, something different.

I googled.

I found this;

The figs are actually grey and blue, but I will likely go for a muted, stylistic or cartoonishly neat paint job.

In a world of countless games it seems, what made this themed, two person, militant looking game a compulsive buy?

I reviewed as I do, plenty of sites before I am content as it goes. The only game I have read about lately that has better reviews, but I have not bought is Inis (still on the burner), but this seems more approachable. Inis looks to be more of an acquired taste, this can appeal to anyone, even non-Trekkies.

It is sort of a skirmish game, sort of a simple board game, part deck builder, part themed homage, part simplified RPG, even a little like a smart dungeon delver-with phasers.

It will appeal to many because unlike the packaging suggests, it is not a skirmish game, the play is deep, but straight forward, the games are short (3 rounds) and I feel it is flexible to some degree.

Want to handicap one player? Free points at the games start can help (the Borg in the starter seem to be weaker, but opinions vary). Want to change the base vibe? make it longer or play until a points total is reached. It is a tight and focussed game, but has some elasticity. I am already even playing with the idea of a Borg stopping the Federation before they reach their points total competition game.

If you want to be smart, sneaky, violent, diplomatic, technically more savvy, even a few of these, there is a play style and faction for you.

There are also several factions and sub-teams within this, with plenty of scope for future expansions (DS9, Voyager, Enterprise even).

The Riker team is about repair and tech, Picard more diplomatic, The Duras sisters are sneaky, the Romulans even sneakier, the Borg are well…… the Borg, able to assimilate your characters out from under you and Gowron is genuinely militant.

Apart from this, the factions can build decks to suit play style better, so a more militant Riker, a more tech savvy Picard, a less “kill them all” Gowron (well, maybe not).

*

Negatives, drawn from mostly positive reviews, some team lop-sidedness, for which there are already fixes noted and I am not a huge fan of flatly even games, a lack of fighting, because it looks like a skirmish game, but again that is Trek and who needs another skirmish game?

There are a few minor component issues, like are difficulty in telling the characters apart, which will be fixed by paint jobs, the highly characterised figures themselves, which I actually like as they take the serious edge off the game to attract more players, the peg boards and card quality, but nothing huge and no one thing all reviewers picked on.

There is fighting, but just like the series, the most combat orientated episode was not a war movie, but more of problem to be solved.

Lastly, there are only two boards (so far), but they are modular, possibly even interchangeable (A half assimilated Federation ship? Not sure yet until I get it).

Wish list.

I wish that GF9 had released the original Series crew as another full set with new boards a suitable enemy (maybe Gorn) and that they included the bespoke dice with the expansions, rather than make them a hard to find add-on (I only discovered them when I missed the Duras expansion and went looking, then had to check they were even needed, not just spares*).

maybe a Voyager box with Hydrans or a second Borg team and a second Voyager team set with the other team?

I also thought more team building would be good, but funnily enough the two characters I thought should be switched in the Federation teams, actually can be (Gordi/Shelby), because team Specialist are interchangeable***.

The fact is, there is no perfect game, but this one ticks most of my boxes. It is fun, fast easy(ish) to learn, deep without being over complicated**, highly re-playable, themed, not a true war game, not a true deck builder, not a “the starter is a start, but not really” game, it is complete and varied enough now, with a slow and reasonable growth path and above all, it got me excited.

*You actually do not need any special dice, but they are thematically on point.

**Everything you need to know ids on the card or the character board.

***Gordi on the tech themed team, Shelby adding security to the diplomatic mission just seemed better.

Bare Bones. The Bones Part 2.

The Rebels counter the Empire with a more balanced, if less exciting fleet. Every ship has a Target Lock and Shields, their Pilots, Droids and Crew excel at Squad synergy, but few have re-positioning options and they are on average the slowest fleet (three ships with Red speed 4).

Fly straight and true and get them on the first pass, or possibly pay the price.

The X-Wing.

Name-sake ship of the game, the X-Wing was one of the first to fall away from the tournament circuit. Lack of re-positioning meant the upgrade slots were usually spoken for, which later fixes helped address, but still, too messy and too late.

In BB, partly created to re-empower this ship in it’s original form and others, the X-Wing becomes a stable, if unexciting ride for a bunch of strong pilot Talents (remember no EPT’s) and named Droids to match. Flying X-Wings well is a matter of flying a good squad dynamic, so it is a perfect teaching tool.

Red Right Hand

34 X-Wing; Luke (8) + R2-D2 + Advanced Proton Torps

32 X-Wing; Biggs (5) + R2-F2 + PT

33 X-Wing; Garvin (6) + R5-P9 + PT

The classic trench run crew

The Y-Wing.

The Y-Wing has two roles, Ordnance carrier or a Turret platform. Twin Laser Turrets are in BB and are one of the most powerful upgrades and Turret upgrades are limited to the Rebels only, making them effectively a very cheap Decimator or Falcon “lite”, but with no generic Droids (FAA/R2’s), Mods or EPT’s, they are sluggish and predictable at best with a true tri-colour dial.

Does not seem fair, but it’s the classic turret vs arc dodger dynamic.

Y-Not

26 Y-Wing; Dutch (6) + Plasma Torpedoes

84 4x Y-Wing; Gold Squadron Pilot (3) + Plasma Torps

or

Phew Phew

38 Y Wing; Horton + TLT + R5-P9 + Proton Torps

31 Y Wing; Grey Squadron Pilot (4) + TLT + R5-K6 + Plasma Torps

31 Y Wing; Grey Squadron Pilot (4) + Blaster Turret + R4-D6 + Advanced Proton Torps

The A-Wing.

This is the Rebel exception, like the Tie Striker is to the Empire, zipping around the table like it just don’t care. Like the Interceptor, the manoeuvre king, the A-Wing stands out in BB as it should as the undisputed speed boss.

Fun.

With Jake (double Boost or Roll) Farrell, or “no stress” Tycho, or even exceeding the 3d Agility ceiling Gemmer and the only ship in BB that should take Proton Rockets (limited to Rebels), it is the special little snow flake that makes a Rebel Squad fun.

Not Easy Being Green

29 HWK-290; Kyle (6) + Jan + TLT

27 A-Wing; Jake (7) + Proton Rockets

25 A-Wing; Gemmer (5) + PR

19 A-Wing; Green Sq Pilot (3)

The B-Wing.

Second in the fun stakes for the Rebels, the B-Wing is the close quarters knife fighter. It has more red moves than green, but specialises in close quarters and also has the distinction of having more Shields than Hull. Advanced Sensors with their dial allows them to avoid losing their Action to a red move and FCS or Accuracy Corrector often aligns with their payload.

Blue Day

100 4x 25 B-Wing Blue Sq Pilot (2) + Advanced Sensors

(optionally it can have 3 and Roark or Kyle from below)

The HWK-290.

Even more so than the Imperial Lambda, the HWK is primarily a support ship, sporting the only single digit Primary, slow and poor dial, no re-positioning, not even a K-turn and minimal defence stats. What it has going for it is cheap cost, supportive Pilots, a Crew slot and a Turret upgrade.

Training Day

24 HWK-290; Roark (4) + Blaster Turret

21 X-Wing; Rookie Pilot (12/2)

22 Blue Squadron Pilot (12/2)

2x 17 A-Wing; Prototype Pilot (12/1)

The gang is back in town.

The YT-2400.

The mini-Falcon, the YT-2400 has several interesting features. Without Title, it offers the dual punch of a 2 dice Turret Primary and Cannon or Missiles, a solid constitution and some nimble-ness with 12 (!) white moves, and a Crew slot.

Me And Mini Me

53 YT-1300 Han + Chewie + C3-PO

47 YT-2400 Eaden + Luke + CrM, ABC

The YT-1300 (modified)

Not the full “Millennium Falcon” we know and love, well not Titled as such, it is still the big bruiser of the Rebel fleet. The popular and strong Han + C3-PO + Chewie build is possible, a little less potent without Title and Chewie or Lando add their own directions. It can be a super support, a hunter killer, a fortress or a combination of these.

Bare Bones. The Bones Part 1.

1e X Wing Bare Bones (again), some quick sample squads.

The Empire

The Empire has the most distinctive fleet, made up entirely of agile-fragiles or brutish-bruisers. They are the fastest fleet on average (although they also have the slowest ship), the most manoeuvrable with nearly universal Barrel Rolls and Evades on their small ships, but also have the few ships that lack Target Locks or Shields.

We tend to play BB to a scenario with canon logical squads, which can stretch the Empire a little, functioning best with a mix of ships. Some of these may seem rigid and a little simplistic, but in BB, they are all viable.

The Tie Fighter.

Why is it, the bad guys like German WW2 Tiger tanks, WW1 Dr1 Fokker Fighters and Imperial Interceptors get our radar pinging?

The basic Tie fighter is the Imperial staple, the original swarmer (which is a thing again in BB), but also the ideal squad filler. These things move well, have no real manoeuvre weaknesses and can Roll or Evade.They “pop” easily and are offensively tame, but are cheap so come in numbers, have empowering pilots and speed.

The Obsidian Wall

18 Tie Fighter; Howlrunner (8)

15 TF; Night Beast (5)

15 TF; Winged Gundark (5)

4x 13 TF; Obsidian Squadron Pilot (3)

The classic swarm. They work best in small self supporting sub-groups.

The Tie Striker.

The late comer, the planetary defence fighter is as different to the Tie Fighter as you will get. Slow, but highly manoeuvrable, the Striker gives an Imperial squad a very different feel. The only ship outside of a few Scum able to execute S-Loops as well as a rare speed 2 K-Turn, so it likes to and can stay close. No shields, less agile than other Ties and the slowest ship in BB, this thing hits hard and twists and turns like few others.

The Tie Interceptor.

The Interceptor is a Tie Fighter after a commando school regime. The only ship in BB with natural Roll, Boost and Evade Actions, as well as more green moves than most, it can be hard to nail down.

Offensively, it is basically the same as the Striker, but most of the Pilots are arc dodgers.

Raiders of the Dodged Arc

25 Tie Interceptor; Turr Phennir (7)

27 TI; Soontir Fel (9)

23 TI; Lt Lorrir (5)

24 TI; Tetran Cowell (7)

The Tie Advanced.

The Advanced breaks away from the previous ships in a few key areas. Unlike most it has a Target Lock, Shields and some Ordnance making it a natural Imperial comparison tool to the X-Wing. The Homing Missile is limited to the Empire in BB, taking the place of the Advanced Targeting System upgrades that BB bans (no Titles).

The Black List

34 Tie Advanced; Vader (9) + Homing Missiles

17 Tie Fighter; Mauler Mithiel (7)

18 TF; Dark Curse (6)

16 TF; Back Stabber (6)

14 TF; Wampa (4)

The Tie Bomber.

The only true Ordnance platform in BB, the Bomber is two Tie Fighter fighters stuck together, becoming a much less slippery and slower ship, but gaining the TL action and 5 Ordnance slots as well as a large ship’s Hull points.

How much you want to load them up with is tricky and very dependant on a sound squad strategy, but with no Ordnance safety nets in this form of the game, these are the only ships able to send sustained and varied pain at their enemy.

Cluster Flock

21  Tie Bomber; Deathfire (3) + Cluster Mines

27  TB; Gamma Vet (5) + Cluster Mines + Cluster Missile

2x 26 TB; Gamma Pilot (4) + Cluster Mines + Cluster Missiles

The Lambda Shuttle.

The iconic Lambda may have surprised early X-Wing players, offering the first true support ship in the game. The Shuttle was slow, but could pack a Cannon and a System upgrade and two Crew. all a stretch for the Empire previously.

The Pilots offer the now much rarer, thus more enticing, support options in BB like sharing TL’s with the bulk of Imperial ships that lack them, drawing enemy TL’s from these fragile ships or take a friends Stress like a passive Biggs allowing them their many Actions. They also add a tough and cheap ride to the powerful, if sparse Crew options*.

The VT-49 Decimator.

A brute in BB, the Decimator is like a Falcon that did too many supplements. The only ship in BB with no Agility without help and one of two with a three dice Primary Turret, three Crew slots (so Palpatine and Vader can share a ride), Bombs and Torps it is a squad defining ship.

Legends of the Empire

45 Lambda; Col Kagi (8) + Reinforced Deflectors + Palpatine + HLC

55 Decimator; Admiral Chiraneau (8) + Proton Torps + Vader + Kallus

How Bare Bones Is The X-Wing Cupboard?

Bare Bones X Wing is exactly that, the game stripped back to the bits that matter, the elements added only for the game, not for simulation of the story or a game true to the games original elegant concepts, are removed.

So, looking at some of the ships in the game, what is left?

The X-Wing, the namesake of the game and possibly the most recognisable fighter (or tied with the……. Tie?) is the best example of what is what went wrong.

Repositioning is the big issue with some of the early ships. The X-Wing has a decent dial, nothing wrong with it, but it lacks the ability to reosition as an action. No Roll, no Boost, not even an Evade, it can Focus or Lock, or sacrifice it’s action for a K-Turn.

Fixes were many.

Flight Assist Droid, Vectored Thrusters and Engine Upgrade, S-Foils, Expert Handling all addressed the issue in one form or another, but felt redundant or tacked on. These became so confusing, along with Integrated Astro-mech, now considered a standard fit-out that the Title Renegade Refit was created to allow two Mods and cheaper EPT’s. Layers upon layers.

This type of thing was the catalist for second edition.

Pilots can change that and in BB, they have the right type of feel for the game. Empowering some to break basic game conventions, Talents are now the primary exceptions to most rules. Luke get a cheap Evade to simulate his up to now dormant Force powers, Garvin shares Focus like a good leader, Biggs draws fire (maybe he should have been named Will), the rest have mostly offensive benefits, like stripping targets of their defences or gaining free TL’s.

Droids are next, playing the role of the Rebel point of difference.

In BB, we have settled on named Droids only, for two reasons.

The logic of an ace pilot getting a droid that may give them an edge, but then miss out on the equally useful manoeuvre or other benefit the generic Droid gives rankles, so the choice was to drop the generics or drop the named.

For a while Flight Assist and Targeting were the only choices, simple and effective. The X-Wing would get FA and the Y-Wing took the Targeting, but not always if packing Blaster Turrets. Limited, but effective. Too limited.

We even toyed with adding just the most basic Mods, but the pullover started to unravel and the original BB concept was under threat.

We went named in BB for variety and to story support. Matching Pilots to Droids just made sense. It also kept the ships in line with their equivalents as the Tie Advanced and Kihraxz were given no such life line. Basically, each named pilot can have a running mate, often as they did in the movies.

The other less imperative consideration was a desire to live with the ships as designed, with called out rare exceptions rather than blanket fixes being allowed. Why have a ship with no Roll and Boost option take a Droid that provides them to each ship? Makes no sense.

Ok, so eight named pilots give the ship some rule breaking exceptions, nine named Droids add more, Torpedoes can add punch, but otherwise the humble X-Wing as made.

Anything else?

Support.

Add Pilots like Lando, Jan and Kyle or crew like Jan, Kyle or Leia and you have more exceptions. With the Rebels in particular, team synergy is paramount.

Now doesn’t that feel right.

This may result in a ship that seems pretty underwhelming or even boring, but remember, BB is designed to even out the playing field and give new gamers a fair go as well as cure X-Wing tournament fatigue.

There is a lot to be aware of in the full game, often enough to give even a moderately experienced player an edge and some builds can defy logic. Wings of Glory, Blue Max etc get by without masses of upgrades, even this reduced offering is more than most.

This is and always was the base line, so how do others compare.

The Kihraxz fighter, the Scum answer to the X-Wing came a later, but still suffered from later game neglect and some drastic fixes. These fixes came in the form of three-reduced cost Mods with Vaksai Title. Talk about a blanket answer to any future issues.

A strong triplet, even stronger as a quintet.

The Kihraxz is otherwise a slippery version of the X-Wing. It has similar stats, a second speed 5 K-turn, the lack of a 1 straight and tighter turns standing out. It has better Hull, but weaker Shields (A Scum trend).

Points of difference, but otherwise similar over all.

Pilots are more aggressive, predatory even. Talonbane has a clean and efficient combat edge, Viktor Hel struggles in this form to get his to trigger, so he switches to a stand-off then strike than close stalking. Graz works well, Jostero may be even better, the Black Sun Ace is just a decent pilot now and the Cartel Marauder gets to enjoy its 5 ship squad advantage over it’s equivalents.

The major differences come in Illicit replacing Droid and Missiles instead of Torpedoes.

In BB, upgrades are reduced or factionally limited to popular, straight forward and BB relevant ones, but the Scum have plenty to pick from and with no named ones, unlimited choice. There are also a handful of named Salvaged Astromechs and Systems, but ships that use these are few.

Like the Rebels, anything beyond these options is supplied by support ships. Not team players many of the Scum take rather than give, but there are synergies that break many constraints.

The Empire?

The Tie Advanced is the Imperial equivalent to these.

The easiest way to empower the Advanced is a cheap Tie Fighter wingman.

The Yin to the other ships Yang, the Advanced sacrifices one attack dice for an Evade, Barrel Roll, speed 5, agility 3 and a better overall Dial. Not a bad deal.

Hard hitting is traded in for much harder to hit.

It does not get Systems upgrades without its Title, but X1 is a little too powerful and a generic Title. As well as a different dynamic to the X-Wing and Kihraxz, it has several advantages over lesser Tie’s with Ordnance, a Target Lock and Shields to it make it a better match for it’s direct competition.

So, why no love?

Like the X-Wing, it fell away from competition when better and more appealing ships were launched and the X1 Title was hidden behind the Imperial Raider Huge ship expansion price wall, making it for some a $100 card.

Vader is a stand out, now even more so in BB and the other pilots are also allowed some long awaited appreciation.

The Empire also gets Advanced can fit Homing Missiles, restricted to the other factions and a good fit for the “Advanced” Imperial.

Support for the Advanced and other Tie’s is sparse but powerful. Palpatine and several Lambda Pilots, and a few Tie Fighter pilots, Vader (Crew) and Kallus all empower them more or less.

These are the most reliable, but possibly most pedestrian ships in BB.

Other ships?

Every ship in BB is filling a specialist role. The Tie Interceptor (agility), A-Wing (speed), Tie Bomber (payload), Y-Wing (Turret), Tie Striker (close quarters), Star Viper (arc dodging) etc, all have their “thing” and unlike in full noise X-Wing, they retain their points of difference.

The agility king vs one of the only Turret packing small ships.

It sometimes feels to me like the core ships and pilots were designed very harmoniously to fit the movies character roles, the other elements were added later for the game alone and I get that.

Building the perfect squad and winning comps is why some come to the game, but that quickly drowned out the other reason, which is simulation and casual play.

Yet to disappoint or show it’s cracks, BB has some dud squad builds sure, but few and the culprit is often a poor plan or play. Even the soft expectation that each squad comes with a “please explain” does not seem to limit players from enjoying their games.

The Last Gaming Year In Retrospect

The simple answer to this is probably “not much to say or see”.

The last year or 18 months has been a very low point in this hobby for me, but has also had some expansion, some of which added to that low point feeling, some still excites.

The good.

I discovered the true value of the Cthulhu based RPG Delta Green and built up an impressive collection. I appreciate the one edition consistency and all things in print at once dynamic here. Sick of chasing hard to get bits of systems in flux (see below-several times). I could have gone just hard cover books, which would have been neat, but ended up with the soft covers for most adventures as they were easier to hunt down.

Never liked the covers, but bought the first book years ago. On further investigation and thanks to it constantly coming up as a D100 pearl, I jumped in and dozens of books later have broken its back.

Delta came from a d100/Call of Cthulhu binge that netted me a good chunk of 7e, a few more for earlier editions of CoC that were missing and a “tidy up” of my Mythras/Legend and BRP collections (Destined, Luther Arkright, Deus Vult etc).

The thing about Cthulhu is, the bulk of the game is scenario books and campaigns. No other system has this 5%/95% dynamic.

One system to rule them all.

These types of products coming together are exciting.

Warhammer FRPG 4e was a nightmare three years in the making, but is over as of just a few days ago with additions late in the game I did not even see coming. Apart from breaking my golden rule of avoiding big, glossy, often flawed or soon to be out of date systems, it is overly complicated and smacks of all things “obsessive-compulsive” in me, but after a lot of waiting and a slimly avoided negative experience at the end of it all, I now have the full “Enemy Within” campaign, with some support adventures.

The last module is still shrink wrapped! Something always missing from these re-makes is the reality that the teenager who bought the original in the gritty early days of the hobby is not the person buying the new version, so they miss on two counts, the nostalgia and the nostalgic. I find the game has elements of the feeling I originally felt, but it is too rules laboured and I would rather cheaper printing with no omissions.

This was something I missed the first time around in 1-2e (1980’s) and combined with the annoyingly required rules fixes (no shields, combat advantage, magic balance, a lack of monsters etc) in the new books, it now feels complete.

Happy?

Way past caring to be honest, but I am sure it will sink in.

Other RPG’s have been a mixed bag. The One Ring, almost complete at time of its sudden ending is being kept as source materiel for a D100 conversion (actually really easy to do), as is my perfect Mouse Guard set. I will not be chasing the new version of TOR.

Another stalled project, the Savage World-Pathfinder blend, is also finally finished. Excitement turned into a “could care less” wait for the last book, but it has potential.

This is a perfect melding of Savage Worlds (faded with me otherwise), some old DnD 3/4e counters, maps and battle mats and a more approachable form of the standard DnD game. A bit like 13th Age, it is more aligned to my take on the world’s oldest RPG.

The Zweihander series are nice to finally have, but faded pretty quickly. The fact is, in this family of games, the flawed Warhammer 1e is still my favourite.

Star Wars Destiny was a real brain fade. Way too much money and time spent chasing this F#%&ed up idea, but a symptom of my too much money, not enough time period early in the year. Compensating for lost time with over spends is a thing, watch out for it.

Turns out, after shedding unwanted excess, I have a decent set, enough to split it into three defined periods, cover most characters (with 2 dice) and their supports. Not perfect, but close enough.

Apart from the cheap boxed sets and blister packs, I chased a couple of Vader cards and paid too much, but I got sick of losing out at the roulette game of opening boxes of blisters and adding to the waste. As of now, I have about 100 redundant cards and twenty or so Dice (less than 10%), so not too bad and apart from Vader, the spread of cards was fair.

It really reminded me the futility of chasing games based on blister boxes for rare cards, the over inflated second hand market this creates and why I sometimes hate the way this hobby is going.

The switch from games room to photo studio was dumb, but needed to be done at the time. The reality is, this type of studio thing needs to be portable, or don’t bother. Switching the room back, de-commissioning my old desktop Mac and converting the space into a bigger and improved painting area, then re-designing my games table (modular and removable), all resulted in a feeling of things coming right again after a long period of feeling a bit lost. Ironically, the photo studio is still possible, in the games room.

The fact is, my mental state is always healthier when I can bounce from one hobby to another as the mood takes me. Being locked into a “photography only as job, hobby and release” was just not cutting it. I need family, pets, exercise, music, painting, gaming in several forms and photo/video to feel settled, not just one above all.

I cannot remember the last time image making felt fresh*.

Board games have been mixed.

Meg and I used to play a lot, but lost the bug sometime between losing interest in Star Trek Catan and flogging 7 Wonders Duel to death. We fixed the coin issue for that and any other game by hoarding 500, 1 Yen coins from our trips (a forgotten resource). These are theme agnostic, light, cheap (less than 1c au each) and have little other use.

I would love to get her into Unmatched and hope to entice her via the excellent “Tales To Amaze” expansion as a team-up game (she liked Pandemic), that is not only clever and straight forward, but so far unbeaten.

This one keeps giving, pre-orders coming through quickly and the quality does not waver.

I intend to clear out and consolidate then concentrate on the games types, or more the specific games I like.

These include historical minis, some board games and reduced collections of TT mini games like some X Wing etc. Attack Wing has already has a massive cull and I like it more for that, Destiny will be split with a friend, for both our benefits.

*Ed. This was a long lost post (September), interesting in hindsight, but it seems leaving the paper has re-invigorated my other interests and yes, image making does feel fresh.

Layers, The Building Blocks Of X-Wing First Edition

Last one, promise.

First ed X Wing (1e) has been a passion for a while (no kidding). Not the play as much as the play dynamic re-designs.

I have the greatest respect, maybe be even adoration for the core game, the premise, the balance of the early waves and overall feel. It looks great and plays well.

It was broken at several later stages, something that tends to happen when the original premise is sound, but not suited for the multiplying effect fiddling with all its variables can do. For tournament gamers, this was an on again-off again thing and they enjoyed the constant adaption, well most did, some got tired and moved on, but for canon adherents (like me), it went off the rails well before I even became involved with it.

Ignorant at first, I just went with it, but over time I became less interested in the buildfirst-play second mentality (it is a game, but it is also potentially a simulation), much as I did with Attack Wing and others. Some things made sense, others seemed to be “tacked on” for gamesmanship only or to cover previous mistakes.

Ironically, it was often the things thatI like, such as printed on card upgrades, costs, effects that were its undoing. Endless FAQ, home brew card reprints, point cost values shifting and older ideas just not cutting it any more meant often more card board was left in the box than used.

I was enjoying Wings of Glory, Check Your Six, Blue Max with almost no upgrades, no clutter, no shifting of the goal posts, so why did X-Wing and Attack Wing rankle?

The tactical game is much the same, but options make it more involved, more complicated, especially for new players, too many choices, too many traps, so experienced players have an edge.

Add something or someone almost nobody has heard of to a little known ship, which may throw the tournament circuit out of balance and make that ship the “must fly”, add an even less likely fix, fix that fix etc, all while side lining the main players of the saga and you have a recipe for a split support base.

At the very end of 1e, there was some balance, but within the extreme limits of the mechanics and some fixes were pretty odd-over obvious even, many certainly straying from canon and the games original base line was forgotten.

Flying the ships should be the priority, not tricky list building, actions should be like gold, but there should be a bank limit set on how much gold can be used.

In BB for example (below), a two action ship is the ideal, the “Ace” move, but also the limit.

Two layers; the ship and it’s Pilot Talent or upgrade or the Talent and upgrade of another. A third layer may occasionally be available, but rarely and often not in ideal combinations, making the fringe ships and pilots more useful. Actions may change, shift in turn order and free actions may be situationally available, but chains of these and other dice mods are restricted.

Some (many) ships lack strong re-positioning. This is troublesome to many and some thought has been put into fixes at various levels. The X-Wing is over serviced in that area, no fewer than 6 different ideas put forward (1 EPT, 1 Droid, 3 Mods), but each comes with their catch. The reality is, you cannot have good fixes without opening the door to bad ones and drawing the line is the trick.

How to fix?

We have six “layers” of X Wing 1e on offer. There are also some little side projects over and above the core six, but six core ideas.

The idea is limiting or removing the “bad” bits, hero-ing the good.

Layer 1

“Classic”

This one is a little different to the others, limited in perview, not options.

Here come Vader and Mauler.

The ships from the original three movies, limited to the squadrons that were present. Red, Rogue, Gold, Grey, Green and Blue vs Black, Obsidian, Scimitar and the 181st Wing.

Only personalities are admitted in Crew and Droids etc, and Droids are pilot matched.

The rogues gallery of bounty hunters (you know, the picture from Empire Strikes Back), the Falcon, some other bits. These are built out with pre-builds and named Titles.

Droids, Illicit and Systems are matched to ships, crew available are all known quantities, Ordnance kept to the basics. The only exceptions to Named Droids are a single Salvaged for Dengar, an R2 for Wedge so he flies better, and an R5 for Horton so he lives longer (Dutch gets R5-P9).

I intend to do some pre-built cards with pics.

There is nothing for tournament builders here, it is all support for the story.

Layer 2

“Bare Bones”

The first of the true “strip it down and build it back up” formats, Bare Bones is very different to Classic. Each faction has a representation of their basic ship types (pretty much up to wave 3 with select bits from later waves, especially Scum), but are not now limited to the movies, allowing other options for balance and better representation of their factional theme.

The Scum get the Kihraxz, Z-95, Star Viper, as well as the Nasties from above, with all their pilot options. Scum are now broken down into sub-factions (Black Sun, Hutt Cartel, Binayre Pirates, Mercs and Bounty Hunters).

The Rebels get the X, A, B, Y-Wings, the HWK-290, Custom YT-1300 and YT-2400.

The Empire gets the Tie Fighter, Advanced, Bomber and Interceptor, with the Lambda and Decimator for support.

Upgrades are limited to named Droids and Crew (the assumption is the generics are always there, but characters add something), a handful of Systems and Illicit (the clean playing, popular ones). There are no Titles, EPT’s or Mods.

Pilots like Vader (2 Actions), Tyco (ignores Stress), Jake (Focus > Roll/Boost action), assists like Jan, Palpatine, Roark, Kyle, Lando, Leia, Howlrunner etc are all highly valued as they are the first and often the only exceptions to the game mechanics as written.

Ordnance is faction limited and heavily reduced to the efficient options and in the interest of simple squad building, anything with added complications is dropped (Ion, tractor, jamming, harpoon effects), so Advanced Proton Torps, Homing Missiles, Cluster Mines, TLT’s and HLC’s are king. Rampant TLT’s are limited to often sluggish ships, HLC’s to large ships and Ordnance has no failsafe’s or re-use.

The ships fly as designed unless a Pilot or Droid/System/Illicit upgrade allows for an exception and faction flavour is intact.

21 Ordnance, 13 Droid, 12 other, 25 Crew for 21 ship types (and all pilots unless their Talent is EPT related). Plenty to pic from, but nothing uber powerful or over complicated.

Layer 3

“Legends”

This is possibly the perfect middle ground option.

Ships are added as well as more names, pushing into the “Rebels” and animated universe. Limits are still set at the basic five actions and named Droids/Crew, but some effects are re-introduced as well expanding Ordnance, Illicit and System choices as well as Named Titles.

The Scum get the Fang Fighter, their versions of the Y-Wing and HWK-290, the M3 and Scurrg. The named Titles for their gang of scum make all the ships more powerful, but also more expensive.

The Rebels have their cheap swarmer Z-95, the E-Wing, ARC-170, regular YT-1300, VCX-100 and Attack Shuttle. The Falcon, Outrider and Moldy Crow are welcome additions.

All the big names, Pilots, Ships and Crew.

The Empire get the Tie Advanced Prototype, Punisher, Defender and Aggressor.

This still avoids the EPT, Mod and the generic Title quagmire, but with Tractor and Ion effects, Harpoon Missiles, Bomblet Generator and Unguided Rockets for some unlimited Ordnance options and fewer factional limits, the choices and tactics have massively expanded, especially in board control and team coordination.

The Rebels alone get 9 more Crew and the three named Titles that seriously enhance many ships (but are limited to the actual pilots that flew them).

Quickly becoming a favourite, you get all the fun, the names and more of the game’s mechanical variety, without the over bearing, multi-layer crunch and there is a little shift towards smarter and more involved play.

Layer 4

“Primaries”

“Primaries” is possibly where this all started, the full game with the bits identified as “broken” removed (EPT’s, Mods, Titles).

No ships are added, but generic Crew, Droids and many other upgrades are back in. Crucially, still no EPT’s, Mods or Generic Titles as these are the bit where it gets dicey-so to speak.

Layer 5

“Expanded”

“Expanded” lifts the hard ceiling of the base 5 actions, which brings plenty of ships into play including the Rogue One waves and single card Huge ships. Reload, SLAM, Reinforce, Cloak, Rotate, Jam etc add many layers of complication to the game, so this is where the experienced players play.

The Scum get the Kimogila, Lancer, C-Roc cruiser.

The Rebels get the U and K-Wings, GR-75 Transport, Auzituck, Sheathipede and Captured Tie.

The Empire has a change of feel with the Reaper, Striker and Gozanti.

The inclusion of single card Huge ships means many more upgrades are available, Teams, Cargo, Hard Points, but Mods, EPT’s and generic Titles are still out.

Layer 6

“Full Noise”

Had to be, all the bits, but as mitigation for the over the top builds possible, some are still limited to Title > actual Pilot, upgrade > Faction.

Sidelines

“Aces High”

This is a group of little sub-games also, often to allow full use of the neglected EPT’s etc, but limit the range of ships available. Fighters only, often grouped into “Big Three’s” of like similar ships like the X-Wing/Kihraxz/Tie Advanced, A-Wing/Interceptor/Star Viper or Fang/Defender/E-Wing with all the trimmings.

There may now be the Virago and a Mk2 in this pack with Auto Thrusters, PTL, Expert Handling etc.

Rock-Paper-Scissors = X

I often use the term rock-paper-scissors when taking about the elegance of the first edition X-Wing game. I am talking about the core elegance, not the out of control layering issues the game had towards its end.

What I mean by that is the base game uses a series of ship characteristics and capabilities that are balanced out against a attack-defence-manoeuvre dynamic, which are all a few contained layers of supporting extras.

I will illustrate this better with the evolution of the second edition of the game as my proof of concept.

The games basic principles seems to have two levels.

I will call these core-cannon or “logical” and game-centric or “illogical”.

The logicals are;

The Ship

As it sounds. the ship has a manoeuvre dial, an action bar, upgrade slots all based on Star Wars cannon. fast ships are fast but fragile, tough ships are slower, some ships are weapons platforms, others run bare bones.

The designers did a very good job in the earlier game of keeping these balanced and relevant to both the game and the feel of Star Wars.

The Imperials are generally fast, agile and fragile, or brutish and cumbersome. Rebels are the all-rounders and the Scum bring their bag of tricks to generally less advanced feeling ships. The Kihraxz, X-Wing and Tie/Advanced are good examples of this, each faction holding true to this base line.

In 2e all ships were placed on a more equal footing, removing the early release ship-later release ship game imbalance and have generally more Actions and more logical ones.

The Pilot

The pilot adds the all important skill value that determines initiative and if decent enough also a talent. Like the ships, there seems to be a lot of thought put into these, each pilot having the one unique thing that makes them stand out and fits their resume. Most exceptions to the game concepts that I like most are pilot talents and even The Force (Vader/Luke etc) or Robotic efficiency (Guri) are decently represented.

In 2e these stayed much the same, often changed only to suit the newer games mechanics or fix unforeseen issues, but Force was made an upgrade, robotic characters were handled differently and some glaring issues were fixed.

Crew

Like Pilots, Crew are the secret sauce that allows exceptions and character into the game. Han and Chewie, Jan and Kyle, Lando and Nien, Palpatine and a pack of killers, all add special abilities that sometimes synergise best with the Pilots we most associate with them.

Like pilots, in 2e Crew make a little more sense and fit the mechanics better, but the dynamic is the same.

Droids/Illicit/Systems

These are the factional or specific ship break-out upgrades that make certain ships stand out and tend to reinforce factional and design age differences. Illicit allow the Scum to add enormous variety to their otherwise similar ships. Systems allow the “new breed” to directly effect core game concepts and Droids are the Rebel pilots “fix it” option, the Scum also getting a small choice here. We allow the Tie Advanced the Advanced Targeting Computer Systems upgrade, but at full cost only.

Reduced and streamlined in 2e, many of the later additions are factored in to the ships as is.

One is cheap, fast and agile, the other has advanced features, can load up a lot of ordnance and has some tricks. All have their place.

Ordnance

Weapons add more punch than standard ships usually have, some considerably more, but they are limited and often one-use or very expensive. Being optional, it is often a matter of loading up a single death-basket, spreading the love/hate or even going ship only, with a different plan in mind like distraction. An optional rule in our games is to hide upgrade cards until used, so you could field a Tie Bomber, load it high with…..bluff, then use it as a blocker, while hitting your opponent with something nasty from left field.

Reduced and streamlined in 2e and some of the really over powered ones are gone or blunted.

The illogical* levels are;

Modifications

I really struggle with these as I feel they take away the clean uniqueness of the ships and sometimes the Pilots also. If a ship cannot do something, then leave it at that. If a Pilot can offer an exception, then take that as the special little snowflake it is. As an example, with Vectored Thrusters every small ship can Barrel Roll, so that becomes a “so-what” or more dangerously a “mad if you don’t” option, effectively re-designing most of the ships as made.

To add to this, in the later game, some of these made others redundant or confused things, many were cost “0”, so a mandatory build and a few just felt like they were a patch.

These are still in the 2e game, but a little better handled and some of the crazy ones, the poor fixes and odd choices are gone or built right in to the core ship.

Elite Pilot Talents

Same as above. You have superior Pilots with superior abilities, then offer similar skills to all those Pilots again, either allowing for an exaggeration or a negation of the Pilots special-ness. From a game perspective EPT’s were often the build defining super upgrade that had a tendency to break balance and one of the upgrades that 2e severely restrained.

Heavily reduced in both power and availability, these are more logical to add to Pilots as a one-off trick of squad tactic, but I still dislike them.

Titles

These come in two forms, named and generic. The named ones are basically Mods outside of legal, or “ghost ship” extra abilities attributed to the thing that makes ship “X” special like the Falcon gaining Evade, which I would have thought was down to the Pilot and Crew. Generics are even worse, often only existing to fix game balance issues that other upgrades introduced.

Generic Titles were basically internal game system upgrades or fixes for them.

It is interesting to note that all three of these in particular have gone in a very different direction in the second edition game. There are named Titles, usually making more sense, but the generics are no longer needed so are dropped. Most changes absorbed into the 2e ships.

The last is Tech, which not bad by design, just limited to later ships, so irrelevant basically.

Examples;

The Tie Interceptor in this most basic version of the game** is the only ship that has all three of the manoeuvre based actions available (Boost, Roll, Evade) as well as speed white 5, pilots that tend to hero these and a huge array of green moves. It is fragile with no shields and has no ordnance options or Target Lock***. It is the Shrike.

The A-Wing is even faster, the fastest ship in the game, has the TL action, but looses Barrel Roll, so one in-one out. One pilot has the Roll Action as their unique thing, being all the cooler for it, being one of the few ships in the game with all five Actions. It has Ordnance and shields and lots of greens moves. It is the Sparrow Hawk.

The Tie Advanced is like the A-Wing, just not as fast losing the Boost action, but has Roll, TL and Evade (see the dynamic here of four actions-always including Focus-but never or rarely all five). It also has Missiles, so it is like the A-Wing, but more about re-positioning than speed. It is the Eagle.

The Scum generally lack speed, but gain slipperiness and tend to trade off Shields for more Hull. Using the Star Viper as an example of an Interceptor style ship, you get speed white 4 with Boost, Target Lock, Roll and S-Loops (Dalan gets the Talon Roll) with Torpedoes. Slower but trickier.

Patterns form and balance is retained, mostly and that rock-paper-scissors thing comes out. Unlike Chess, the game has some built in variety, but not too much and perfect balance is boring.

The manoeuvres, actions, upgrades and pilots of this paired down game still give the player almost unlimited options within a 100 point squad. As a game it is sound and deep, as a simulation, cannon is adhered to. What they do not do is allow a multiple stacked Action economy to rule.

As an added variable we allow both main factions to “hire” Scum, but as Scum are also broken into sub-factions (and un-aligned), they are limited to a main and one other.

Actions are an intrinsic part of the game. They are often the advantage some ships and better pilots have or take away from others, but in the later 1e meta, stacking Elite Pilot Talents, Mods, Titles with the above meant that more actions won the game, all else became increasingly irrelevant.

The fix for this was basically 2e, with the benefit of hindsight.

The beauty of the simpler game is the ease with which it’s different game elements work together and the power of the exceptions. This was the core idea of the game in the first place and it was brilliant.

The Y-Wing for example looks pretty boring in 1e, but it is cheap and has a Droid, Turret and Torps, so it’s role as stable weapons platform that needs an escort is retained. Plenty there from a squad perspective and no other ship is startlingly better overall.

“Hey guys, looks like they want us again”.

Darth Vader with two Actions is the stand out as he should be, elegantly mimicking his Force power.

The layers of ship > Pilot > (limited) upgrades > team building make for a great game, a sensible and easily grasped game, but like Chess, easy to teach does not mean easy to master.

A new player has all they need to remember in front of them, without needing to be aware of game breaking and illogical combinations more experienced players may employ. Build a squad from ships and Pilots, add the odd upgrade, and go. More experienced players will have an advantage, but not an extreme one.

It comes down to play on the table, not the mini game that is tournament squad building. This is roughly where the second edition of the game was going-more flying, less game breaking.

Some ships and pilots that tend to be forgotten also come back into consideration.

Thweek with his Mimic and ID-88D Crew can shake things up often being the only way a ship can do something it cannot.

Pilots who can subvert the core game mechanics are also notable, like Tycho who ignores Stress for Action use, Kaa’to who steals Actions, Manaroo who shares them, Targeting Mechs that allow TL’s after red moves (making Y-Wings more adventurous), Soontir Fel who gains a Focus when stressed, or Guri who gains one when at Range 1 (being a calculating robot assassin thingy).

The thing I like most in these games is the feeling of things making sense, of feeling right. Feeling Star Wars like I remember I felt in the theatre in the 70’s.

I guess the argument could also be made for even more options to be allowed, but then it would get harder to balance, harder to master and more expensive I guess.

Not sure I got my point across fully, but the X-Wing 1e game with some upgrades removed and only the ships with the basic four Actions, provides for a logical, balanced and fun experience that avoids all the pitfalls that broke the game and forced the second edition into being.

*

In my perfect universe, the Pilot and ship would be separate with large and small ship skill (or a limit like Luke = Rebel/small, so as to avoid silly mixes like Attack Wing) and Pilots could have more than one natural “talent”, teams could have a tactic option rather than EPT, upgrades would be less limited, maybe a budget of space, or getting increasingly expensive or they are active/inactive, which is something we allow for Attack Wing games, the ability to buy more upgrades, but only have upgrades equal to upgrade icons “active”. This allows Kirk to choose which of his clever tactics he wants to select from, not have to decide pre-battle which to leave on the shelf, but he still has to pay for them.

*Things that are there for the game not the back story.

**In most of the various limited version of X-Wing, we remove the main culprits often abused of game breaking and gamesmanship or poor attempts at game balance, EPT’s, Mods and Titles.

***In our paired down versions of the game with no EPT’s or Mods, no ship has all the Actions.

"I Had A Dream I Got Everything I Wanted". X Wing Second Edition (etc), What Do I Think?

Second edition X-Wing has a special place in my heart.

Have a lot of it.

Never played it.

Confused?

Second edition did a few things, some good, some so-so, most down to me.

It enabled me to get into first edition very cheaply, in fact it was responsible for me jumping in the first place, but I jumped backwards into 1e. I picked up 5 (!) first edition TFA starter sets for about $100au, then against my better judgement (if there is such a thing), I grabbed lots of other bits from the original game/movie period just as cheap, or even cheaper.

It started innocently enough like many of my projects with a sensible “taster”, that turned into an all you can eat banquet, meat sweats and sometimes indigestion (SW Destiny). Then, usually after a period of WTF just happened recovery, I settle into the smug reality of it all being done and dusted.

I digress.

By going first edition TFA only, because I am a stickler for adhering to cannon, I felt I could keep it real.

The starters offered two Tie/FO’s, which were more robust and interesting than the regular Tie with a Tech slot, S-Loop, Target Lock and a single shield and a T70 X-Wing which was also tougher than the old one, moved better with a Talon Roll and also has a Tech slot, so the ships as were had more options than the older variety, more table presence, looked great and had most of the things you want in a game.

You needed more than one set, so five was plenty with spares (three was perfect if same-ish).

Then there was a Falcon, the Bomber, Upsilon Shuttle, Tie/SF, Tie/Silencer, so more options and I could even justify some Scum if I blurred timelines a little, or just as easily avoid the faction completely. I liked the new movie, it all felt limited but comprehensive by design. I had a little of everything from the X-Wing game (just) at a decent level of crazy.

Have I mentioned I am more of a Trekkie and already had Attack Wing and several other Trek games??!!

The blurred timelines turned into a fusion of original and new era with some stretches, then some bargains (always a problem, always) pushing things a little more, even allowing for a couple of huge ships (that FFG actually did make official later in 2e). These were by now rare so a must grab at cheap or even normal price, then some original movie ships, a cheap original starter and well……….. .

The low/high point was grabbing some Spanish language ships reasonably (Sabines Tie, a CR-90 and Gozanti), then sourcing the cardboard from Big Orbit cards. I searched, chased, sometimes missed, but found almost everything X-Wing 1e from all the sellers clearing out and some not. My timing was not perfect, that would have been a couple of months earlier, but it was close.

I drew the line at paying “collectors” prices, so I missed the Alpha Starwing, but did grab some of the upgrade cards from that set anyway. The set is almost comprehensive, very deep and satisfying.

I remember (fondly in hindsight, but not so much at the time) luckily getting the last two Tie/Aggressors, two ARC-170’s and a Rebel Transport in captivity in Australia, even stumbling across a new Ghost with Attack Shuttle very late in the piece.

I would like to say this taught me a lesson, coming after a Wings of Glory, Sails of Glory, Attack Wing and Heroes of Normandie binge, but Armada and Destiny proved that wrong.

Star Wars Destiny did however break me.

Annoyingly, probably predictably, second edition even supplied me with vindication for my original pathway.

The now properly segregated TFA factions in the second edition had their own upgrade packs that were the cheapest by far and well balanced for my collection (almost perfectly as it went). One Resistance and two First Order sets and I would have been sorted. One set of ships, effectively two games.

Two more movies came out, so in second edition it followed that more ships would also, like the Whisper, Fireball, Xi, Resistance Transport etc. These fleshed out the TFA period and more support generally and in the cleaner, more organised space that is 2e, it was comprehensive.

It could have been ideal and controlled and limited……maybe even considered sane.

Second edition bought the new A-Wing, Y-Wing, more X-Wings, the Transport, Tie Bombers, Interceptors, even a few janky Scum crossovers etc. All the options available in the game would have been catered for, which is my main aim-full game system representation for maximum game options as cleanly and simply as possible. There was even a blue/red colour scheme theme coming through.

What harm in getting the other upgrade packs, just in case?

These things have a habit of getting scarce you know. I will buy them and put them on the shelf in case 2e becomes a thing with me.

Hmmmm.

I have put the breaks on now. I will continue to get anything TFA period, some Scum (Razor Crest yes, Mining Tie no), but nothing new for the earlier period and I am not touching the prequels, although I do wish I had done that rather than the same period in Armada* as that was never finished.

*

Second edition is all is was meant to be.

More balanced and consistant, flexible, evolving, comprehensive and unlike first edition, little or limited power creep. AMG are doing a good job screwing the pooch, but it matters not, the game is good, the ever changing point costs, build “shape” and rules ambiguity are somewhat irrelevant to a casual gamer.

It came at the wrong time, was handled badly and the price of the new ships is frightening ($35au for a Mining Guild Tie is a lot of money for a filler ship at best). “Oh you can field a half dozen”-for $200au, so what.

Even with the odds stacked against a good roll-out, it still grew the community for a while and some even liked the new direction, but the mob of bloggers and podcasters turned into a trickle, then the game changed hands and the writing was on the wall.

AMG were probably handed a tainted chalice, with a jaded community, COVID and some questionable changes already made, then they made it worse. It all too hard for many.

Thing is, there is nothing wrong with the game, original or the newer version(s). Like Armada it has its dedicated followers, still manages tournaments, still sells product, but like a lot of things, newer, better, shinier are only relevant if people are listening.

For me, second edition means a great and balanced collection of TFA period ships with all the cast and characters of the movies (new movies, new game). A great game with tons of options and even being limited to just three factions (option of Scum), it is all represented. Almost everything 2e has to offer is handled by these two and a bit factions.

First edition has a similar dynamic with the original game and original movies pairing up, but I do keep it streamlined to retain the game’s early balance and feel.

I just need to play them!

TFA even in the first edition, a tack-on at best, also has a small role to play.

I use it as a training suite with no upgrades, because the Tie/FO and T-70’s from the original set, even with just their pilot abilities are a great way of learning the actions and manoeuvres of the game as well as learning how exceptions effect the game. The bulk are “generic” pilots, so squad building could not be easier.

No regrets here, or more accurately, I would have done some things differently in retrospect, but it was exciting**, still feels good and I am glad I jumped. Only Heroes of Normandie gives me the same feeling of accomplishment in this gaming space.

*Armada went much the same path. I thought it would be a good way of doing a limited Armada set using the prequels in limited fashion with a similar dynamic of getting the latest rules, latest layout then stop there. Unfortunately they left us all stranded with incomplete fleets, so I ended up going original movies anyway (see a pattern?).

**Looking more realistically at all of these, I would have done;

• Armada original is a Yes

• Armada Prequel is a no (sunk a bit into this and they failed to do the full range of small ships)

• X Wing original 1e

• X Wing TFA 2e (with 1e clearances as the launching pad).

• X Wing prequel 2e (I avoided this and went Armada, but should have followed through).

A Pointless But Fun Rehash Of Modified X Wing 1st Edition Game Styles

My favourite version of X Wing is still 1e for classic Star Wars, 2e for the newer movies (I have 2e for all, but prefer 1e for the original movies).

I do however, prefer it paired down to a “better” version if itself and seeing as it is a dead system, I see no harm in that. This started as “Bare Bones”, but was joined later by other variants.

Why?

The basic bones of the game (Bare Bones) are brilliant and supremely balanced. It has a real rock-paper-scissors feel over many layers. The 1st edition became unravelled as it grew with newer, basically unknown outside of the Star Wars fanatic circles ship introduced that became so strong that the actual ship the game is named after and most of its bretheren became basically dead in the water. They paid the price of coming first with what felt like a homage to that R-P-S flow, then it all shifted under their feet.

Attempts to re-balance tended to make things worse and there was always a feeling of in-and-out of vogue builds.

There were many miss-steps like Attani Mindlink, the Jumpmaster card changes, several attempts to strengthen the weaker ships, which often led to other attempts etc. The X Wing by the end of 1e had several strong tweaks, but none felt “right”.

The main culprits are;

Elite Pilot Talents, that tend to nullify or double down on the talents the pilots already have. The Pilot talents are thematic, the EPT’s are “game-y”. Soontir, Vader, Wedge, Luke, Han, Jake etc all have that extra something that define them and fit thematically. Adding an EPT to another pilot to give them basically the same abilities or even making them more extreme seems pointless. Why not add two or three more?

Titles, especially generic titles like Vaksai, Tie/X1, several “refits”, all an attempt to make dull ships competitive, creating a power creep spiral that would probably be still going if they had not pulled the plug. Named titles also annoy me a little as it is usually the crew and pilot that give a ship its special powers, not some “ghost ship” special ability. If Han or Chewie fly better than most and have special survival skills, then why add Evade? I feel the same with Star Trek Attack Wing. Why would you add a shield just because it is a named ship?

Lastly are Mods. Probably the most excusable in one way, they are also the most insidious. Ships like the Tie Interceptor and A Wing are meant to be the most agile or fastest in the game, then you add a mod to another ship and that goes out the window. Want everyone to have Boost, then upgrade their engines. Can’t roll, then add Vectored Thrusters. Sure there are mods that can be added to these ships so they can then encroach on others territory (The Interceptor lacks a Target Lock, so add one), but that fine and perfect balance is gone.

There were others like some later droids, but these are treated as singular cases by game “layer”.

As proof of this, almost all the multi action economy, super builds that have dominated over the years have been Mod/EPT/Title based.

Strip these away and suddenly you have a clean, balanced, player tactics and squad support based game with plenty of options, almost infinite actually. It just stays within an envelope that rewards good play and can be picked up by a new player very quickly.

Should be no competition.

My favourite home made sub-variant of 1e is “Skeleton Crew”, which is the second of several “layers” of these reduced formats*.

This list has the core ships with their strengths and keeps the main factional differences strong and clear. Pilots and certain ships shine through, upgrades are kept to a logical minimum. Flying the base ships, warts and all is key, especially in squads.

Without EPT’s, Mods or Titles to “normalise” some design and balance miss-steps in the later game, each ship is there for a reason, with actions limited to the basic four and actions rarely stack beyond two.

Upgrades are made very faction or even ship specific and kept within logical bounds. Flechette and Mangler weapons are Scum, Proton Torps and Rockets are Rebel etc.

*

The Empire, have the dual dynamic of fast and fragile or brutish and cumbersome, so squad balance is key.

The Tie Interceptor is the action/manoeuvre king. No other ship comes natively with all four manoeuvre actions in this form of the game (but loses Target Lock).

The Tie Fighter is the consumate swarmer. Cheap, agile and with plenty of pilots with support benefits. Swarming goes in and out of fashion, but in this form of the game, it is as valid as any other tactic and the array of Tie fighter pilots make for good squad fillers.

The Tie Advanced adds some depth and resilience, while retaining the interceptor feel. This is the line fighter of the Empire exemplifying speed and relatively weak offence, but adding a little defensive depth. The best slot in this form of the game, Vader resides here. As an option the Advanced Targeting Comp System upgrade is allowed, but at 5 pts.

These are the only native white 5 speed ships, all have Barrel Roll and Evade, the Interceptor adding Boost. Offensive options are limited, but they are hard to lock down.

The Tie Bomber is the payload king serving the dual roles of the anti-interceptor heavy hitter and team enforcer. In this form of the game, the Bomber is potentially the hardest hitting ship, but only if they can get that shot off. Having one lurking behind a frustrating swam, to pick off a distracted enemy work well.

The Lambda Shuttle is the true support ship, like a different take on the Bomber. Pilots, Crew and the System upgrades combine to make a good gunship with Target Lock and other assists, a super support or tank. A classic Palpatine/Soontir/Vader build is possible, just not as lethal.

The Decimator Gunship is a squad hub ship, equal parts support and brute. A turret (limited to range 2 and no mods in this form of the game**), 3 Crew slots and the toughest hull make this one of the most substantial ships in this game, but it is a bit of a whale and with the reduced turret range, the squad as a whole becomes a priority.

*

For the Rebels we have the slowest and least manoeuvrable (or interesting) ships overall, but there are some exceptions and plenty of great pilots. You need to be a team player and work those supportive synergies. Droids are paired down to only Targeting and Flight assist for their simple and thematic efficiency.

The X Wing is good enough in this game, which is some of the reasons for it working. Pilots make them solid, even interesting, with some decent resilience and punch. It is a predictable, reliable team player and the obvious “ground zero” ship of the game. Droid choice is limited to Flight Assist or Targeting, giving them limited Roll and Boost options or more fire control, enabling predators and rookies equally.

The A Wing is the speed demon with a punch. Pilots lean towards danger-close tactics so Proton Rockets are the Missile of choice. Like the X Wing and Tie Advanced, a non-EPT/Mod/Title landscape empowers them to an extent and nothing else as green 5 speed.

The Y-Wing is the heavy fighter/payload option for the Rebels. Slow, but resilient, it is like the Tie Bomber, but a better fighter. TLT’s are available in this game, so there are still several options. Droid choice is limited to Targeting Assist only, so they are as sluggish as made, but can still TL after a red move.

These are the work horse fighters of the Rebel fleet, one tough, one fast, one heavy. The limited choice of droids covers what droid do efficiently and R2-D2 can still be used as Crew.

The B-Wing is the other heavy option with a totally different feel to the Y Wing. Actions outside of Focus are thin for the Rebels and the B-Wing has 25% of them (Barrel Roll). Like the Y-Wing it has two Torps, but a Canon and System slot as opposed to Turret and Droid and Advanced Proton Torps. System choices are Advanced Sensors or Fire Control System.

The relatively weak HWK-290 is like a mini Lambda with a turret. The weakest ship as is, it can be a good sniper with TLT, a good support and even a decent mix of several roles. The HWK does add some action economy benefits that in this form of the game become even more powerful. Suitably, the matched Pilot/Crew combos of Jan Ors and Kyle Katarn are strong and logical.

“The Heavies”

The YT-2400 is the mini Falcon by design (and Dash Rengar is a Han Solo-like character) and an answer to the Scum Jump Master. Without its Title it is a turreted gunship with ordnance options, a decent knife fighter and generally tough little ship. Like the B-Wing it has a Barrel Roll option, making it a little unpredictable-for a Rebel.

The YT-1300 (Mod/Falcon only). The Falcon is the beefiest Rebel and one of the toughest ships in this game. It cannot be fully tricked out into the classic builds, but still has options. It can be a defensive monster (Chewie, R2, C3), support (Lando, Leia, Numb) or a powerful fist (Han, Luke, Chewie), but it is probably best as a balanced offering.

*

The Scum are the middle ground faction with some surprises. They have a slow but consistent fleet (speed 4 and 1 boost or a 3 with boost), with some interesting manoeuvres and plenty of upgrades the other two cannot touch. The rolling out of the Scum faction started the unravelling of 1e. If looked at with a fresh, but more reserved eye, it can be balanced and add that something different especially the random element.

We play Scum as mini factions, who may be allied, or individually used by the other two in the main factions.

Black Sun (Viper, Head-hunter, Kihraxz), Binayre Pirates (Firespray, Head-hunter), Tansarri Point (Scyk, Kihraxz), Lok Resistance (Scurrg), Freelancers (the rest);

The Star Viper is the fastest Scum ship thanks to Boost, with S-loop and Barrel Rolls for added slipperiness. With pilot abilities it is even more unpredictable, with Dalan adding a now bespoke Talon Roll option.

Float like a Butterfly, sting like a Viper.

This is the only speed 5 option using Boost, but also one of the three S-Loop capable ships.

The solid Kihraxz is the Scum X Wing with Illicit upgrades instead of Droids and Missiles instead of Torps. Unlike the X Wing, the Kihraxz can be fielded as a no frills, 5 ship heavy swarmer (something they tried to Mod into existence for the X-Wing in the later game) and to me always seems a little more interesting. Like the X-Wing, it about Pilots and team building.

The M3a Scyk is the Scum Tie Fighter. Slightly better rounded, but slower, it cannot be bought in the same quantities so is a decent swarm option.

The two above can do the speed 5 K-Turn, a scum “slippery-slide” move.

The Z-95 Head Hunter is the other Scum swarmer option, as cheap as the Tie, but probably best used slightly heavier with Ordnance and Illicit upgrades for variety. Suicide squad anyone?

The GA-1 Starfighter is often called the Scum B-Wing and with similar specs it would seem that way, but swapping out the Cannon slot for Illicit makes it a very different beast.

The Jump Master 5000 is the Scum YT-2400. A curious mix of small ship manoeuvrability and large ship upgrades. Sporting S-Loops and a native Turret, makes it a kind of Viper/YT-2400/Y Wing hybrid and it is the only one that takes the 4 generic Salvaged Droids allowed.

The YV-666 is the Scum Lambda. The “party bus” is the toughest, least manoeuvrable and possibly least appealing Scum ship, but unlike the YT-1300 or Decimator it is cheap to field and has more options to draw from. It is a ship of many personalities, literally and only Scum ship that can take Jabba.

The Firespray is the bad boy of the Scum fleet with great pilots and plenty of options. It has a dual direction primary and manoeuvres well in close, so a knife fighter like the B-Wing.

This all feels right and produces good gaes for those who like their stories to feel on point (I do).

*Classic, which has only the three original movie ships and Crew characters, very limited upgrades without EPT’s, Mods or Titles, Skeleton Crew, that slightly increases this to a more balanced offering of ships, but no repeats (only Reb HWK-290, Y Wing, Scum Z95), Bare Bones, which adds all 1e ships with the four basic actions only and Expanded, which has all 1e ships and upgrades (except still no Mods or EPT’s), allows the three single card Epic ships, named Titles, but no TFA era ships or the Jump master (no Tech upgrades). Sidecars to these are small groupings of specific ships without upgrade limits like Aces High or Top Twelve, and Flight School which uses the TFA X-Wing and Tie in an introductory, no upgrade game.

**The basic rules mods are; Primary Turrets reduced to R1-2 with normal range mods (R1 bonus).

Unmatched Fun

First game of Unmatched last night with friends new to the game. We went 3-way free for all and even though it was not the most recommended form of the game, it went well.

Using Cobble and Fog, Kira played Dracula, Lee had Sherlock and I grabbed Jekyll/Hyde on the SoHo board.

We started off with me getting caught between both opponents, which bit them both big time as I discovered the power of Hyde when the cards run his way. Burning a couple of Jekyll cards, I dumped 9 damage on Dracula, then hit both with some shared damage and moved away.

Lesson learned, don’t mess with a cornered, card-laden Hyde.

Another lesson learned is some characters play easily, some are harder to master, or so I thought.

Much jockeying of position, a few stray shots from Watson and a little Holmes cleverness. Lee really played the Holmes well, and remember, his first game of Unmatched.

Kira, usually the most cunning player in our group got weakened quite badly, to the point where we basically ignored her, then she started playing cards that recovered health and her lost Wives (minions). Oops, before we could register, she was back in the game at close to full strength.

A revitalised Dracula late in the game was a real threat, but circumstances allowed Hyde to do his thing again on Drac, crushing him when we were all down to about 3-4 cards. A 1 v 1 game would have been over there, but this was 1 v 1 v 1.

Sherlock and Hyde faced off, but Sherlock got the better of the run and was relatively fresh. Brutal, aggressive Hyde was needed to win, but defensive Jekyll cards were all that were at hand as the ultimate schizo got spooked. Sherlock and an untouched Watson finished him off with basically nothing left in the bank.

Close game played well by two novices and a relative newbie. Kira was unlucky to be closest to a mean and slightly lucky Hyde twice and Sherlock/Watson was probably the ideal pairing to make the most of the situation. Still, a close game with 2 characters losing within 2 turns of each other, one after a come back and the game made it to end of the decks, which was a great result.

So, Unmatched, what is the takeaway?

The game is dead simple to learn and teach, deep enough to become obsessive and not overly luck based or just play casually. The games generally have a to-and-fro element, even the ones that up front look oddly unmatched (Squirrel Girl vs T-Rex) and really any character can win any duel, but over repeated plays or with players of different skill, some results are surely more likely. Nobody gets bored, because the play in interactive and limited to a hand of cards each.

Components.

Mixed here.

The boxes are brilliant as supplied. Everything fits including sleeved cards (Villainous-looking at you). If you choose to upgrade your minions to minis, then you have to use the dead space under the inserts, buy a divider solution, or just box them separately.

The cards are top notch, but sleeve them please. A single lost or bent card pretty much ruins a character and many are on limited release (and who wants to buy a game for 1 component), so sleeve, sleeve, sleeve. There are only 30 cards per character, so it won’t cost a packet. If something does happen, I plan to switch from transparent sleeves preserving the art, to solid backed ones allowing proxy or damaged cards to be used.

The main figs are grey and washed. They are nice enough in a world of many awesome minis. I am tempted to paint them to match the art on the minion discs and cards, but will probably settle with more themed colours, then re-washed or stylised contrast paint washes.

From the first Legends set (Tricky Merlin is upside down).

The minion enamel discs are actually pretty nice and for play make sense (when minion figs were introduced in one game with Elektra, a new player struggled to work out who was who). I started to get figs, but cut my losses at Dinos, Cobble and Fog and the first two Marvel sets as figs off Etsy with freight were threatening to out cost the game itself.

The boards annoy me. They are as designed and quite nice to look at, but two things still annoy. The big circles I feel are unnecessary (dots for locations and thin coloured lines for shared areas maybe?), which they themselves basically hint to, with my second annoyance which is repeating the same map with less obvious, but still obvious open circles.

One even has a useless map of where the game board is located in the world. Who gives a f&%k! More game please, less fluff.

In a time when maximising resources, especially effectively free resources is logical and simply good business sense, I fail to see how they cannot double side these maps with two different options?

The Buffy set from memory is the only one with two different sides on one board and the pending Tales to Amaze (they might be two boards, cannot remember, but anyway). Easily adding variety without compromising anything, why not? They could even link boards from different sets or make a tougher, weirder option.

It almost feels like the boards are a blind spot for the designers.

What do I think about the theme?

The really unmatched characters are to me a poor fit, because I am not a competitive gamer and really never asked myself “who would win out of X and Y” when X and Y make no sense. I am more of a simulation-ist gamer, but no problem. We will and have generally played within logical themes by choice, so I have broken them down into these (below).

My journey started with the two base sets, Cobble and Fog and the small 1v1 boxes. Buffy came next, I think becasue it was cheap from a supplier with another set. I then did the Dinosaurs (Three Raptors!), two Marvel sets that seemed to fit and characters I knew (Redemption Row and Hell’s Kitchen), then the new release Houdini v Genie.

Just recently (since Japan), I realised that the pre-ordered “Tales to Amaze”, a set I hope with reinvigorate the game for me as it allows team vs villain or even solo modes, is pending, so I grabbed the three remaining Marvel sets while they are around and bothered to find out who some of the characters are (a push by Marvel to promote their new series it seems).

I would love a Deadpool reprint, but not at $200 ebay rate, Bruce Lee I can skip.

Dark Streets (street level-gritty); Dare Devil, Elektra, Bullseye, Moon Knight, Cloak & Dagger, Luke Cage, Ghost Rider, Golden Bat* and Squirrel Girl.

and/or

Marvel Mayhem (more big name); Black Widow, Black Panther, Spiderman, She Hulk, Dr Strange, Winter Soldier and Ms Marvel.

Dino Disasters; Muldoon, Sattler and the rock band that is T-Rex and the Raptors. The dinos can easily fit into almost any other set like Raptors in the fog or down in the woods.

The Buffy set stays as is. This set is well balanced, but has a bad rep against other characters, only Buffy seen as competitive. Dracula, Bloody Mary, Raptors, Bigfoot etc are all a decent fit.

League of the Extraordinary (Victoriana/horror); Sherlock, Houdini, Tesla*, Annie Christmas*, Invisible Man, Bloody Mary, Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde.

Down to the Woods (British lit themed); Arthur, Robin, Beowulf, Red, Alice. Throw in some Dinos, Bigfoot, Squirrel Girl and maybe Monkey for fun.

Legendary face-off; Sinbad v Genie, Yennenga v Monkey, Achilles v Medusa then mix it up. This is Unmatched at it’s core.

Amazing Tales; Jill Trent*, Martian Invader* (villain of McMinnville).

Urban Legends; Jill Trent*, Mothman* (villain of Point Pleasant).

In both of theses Trent is a logical place holder, but many of the above can come in and the boards are pleasantly neutral time-line wise.

Oriental Heroes; The pending Suns Origin* set with Monkey.

*Still on pre-order.

Ok, so with the benefit of hind-sight, what would I do differently?

Maybe just get the Dinos and the non Marvel or Marvel only sets as these are honestly a good representation of the different character types. Probably Cobble and Fog, Dinos, Buffy and Tales to Amaze would have been fine also giving me three loosely themed groupings (Modern Horror, Dinos and Victoriana). The Marvel sets do feel oddly incomplete, but if I just don’t worry about it it all goes away.

My Attack Wing "Little Fleets"

After shedding the bulk of my AW collection, I am still left with a decent showing, but more specialised, tighter and more on theme.

I have stayed with the original points costs, deliberately avoiding the newer, cheaper ones, staying consistent. These new costs make older ships and builds obsolete, but I am not a gamer more than I am a simulation-ist, so “best buys” are of little interest if it means the ships that fit my vision become poor choices.

I have to admit, nothing puts me off more these days than a nerd-fest of gamers pulling apart any game purely from a win-loose perspective.

I am drawn to the elegance of the base system, the balance inherent in the early offerings and the “Trekki-ness” of the game. My X Wing collection often boils down to this also, using a heavily cut down 1e game, trying to hero both the system and the subject rather than chase competitive “perfection”.

I miss the Scimitar, Enterprise-E and some other bits, but have a solid representative set of the real core ships, the ships that defined the TNG and DS9 franchises*.

I went with a main flagship, support ship, something in a specialist-faction representative and an exotic where I could and it turned out to be both do-able and well balanced. This is sitting so well with me** that I have not been tempted by a few rare faction packs that have emerged recently***.

I need to remember, I sold more than half my collection in a move towards “de-gaming” my life, so lets not get carried away.

Federation

• Main; A Galaxy class Enterprise-D with two builds, one normal-defensive, the other one more of a combat refit from the Fed v Klingon starter I think.

• Specialist; A Nebula class, the T’Kumbra from the Vulcan faction pack. This is the tech heavy ship which also takes Vulcan upgrades making it even more “Spocky”. I also held onto two different “generic” cards for this one.

• Support; The Akira class war pony, Thunderchild, because it is a solid representative of the new order of warships and a good hardliner (and I love the name, inspired I assume from the War of the Worlds ship that valiantly sacrificed itself to save others).

• Exotic; A squadron of fighters, just because they are a different dynamic all together.

Going to probably give the two bigger ships a paint job and/or wash to match the Akira and repainted fighters.

I have all the correct upgrades as well as any duplicates from other sets (2 different Picards, 4 Rikers etc), so each ship and the fleet as a whole is well serviced. This is probably the most balanced, flexible and upgrade powerful fleet, if lacking a real “hammer” ship, as it should be.

The Romulans

• Main; The D’Deridex class is represented by one ship, but the option of the Haakona or Khazara, which similarly to the two Enterprise options, give me a defensive and offensive option.

• Support; The Valdore class Vrax. The Valdore had to go with the Scimitar and Ent-E and the Vrax should have also, but I was keen to keep one. I found when playing a movie based scenario, all three ships were too much for the Scimitar, so it will not be missed. The Valdore is more Klingon like, toothier but more fragile than the D’Deridex.

• Specialist; I kept a single Scout ship, the Vo, but also have cards for the Science vessel Apnex and have just ordered a cheap Talvath (again) for the six powerful tech upgrades I parted with. The Vo is the only agility three ship in this form of my game, with a free evade for not attacking and cloaking, so it is very hard to hit and the Apnex and Talvath are very cheap “one trick ponies” or distraction ships, both very different to each other. The top two are expensive ships, so these little fillers are ideal and allow access to all the funky Romulan tricks.

• Exotic; The little Scorpion fighters were limited to the last Movie (as is the Vrax), but I really like them and they add a Reman vibe.

I like the repaint colour of the Vrax, so the others will likely be at least dual toned (really do not like the cold green on the D’Deridex). There is also a science ship to come.

The Romulans are the sneaky, elusive and tricky faction. I have plenty of surplus upgrades, especially crew and captains including some surplus ones from other, earlier periods (cloaked mines). You will not know what is coming with these guys, which is part of their vibe.

The Dominion

• Main; 4th Division battleship. The big bad of the Dominion.

• Support; 2nd Division battle cruiser. I change the models for these two over because the B/C model is actually bigger than the B/S, which is……..B.S. Nobody cares or even knows and it looks better. The battleship is also faster, which suits the sleeker look of the B/C.

• Specialist; One 5th Wing Attack ship which does double duty as the Robinson in another set.

• Exotic; The Gor Portas Breen battle cruiser, with all its nasty tricks. What a militant bunch they are!

Fairly straight forward except for the Breen ship, this is a simple fleet that likes to run in numbers, hit hard, but can be brittle. Because I had a big fleet with lots of duplicates, they do not lack variety. I have a ton of upgrades for these, no Admiral, but a surplus of crew and Breen weapons.

Excuse the shallow depth of field on these, just lazy. The Dominion fleet is as impressive as it is poorly scaled, but I a also tempte to go all dark blue like the attack ship.

The Cardassians

• Main; The Keldon class Koranak flagship.

• Support; The Kraxon representing the more common Galor class.

• Specialist; The Dreadnaught 4107 from Voyager. This was called out as an Alpha quadrant thing, so it follows they would be retrospectively there. It also fits the brutal, merciless Cardassian feel.

• Exotic; The 1st Wave Hideki fighters, last of the three fighter types and quite strong, more like small ships than fighters.

The other half of the Dominion alliance, these guys are fast, slightly unpredictable and reasonably cheap with a ton of upgrades. Very light on crew (or the need for many), but sporting the only alliance Admiral, the Dominion are over done the other way, so room to swap freely, as they did.

The combined Alliance fleet can field 220 pts in ships and 70 upgrade cards, even if they are a little unbalanced.

Not to be out done by their allies, the Cardassians are even worse scaled (the Dreadnaught on the left should be tiny and a much better fit in the Delta Quadrant set). These are all up for painting review, probably to match the fighters.

The Borg

• Main; The Octagon Queen Vessel in two forms like the Enterprise and D’Deridex, the options here are “legion”.

• Other; Sphere 4270, the work horse. I have a second, but have no room in the points cost for it.

• Specialist; The Tactical Cube 138, the closest thing I have to a giant Borg cube. This one was very hard to track down coming through a clearance sale from California in the end and took a good month to arrive. The only medium base ship I have, it manages to add some menace.

Strongest in points and hard to beat, the Borg tend to be all about the ships, regeneration, Multi-directional movement and powerful, but expensive weapons. They are brooding punching bags with claws.

This faction was the only one I “held back” a little as it was mostly a Voyager-Delta Quadrant thing, so it is the strongest in points (168 in these ships alone) and 50 upgrades. I think I could easily field a 350pt fleet here, which matches any other two combined. The big issue here is the Queen is the only captain that can field the many elite talents, but that is how it is.

The second sphere is not in the squadron as it pushes the point base way too high.

Species 8742

• All main/specialist; 3x Bio-ships, Alpha, Beta and I guess Gamma. Simple but very effective, especially in numbers. These are the second strongest faction and scare the Borg more than most as they are effectively immune to many Borg strengths or match others (regeneration).

I have all the upgrades from the Alpha and Beta variants, so they fully mean and dangerous even with the fewest ships and lowest upgrade count. This fleet tops 100 pts with only three ships (I kept the three that matched in look).

The three spikes of death.

The Klingons

• Main; One Vor’Cha class the Maht-M’a “modern” cruiser

• Specialist; One B’Rel class “small” BOP the Rotaran.

• Support; One bigger K’Vort class BOP the Koraga.

• Exotic; One old warhorse K’Tinga class the T’Ong. This one gets around as a decent representative of the class.

Nothing exotic, just solid ships with strong teeth and a plethora of crew and command choices. A sentimental favourite and decently balanced, its strength is in its “people”.

A mixed bag, my preference is for the darker bird of prey, but we will see. I actually kept the ones I had not re-painted to match and will likely try to match the brighter Bird of Prey.

Each mini fleet has roughly 100+ pts of named ships, and about the same or more in upgrades.

Rules mods I have been pondering are;

1. Hidden upgrades (and captains) until revealed in play. Who are you fighting? You may even hide the identity of the captain until you decide to play their skill value for initiative (see below), so a cat and mouse game of rolls for initiative can play out then the big reveal of the captains identity (and skill).

2. Set dials then determine the actual order semi-randomly (+/- 1d6 rolling one negative one against a positive one) + Captain skill, or not-see above) for move and fire (maybe even separate rolls using two differently coloured die or trading off), which adds some much needed unpredictability to the game. Kirk is good at skill 9, but one point of difference over the otherwise brilliant Romulan commander (skill 8) should not always give him the edge, especially in small scenario driven games.

3. For some smaller sets (one ship TOS/TOM/Kelvin), all upgrades are available for their price, but a maximum point spend limit is imposed in-game, so the ship may field “X” points, but only have active upgrades equal to available Icons. The captain can call on a full choice of Elite upgrades, up to a points limit, but chose which to take as they go. This was particularly good for TOM/TOS fights, but even without most of those ships anymore :(, it fits their small fleet-limited option dynamic. It even extends to changing captains and suits generic ships well.

* I kept all of the Voyager and Enterprise series as well as a scattering of other ships, but these are the main head-to-head opponents.

**Attack Wing for me was always a tug-of-war between trying to keep up with all the OP’s and complete the collection (a better idea than a massive X Wing collection, but hindsight and all that) or just keep it sane and represent the game, which the above has done. I never appreciated Wizkids OP heavy offer, not having access to a community of players or retailers supporting them, but they did produce a game that is fun with a few ships and healthy upgrade options. Even the base set is plenty.

***Tal Shiar and Ships of the Line, that effectively give me back my Last movie themed set and transparent, cloaked Romulans! The T-S set is tempting, but apart from the transparent ships and a weapon upgradeable Tal Shiar (which took some confirming after the fandom entry for other scout ships was incorrect), there are few tech cards, repeats of several and Captains and crew and the balance of the whole is knocked off by too many ships with new, lower points costs. It all feels too much like a re-escalation that I am trying to avoid.

Tempered Enthusiasm.

I have a new found passion for my hobby.

Photography has long moved on from hobby status, video also, so I needed a hobby for my down time and gaming has re-emerged ironically after a trip the Nick Bowlers place in Hobart to sell some stuff.

My studio room has been re-allocated gaming room status, my old desktop computer removed to make a new and improved painting station and my hunger is back.

On a sour note, I have been trying to wrangle a resoluton with a supplier who I will not now name, a company I had issues with before, but mistakenly ordered some Warhammer RPG books through last year because they “had them in stock” which was a lie. They do not refund or it turns out check their stock for pre-orders either because on two occasions I have chased up stock known to be around and they have magicked it up and sent it, but for extra freight.

This last time, with two books owed, they offered to do the same again for the second last one, the last book had no eta from the supplier. Gameology though had stock, so I pressed them, wanting a refund of the remaining book (I am well over this and had no intention of even chasing up the last book).

They stopped responding.

Turns out they have form.

ed. out of the blue I got a refund of the balance, well after a lot of threats, cajoling and pleading for them to do something.

I am refusing to let this stop my enjoyment of the hobby, but be aware, they are Australian owned, cheap and sometimes good, but not always and they do not play fair. Paypal it turns out is of no use because the original transaction is over 180 days old even though it has not been fulfilled!

I am going to be philosophical about it as I have had little bad luck (more often good luck*) and should have been more careful. I waste more money on little used video accessories an dont even think about it. Move on and learn from the experience.

*A year or two ago, a U.S. supplier sent me a full second hand set of Shadows over Normandie instead of the ordered small supplement (the freight cost more than the ordered item), then they sent the right thing anyway…with an apology. Later they sent a single over priced counter sheet from one of three missed kick starter sets on offer ($70au for a single sheet). I was hard pressed to choose, but went with the Rangers from Saving Private Ryan and found all three panels were inside the one shrink-wrap (still expensive, but much better and collection now was complete), then another supplier sent me a Cigar Box mat with two in the same bag and it was a useful one to have multiples of. Later again a kick starter I ordered was double delivered, one on time, one weeks later out of the blue. None of these were cost effective to return, so I was gifted each.

I have had plenty of luck, now is the time to accept balance.

So, What is Actually Wrong With Star Trek Attack Wing?

First there was X Wing.

Near perfection in a predictive, rock-paper-scissors style head to head (or many heads) combat game with a theme. It set the scene and did a pretty good job of owning or creating this space.

But what about the other side of the coin, something for the “Trekkies”?

Star Trek Attack Wing (AW) came along not long after, mashing two licenses, Star Trek and the “Flight Path” system used by X Wing (XW), a concept also shared loosely by games like Wings of Glory, Sails of Glory, Blue Max etc, but closest in philosophy and style to X Wing (if they were any closer they could be mixed together).

In a lot of ways it was a better game (holds breath for thrown shoes), but not in others (releases breath, but warily).

Lets look at why.

The starter sets tell some of the story.

The XW starter is just that. Many bought two sets, just to have small basic squads, but that still fell short of the recommended 100pts and some of the pilot and upgrade abilities did not even work with only one ship (Biggs).

You knew there was more to come and we (not actually me because I was late to the game) grabbed it all with glee. The basic starter just did not cut it, it was obvious from the start you needed more.

The AW starter on the other hand is actually enough. The big difference is the depth of each ship. The AW starter gives you three of the many factions (another advantage), each ship capable of being a 50pt+ build, usually enough for the provided scenarios.

Even the original series Enterprise, a weak ship at the start can be built out to 60 odd points. You also have the option of three player, which is just fun.

Even the lowly Enterprise “NX” from the earliest period, a pre Original Series ship in the official time line, shares identical stats to a Tie fighter (2-3-3-0), the “cannon-fodder” of X Wing and they even have similar starting point costs. It does however have several crew, weapon and tech upgrades making it a very different proposition.

The Enterprise NX can take some hits, repair, avoid, dissipate, up-arm, swap crew, play tricks, add armour. The Tie just flies until it “pops”.

Add a single other ship to each faction and you add a huge variety of options, even if you stick as I do to faction and period limited fleets. A Nebula class, Klingon Bird of Prey and a Romulan Valdore class and each faction can easily field 100pt squads with plenty of options held aside.

One expansion pack feels substantial.

One solid all-rounder Galaxy, One techie Nebula, One militant Akira with some fighters and you have a flexible multi-scenario set. This is my little kept fleet, hopefully left just as is and capable of filling 1-200pts.

If you mix and match factions and timelines (which I hate) then the options are exhaustively extensive.

This is the key difference.

The AW ships are designed to be upgraded with multiple crew, tech and other upgrades, where some XW ships seem like a money grab (Mining Guild Tie for $35au!). When you build up a fleet of 8 weak Tie fighters with their limited build options just to see them evaporate all too easily (sometimes even when they collide) you will get it.

XW has ships like the Falcon, Ghost etc, but they are larger, slower, far more point and real money expensive and hog the standard 3x3 table.

The same money spent on a single faction of AW ships covers basically the whole offer of a faction. With X Wing it is all about how many ships you can cram into a 100 point ceiling (using 1e terminology), AW is more about best builds of a few or even one ship to get the job done.

Scenarios.

XW has never been strong here. It is tweaked for tournament play, so many do their own thing.

AW on the other hand gives you a scenario with every pack, one that mimics a movie or TV series episode with all their problem solving angst. You can actually win a scenario without even damaging an opponent. Immersion can be very high and smarts rule over kill or be killed. Hunt the Scimitar, deal with the unknown Gorn, team up against the Xindi or Borg are all awesome and very different challenges.

Simulation and feel.

In my opinion, AW does a very good job of giving you Trek without the common heaviness of Trek games*. It also does it better than XW. XW as a game has better balance, and often cleaner application. It feels to me a good game but less connected or possibly less connecting to the subject. You can have Luke and R2 vs Vader, but until you field the Falcon or a squadron, you lack that “everyone has a role” feel. There is nothing like using Spock, Scotty, Bones etc to do their thing in the face of adversity. Win or lose, they all work together and it feels like a story.

AW has also managed to avoid the hole that XW went down, of introducing EPT’s, Mods etc that stretch cannon and change the ships fundamentally (I drop these out of my 1e games). If it was in Trek, it is in AW.

XW on the other hand allows cannon stretching “cheats” that let you to make everyone potentially act like everyone else. Tie has no Boost? Then add it. Interceptor with no Target Lock, then add that. Action economy is all in XW.

XW ships are more varied and manoeuvre/action economy is king, but AW shows it’s deeper versatility with much less “exciting'“ ships managing to do the job (Wings of Glory even gets by without anything but the plane as is).

A comparison of dials is eye opening, with many AW ships looking much the same. They are on the whole less agile (3 is a rarity, 1 most common), tend to be quite slow, especially in the earlier periods although speed 6 ships are possible and some lack any form of turning ability, but this lets you concentrate on the action. It is about captaining a capital ship, not piloting a nimble fighter****.

Balance.

XW was for the most part balanced well into its growth path, which was important because its tournament circuit was a world wide phenomenon and all seemed bright for the game for several years, but over time it grew out of its shoes and lost that all important balance. The biggest shame and the reason the game developed a second edition was the name-sake ship and many other older favourites were pushed aside by vessels many had never heard of.

AW did also do a second edition, but few noticed, although annoying point cost changes on newer ship cards were frustrating.

AW has always struggled with balance, especially when anything-goes builds are allowed (yuk!), but if played to scenarios, it is almost balance irrelevant (play one game each way and see who does better if you need perfect balance). As an old school war-gamer, I have never been overly bothered with perfect balance, which is often nearly impossible to achieve anyway. I much prefer a scenario based game, even one deliberately lop-sided. Kobayashi Maru anyone? Gets me every time.

So, what went wrong?

The balance thing first meant the tournament circuit was a less realistic proposition. Mixing factions and timelines really annoys me personally, but even if accepted for tournament play, so many upgrades and ships got lost behind the clear and often over used winners like Picard in a Borg ship vs Picard in a Romulan one. Suspend your belief at your peril.

Without a healthy tournament circuit, it is hard to keep the game in the spotlight.

Many strange encounters, asymmetrical by design, so how does the little Enterprise survive?

By applying the many upgrades intelligently. How very Trek. You may notice a few extras in there from the “live long and prosper” faction pack, a no-brainer for an Enterprise era gamer, but with some handy extras across all eras.

The actual model ships were inconsistent, even poorly painted** and the scale choices were sometimes odd to say the least. If you do not like the Trek universe as much as Star Wars, the ships alone can be the best reason to avoid AW.

It is accepted that if you want to use pretty much only one base size, then the massive size difference of the Scimitar to the Delta Flyer or even less odious comparisons like the Galaxy class compared to the much bigger D’deridex are a visual stretch, but some choices like the Xindi Aquatic ship being the smallest Xindi model, when it should at least be the biggest as it is many times the size of it’s own allies is still frustrating.

XW managed four size groups keeping things good to the eye even if there is still a little fudging (the bigger ships are a slightly smaller scale), although Armada suffers from some odd stretches. If AW had even added a “medium” size for more than one ship (the Borg Tac Cube), some voices would have been silenced. In contrast they did a few truly massive ones, so there was obviously potential.

I partially fixed this problem for myself, by splitting the TNG collection into TNG battle and DS9 skirmish sub-sets with Voyager separate (but a good mix with the DS9/skirmish set). In the skirmish set, the smaller ships give you a game closer to XW with 3 agility common, but generally slow ships. In the battle set, ships get faster and tougher, but considerably less agile. Importantly the scale gods are happier.

Too many factions and sometimes poor attention paid to important details. The early ships and characters were well designed thematically as were the early XW offerings. As time went on, new factions were introduced, many points values were amended and some odd choices made. Some factions were missed (Suliban) and many were not fleshed out fully, while others got a lot of attention.

The Enterprise series for example, which sports some of the nicest and most consistent ships as it goes, was plagued with poorly thought through characters and showed signs of design fatigue.

My personal gripe is a lack of logical Captains for the NX ships, several of whom were mentioned in the series including half the bridge crew. Instead of T’Pol or Hernandez (actually in command of NX-02 Columbia) they went with the Mako officer Hayes, who was not even Star Fleet and to my memory did little bridge work. He would have been a much better crew upgrade.

*

Personally, I have just sold off the bulk of my collection, but possibly sparked a resurgence of interest just the same. Less in this case is actually more.

The happy buyer got a bargain and was not interested in the two series I most liked, “Voyager” and “Enterprise” so I kept all things related to these two and built small fleets for the other periods with my many duplicates. Voyager in particular had many possible hypothetical fleet building options like the Dauntless, Val Jean, Equinox or even the Klingon T’Ong and in the end the powerful Promethius came into the frame (a Voyager alternative?).

I actually ended up with a decent little 100-200pt fleet for the clever Feds, sneaky Romulans, bolshy Klingons, paranoid Cardassians, brutish Dominion, scary Borg and enigmatic Species 8742. Each has more than its regular upgrade allocation, because again, duplicates.

Along with this I held back one or two TOS series ships from each faction (I did have to re-buy the Gr’oth on clearance as I only had one), an Excelsior, Ent-B and BOP and Kronos One for the movie period and also have the one-off Kelvin timeline pack.

All the ships are used in named versions (with some options) as this adds more upgrades and +1 shield factor over generics (something I still struggle to rationalise), as well as more immersion.

There is enough here to field hypotheticals also like the Tholians, Borg, Sp 8742 or even time travelling Kremin popping up all over the place, always a Trek option.

The Bajorans slipped everyones attention (no DS9 love) so I kept them and the Marquis fleet with a few other ships to make for a decent little skirmish set vs the Cardassians, really an excuse to keep my extra Mirror Universe Defiant, with an optional Fed crew from a duplicate Robinson and the Voyager on its original mission.

I am actually more excited about AW now than before! I am so happy in fact that I cancelled an order for a lucky find Fed faction pack as it would just start things up again and I am happy with the balance.

AW is battling on with better re-paints and faction pack re-releases, often better painted than the older packs (but different again!), but I am done.

Now what to do with XW?

*Star Fleet Battles, Fed Commander, FASA’s Tactical Simulator, ACTA Star Fleet etc.

**Wizkids could not even decide on a colour and stick to it. The Enterprise-D started light blue, went silver with yellow, then silver with black and white. These then do not even match the other Fed ships.

***As an example, the Feds have the Enterprise (Galaxy), K’Tumbra (Nebula), Thunderchild (Akira) and a squadron of fighters. This represents a tech, general-crew, military and exotic option. Each faction is about 100-120 points of ships and about the same in upgrades.

****Star Wars does offer Armada, another cash sink, which has an even “bigger” feel, but lacks much of the immersion and ease of AW. My preference in Star Wars is Armada and in hind sight, I would have done that instead of X Wing, or just stuck with AW, but hindsight and all that……. .

Opposites In Tandem

I once wanted to run two RPG system trees, one hard and realistic, the other pulpy and light.

The two system families were;

• Savage Worlds for light weight and pulpy.

• The d100 family of games, including the Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Openquest and D100 lite branches.

The two systems seemed to mirror each other for available resources in the 5-6e CoC and SW Deluxe editions. Want Rome, Weird War 2, Cthulhu horror, Western, even Sci-Fi and Supers? They both provide.

The idea was to fit the mood, but I usually shied away from SW in favour of one or more d100 versions for each theme. The assumed player friendliness of SW was actually harder to teach and play than a straight firward D-percentage style game.

The reality is, there is more genuine player fear in a simple game of Vikings of Legend than a horror themed SW game. Real fear comes from an awareness of random and uncontrolled peril, not just thematic art. In VoL or WHFrpg your character can loose an arm just like that. SW, a lot like many d20 games seems to lose that feel in the abstract and soft mechanics.

The prime example was Achting Cthulhu. This one came with both (and optionally other) systems as the mechanics for their adventures, but without fail, I found SW a thin game in this space, even less meaty than the board game. CoC was the real thing, scarier, more dangerous and more visceral.

There were some games however that I felt could or should have jumped the divide.

Luther Arkwright, a Mythras based game I feel would have been a better fit for SW, being a comic book based, pulpy, multi dimensional game. SW would have felt like a good fit, been more versatile and pick-up flexible and many of the SW world books could have been folded in seamlessly.

On the other hand, Solomon Kane, a dark, perilous, horror themed game written for SW, is a perfect fit for any number of d100 systems, CoC in particular. The Cakebread and Walton Clockwork and Chivalry/Cthulhu games maybe even better. Even the Warhammer or Zweihander games with little modification. In SW, it just lacks the base mechanics, the darkness and mechanical hardness to feel right.

*

One of the reasons I think Savage Pathfinder is such a good fit is the massive amount of content a d20 game requires to give you the illusion of freedom. This huge array of blinkered choice is a burden forced on it by its very restrictive nature. Rail-roading players into strict class envelopes always leads to envelope pushing exceptions, but the envelope is still sealed and it needs to be for the paradigm to work.

Savage Worlds offers vastly fewer core options, but has effectively no limits within those. Classes are a choice, not just which, but whether to or not. Spells, cut down from over 600 to less than 50 have more options built in, so they feel more like controlling chaos than strict recipes and are infinitely easier to implement (and have no fixed slots!). Feats rather than add-on exceptions and special actions are character defining edges and hindrances.

I never thought I would say this, but I think SW-PF is even better at not being a traditional d20 game than 13th Age.

It manages to streamline the core system, adds in modern RPG tropes like 13th Age’s “one unique thing” through more defined edges and hindrances and even adds elements d20 games cannot.

The key to me is flexibility. Pathfinder-SW has more with less overhead.

D100 RPG Genre Check List

So, can D100 games alone actually capture the feel and mechanical needs of the periods I am (or may) be interested in? Lets look at the options period by period. The bracketed (#) value is the relative “hardness” or realistic tone of the option with 1 being soft pulp, 3 middle of the road and 5 being very gritty, italicised titles are not at hand (owned) and the bold titles are realistic non d100 options.

Stone Age survival/exotic encounter; Legend has a 40,000bc book (4) and BRP is easy enough (3).

4000bc Ancient history/fantasy; Mythras has just launched a highly regarded Babylonian book (4).

Greek legend: The core Mythras book is Bronze Age based (4), with a Greece supplement slated, OQ; Jackals (3)

Ancient Rome historical/fantasy; Mythras/Legend has the Mythic Rome and Gladiators books (4), CoC has an option also (3) .

Early Dark Age historical/fantasy; Mythras/Legend for Mythic Britiain (4) and Vikings of Legend (4) Cthulhu Dark Ages (3), D100 Dungeon (3)

Medieval historical/fantasy; Legend/Deus Vult (4).

Medieval Asian culture historical/fantasy; Samurai of Legend (4), DwD Art of Wuxia (1)

Medieval high fantasy; Magic World (3), Mythras (4), Legend (3-4), Bare Bones Fantasy (1) 13th Age (3)

Medieval low magic fantasy; BRP (3), Legend (3-4), The One Ring/AIME (3-4), Mouse Guard (3)

Dark, gritty fantasy; WHFRPG 1/4e (5/4), Zwiehander (5)

Renaissance dark horror; Clockwork and Cthulhu (2), WHFRPG 1/4e (5/4)

Renaissance historical/weird science; OQ; Clockwork and Chivalry (3)

Pirates; Pirates of Legend (4), BRP; Blood Tides (3), Pirates and Dragons (3)

1890’s horror/mystery ; Cthulhu by Gaslight (3), Legend; Historia Rodentia (4), BRP; Aces High (4), BRP; Devil’s Gulch (3).

1920’s to WW2 pulp/horror; Call of Cthulhu (3), Achtung Cthulhu (2), Weird War Cthulhu (4), Astounding Adventures/BRP (2).

50’s Horror/sci fi; Worlds United (3), Weird War Cold War (4), The Laundry ‘50’s (3).

Modern horror/urban fantasy; Mythras/The Vampire Wars (4), The Laundry (4), Delta Green (4), Cthulhu Now (3) Signs and Sigils (5)

Post apocalyptic; Seasons of Death for Mythras (4-5)

Modern black ops; Covert Ops (2), BRP or Mythras base (3).

Space Opera Sci Fi; DwD Frontier Space (2) Mongoose Traveller 1e (3), Star Wars d6 (2)

Hard Sci Fi; M Space (3-4) Mongoose Traveller 2e (3-4)

Far Future Fantasy; BRP/Future Earth (3).

Trans Dimensional; Mythras; Luther Arkright (4)

Supers; Superworld/BRP (3-4), Destined for Mythras (4-5), Many Others (1-5)

Lots of options.

Everdell (semi) Complete, And Just Right.

Out of the blue, the long awaited Mistwood arrived, completing my Everdell collection.

There are as always, plenty of opinions about the Evedell expansions, but anyway, here is another.

Bellfaire is a must if the core game is well played and getting a little thin or predictable, or the big tree wrankles (we tend to miss things on it and it can get damaged easily). Mine spent six months assembled sitting on the box until it inevitably got bent. Also increasing the player count to six, it fills out and balances the card count, adds race specialities*, makes the solo game better, replaces the tree, adds a way to trade resources (a massive road-block remover) and adds more victory options, all without changing the core game’s feel much at all. Highly recommended especially for bigger groups or if the game is getting stale. It does make the board bigger, but less unweildy by replacing the tree.

Mistwood is my next choice because again, it adds depth to the core game and introduces an even better solo option**, one that can be played as a disruptive ghost player. This does change the game dynamic considerably, but it is a call out to a different style within the envelope of the basic game, not a change of the core game. Solo is important to me, but also the vibe of the game appeals, taking the sweetness of Everdell and adding an all against the menacing nasty dynamic. Even if you don’t use the Spiders, there is some good content added. Recommended especially for solo players.

Spirecrest is one of the big expansions, adding a large “questing” board and changes the core game. This does not appeal. Apart from the board size and major emphasis shift, the table real estate is strained and the core game changes too much for me. This could have been made as a separate game completely that could be played along side or before/after Everdell. The weather mechanic is also disliked by many as being either irrelevant or too effective! Up to you, changes the game some, not in my collection.

Pearlbrook, take Spirecrest and double it. Pearlbrook seems to take over the game, hyjacking the victory conditions and shifting the game dynamic to one I find a stretch thematically. Up to you, changes the game-a lot, especially the victory conditions, again not for me. Ironically, if you get the lot, the base board is completely surrounded by extra panels, but it is not recommended you play them all together! Everdell is a simple, elegant concept, muddied by too much going on.

Newleaf is the most likely to be added (but won’t be) as it seems to fit well with the original feel of the game, but it hints at a larger world, which again takes away (for me) some of the Everdell feel. It goes from a late Medieval fantasy civilisation hidden in the woods, the center of the world if you like (like Mouse Guard) to an early steam era country outpost of a bigger world. Personally I do not want Everdell to feel like Schythe or Ticket To Ride. Another board, more mechanics, maybe too much.

Extra Extra! is a small box expansion with just more and different cards. All good and glad I got it for variety. Recommended, but not needed.

Legends is the same, adding in some major players with a handful of cards. These tend to be very popular in our games and add some role-playing immersion. Mistwood adds more of these, so we anticipate the even deeper stories. Recommended, but not needed.

Rugwort was the original small solo expansion. The game has easy solo rules built in, but Rugwort adds the actual villain and his black rat minions. I missed the original upgrade pack, so I bought the cards from BBG store and the meeples from Etsy. Some feel the three Rugwort cards are too powerful, mean even, so choose your day, but the black meeples are good when playing solo as they feel more menacing. With Bellfaire and Mistwood, the Rugwort cards feel more balanced, so they will likely be used more. Up to you, good for a solo player or if you want a little nasty.

My three boxes with the small expansions integrated.

*

So, if you like the game but want more, or feel there is a need for some added depth and balance;

Bellfaire, Extra Extra.

You want more characters and bespoke story elements in the game;

Legends, Mistwood.

You like, or need to play solo (neither is strictly needed for occasional games);

Mistwood, Rugwort.

You don’t like the core game as is, but wish you did or love it and cannot get enough;

Spirecrest, Pearlbrook, Newleaf - basically everything.

This brings us logically back to the “Expansion envelope theory”. Here are my rules for avoiding or embracing expansionism.

• Does the expansion add to the game in a logical and meaningful way?

• Does the expansion feel right to you?

• Is balance retained or even better, is balance improved?

• Does the expansion change the core game assumptions and if so is it for the better or is it worse?

• Can the expansion be played more often than not and with other existing expansions?

With 7 Wonders Duel for example we love the Pantheon expansion and feel it makes the game better and balances some elements. It’s telling that my wife is less inclined to go for a military victory and has pulled off the odd science win, which would not have happened in the base game. This fits in the envelope, although it doubles the table space needed.

Agora is not played much, but is in the wings for essentially a different gaming experience. For us, Agora makes the game less about a long term civilisation building game and more feels like the story of a single city in a more machiavellian, Roman civil war competitive feel. We feel it plays more as a mob/territory game. This one is purely optional, feeling like Pealrbrook above and it breaks most of the above rules.

The Etsy printed/freely downloaded Leaders expansion, fan made content based on the full 7 Wonders expansion of the same name, is an ideal booster for the base game if you don’t want to set up Pantheon or you are travelling light (it fits in the Core box), but my wife is less keen on it and really dislikes it if we are using Pantheon (although oddly she likes it more with Agora). I think this is as good an addition as the Pantheon expansion, with easier setup and a smaller footprint It offers alternatives to both the base game and Pantheon mechanics and tons of immersion with named characters. We have messed around with the application of this one and it seems to take it well.

*

For Eldritch Horror as another example, the same goes. The four small expansions are great additions, either adding balance, depth, good additional elements or all of these. The large box expansions are far less compelling, just adding more of more at a premium.

Three good games completed and balanced. Yes I could add more, but there are so many more games to play.

*We use all of them as “allied” abilities if the meeples are not available, but may end up buying all the meeples separately from Etsy.

**Rugwort is fine, but the AI in Mistwood is more balanced, varied and intelligent.

An Example Of No Control Applied

After exercising great logic and control with Eldritch Horror, I have not been as successful with Star Wars Destiny.

The sales are coming and I have found some of the first three (black) blister packs for as low as $35au. That is about 15% of original or to put it another way, about 1 die and 5 cards for just under $1au.

So where have I ended up?

3 Spirit of Rebellion and Awakenings boxes and 2 Empire at war packs, 3 Draft boxes, 4 starters and a two player starter, several loose cards and some die from Big Orbit, that have already started to arrive totally about 400 dice and 1000 cards.

Wow, that was quick.

Only a part of it and more coming.

Did I win?

Still not sure as Vader eludes me but 5 of the boosters are still to come, so here is hoping. The two Awakenings boxes arrived (which makes 3 or to put it the other way, 108 dice, 168 cards), and still no Vader!

Need to stop.

Have enough.

No Vader is a shame, no actually, it is a lesson on the frutility of chasing single cards in this wilderness. Just happy I did not spend $500+ to get to the same place.

Ed. A Vader and a few other hard to gets have been found, all paid way too much for, but oh well swings and round-abouts. Also just orderred a Black Friday special Across The Galaxy blister box, with I guess about a 1:5 chance of getting that mean Vader.

An Example Of Applied Control

Like most of us some games sit on my shelves demanding attention, but not getting it. Eldritch Horror is one of those. It ticks all the boxes for theme, play options and eye candy, but I have just not made the effort.

Like many (most) games, it comes with a certain amount of ‘expansionitis”, offerring no fewer than 7 expansions, thankfully finished now, but still.

Four are small box, meaning they only add cards and rules options, no extra boards. These are generally considerred to be good value, one nearly mandatory.

Three are big box expansions adding more game with extra boards. These match the base game for cost and box size and make the core board 50% larger (each). They also change the core game dynamic and need more table room. It is generally not recommended to play all of these at once, but if you have the need for an epic game then go for it.

Enough. Chock full of cards and options, but not a huge table hog.

One is a big/small box expansion, which offers several extra rules options and mechanics including a campaign system and backgrounds, but no board so no extra table space is required. It also “completes” the cycle, which means it leaves some wasted resources or forces system completion, so assume this if waste bothers you.

I have chosen to take an Everdell approach* to this.

Two of the small box sets (Cities in Ruin and Foresaken Lore) are universally lauded as either the best or most necessary expansions to get. FL is a must, considered universally to be required to complete the core game (which is a little thin in some card stacks). You could leave it at that.

Cities in Ruin is the one single expansion that makes everyone’s top three favourites list. The other two add useful content and rules and generally make the game deeper, but not that much more complicated. Needed or not, these last two (Carcossa and Remnants) are never seriously criticised as useless or game breaking, just less compulsive purchases compared to the other two.

The rest are all over the place, never reaching close to universal agreement on ranking lists (two lists I found today had virtually polar opposite opinions on the bigger sets, but much the same take on the small box ones).

Pyramids, Madness and Dreamlands are the big three, but I am avoiding these as they break the “Everdell rule”, which is to say, they do not stick to the base board only, or are not all useable at once, nor do they protect the core mechanics or add needed or recommended improvements.

With Everdell, I have added the three small expansions (Extra Extra, Legendary and Rugwort) the bigger Bellfaire, which adds some board space but does so seamlessly (and replaces the clumsy tree). It also adds several game play elements that add balance and fix a few road-blocks from the core game and includes better Solo options (Rugwort realised*) all without clutter. I have just added Mistwood which further improves solo play and adds more core content without a board addition or a shift in overall “vibe”.

The 4 small box expansions are good, the 3 big ones creep into “obsessive” territory and if I get one…….. .

Nyarlathotep is the outlier. It has no board (tick), but adds elements that complete the full set, so holes are left if you don’t have it all. It also has a mixed rep for rules implementation and fun to complexity ratio.

What do I have if this is my hard cap?

8 Old Ones, 24 Investigators, several useful expansions to the core mechanics and a ton of depth in all card stacks. More would be just more, with added density (but not necessarily depth), more intimidation factor and to be frank, less appeal. The Focus mechanic from MoM is well liked, but I can download the rules and use some leftover X Wing Focus counters.

Control exercised, balance retained.

*Turns out Rugwort is also improved with a free fan made solo variant found on BGG called “Everdell Unrigged”. This makes 5 solo options total.