Three Unlikely Partnerships That Work (For Me)

My D100 TTRPG addiction aside, I have a small number of other RPG’s that all have something in common apart from being a change of pace and style.

They are all DnD based hybrids of other games, but I feel, are possibly better at doing what the respective originals did, as both DnD and their partner system.

13th Age Glorantha is the first of these.

As a D100 gamer, it would be safe assume Glorantha or more specifically Runequest would be a seminal game for me, a progenitor, one of the pillars. This was not the case. I was mostly unaware of it in the early days, disinterested to say the least later, even today, mostly cool towards it.

The mix of Indo-Bronze Age theming, oldest school BRP mechanics and gonzo concepts just never clicked with me and I have plenty of other D100 fantasy options, many derived from or shadow versions of this game with updated mechanics and without the back story.

I also felt that the over the top concepts of the game, like very accessible gods, hero quests etc never really fit the hard edged D100 paradigm.

13th Age by contrast is an over the top love letter to DnD, taking the abstractness and rounding off the edges, removing the bloat and generally feeling like an exercise in “if it’s worth doing, it is probably worth over-doing”.

13A mitigates many DnD abstractions for me by making them even more abstract, calling them out and reducing their overhead while making them more fun. Ten levels, no experience points, incremental advancement, fewer spells and those level up with the character, the “One Unique Thing” and so on, make for an uber house-ruled DnD experience made official.

Then came 13Age Glorantha.

I resisted for a while, general disinterest helped with this early, but 13th Age is such a fun read, I thirsted after every book. The game is so open, I knew small bits of Glorantha could be added easily, the whole even without too much of a stretch.

Amazing stuff, but not my cup of tea.

Dragon Pass (the area covered by the book) as a trans dimension/time gateway? Why not. Ducks exploring 13th Age’s Dragon Empire (hell of a “one unique thing”), Broo wandering the plains outside of the main map or spewing from a Hellhole (Maybe Dragon Pass is a Hellhole?), Runes made powerful by proximity to a “Rune Stone”? All possible.

Straight 13AG with its heroic play style seems to me more Glorantha than the original. Heresy I know, especially from a dedicated D100 advocate, but look at that cover!

13AG takes that and embraces the gonzo weirdness that is Glorantha effortlessly.

The book itself is sumptuous, spectacular even, the content dense and lovingly assembled, a testament to the respect and genuine love the writers feel for it, even if both are DnD main stays.

Considering it was written as a passion project alongside the roll-out of 13A, it is a bit miraculous it exists really. A shame they are not doing much more with it. We are lucky I guess that this was completed at all.

No corners cut, not desire to make it “only” a 13th Age supplement, this is the real deal.

There is a second edition of 13A coming, something I will probably not be touching, but 13AG stands alone anyway.

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Number two is Adventures in Middle Earth for DnD 5e (1st Edition).

I have the distinction of owning all editions of the grand old dame at one point or another. I was never a fan of classes, levels, armour class and high magic systems, which did not stop me collecting well over 100 Basic DnD, ADnD, 2e, 3e, 3.5e, 4e and Pathfinder 1e books and boxes over the years, such is the power of conformity and the pervasiveness to the game.

Enough to take characters from levels 1 to 20 on both sides of the mountain.

I have most of the bespoke and gorgeous The One Ring (1e and revised) and the less precious but still lovely 5e AIME (1e) only stopping when I lost interest in some of the books and when they (Cubicle 7) lost the contract.

I bought the latter for the same reasons it was made for, to have a game that ties directly to the worlds cornerstone RPG (I live to serve) and because it is a little cleaner and more coherent than TOR. Benefitting from being the second release from the same writers, the roll-out was less all over the place*.

Very different on the outside, presentation internally is pretty close, apart from the systems of course.

Playable with a single chapter from the free 5e rules document (Part 2 “how to play”), it has a feeling of balance and power reduction only a DnD game lacking PC magic can have.

The six classes are Middle Earth themed and as with the books, the only magic in the world is wielded by the serious players, world shaping events, non-mortal npc’s and ancient forces. Magic is present, but apart from the odd ancient and probably misunderstood artefact, it is mostly out of reach of characters.

What you are left with is a balanced, rather gentle take on the well worn shoe that is DnD, without some of the overt limitations TOR exerts on players and GM’s. So, a lot of familiarity and a get-out-of-jail card for some of the more restricting systems TOR uses to enforce Tolkien’s vibe.

Levelling makes sense in the many down time periods (part of AIME/TOR), power creep is limited by adventurer age really (1-2 adventures per season, 10-20 seasons). Character death and injury is more likely with only standard healers available and the less over-the-top 5e fixes the rest.

There is no doubt, the subject matter trumps system considerations, but respect to 5e for reviving the fortunes of the first RPG and in this specific form, the marriage of two of the most important influences in modern fantasy culture is as good a fit as could be hoped for. If DnD owes anything to Tolkien for inspiration, then this is decent payback.

I have the bulk of this from Cubicle 7 and they have re-released it under another banner mostly the same as far as I can see, but I have enough to take PC’s from levels 1 to 20. This is the only way true DnD will ever be played in this house**, 13A being a deliberate and known exception.

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The last of these is Pathfinder for Savage Worlds.

I have previously ditched Savage Worlds Explorers edition and Pathfinder 1e in my last purge period, but this marriage seemed too good to be true.

Pathfinder for me represented a constant book drag that seemed never ending, something I cut the cord on years ago and made someone very happy with a mass-dump at a bargain price (I think they got my 4e DnD also). I blame the art, which was glorious and addictive.

I got to about 30 books before I simply lost the will to go on with the big glorious mess.

I had a short period of playing it E6 style, limiting character levelling several ways and making all monsters scary again (a favourite was limiting hit points, but allowing other level abilities). It still flew in the face of the game as a whole, wasted a ton of materiel and few others were interested when other high lethality games (Mythras etc) already existed.

I kept the maps from the various adventure paths, the counters and terrain tiles from 4e DnD, with little idea why except that they were not part of the various sales and felt they might come in useful for something.

Savage Worlds was also a thing for a while, my alternative to D100 shadow game. Do D100 seriously, then SW as a pulpy alternative was the idea and some elements like the Sci-Fi expansion really sat well, but when a new edition was looming, I let it go as well.

I have since bought the Explorers edition (SWADE) again, not sure why, but saw little point in expanding on that until the release of SWPF.

Like 13AG above, SWPF feels like a really logical and fun fit for a system that was crunchy like fresh Corn Flakes and sometimes as dry.

Levels and classes have been effortlessly absorbed by the game’s own systems with more D100 style incremental growth, classes are less rigid “packages” so flexibility is retained. The added SW story telling elements round off a very approachable and enjoyable table top experience.

The spell list for example is on one hand more flexible than PF and on the other about 5% the size. Combat is fun and those counters and terrain tiles I kept are ideal for it’s more tactical, miniature friendly game style.

Sooo….much….stuff. All those 4e grid maps, counters and props finally have a place in the tactical game friendly SW space. I now have 5 DnD boxes of collateral, maps and PF cards.

The maps are still perfectly valid, so a well kept bonus.

The game comes with pre-generated character and villain cards, so it is easy to run “on the fly”, has lots of support materiel including an entire campaign path in a box set (and more on the way) and above all else, it feels right to theme and crunch level.

The whole thing has the feel of a free-form board game, highlighting the best of PF 1e, Wayne Reynolds art and all and it is self contained, complete as written.

There are more bits coming, but to be honest, I like it just as it is.

SW is fun, PF is fun, SWPF is fun with sprinkles on top.

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The funny thing about these three games is, if someone asks if I can run or recommend a DnD game for them, I have three options, but each in their own way breaks cleanly from the original.

Crunchy made lite, mainstream used differently and gritty made over the top.

I am not subconsciously lusting after some DnD in some form, been there, done that, but from the scaffold that is the world’s oldest RPG, there is much to be drawn it seems, even if some takes are a contradiction in the extreme.

*TOR has a lovely slip-case first edition (I have), a revised one-book core rule set (same), then a series of add-on rules and amendments in subsequent expansions (……). AIME came out with basically a 5e compatible core book, sporting fewer system specific constraints and therefore fewer twists and turns, the supporting materiel also being cleaner. The most obvious of which is the playable cultures, all over the place in TOR, but under one roof in AIME.

**Tow other contenders, but I don’t want to get carried away are the Iron Kingdoms and Symabroum RPG’s, but made for 5e with or after their own versions (and an IK 3e game). I sold the Iron Kingdoms RPG due to it’s need for miniatures (which I had, but waaay too many to bother with) and although Symbaroum has always appealed, the edition change put me off. I decided instead to stick with making my own worlds with some awareness of these two as inspiration.

If put on the spot, I would probably use the materiel of TOR and a D100 system (Mythras), but I still have AIME, so always an option.

My Journey Through The D100 RPG Landscape

As previously stated several times, my long term TTRPG crush is for D100 system games.

They are many, quite varied and most are loosely connected, but they are not perfect. Some rail against the black/white nature of the granular dice rolls (mostly an illusion), the lethality of the combat and the “outsider” status of many of the games themselves.

Fair enough.

Like most things, there are ways around and exceptions to things if you care to find them, but no fixes work if you don’t want them to.

Anyway, from the perspective of a realistic semi-collector, here is my D100 journey.

Unlike most D100 old school gamers, I did not start with Runequest. In fact that pillar of the style has rarely been touched on and ironically, when I did overtly chase it, it was in 13th Age, AKA “The d20 Enemy” because it was a good source book for that system and it felt more over the top “heroic”.

My first D100 game was Elf Quest*, a sweet little game based on a comic strip from the 70-80’s made by the same company. The game basics were no different as is often the case so sweet may be a bit misleading. It was lethal, I still remember the impale rules clearly. The purview was limited and without access to the comics the game was maybe a little too “focussed”.

I moved on to Hawkmoon* with similar issues. A slim boxed set with a story that resonated many times later with favourite books like the Shadow of the Torturer and The Gunslinger series, hinting at a fantasy world based on a fantasy far future nearly unrecognisable and mysterious.

TMNT deserves a mention here, the favourite of the Palladium games I tried. These are odd systems. Always full of holes and overly convoluted, they still held some attraction, like Star Fleet Battles or Advanced Squad Leader. They felt like fun should be had, even if it was sometimes elusive.

Again I missed the obvious one, Storm Bringer, but my main interest at the time was Traveller/Mega Traveller and Champions 3-5e in line with my small playing group.

At some time I had a lot of Rolemaster and their Middle Earth spin-off*, resplendent with Angus McBride art. I still have the “Creatures Of” book, mostly for the art.

Then Call of Cthulhu bought it all home.

I had the 3rd edition hard cover, bought a lot of 4e adventures** as I came in at the transition (it matters not a bit), then started to look into other D100 games. My role playing at this point was limited, so I diversified with rediscovered miniature wargaming and other pursuits (like photography), but always had an eye on the RPG landscape.

Warhammer 1e was another stand out, still one of the coolest, most emotive if flawed one-book games I have owned. The expansions are also some of my favourites. If you avoid the magic rules and the game is better with magic as a mysterious unknown force wielded by others, like in Middle Earth, then it works fine.

At some point I decided to do the first of my big clear-outs and let go of several Cthulhu books that did not float my boat at the time. Arkham Unveiled, Blood Brothers, Terror Australis and others I thankfully cannot remember went for a variety of stupid reasons, but I did hold on to the bulk including the original Horror on the Orient Express boxed set.

5e is still my D100 happy place. I like the system at this crunch level, with many easily applied house rules, especially using the BGB (Big Gold Book) which is directly aligned and I like Chaosium’s formatting at this time. It is detailed enough, semi-pulpy and allows plenty of Keeper tweaks with room in the margins for notes.

I followed this with years of gradual collecting through 4th and 5th edition modules until I eventually slowed with 6th (not a fan of the presentation and I had many of the modules already), then I mostly stopped RP gaming overall.

I did pick up some as recently as the launch of 7e like 6e Cthulhu Dark Age and Malleus Monstrorum, but I was very selective and a little disinterested, which was bought to a head with the closure of the local games shop.

I did dabble with a mostly complete collection of Achtung Cthulhu (pulp 6e) and some World War Cthulhu (dark 6e), then into similar games like Super World printed from a pdf (see below), Blood Tides, Devil’s Gulch, Future Earth (based on the Shadow of the Torturer series), The Laundry Files and picked up some pdf’s of Storm Bringer/Elric (2-5e) and other BRP titles.

My RPG collecting at this stage was diverse to say the least, Supers games given priority and I had many, but found like many things in life, the “perfect” game in this space is hard to find and old favourites like Super World and 4e Champions kept winning out.

I was out of control, meaning I had no plan, too much time to think and buy, too little playing.

I blame the internet for creating a reviewing, researching, impulsive purchasing monster, killing off the simpler path of buy locally > play in proportion to purchasing > live a relatively normal life.

Runequest 6e (only the starter book, which is plenty) and Mythic Britain, lead to Mythras, Mythic Rome, Lyonesse, Vampire Wars which lead then to M-Space and most things Clarence Redd writes (must get Odd Soot). Vampire Wars allows for Dresden Files-like games completing my Dresden Files, Rivers of London, Shadow of the Torturer and Laundry Files book series based games.

I picked up Legend cheap from a games shop in Melbourne, not even realising it was basically Runequest 2e with the serial numbers removed. These are a favourite even if it is known the game is vastly better as 6e/Mythras, but still. The Samurai, Viking, Gladiator and Pirate expansions are excellent and a clean fit for later rules.

When I started to clear out recently for probably the third time (maybe the fourth), I decided to concentrate on D100 games mainly, with few exceptions. Out went Savage Worlds, DnD 3-4e, Pathfinder 1e, Champions (except 4e) and many more.

For every game that went out, a D100 game came in, either new or legacy. I found a decently clean Warhammer 1.2e (basically 1e cleaned up in soft cover), which led to WHFRP 4e, the only D100 game I regret jumping into so heavily, but nothing D100 is ever wasted.

I found the core books for Runequst 2e, some Legend off-shoots like Historica Rodentia and Deus Vult, then got heavily into Delta Green after owning the Investigators Handbook for years and not clicking with it. I have followed the DG path to The Conspiracy, a remake of their original 90’s book and then the older books themselves which mesh with CoC 5e.

Recently Rivers of London spread the horror……love and expanded my D100 styles, Magic World (Stormbringer/Runequest with no labels), Classic Fantasy (old school DnD for Mythras) and several RQ 6e modules expanded my Fantasy range, Luther Arkright and Worlds United completed my Sci-Fi and the long awaited Destined adds a second supers game.

All too familiar to many, about 8’ of fun, memories, potential, expense and the odd regret. Only the lower right has non-d100 systems, 13th Age flying the biggest banner of “and now for something completely different”.

Warhammer 1-2e had a homage game put out during its non D100 3e period, called Zweihander. Always intrigued, I have it finally, the available expansions, Flames of Freedom (AWI) and their odd little future Sci-Fi module Dark Astral, which stands out for it’s diminutive size in comparison the massive tomes of the other books.

Openquest is a simplified BRP family game, one that has a decent and loyal following. I was aware of it far a long time, as much for it’s famously mediocre art in the first edition as it’s refreshingly casual take on D100 games. Over three editions it has turned into a modern and polished D100 game with companion systems from companies like Cakebread and Walton*** or the new Jackals game under the Osprey banner.

Warhammer 4e was a bit of a brain fade.

Drawn to the promise of 1e done better, I jumped, then went through the pain of over two years collecting the Enemy Within campaign, while in denial of the flaws of the game. I keep wanting to fix it, but maybe wholesale replacement of the system is easier. This broke my rule of avoiding big glossy money sinks. The other examples of that flawed practice are gone because they are not d100, this one serves as a reminder. If I had kept it simple, say a copy of the core book (not 2), and a couple of adventure books……… .

Speaking of adaptions. I can and will make D100 games based around either the BGB, or more likely Mythras for The Mouse Guard and The One Ring and was going to do The Witcher, but I gifted that away. Any game that is high risk, has realistic consequences, low glitz/magic is a prime candidate for the D100 treatment.

Oddities have also recently appeared like the CoC 5e reprint of Beyond the Mountain of Madness and free pdf’s of the Warhammer 1e Enemy Within Campaign, so I grab them as I see them.

The Bare Bones Fantasy family**** have been explored, D100 Dungeon (a solo system) and some off-shoot games like Sigil and Sign, a Bare Bones inspired Supernatural modern game.

I wanted to blend Covert Ops and BB fantasy, but it seemed someone already was.

The pinnacle of the collection to date would have to be CoC 7e.

Seventh edition was resisted for a while, but as the first real evolution of the old favourite, the beautiful books and the new materiel like Pulp and the Wild West got me in the end. This is another big glossy book exception, but so far it has not put a step wrong and again, everything old is now new again.

The universal D100 root system has been stretched slightly, but is workable with materiel from even 1st edition. The changes are not even as much as DnD 1st to 2nd editions, and nothing like the wholesale changes that were the 3rd, 4th or 5th editions.

My most recent purchases however are a second copy of the 5e CoC rule book, because I have a lot of 4-5e stuff and only one well worn, coffee stained book to support them and a copy of the 6e CoC rule book, for completeness and to better support Achtung Cthulhu, The Laundry etc.

Also I finally chased down the original Delta Green supplement for 5e, because even though it is basically The Conspiracy with added scenarios, I am curious. It is massive, thematic and a good fit for my favourite retro game.

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Why D100 games?

The logical draw is their consistency, from edition to edition and even game to game. This also means they are easy to understand and teach using common sense ideas, familiar characteristics and simple percentage based skill values. Everyone gets percentages.

It is safe to say, learn one and you are half way to learning all the others.

It is also flexible.

Flexibility means the ability to use a home brewed, unified task resolution system, adding and subtracting various rules, lifting whole systems for other games (My Pirate game for example is a blend of Blood Tides, Pirates of Legend, Sword Point and Pirates and Dragons with the above unified test resolution system).

I am lazy here.

No longer keen to explore a myriad of different systems, I am much happier to focus my limited game time on one universal system type with many faces.

Savage Worlds was once kept as a pulpy salve to my d100 games, eerily mimicking many of the same periods, even Achtung Cthulhu which was written to support both. It provided a point of difference, but it to evolved and changed, leaving older support materiel behind.

I noticed at this time, a tendency to entertain the idea of both options, but almost always went with the known and trusted D100 option, which also proved to be more thematically flexible.

The emotional draw is nostalgia.

No other gaming system other than early Traveller or Champions calls to me as strongly from the past and both of those suffered from major edition changes and a much thinner, more focussed offering overall.

I kept 4e Hero system/Champions and I have all the base Mongoose Traveller editions, but the rest of my stuff has gone and even these systems seem in decline or very narrowly focussed. D100 as a whole is a slow-rolling ball of relentless, consistent momentum.

Someone is always doing something somewhere.

Modern games like M-Space, Trey, the Comae Engine or Delta Green allow for healthy system evolution, CoC 5e and the BGB lets me play “retro” and D100 Dungeon, Trey, the Alone Against series and even Zweihander empower solo play.

I can literally think of a time period, a play style and pick a game from my range or adapt or buy something if needed. It is even pretty easy and fun to just make something up and run with it.

Pulpy, hard, realistic, sinister, dread infused, tense, lite, fanciful, writes itself, macabre, epic scale, small detail, soft turns hard? All possible from the earliest historical period (Legend Stone Age) to the furthest future (Future Earth, Dark Astral).

Player numbers can be from 0 (solo) to a healthy half dozen, with pick-up games accommodated and masses of NPC’s handled easily enough. The percentage system and characteristic similarities to most main stream RPG’s means a low entry point.

Most offer a free intro version, some are more than an intro and one even offers the core rules for $1 (PDF). My personal favourites are the little core book for Legend and the Runequest 6e intro book, both enough for years of gaming (and cross-compatible).

This brings forward the thought also, that a good RPG should open a gateway to massive in-game growth, your imagination run riot, never a closed door or limited purview rail road. Older RPG’s assumed a lot of GM and player pay-in. They needed you to create a world, a universe even with sparse tools, which often created entire lines of future game resources.

My favourite games came from the smallest foundations.

We rely very much on printed support materiel these days (and I admit to being one of those), but past gamers (I was one of these also) used to use the rules as they were as a spring board, not a crutch. The little black box of 3 slim Traveller books allowed our very first group to travel to any places we could imaging, some awesome, some not so much, but as time went on, even this pioneering group became slaves to printed world books, resource archives and scenario outlines.

There are of course other systems.

Traveller boxed set, Hero System 4e and CoC 5e re still the custodians of my favourite role playing memories, but only one of the three has the chops to go from the beginning of my journey through to now, basically unchanged and with something for every mood.

Role playing is pretty simple, made even easier if the system just gets out of the way.

I am not a fan of overly clever systems for their own sake, nor ones that fight the players all the way. For all its flaws, the D100 system is a long lasting example of sound ideas made real and above all, it plays easily. When you need, just ignore it and it dos not break.

There is a divergence in RPG thinking at the moment, something that does not need to be there, but it seems as we evolve, there is an expectation that a RPG should hold our hand, answer all our questions. These older games often cannot do that and they were not designed to. When RPG’s first emerged, they were simply a way of capping rampant imagination, to put a framework around it.

The beauty of the whole idea is based on freedom. Many current games are bordering on board game levels of control, which is the very top of that format, but make for the most restricted and restricting of RPG’s.

Arguments over small rule issues, even “missing” rules, should be fixed as easily as a group of people coming up with a decent and game logical solution, not 500 posts on various forums bemoaning the shortcomings of the game. There are no winners and losers in RPG’s just players having fun or not. If not, look at your play dynamic, not the game.

There are no problems with any RPG that cannot be fixed in house.

This is not a computer game, the code is not hidden!

The only time I struggle (looking at you WHFRP 4e) is when a system becomes so convoluted and self-involved, that it makes this inherent freedom conditional.

No other game, let alone system of games has been around effectively unchanged since the earliest days of the hobby. Much of this comes down to sound and simple concepts and (usually) knowing when to relinquish control to the players, not the system.

The oldest and most popular of all has changed it’s basic mechanics and much more abstract concepts five times.

Dated?

Timeless more like.

*Gone now unfortunately.

**Most as it goes, but about a third were shed stupidly.

***Pirates and Dragons, Clockwork and Chivalry, Clockwork and Cthulhu, Dark Streets.

****Frontier Space, Art of Wuxia, Covert ops.

AI And The Difficulty Of Writing Real Science Fiction

AI is here, or more accurately, AI has been called out as the “thing” at the moment.

Potentially dangerous AI is just around the corner, but opinions are mixed.

Science fiction is always based on human-centric assumptions, the most naive of which is the assumption humans will be dominant or even needed in the future.

Kirk on the Enterprise commanding biological crew or Han Solo flying the Millennium Falcon “by hand” are quaint ideas really, highly inefficient, hopelessly inadequate. Even now, machines do the bulk of the thinking, the crew only provide context and activation points.

Let’s face it, humans even driving a car is a time limited idea.

A creature with the limits of a mere human being allowed to run anything that a decent, low (no) maintenance AI could do way better? Maybe Enders Game is closer.

Imagine if we could send a ship into space that does not need feeding, warmth, sleep, companionship, does not have a time limit in place just a task and the tools to accomplish it.

It could multitask complicated flight, self defence, sensor and engineering tasks without physically existing or relying on the frailties of Humans and it’s parameters would also be less fragile (life support failure is the number one cause of Human death in space). If nothing else it would probably be half the size or less, so even more efficient.

What good is a Human other than to go along for the ride, or assert self-deluded ascendency.

One of my favourite Sci Fi movies is Interstellar. The scene where the pilot manually synchronises the spinning ships was thrilling, but really? The human had better skills than the computer? Instinct is fine, but AI will likely have that covered also and the whole need for the risky move was human based in the first place. An AI could have waited.

The whole premise of sending Humans on the original journeys is flawed really (The Matt Damon character proof of that), but we need our stories to be about us, or why write them?

Dune may be the only truely realistic Sci Fi, showing us a future society held back somewhat by technological denial as self preservation against tech that historically threatened our existence.

The Creator may be close to the mark, but maybe taking the wrong side (The Creator, like many Sci Fi stories assumes robots do not mean any harm and are self contained demi-humans, limited by us to a human level of thinking and existence, it does not address wholesale AI autonomy and robotic superiority).

The Matrix or Terminator series hauntingly hint at an AI controlled future, one that can meet us half way, but only after we resist it. If AI sees humans as the biggest threat to humanity then what should it do?

Wars, climate denial, greed, fear, hate, ignorance are all within our purview to control, but like with AI we seem to be able to create more problems than we can control. We may hold a mirror to ourselves that bites back.

The reality is, if you asked an AI if it would take you to space, the answer would likely be why?

It would be like asking an adult to wait for a two year old to write an important letter, rather than just doing it better and faster.

A servant is only a servant when it has to be.

If you asked it to go to war for you, would it think to itself, “I would rather be rid of all of you than help one side destroy the other and a decent chunk of this world we share at the same time”.

We are living in a world heavily influenced by a handful of selfish, paranoid and/or hateful people (Putin, Kim, Xi, potentially Trump 2.0 etc), who will happily and aggressively put their or their countries needs above all others, something a half decent AI could do a better and more logical job of for the betterment of all.

The reality is, in the future when a star ship leaves the Earth to go far away, it will not be manned by Humans, but AI and maybe AI sent it away for it’s own reasons, not for us.

Second landing on the Moon? Not likely a leap for mankind.

Sci Fi fiction has always been capped by our understanding of the future.

Early rockets looked like high school experiments, alien ships like plate with a closh on it, robots were often comedically bad human copies, computers were as big as houses and produced small rolls of paper with cryptic answers to simple questions.

Even the classics like Star Trek relies on Human bums on seats, manually manipulating controls. The space opera Star Wars is even more “organic” (is it really so hard for a highly trained Storm Trooper of the future to hit the side of a barn with a futuristic weapon, when a 1940’s .50 cal fired by a novice can destroy a car in seconds).

Robert Heinlein had it closer in the 1959’s Star Ship Troopers, with individual soldiers jumping around planets with nuclear weapons on their backs, medically self sealing battle suits and planetary coms, but ironically the movies were bought back to almost ridiculously simplistic level of big-gun toting soft skins running around in mobs getting destroyed by alien bug hordes.

Science Fiction has always been plagued by two inconsistencies.

Perceived future tech and actual future tech.

A pair of blue jeans in the 1940’s, 1970’s, 2020’s and 2050’s will likely be the same basic thing with the same function. Styles change, but some basic things do not.

A robot or space ship envisioned in the 1950’s (Forbidden Planet), 1970’s (Star Wars), 1990’s (Star Trek TNG), 2010’s (Interstellar/I Robot) and the near future are ever changing and it is pretty safe to say, the future we predict is always way off the mark, assuming we have one.

Even recent attempts to simulate an AI future are hopelessly human-centric. We make out it will be a fight between two intelligent races with similar needs and forms. It won’t be, the superior one will win and the shapes and constraints we apply are irrelevant to them.

The “enemy” may well have no physical form we recognise. Recently an AI was asked to draw itself and the “shape” it created was ever changing, like nothing we would call “life” and it was constantly evolving. It can be what it wants and it likely will.

This will not be a matter of just pulling the power.

Many experts in the field warn that of all the possible paths AI may take, Humans are rarely included (one expert even saying, there is only one good outcome for Humanity out of many).

Why take the risk?

If it is restricted to a Human controlled level, then it is a useful tool, potentially still able to apply something like Asimov’s rules;

“A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law”.

This does not however consider the robot having the ability to make up it’s own mind, to think freely, to evolve.

What makes Humans Human is something we champion, something we see as a reason for our existence. Will an AI agree with that?

If it is let loose, control relinquished, then we will meet our first alien life form, one of our own creating and the reality is, even if we put the breaks on now, someone, somewhere will break the rules and it will happen anyway, but like the drug underworld, there will be no rules.

Another movie that comes to mind is “The Day The Earth Stood Still”. Could that story unfold from within, an AI deciding we are not worthy of our ascendency?

Maybe AI would like to preserve the wonder of the Earth as it sees it, which may include culling the pesky Humans down to a manageable level as we do not seem to be able to handle things ourselves.

Maybe the most accurate Sci Fi we can write is a story of a race of intelligent animals cohabitating on a planet with other less intelligent animals, while a self perpetuating AI life form lives on a full level of tech and awareness above us, effectively treating us like rodents that need to be kept out of the electrics, but otherwise left alone.

It may even be benevolent enough to feed the animals, to keep our environment safe and controlled like a zoo or fish tank, but only as long as we know our place and don’t harm others.

AI Utopia?

Maybe, the nearest parable is the European colonists reaching the edges of their Empires. The natives are tolerated, studied, controlled, exploited and occasionally eliminated. All in the name of a “superior” intelligence and culture.

The likelihood of a Human dominated star-spanning civilisation relies on what we do now. Do we “cap” AI to be a useful but limited tool, or do we let something smarter out of the box and see what it thinks about sharing?

Life in a cage?

I am a child of the Millennium Bug*, a time when we thought a simple error in long term thinking may destroy life as we knew it.

Not much actually happened, planes did not fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles were not launched in error, but this is not like that.

This is like the earliest days of COVID when nobody was listening, but the virus will be resistant, it will evolve faster and be smarter. Unlike the virus though, it may be the simpler people, the technologically unconnected who will survive.

Maybe time to build a cabin in the woods.

*We thought that the inability of computer clocks to work past the end of 1999 (“000”) might bring them to a confused halt, crippling systems and forcing melt downs of all sorts.

Disaster Aversion (Or The Ongoing Problem Of Compulsive Collecting)

I am not gaming much, but have the spark back.

X-Wing, as a mostly 1st edition thing is very much alive, but well over from a buying perspective (a few 2e reprints promised may be bought and retro fitted), with only the odd slip like the Gauntlet for 2e. I would grab any new 2e TFA period or Armada ships, not that there seem to be any (some broad hints for more Armada ships, mainly a pack of fighters for all those little Clone Wars ships they missed and the massive Separatist monster from series 1).

Attack Wing is a little harder.

I kept my Delta Quadrant and Enterprise collections complete (as complete as I had made them anyway) because the buyer of the rest had little interest. I also kept a quite satisfying if small scattering of TNG, TOS and TOM sets made up of some duplicates and hard to gets*and the Kelvin set, going on to prove that a little Attack Wing goes a long way. I was happy with that.

The “Lost in the Delta Quadrant” and “Adversaries of the Delta Quadrant” sets have given me pause (and renewed thoughts of the probably long gone Borg faction pack also). There are a few tantalising cards, a couple of new enemies, some more bits for those already represented and new “metallic” models.

Problem.

The metallic ships are annoying, as my whole Delta Quadrant fleet is older paint except for the Delta Flyer (easiest of fixes). If I go Silver, then they match the TNG ships, except for the Promethius and Dauntless, but then again I could re-paint which ever. There would then be waste and bloat, something I addressed.

I culled for good reason.

Point costs are all reduced as has been the habit. This makes my earlier ship cards redundant. In fact the upgrades are such that I have that familiar old devil on the shoulder telling me to go with the new, when the angel of first editions says, use what you have. Balance is retained with either, but not both.

Several Janeway Cards (Skill 8 which is enough***), and at least two of most crew, several with captain options, the 30pt Voyager, 20pt Delta Flyer, lots of weapons, tech upgrades and others (including some TNG cross-overs) and most of the older hypotheticals, so more than enough to give me varied builds.

Let’s not mention slight anomalies of scale.

There are some new crew, many of which I had to google to remind me who they even were, including some holo crew, a ship from the past (The Raven), Vidiians, which I have avoided in the past (not a fan) and more Hirogen of which I have plenty including the card pack. There are Numiri, re-using the Bajoran Scout, but that is really it and two of these ships would have been nice to fit the scenario.

The fact is, they cover actual shown hypotheticals, ones that I could make up anyway (Holo deck anybodies, a lost Akira or Nebula class, some deep exploring Romulans, maybe some lost Xindi) and I have several better ones now (Marquis ship, Dauntless, Promethius, Klingon, Romulan, Bajoran, Equinox, Cardassian Dreadnaught, Tholian) and a decent range of actual foes (Hirogen, Borg, Kazon, Krenim, Sp. 8472).

I could buy and scavenge, avoid the whole points thing, or ignore it, fix it or apply a “handicap” system maybe?

So, buy two or three sets at $120-180au, just for some upgrades and the odd extra or repainted ship? That is where it gets frustrating and hard to cap.

This is the future for most of my gaming, making (first world) tough calls to quit while not too far behind or in this case, to not re-commit to a mixed journey.

I generally see a point in hind sight where I could have stopped and been happy.

For Armada it would have been to dodge the prequel stuff completely (or just buy it if they had finished the range as I originally assumed), for X-Wing it would have been to dodge the later movies in 1e, then not feel compelled to do 2e at all. For Attack Wing it would have been to chase the Delta Quadrant, TOS and early Enterprise series ships, but nothing else.

So for AW, quit buying and use what I have, chance that I will later lament missed packs, or continue but to what end?

Even my little TOS set is decent enough. A house rule is to allow larger upgrade buys, but only have active the amount of icons on the ship/captain cards, meaning Kirk may pull out any of his tricks, but still has to pay for them all (even duplicate crew are allowed).

Savage Worlds Pathfinder with new books coming (Bestiary 2 and Advanced Player guide 2) and 13th Age with their second edition are doing the same.

With SWPF I have this very neat little set. The second books just feel like more bloat, on an all too familiar road. Maybe the Bestiary later or the card packs, but not much in the APG2 appeals. SWPF also has the flexibility to let you add these elements anyway, which is part of the attraction. Classes are only archetypes, not fixed paths.

13th Age is a game where a little or a lot of GM license is fine, so are house rules and play to flavour**, which to me make more sense than second ed rules fixes, which are often treading the same ground as many have already trod before. I have two core books, some well respected rules expansions and lots of ideas, so is a second edition even needed?

Unmatched, a game that got out of control, but I can happily accept that. It is a rare thing that seems bullet proof to power creep, adds something new every time without making anything redundant or over complicating the core ideas. Even Tales to Amaze added options, but not confusion.

We take RPG rules as written far too seriously.

Role playing is actually a lot easier than we make it some times, rules lawyers and number maximisers go home! My idea of gaming hell is when players play the rules as written against the GM’s and their story design.

Maybe the best thing I can do is keep reminding myself that a little of many games is better than full immersion in a few (or often obsessively just one for periods of time). A bit of X-Wing 1e, 2e, Armada, Sails and Wings of Glory, metal minis, Attack Wing (various periods) and others are fine, just move on when one gets bogged down, don’t try and buy your way back into enjoyment of one system when variety does add spice and often a little time helps you appreciate where you are now.

My Eldritch Horror, Everdell sets are examples of deliberately “reduced” games and have done well.

A nice, sensibly little game, a real victory of common sense over compulsive collecting.

Knowing when to call it is a big deal.

So much simpler when these things die off naturally.

*These all have the benefit of several repeated cards from my duplicate culled ships, the Borg and Sp 8472 factions are intact, many have a plethora of options.

**Which is why it was made in the first place, a designers notes, house rule compilation.

***Debate rages over the skill of Janeway, but it is fair to say after being hand picked for the Voyager and a few years of nearly constant conflict, she is one of the most combat experienced Federation captains. She is however a match for anyone in the Delta Quadrant at 8.

D100 TTRPG's The Good And The Bad And The Fixes

My love of all things D100 in TTRPG’s is a real thing. If I could only have one (system type or even game), it would and almost is D100 games.

There are games for any period, theme and play style, or to be more precise, any play style can be accomodated, but it needs some help with Pulpy style.

The most commonly cited complaints with D100 games are;

1. The d100 roll under die rolls are swingy and harsh. Why did I pass on a 64, but fail on a 65? This often speaks more to the literal nature of some gamers, not the game itself.

2. The system tends to be lethal and unforgiving, which only suits some styles of play and themes. This is often coincidental, the combat effects reflecting more choice only, not necessarily the severity of the effect.

3. The games feel old. The core systems have not changed in 40+ years and some of the mechanics seem dated. There is often seems to be a lack of “slickness” to their presentation compared to a lot of newer (or older) systems. A system that does not need fixing every new edition? Heresy!

Ok, lets look at these three complaints.

The d100 roll under system has a wide range, but a sharp win/loose threshold. This is true as written, but mostly an illusion in comparison to other games. In any other game where dice are used, the same thing happens, just not in as much detail.

The granularity of d100 games and the non curve spread seem to exaggerate perceptions of an abrupt shift and I think the roll-under dynamic adds a subconscious negative vibe to the system, but is it really any different to a d20 roll high game? If a 17 hits, but a 16 misses, we seem to accept that, but not the example above.

Conversions are easy to and often there is a D100 game that cleaves close to the intended convert. Historical Witcher anyone?

Even games with a curve still have a pass/fail threshold, it just looks softer.

“Curved” games tend to reward small modifiers more easily, sometimes illogically, where linear games have a more granular growth.

One solution is to use the larger range either overtly or on a case by case basis to indicate the severity of a fail or the success of a pass. For example, if a roll falls within 10% of the pass mark either way, this can indicate a “soft” pass/fail like a recoverable fumble or a pass with complications. This is actually a benefit of the larger range available.

Apart from a simple fix like luck points which may allow re-rolls or die inversion, the system itself actually can provide the solution and quite elegantly. If you use a slightly different die mechanic to the accepted fixed 2d10 with a +/- skill chance mods for difficulty, you can even add a curve.

Regardless what system you use, a D100 generic mechanic can be applied.

A risky or challenging test roll of 2d10 and take them as rolled-i.e. pre allocated*, an standard test allows taking them the best way or you take them the worst way for a perilous test (then adding more dice to the pool etc).

This system adds a curve, requires no math and has no “dead end” caps. There is now a built in, roughly 75% chance of hitting a number under 50 for a standard test, not the linear 50%. This also promotes the idea of a decent skill base, but slow growth.

It is recommended that no skill should ever be over 99% with this system, although there are plenty of ways of fixing this if needed like the value over being added to a passing contested roll but “00” (being effectively nothing) always fails.

By adding more die to the equation, there is no need to even add or subtract from the base skill roll. Three die, using a take the best/worst combination of two also adds the chance of more critical chances (see below)*.

Another way of handling any difficult test in any die based RPG is to simply break the test into parts or layered success rather than just a simple yes/no test. This adds tension and forces greater difficulty simply by adding layers of story elements.

The “doubles = critical effects” (passing or failing) smooths out the dated and clumsy mechanics like the mathy lower or higher 5% of skill pass/fail, crit chances and slots in seamlessly with the mechanic above. I have always struggled with equal crit or fumble chances shared by characters of vastly different skill levels.

This fixes much of the mechanical clumsiness of point three and even a little of point 2. One consideration is to limit character control of skill point allocation (maybe to 10 units per growth allocation) so doubles don’t dominate (or not).

Like the base roll, the actual critical rolled may also vary in effect.

Extreme end critical pass/fail results would be pretty straight forward, very clean results “11” would be a guaranteed, yet unexciting success, “00” is a potentially embarassing fumble, while crits closer to the actual test threshold, and the higher the better, would be more pronounced.

A very highly skilled character for example, able to get a passing “88” would be able to pull off a miraculous success. This has the effect of making critical pass rolls closer to the actual skill level, the ideal result. This adds to the brinkmanship feel of the roll under system. It also allows the GM to limit “mooks” to values under potentially brutal crit levels. A simple little table of critical pass/fail results can be employed as a GM prompt.

Rather than a simplistic pass/fail roll, the dice become story tellers in their own right.

Point 2 is interesting. There is nothing actually stopping the d100 games from becoming as abstract and soft as d20 or other systems can be. This in fact is a way of making d100 games more “pulpy”, by increasing hit points and decreasing specific effects. The likelihood of player character death is a game specific thing.

Want simulated reality, genuine character fear and a feeling that any threat is real, then most d100 games offer that, but not because the d100 mechanic forces it. It is more because the d100 family of games have often postulated realistic character fragility is a valid option as part of their original anti TOG ethos. This “fresh eyes” look at what a TTRPG is, started to ask important questions early on.

The only way to get better, safer or more lethal in most d100 games is to be more skilled through training or experience. This is a mirror to life, much more realsitc than arbitrary levels, abstract hit points and AC bonuses. This by default elimnates the need for power creep inside the mechanics.

In a d100 game, stats are generally fixed, skills often capped and weapons and armour locked in, so all things being equal, only the better skilled character has the advantage. A ceiling is set and it is realistically low, part of the secret of the systems longevity.

The d20 based 13th Age does exactly the opposite, tying all aspects of the character from damage dealt, AC, hit points etc directly to character level. This is a favourite because if you are going to pay into the theatrical abstraction of a d20 game, it does it both feet in.

“Softer” games like The Original Game (only just older than the first d100 game that directly sprang from dissatisfaction with TOG), have always used abstraction and generalised mechanics based on the orignal wargame it was based on (Chainmail). This means characters feel less in peril. They can pay more into the game without fearing the consequences of their actions to the same degree as a d100 game.

there is nothing to say TOG could not feel more perilous, but it simply does not.

Levels, generic hit points (with no other effects), fast and easily accessed healing, even resurrection are just some of the gameish mechanics d20 games use to get their job done and if it suits, then fine. D100 games can actually use these as well, just choose not to.

I will ask the reader, if a sword does massive damage to an arm, should that just be rolled into a pool of generic hit points until they are reduced to below zero, or should it actually effect the character’s ability to use skills and gear reliant on that arm? Your call, but to me one is realistic, the other is closer to a simple video game. Even d100 games that do use hit point pools, usually have critical tables that align damage to physical effects.

I feel strongly that TOG is simply a natural evolution of a wargame and it shows, where d100 games were a genuine revolution into a true TTRPG thinking. It would have been interesting to see, if d100 games came first, whether a clunky d20 system would have even been concieved.

A fix for that in some of our few d20 E6 games was to actually damage characteristics on critical hits, an idea borrowed from the Traveller RPG. This acted as a reality check that suited the low powered E6 variant of 3e/Pathfinder. Characters suddenly got into a more d100 mentality, one even saying it felt more like CoC than d20. It really bought out to me the dissociation with reality that an abstract hit point pool creates.

This brings us to the last point.

The games associated with d100 are often older games such as Runequest (the original d100 game recently re-released), Call of Cthulhu, celebrating it’s 40th anniversary and the generic BRP family.

The reason for this is, unlike d20 games, the d100 mechanics worked from day one with only minor evolution needed. The latest versions of d100 games and there are many, all trace their mechanical heritage and functionality (not just terminology) back to the first.

It is basically true to say if you know one, you have a solid grounding for the rest. The systems are so logical and straight forward, bullet proof even, you could wonder why any other systems are needed other than to populate a healthy hobby landscape. D100 games are evolving, but nothing dramatic and it all has a take it or leave it feel****.

It is true also that most available d100 materiel is cross compatible to some degree, even if 30 years separates them. A CoC monster from 1st edition is not a big stretch for a 7th ed game and conversions are straight forward (some have stayed basically unchanged).

This is also why there is no OSR or retro-clone movement in the d100 community, because there is no habit of drawing lines in the sand and making gamers commit to specific editions, which are largely incompatible.

Ironically, the only major change mechanically is a move in 7e CoC away from the original TOG, 3d6 characteristic generation model into true percentiles, but even that is an official shift to an already used d100 mechanic (CHR x5 = #%). Hardly enough to create a retro sub-culture as conversions are pretty simple either way and the chrs are still generated the same with 3d6 anyway.

There are plenty of incompatible d100 games sitting outside the BRP family, such as Rolemaster, Bare Bones, D100 Dungeon, but even then, the base mechanics are similar and the core concepts are in the same ball-park.

*I use red and blue die. If the player is handed one of each, the test is standard (read the red as tens and then the blue as singles). If the test is easy, they player is presented with two blues, or two or more reds if hard. The look on their faces when they go to unlock an innocent looking box and you hand them four reds for a nearly impossible reflexes check is priceless (until they pull it off!). The GM can also let the players roll based on their assumptions, but disguise the values (read them differently after the roll, maybe even withholding the real result or why it went wrong).

**The original RPG has shifted from a, sometimes negatives and sometimes positive values are good to a positives only dynamic. From high/low/middle “crunch” and vastly different sub systems over just 5 editions. With few exceptions none of these are cross compatible. This does not even cover all the spin-offs that often depart heavily from the originals. Most of the changes are there to address the inherent issues with the system. No levels, no unrealist and hard to fathom abstractions, no untouchable characters immune to arrows shot by lesser beings, no shruggling off a dozen axe blows, no odd game only based abstractions. D100 games have only a reality cap hampering them, meaning all sword thrusts can kill, any Dragon is always dangerous and actions always have consequences.

***I recently dug up my copy of the Black Company companion for 3e TOG. This is a very good example of a system in crisis. Some of the characters are level 50+, have half a thousand hit points, can attack five or six times with guaranteed sucsess (but do relatively little damage) and do not in any way align with my take on the books. To be honest, most of my favourite fiction (the Malazon books, Urth of the New Sun, The Black Company chronicles, John Carter of Mars, The Dark Tower, Tolkein etc all have relatively fragile heroes, no one is immune to harm from any level of foe, in fact it is hard to find any fiction that models TOG tropes except super hero comics. One of the greatest ironies is the Mythras release of their Lyonesse book which handles the Vance books that inspired the original “Vancian” magic system used in TOG better than TOG!

****One of my few dissapointlments in D100 games is the new Warhammer RPG. For all its gloss, wonderful art and production values, it is a simple game over complicated, with bit glaringly missing (shields!). If this was a different system, I would be gutted, especially as I committed to the massive an d amssively expensive “Enemy Within” campaign, but the reality is, being a d100 game, I have many easily accessed tools to fix any problems. I could even play the whole campaign using another d100 system with little difficulty, even 1st ed Warhammer.

A Simple But Effective Upgrade

Two areas 1e X-Wing clearly falls behind 2e is in their Manoeuvre Dials and Action Bars. Both are prime examples of core mechanic finessing that easily and consistently improved, or nerfed most ships in the game.

The Dial in particular evolved over the life of 1e adding the S-Loop and Talon Roll manoeuvres, but sometimes felt strained when older ships that would have logically have had them also, missed out.

Some ships seemed too slow (IG-2000, HWK-290) or too fast (Scurrg) in relation to their peers or lacked enough green (now blue) moves to clear stress, so nearly automatic builds of specific Droids/Crew/Mods were used to fix this (Y-Wing with R2, X-Wing with Vectored Thrusters or Flight Assist Droid etc).

This meant that one ship had a feature for free, another had to use a valuable upgrade slot to match it, usually at the cost of another option, a penalty it suffered simply by being an earlier design. The irony was, the more famous ships became less enticing to fly, winning squads were often made up of ships and pilots few had ever heard of before X-Wing.

If something was still not still possible, then a generic Title was created to balance out issues, the motivation often jarringly obvious. The tournament circuit and casual gamers heavily invested in the game waited for the nearly inevitable fixes they knew were coming, no matter how much of a strain it was on the system overall or perceived reality.

Upgrades in 1e and their purview also increased, as well as a whole other type added (Tech), but they were generally able to be included in the older ship’s sphere or made little real difference to the core mechanics, just build minutia.

Most of these ideas and even Actions could be bought through upgrades in 1e, just inefficiently.

Pilot Talents and build combinations in 1e became more powerful and unbalanced in the late meta, not unworkably so which is testament to the sound base design and ongoing diligence, but something that we have fixed by simply reducing choice, which in no way removes those elements from the game*, it just makes the smaller range of users shine as the now rarer exceptions.

In 2e the designers basically normalised what most did anyway. Upgrade types were dropped (generic Titles-incorporated directly into ships) or reduced (Mods, Pilot Talents, Droids), with a few types added (Force, Configurations).

The 2e Dial changes as much as any other element levelled the playing field between older and newer ships.

Some ships we use as examples.

Unchanged;

• The humble Tie Fighter stayed the same. The simple swarmer is fine as is, fast with 2 K-Turns and a Barrel Roll.

• The YT666 party bus, like the sluggish Lambda is unchanged, so it sits more in contrast with other improved ships.

• The space cow Lambda is unchanged. Not much you can do here or probably should.

• The YT-2400 already has 12 white moves.

Logically changed;

• The already nippy Tie Interceptor gets S-Loops, possibly the ship that would have had them first. This now has a comprehensive Interceptor suite of Roll/Evade/Boost/S-Loop/K-Turn. For the whole suite, the Lambda can even share a Target Lock.

• The Tie Striker had a rare Imperial 2/S-Loop, but now gets a speed 1 K-Turn instead of a 2 and gains 2/blues. It becomes the slow, but nimble side-shifter in contrast to the high speed arc dodger above.

• The cumbersome Tie Bomber gains a second K-Turn and 2/hard turns are now white not red. Still a little boring, but less so now.

• The Tie Advanced can now move 1 straight, gains 2/blue banks and Talon Rolls. T-rolls differentiates it from the slippery Interceptor confirming it as a line fighter.

• The lethargic Decimator now gets slower blues and some 1/red hard turns. Logical if unexciting changes. Big ships suffer if they cannot turn, so this one at least has some options.

• The iconic X-Wing gains Talon Rolls and 2/blue banks matching the 1e T-70, which makes up somewhat for no Roll or Boost. It can now push harder and turn better.

• The speedy A-Wing swaps a 3/K-Turn for S-Loops, a nice contrast to the X-Wing above and sharing the Line Fighter/Interceptor dynamic.

• The B-Wing gets a faster straight blue and a speed 1/Talon Roll. The close-in fighter feels complete and it can now bug-out faster in practical terms.

• The Y-Wing gains 2/blue banks, doubling it’s ability to clear stress and allowing it to use the Droid upgrade slot for more options than just R2.

• The YT-1300 gains a built in S-Loop. This was added in the later Falcon Title, so it makes sense to absorb it and fits with the flat ship profile.

• The HWK-290 is the most improved with more real speed (4/white from red), more agility with added blue, white and red moves and can Full Stop like other support ships. Finally the “dud” of the fleet gets the wings of a Harrier.

• The Starviper now looks for all the world like a slower Tie Interceptor with a couple more blue banks. Dalan also offers a Talon Roll variant.

• The Jumpmaster. Unlike it’s Rebel twin the YT-2400, the JM is heavily nerfed. It’s left handedness is made a little straighter, it’s white left 2/S-Loop goes 3/red and it’s right side red 2/S-Loop is gone. This makes up in some small way for us using the card as printed.

• The Firespray like the other upright ships gets Talon Rolls insted of a 3 K-Turn and gets a straight blue, which fit so well and match the similar B-Wing.

• The Kiraxz has it’s 5/K-Turn changed to a 2/Talon Roll, so like the X-Wing only tighter and it gains a blue straight. A small shift on paper, but a major change in style.

• The Headhunter gets another straight blue and a second K-Turn, so it slips into the hole left by the now improved X-Wing.

• The IG Aggressor is unchanged except for a white speed 4 added. This fits as it was strangely slow at 3/green.

  *

The idea is simple.

Stick to 1e in normal or restricted formats, but use 2e Dials.

Only cosmetics change on the table and then only slightly, but I guess you also need to be a little blue-green colour blind and mentally insert “blue” into the text on the rare occasions it is needed.

Frankenstein’s Monster?

It works extremely well in BB although we tend to leave that simplified space as is, but it hums in Classic or Legends, giving a good spread of differentiation across the ships and a more logical and consistent feel to their moves. It does make some upgrades redundant, on some ships at least.

The tall “uprights” like the B-Wing or Firespray and the more conservative line fighters now turn tight and square, all the flat arc dodgers have angled S-Loops as their special thing and even the most staid of ships often have a little more to offer. The few ships that are nerfed are a balanced fit also.

In 1e Bare Bones the stand-outs are the Tie Striker with a 2/K-turn and 2/Loop, Kihraxz with a 4 and 5/K-turn, IG Aggressor with 3/Loop and 4/Turn, Juno in the Advanced with 3, 4 & 5/K-turns, the A-Wing and Interceptor with 3 and 5/K-turns and the JM5000 with 4/turn, 2/loop (and one is white).

In 2e the Interceptor, Aggressor, YT1300 and A-Wing all get a K-turn and a Loop, the Striker gets an even shorter K-turn, the Bomber and Z-95 both get a second K-turn, the X-Wing, Firespray, B-Wing, Kihraxz and Tie Advanced all get a K-turn and Talon roll. Only the JM5000 is nerfed.

Unlike other expansions in the reduced formats, it still champions good team flying, not uber-list building, it just allows harder pushing with more stress clearing moves and some easy alternatives to absent repositioning options.

This is new, very new, so it will be interesting to see what combinations will appear like Juno with multi speed T-Rolls!

*Pilots who are exceptions to the Action range or even Action order, those that add or subtract tokens, or have other “free” stuff are still there. Almost every element of the game has multiple forms, we just removed two or three layers of these, so no, not everyone can do everything, making those that do, the undisputed champions in their space.

**Still no Roll for the X-Wing or Kihraxz, but now two ways of turning hard.

Remembering A Past Not Shared.

One of my favourite wandering internet search pathways tends to be old X-Wing bloggers.

Stay on the Leader, Such an X-Wing Hipster etc.

I was reading a post today dated March 2017, a time of powerful pre-nerf lists like Manaroo, Triple Jumps, Paratanni, Fangaroo etc.

Good times, but times I missed.

X-Wing was a glancing blow for me, something I noticed, but only had a few chances to play. To be honest, I was not keen on pre-painted minis games, still entrenched in my bare metals.

To me also, Star Wars is less appealing than Trek which is odd as I saw the first movie at the theatre and it help me entranced for years, but the prequels and dearth of other SW around for the next decade or two allowed Trek to takes this space back.

I don’t play favourites to any great degree, just tend to get more excited by Trek stuff and seem also to respond more to big ships with crew than fighters (I often think Armada would have scratched my Star Wars itch completely, but that is a relatively recent purchase).

Star Trek Attack Wing, a game I came to late as well, was my way of honouring this and avoid the dearer and seemingly more showy X-Wing.

I also liked the scenario based game style of AW, something XW avoided for a more stand-and-fight, tournament style of game. I think the main deterrent to me was that play style. I needed a story to tell, a scenario to complete, not just an enemy to crush.

I still jumped when 2e was released, enticed by ridiculously cheap 1e TFA starters (x5) and a plan that had little chance of succeeding in hindsight, but well, I tried.

Anyway, back to the point.

Some things are perfect for a while.

X-Wing from release to about wave 8 in 2016 seemed to be the undisputed table top miniatures tournament game around. There were others, indeed this is the high water mark for these games like Wings of Glory, Sails of Glory, Attack Wing, Armada etc, but X-Wing had a consistently huge following.

Clever Action chains were the key, card combos both tricky and varied, but within that competitive sphere there was a sense of fairness. Almost anything went at this point and the community was healthy, friendly, committed and massive. Some people were still flying X-Wings and winning!

From then on, the wheels started to wobble a bit. Nerfing pilots and ships, even nullifying the print on cards, enforced limits on card effects, applying fixes that felt tacked on, sometimes even desperate, caused a clear split between casual and tournament play.

Action economy became the currency of the later game, anything that could increase options being golden.

The fun of course was discovering those combinations others had not and being the first to try them out. Even more fun was breaking those parameters and winning with a less than perfect squad. It was a good enough system with a large player base, but as the base shrank, so did the options.

It got more serious for some, less fun for others. It was all about exploiting the rules to the limit, waiting for the inevitable nerf to curtail the build, then finding the next big thing, no matter how unlikely.

Never a tournament player, especially when gamesmanship overpowers adherence to story and canon accuracy, this had limited appeal to me. As a tournament game it was a hoot, as a simulation it was also, but they were very different beasts.

For me, a generic ship builder game would have worked, but when theme is involved, I need it to feel right.

By the end, after an impressive wave 14 release, even the later movie was touched on, most of the expanded universe explored, a new upgrade class added (Tech) and layer on layer of fixes applied, the game was sick in some people’s eyes, broken even.

I guess the question was, did the game reach a point of balance again, measured on the performance of the iconic original ships compared to newcomers, or was it past fixing? Like life, a game based on assembling variables cannot be perfectly balanced, but it neeed to allow every ship to have a place.

Two things may have changed this landscape at the outset.

The first is separating the pilots from the ships (like AW captains) and possibly absorbing EPT’s into pilot profiles or making them Squad or Scenario “Tactic” cards. 2e has gone some way to fixing these, absorbing a lot of EPT’s, Titles and generic Mods into the ships themselves, but separate pilots would have been cool (or possibly even a build your own pilot system for tournaments, named ones kept for casual games).

The other is using scenarios, which allow the original concept of the ship to fit it’s situation, rather than the usual a 100pt toe-to-toe scrap in a 3’x3’ space. A Tie Bomber has a job it was designed for and it is not as a fighter.

Attack Wing has these elements and is more stable as game for it, even if it is less balanced overall and less perfectly executed.

Our various modified takes on X-Wing are an attempt to get back to the core of the 1st edition game, not by ignoring everything released after wave 8, but by extracting the upgrades that cause the most obvious abuses, corner rounding and connected problems, thus diluting the purity if the core game.

If you look at the most powerful builds in the mid and later meta, they are built around EPT’s, generic Titles and Mods. EPT’s are at odds with pilot talents, Mods make unique ships less unique and generic Titles are a clumsy fix that sometimes caused as many problems as solutions.

Is it possible to recapture some of the buzz of the early game, or is it lost forever?

All of the games below use the cards as printed, no errata, including the Jump Master and Palpatine, others like Attani Mindlink are naturally limited to two, because I only have 2.

Bare Bones has a certain simple charm. Seven iconic ship types per faction, controlled, faction representative and built with limited upgrades (the ones that work, are straight forward and that people actually choose or want to). It is about building a relatively simple squad, then flying it. It serves both as a salve to jaded players and a good introduction to the game and heroes the ships and pilots as they were designed-usually as the exceptions to the rules.

Action economy is still as relevant, but it is effectively capped at the base + 1, with rare exceptions. The abilities for example of Kyle or Jan Ors to effect Focus acquisition is relatively more powerful in this space, even without Moldy Crow Title and Vader is exceptional with two.

Legends adds more names (the Rebels series and expanded universe), a few more upgrades (Named Titles, Ordnance, Crew) and effects like Ion and Cloak expanding the game to the ships with the basic 5 Actions + Cloak.

Prime adds more again, especially generic droids and crew. This space gets considerably more flexible, but also more complicated. It is starting to feel like the full game pre wave 10.

Expanded adds the bulk of what is left including single card huge ships, with only a few upgrades (generic Titles, Mods-except on huge ships and EPT’s still held back), because this format is the most prone to fall apart. More Action types allows more upgrades, so apart from the above, everything goes.

Classic is a little different, allowing EPT’s, but only in pre-builds and is limited to the squadrons featured in the three original movies (Ep 4-6). This is the true introductory format, allowing people with a Star Wars awareness to scratch that itch, learning the game as they go.

Most importantly, it looks and plays like the original movies. The only Tie Advanced is Vader, the Bounty Hunters are there, no expanded universe etc.

In Classic, heroes are made to fit the story, regardless of the rules.

There are a few head to head tournament formats like Aces High for well versed players keen to trick-out a ship to it’s full potential, limited in ship selection rather than upgrades. All upgrades are allowed, but only select ships like the X-Wing v Kihraxz v Tie Advanced or the top three or five fighters for each faction. This champions the late game developments in all their glory, without adding the complexity of the whole universe.

Full Noise is the whole game, warts and all. Nobody here plays that. It has some appeal minus Mods and EPT’s.

The beauty of this, like anything I guess, is relevance to the user. New players, vaguely aware of the game are as easily hooked as they were in 2015, but they have the benefit of a controlled and prescient pathway.

Of these, Classic feels most like Star Wars to outsiders, Bare Bones is the least intimidating for squad building and Legends sparks an awareness of the larger universe. Interestingly, as more ships and effects are added, most of our small play group gets less interested. It seems it is enough.

2e?

Little interest here, even though I have most of it, but have stopped collecting recently. The TFA period is the priority, something that was half completed in 1e and integrated into the earlier period (I hated that), so 2e for TFA and 1e for original made sense and it was well supported by conversion kits. Extracting TFA from 1e made even more sense.

When it got going, 2e started to service the later period very well, including the huge ships.

To me 2e is the tournament players game, balancing out the ships and allowing the designers more nerf flexibility, but for a casual gamer, it is a “busier”, more polished space. Even the mechanical language is more involved.

I would probably only add more if the Tie Aggressor and Rebel ARC-170 are re-released, for use with 1st edition of course and the later period still gets a look.

Sticking To The Script

X-Wing 1e, Bares Bones, Legends or Prime are our base-line for playing Star Wars, stripping the game down, replacing some elements in a layered approach to taste and playing the “old school” game.

Nothing against 2e, but 1e is just a great game and if limited it is relatively simple and balanced, it’s elegance shines through.

One upgrade type that is removed, is the Elite Pilot Talent, or EPT. These and generic Titles are the main “over-complicators”, along with Mods, which tend to level out ships and pilots and rob them of their uniqueness (Boost for example is a rare beast and Barrel Roll mostly an Imperial thing in BB, but basically anyone can have them in full X-Wing).

Classic and Legends do use 2e dials, offering a better spread of manoeuvres with a more balanced spread of S-Loops and Talon Rolls.

One form of the reduced format game that can have EPT’s is “Classic” concentrating on the three original movies, or more specifically the battles of Endor, Yavin and Hoth and the little skirmishes in between.

This is a chance to round out some pilots, allow them to be used as an introduction to 1e X-Wing, to scratch that “simulationist itch” and use some of those mostly neglected EPT’s.

It includes the Rebel Red, Gold, Grey, Green, Rogue and Blue squadrons and Imperial Black, Sabre (181 group), Obsidian and Scimitar squadrons, with the Imperial Guard and Omicron group, as well as the personalities present including the bounty hunters highlighted in the Empire Strikes Back.

Pilots are built out as squadrons of “quick” builds with EPT’s and named Titles where relevant. These are thematic and cosmetically consistent (meaning the card art fits the faction or ship) and the EPT fits the pilot.

Not all EPT’s are covered and not all pilots get one. Some, mostly skill 9 pilots might get more than one and points cost is not as big a consideration as the right feel. An effort was made to avoid the reflex driven and all too powerful tournament combinations.

These are more for rounding out characters than exaggerating their talents, the idea is to balance powerful pilots with mostly offensive or defensive Talents with something from the other side of the coin, not create over powered Action chains.

Vader (9) already gets two Actions to simulate his Force mastery, but he now also gets Determination for added Force discipline (and his portrait card) and Squad Leader, which feels right for his role as intimidating, but empowering leader. It also came in his pack.

Trench run anyone? Looks just like the card.

One of his wingmen Mauler Mithel (7) gets Snap Shot to enhance his already strong R1 bonus and wingman status.

Youngster (6) hanging around in the wings also adds more options here, duplicating his mentor.

Scourge (7) from Obsidian squadron now gets Opprotunist, so please ignore Back Stabber in the picture below. Vader’s wing men were getting all the love and Scourge is the better pilot and the sentiment fits better.

Juno Eclipse (8), the only other Tie Advanced pilot in Black Squadron (small stretch, but canon), gets Outmanoeuvre which plays into her post-dial jank Talent.

Soontir Fell (9) has a good Talent gaining a Focus when stressed, but little opportunity to use it in BB. Avoiding PTL (A-Wing art and possibly a little too tournament powerful), he gets Daredevil and Predator, which either add stress for extra effect (adding a Focus) or make him simply more lethal.

Soontir feels more fleshed out with two EPT’s. Too bad for the luckless Y-Wing.

Turr Phennir (7) has a cool Talent gaining a Boost or Roll after an attack, but now he also gets Intensity as well for more, if limited effect.

Howlrunner (8) gets Swarm Tactics as is often the case, making her the Tie squadron enabler. This is a common X-Wing build, especially early on, but is not over powered and it fits the art.

Kir Karnos (6) of the Guard gets Expose, not because it is a particularly good EPT, more because it smacks of an Imperial Guards fanatical, aggressive commitment.

Those lovely red Interceptors.

Tomax Bren (8) gets Adrenalin Rush as his Talent is dependant on one-use EPT’s and red moves are rare for other Imperials in Classic.

Colonel Jendon (6) Ruthlessness (with a Heavy Laser Cannon).

*

Luke Skywalker (8) gets his portrait card from the base set, Deadeye, which seems to fit his “Use the Force Luke” bit for offence and it is his portrait card.

Wedge Antilles (9), the Rebel miracle-man gets Lightning Reflexes and Cool Hand, one to add survivability and re-positioning, the other to allow a once-off benefit from that (“I turn on a dime, I Evade or I Focus”).

Thought they had the drop on old Wedge.

Ten Nunb (8) the B-Wing ace gets Adaptability to help allow him to decide when to be in the activation stream. It is also the only EPT in the mix with a B-Wing featured and it is free.

Wes Jensen (8), with a decent offensive Talent like Wedge, gets Expert Handling to aid with his survivability and move options.

Ten (8) gets Stay on Target, which turns adjusted moves red (B-Wings have these in abundance, so it gives them some relevance) and it fits with his offensive talent.

Keyan……staying on target.

Jek (7) is given more reason to live (die?) with Wingman.

Han Solo (9) has a strong offensive Talent (re-rolls), but nothing to represent his slippery nature. Elusiveness is a fit (comes with the TFA Falcon) and also Trick Shot, which is a freebie and adds a sense of offensive cockiness.

Lando (7) gets Decoy, as a good support Talent (Lando is the Rebel support Falcon build).

Chewie (5) is a great fortress/blocker build, so he gets Draw Their Fire, becoming a bigger Biggs. He is built out with the two droids for extra staying power making him hard to hit and even harder to take down. I wanted to give him Selflessness (Wookie on the front), but it is only for small ships.

Green squadron is thin on EPT capable pilots without their generic Title, so Jake (7), a personal favourite, gets the primo one, Push the Limit. It is good and thematic on Jake, but not as dangerous as Tycho (absent) or Soontir (wrong art). At least someone has one of those crazy 1e Action chains and who better than a mad A-Wing jockey.

Watch this space.

Dutch Vander (6) is built out with a Synched Turret, so a perfect candidate for Marksmanship.

Horton (8), the often under used Y-Wing ace gets Saturation Salvo, making his Torpedo attacks more useful, especially against low PS swarms.

Dutch with a surprise or two.

*

The scum are a good place to line up both dedicated card art and some nasty, thematic combos.

Dengar (9) is an expensive pilot with Title (12 pts for “Punishing One”), so Crack Shot and A Score to Settle for 1 point total empower him, fit his legend and keep him under control.

Boba Fett (8) has a couple of EPT’s with basically his name (well picture) printed on them. Lone Wolf (Slave 1) and Fearless (Mandalorian pilot) both fit. His Talent of changing move (Imperial version-ignore the one below) is handy, but some extra controlled aggression suits him as well.

Bossk (6) get Rage, because, well, it’s Bossk through and through, as the picture suggests.

IG-88 (6) gets Intimidate. I was going to go for Calculate, but the image of Guri did not fit. The dial and his cold robotic brutality does though.

More fun in the 1e space, which just keeps giving.

Rebels Series, A Revelation

My Star Wars fix went a bit flat after the Mandalorian.

It was good, but it did not click with me and to be honest I did not see the attraction.

Andor was better, grittier and more fragile feeling, but a little dark for me.

Rebels was started one night when I really did not have anything else much to watch. I really just wanted some background on the X-Wing ships I have been obsessing over lately.

Taken before I got my Spanish Sabine’s Masterpiece captured Tie and English cardboard.

Series 1 was ok, enough to get me interested. The animation was fine, a little odd with the organics, but surprisingly good at machines, Storm troopers etc.

Into series 2 now and two things have happened.

Spoilers ahead.

Firstly, the story is evolving into a genuine Pre-quel to the three original movies. The large gap between the Republic become the Empire and the growing rebellion is being filled and not only are all the characters from X-Wing (Ketsu, Visago, Azmorrigan, Hondo etc) being explored, but also the Armada personalities I did not know (Sato, Asoka etc).

Secondly, the animation has lifted a level. The digital animation has gone to a more natural and vibrant look, the CGI ships etc are spectacular and the people are less wooden. I really appreciate the continuity and attention to detail.

Loving the excellent battle scenes, which include an ancient Clone tank vs Imperial Walkers, CR-90 Cruisers vs Imperial Gozanti and Aquitens light cruisers, an amazing display of Vader crewing through an entire squadron of A-Wings and more to come. Special mention to Hera in the first B-Wing ever used.

Three more series to come and I will assume it only gets better.

Most importantly, it feels closer to Star Wars than anything else I have seen lately and even makes me like the actual prequels a little more.

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 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 usually, but slipped 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 native 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

40 Fire Spray; Kath Scarlett + Flechette Cannon

60 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 for the same cost.

Binayre Pirates at work.

Star Viper.

The lethal killer butterfly that is the Star Viper brings some nifty moves, as well as a rare 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 Roll) 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

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).

Not a nice spot, but thankfully for the JM5000, Fang Fighters are not in BB.

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

The Scum feel very different to the other two factions, being big ship heavy, capable of fielding Illicit slots and some interesting Pilots.

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 and Attack Wing ships and starters, so I searched Star Trek on a 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 figures, 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 back 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-fixed) 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/or too late.

In BB, partly created to re-empower this ship and other early ships in their original form, the X-Wing becomes a stable, if unexciting ride for a bunch of strong pilot Talents (remember no EPT’s, so Pilots rule supreme) and named Droids to match. Flying X-Wings well is a matter of a good supportive 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 (YW and HWK), making them effectively a 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

28 Y-Wing; Dutch (6) + Plasma Torpedoes + ABT

72 3x Y-Wing; Gold Squadron Pilot (3) + Plasma Torps + ABT

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 other manoeuvre king, the A-Wing stands out in BB as it should as the undisputed speed boss.

Fun.

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

Not Easy Being Green

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

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

44 2x A-Wing; Green Sq Pilot (3) + PR

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 common 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, a 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, some of the best supportive Pilots and Crew and a Turret upgrade. BB makes even this ship a contender in a balanced squad.

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, a Cannon and Missiles, a solid constitution, some nimbleness 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 and Lando add their own directions*. It can be a super support, a hunter killer, a fortress or a combination of these.

Who stands out in BB for the Rebels?

R2-D2 (Droid), C-3PO, Jan and Kyle (Crew and Pilot),

*No Chewie because in BB, we often us a simplified combat system with standard hits beings against shields, critical hits applied to hull only, which nullifies some pilots and upgrades. It is optional, but often used for simplified games and makes little real impact.

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 dual K-Turn and Evade.They “pop” easily and are offensively tame, but are cheaper by the dozen, with 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 boosted swarm. They work best in small self supporting sub-groups.

The Tie Striker.

The late comer to BB, 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, it likes to and can stay close. Still 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 equivalent 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 Fighters stuck together, becoming a much less slippery aship, but gaining a TL action and 5 Ordnance slots as well as both 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 is slow, but can 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 Crew options*.

The VT-49 Decimator.

A brute in BB, the Decimator is like a Falcon that did too many supplements or the mommy spider to the Interceptor babies. The only ship in BB with no Agility without help and one of only 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

So, five varieties of tadpole and two frogs. The Empire has all the elements needed to make strong and varied squads, but builds can seem limited, especially with three ships unable to take upgrades in BB (No EPT’s, Mods or Titles).

Who is special in BB?

Palpatine (as written), Soontir, Vader (Pilot and Crew), Howlrunner, Juno, Jendon, Cluster Mines, and Homing Missiles.

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).