Well, there was a local gaming event called Mace here in the Charlotte area. It’s mostly board games and role playing, but I had bought my Tantive IV and wanted to use it. So, I thought I’d run a demo game where Imperials would have to destroy it. I wanted it as easy as possible for people who had never played the game before. So, I thought of 200 pts each….but stretched it to about 205 for extras. I wanted to go with all generic pilots, too. I used all my own minis, too. So, I would’ve used more Tie Bombers, but I only have one.

Rebels

CR-90 w/ 2 x quad lasers

2 x X-wings w/ Proton Torpedoes

Gold Squadron w/ Ion Turret

Blue Squadron w/ Ion Cannon

Imperials

Tie Bomber w/ Concussion Missile + Cluster Missile

2 x Tie Fighters

Lambda w/ Heavy Laser Cannon

2 x Tie Fighters

2 x Tie Advanced w/ Concussion Missiles

2 x Tie Interceptors

When I first ran this, I did it with some guys at the local store. Most were new and played none or little before. I ran the 6’x3’ table long ways, which let the corvette get lots of energy by the time the fighting happened. Also, the Imperials went in piecemeal and were just blown to bits. It was a bloodbath.

The second time I ran it I did with some old friends who weren’t too used to the game. We did it long ways, but I warned them about Imperials last attempt and they came in as a wave. It was brutal and lots of death. The rear of the ship was only at half hull points when the last snub nose fighter (B-wing) fired an ion cannon at the last Tie Interceptor to make it move 1 forward and smash into the Tantive. Rebel Victory, again.

So, I then realized that it needs to be the short side of the table and set it up for a Saturday morning game at Mace. I got a good bunch of guys and most hadn’t played before, or at least more than 2 games. You can see in these two shots that they decided to send the 4 regular Tie Fighters to distract one ship and the Corvette while the bulk of the heavy hitters wiped out the fighter escort.

The lone X-wing was taken down without too much trouble.

A giant furball happened on the other side of the table.

After the small fighters were mostly taken care of, they went after the big ship.

Eventually, the Imperials were able to blow up the rear section, but then it was quite hard to target the front of the ship from the rear. By the time that the ships were able to arc around towards the front, they were greatly reduced. The Imperials lost to the Rebels again!

In the next game, the Imperials did gun for the ship a lot sooner. Ships went into strafing runs on the front of the ship and peeled off. The Bomber was ionized and had to ram the Corvette!!

Imperials cleared up some fighter escort and moved on the big ship. The shuttle moved in to fire. The rear was taking a beating.

The Corvette reared towards the Shuttle and almost rammed it, but it did a sharp turn to get out of the way. It spent about 5 turns trying to turn around and was eventually killed by an X-wing and long range guns on the Corvette. That Tie Fighter behind the Corvette helped blast the rear section with the help of the Interceptor, but eventually that Tie Fighter rammed the Corvette by mistake. It was down to a Tie Fighter and the Interceptor and the front section had 2 hull points left, but with 2 X-wing escorts. It was too much for the Tie Fighters to sweep in to get shots and then peel away as the Corvette was always turning. First the Tie Fighter died, and then the Tie Escort. What looked like a certain win for the Imperials was quickly turned to a lose with the firepower of the Corvette…and a couple of bad moves by the Imperials.

Now, the last game ended late and my head didn’t hit the pillow until 1:30 am. The alarm went off too early at 7:30 and I was out the next day setting up another demo. Why did I do a late night and then an early morning game? I did decide to change things a bit. I think the Imperials got too distracted with the fighters and the B-wing and Y-wing had too much hull to chew through. This would cause the Imperials to get too bogged down with fighting them. Since I can’t add in another Bomber, I would change it to all X-wings for the Rebels.

We had only a few people show up to play, but they were excited. There was one guy who had played before, but the other 3 had not. It was 2 vs 2. The Imperials weren’t fooling around, though, and they went straight for the Corvette. There were a number of shots in short order that took the front shields down! Someone managed to get a critical hit in, as well. I think it knocked out the front quad lasers.

The Lambda parked for a turn in front of the ship and managed to get two good rounds of firing in….to fail on the rolling with only a single damage per shot. It then tried to get out of the way of the ship bearing down on it.

The Shuttle didn’t get out of the way and was run over! It did manage to give a few hits to the front of the ship. At this point, one of the players had to run to another game and we swapped him out with someone else walking by. This fellow did get distracted for a few turns fighting the X-wings on his side. Still, the other opponent was forced to engage the X-wings on his side, he always had someone taking shots at the Corvette. This was able to knock the enemy shields down in the rear and caused a critical! The Corvette was not able to regenerate it’s shields until it rolled a hit on a red die as an action!

At this point, the Imperials quickly turned on the Corvette and poured fire into it. The rear started taking many critical hits as it was raked with fire from the Interceptors. Structural damage was done and it even blew up more hits on the front section! It didn’t take long and the rear was destroyed. The front had 4 hull and 2 shield. The Bomber fired a missile and hurt it as another Tie Fighter fired at Range 1. It took it down to 1 hull point and gave it a crit! The crit was……direct hit, 2 hull points done. The Corvette blew up!!!!!

The Imperials finally won one game out of 5. I think it was a matter of just concentrating fire on the Corvette and ignoring the fighter escort. I will say that there were some crucial critical hits in there that really turned the tide. If those hits weren’t critical, the Imperials might not have won.

All in all, it was a lot of fun. It makes me want to get another bomber before I did it again. I think the Tie Interceptors were the stars of most matches and usually the last to die…except that first time. I had a good time running the event and there were a lot of people who had never played before had a good time, as well. I got a number of people interested in stopping by the local store and playing again.

I hate writting this stuff up and not getting a response.

Sounds like you had quite a few fun games - and surprising ones as well. Although they were demo games, the Corvette is not known for faring particularly well against regular Imperial forces...

I just read it. Sounds like you and the guys had a blast, and it also got me interested in buying the Tantive :-) up to now i thought its not worth the money but those games really sounded like fun and it would make for a great change of my normal 100pts games.

And really nice write up you made there, pics are awesome and made me really life through the action that was going on *thumbs up*

Yeah, while X-wing is perfect for 1 vs 1, Epic play is definitely made for a group of friends having a blast. And a beer. Or six.

Thanks guys! I really do appreciate it.

The one thing I noticed in the last game was that the players gunned for the big ship straight off the bat and tended to ingore the fighter escorts. That's what won them the game. Well, that and some good crits early on.

Yeah, I had heard that the CR-90 didn't last long, but it's been a real beast in most games. Maybe if the Imperials took more bombers? I was playing with what I had, so I only had one bomber.

It was most fun and most players were quite new. It was a good way to get players in the game. Also.....if I spent the money on the danged Tantive IV, I was going to get games in with it!

Yeah, I had heard that the CR-90 didn't last long, but it's been a real beast in most games. Maybe if the Imperials took more bombers? I was playing with what I had, so I only had one bomber.

Well, admittedly the game I played with the Corvette it was facing named Defenders, Phantoms and Interceptors, so it took a horrific beating, but the usual consensus seems to be that a single 110-125 point ship struggles to deal with 110-125 points of standard ships.

I also forgot that the Corvette can do two actions per turn as well, of course...

..it's really interesting to see your experience and the CR90 bucking the perceived trend, though!

edit: Hothie's CR90 report makes for good reading as well!

hey man just read over this i have never played with the bigger ships is it worth picking them up

@ empty1986m reading his write-up it really sounds awesome for epic play with more than just 2 people, which is the way to get some more friends attracted which might not really be into miniature games in the first place and then get them hooked ;-)

And it also seems like a good variation to regular standard games must to get some fresh air from time to time, so i really think i know what to put on my wishlist for christmas now :-D

yeah i just did that lol lol

Well, admittedly the game I played with the Corvette it was facing named Defenders, Phantoms and Interceptors, so it took a horrific beating, but the usual consensus seems to be that a single 110-125 point ship struggles to deal with 110-125 points of standard ships.

I also forgot that the Corvette can do two actions per turn as well, of course...

..it's really interesting to see your experience and the CR90 bucking the perceived trend, though!

edit: Hothie's CR90 report makes for good reading as well!

I think it does matter what ships you use, then. The Imperials only had 3 ships that had a natural 3 attack dice to use. That made the use of Missiles more important and the Interceptors had huge effects on the outcome. I really wanted to use the iconic ships and generic pilots. I probably would've used another Bomber instead of the Lambda, if I had it. I really think it was worth it to have a bunch of Tie Fighters in there, though. I mean....it's Star Wars!

I do think using all X-wings was better as the B-wing and Y-wing just took too long to shoot down. This distracted the Imperials for longer and allowed them to get shot down before moving on to the big ship.

hey man just read over this i have never played with the bigger ships is it worth picking them up

I got it because I thought it would be cool to have the big ships. If all I ever played were the 100 vs 100 tournament games, then it isn't worth it. I especially wanted to ensure that I got my money's worth out of it, though, so I made reasons to play it. I found it was really fun to play with it. It's great for getting new people into the game and just doing something different.

I think all the scenarios are like that, though. I played some of the scenarios I made and lately uploaded to Mission Control and it was a lot of fun! My opponent even picked things like Expose to use....because it fit the scenario. It's the same rules with a different focus and it is pretty fun. Otherwise you can get pretty stale with seeing too many Falcons, Phantoms, and Tie Swarms....

Thanks for sharing this. Sounds like it was great fun. Now I MUST get the Corvette.