Today Urban Cannibal and I played 'The Battle for Endor' on an 8x4 board with 600 points aside.

The key rules were that only original trilogy ships were allowed and only pilots alive and able to be present at the battle.

So you couldnt take biggs because he was dead, Han and Chewie are not allowed. Likewsie Luke and Vader were having 'father and son' time so banned from both lists.

My deployment... barely room to fit it all on. we decided to allow each other to be just over 'range 1' to deploy as long as no body took the micky about it.

Opening moves

I took

2x Tie advanced (we proxied the new titles and systems)

Jonus, Rhymer and two Gamma bombers totally loaded for bear with full ordnance and MF

3 x sabre squadron Ints with PTL and Autothrusters

181st wing of fel, tetran, phennir and lorrir, all with PTL and AUTOs

1 flight of three academys led by howlrunner

1 flight of three black squadrons led by mauler mythel

and my command ship was ST321 crewed by colonel jendon with EU, reb captive and HLC

Simon fielded all four named A wings pilots

Ibitsam and Keyan in B wings

four grey squadron y wings

five X wings in a mix of named characters like Wedge and a few red squadrons

The falcon with lando and nien numb

a generic rebel transport.( it managed to take out two ships by ramming them and another with slicer tools.)

The battle lines converge

Needless to say Tie Advanced with the buffs were deadly and given the scale of the game everything filled its 'niche'. The tie bombers shredded the milenium falcon and cut the transport up badly. X wings were very very verstile.

Funniest bit of the game was simon for some mad reason giving gemmer sojan 'expose' and then just when he thought he was in a 'no incoming fire' postition he forgot soontir fel had yet to move, got him in arc and with only 2 defence dice soontir at range 1 managed to wreck him (he'd already lost his shields).

The 181st get outflanked and shredded by A wings

Black Squadron engage wedge and red squadron and come off worse!

Everyone says expose is rubbish, i think it was duly proved to be a total waste of 4 points here.

The biggest problem was remembering what everyone had, i was constantly forgetting that jonus could allow my bombers re-rolls... constantly forgetting i had autothrusters on the non named interceptors

Everyone hates ordance but it really made this game and was terrific fun as it was so 'target rich' that getting locks wasnt a problem. Giving jonus and rhymer 'deadeye' helped a little as did having a massively diverse range of missiles and torps.

Here the falcon survives bout a turn of 'bomber love'

we didnt get to totally finish as we ran out of time after five hours playing but it was looking like the imperials totally owened the left flank and only soontir fel was alive on one hit point on the right with a flock of xwings and a wings around him

I honestly cant say who would have won had we played to completion but it was great fun all the same!

Ah, good times. Reminds me of the 3,000 point game we played last summer.

Did you cram your Bombers with Assault Missiles and make everything die? Because that's what the Imps did to us back then.

I really, really want to try and run a 400 point game this coming summer. Me and a friend have a plan, but it will be hard to keep the momentum going when the hours wear on.

Jacob

No i thought assault missiles would be shooting myself in the foot.

I did take them on one or two of the bombers but everyone got 'up close and personal' too quick to make them much use, everytime i had a shot with them i was more likely to trash the academy flight taking on the B wings

They pretty much all had

advanced protons

protons

clusters

Prox mines

MF

Two gammas running with jonus and rhymer were just lethal. espeically with jonus and rhymer having 'deadeye' to give them more target flexibility but to be honest it was such a cool game as both sides 'bombers' went after each others bigger ships, the interceptors tried to stop them and the space superioity fighters got stuck in with each other.

The left flank as really ordance heacy and big high HP ships slogging it out, the centre was largely ties and xs and the right flank was an awing/interceptor elites dogfight.

Terrric fun

I really, really want to try and run a 400 point game this coming summer. Me and a friend have a plan, but it will be hard to keep the momentum going when the hours wear on.

Jacob

In future we're going to play in the upstairs wargames room so we can lock the cat out and play a turn or two each day and just make notes at the end rather than get game fatigue.

To befair though five hours in we only stopped as simon had to go visit friends and catch a train. My spinal wound was flaring up again and i was in agony but was still raring to play as it was so much fun.

Its certainly true that in bigger games ships find their niche and that things that are very 'luck' dependent like ordance even out a bit more. Ordance was actually a real killer with lots of ships being one shotted by cluster missiles or prockets.

Cool pics. Looks like one of those scenes from Braveheart or The Mummy 2 when the huge infantry armies collide with each other on a wide open field. Which I guess feels kind of weird to me in a game that is supposed to be about ships fighting in space. You never see that many ships fying in a horizontal plane like that in the movies, it's always a tight cloud. Might be why, as a fan of the films, Epic doesn't appeal to me visually. The flat plane is less obvious when there's only a handful of ships on the table.

On a 4 ft wide table, would it really be an issue to allow ships to deploy range 2 from the board? I feel like that might help the visual problem of having a bunch of starfighters lined up wing to wing across the entire battlefield looking unnatural, allowing you to group them into clusters and making a refused flank tactic more of a threat.

It looks like you guys only made it to turn 4 before you had to quit. How many hours did you play? Edit: nvm, I see above you posted 5 hours. Wow, that's a long time to only get 4 turns in and still have all the ships be flying straight at each other.

Part of the time included set up, while we had print out it occured to us we stil had to get shield tokens out etc.

we had a few cups of tea and as i say my spinal injury was causing me a lot of pain so i had a lie down on the floor for ten mins every now and then. At the mo the nerve damage i sustained means i cant walk more than about 50 metres at a time and sitting for too long is agony too but we'd planned this game for a while so I didnt want to bail

Im sure we got more than four turns in though. I think both of us were quite cautious and made some very 'slow' opening moves, it was probably turn 3 before a ship went down (procketed tie interceptor of the 181st i think, lorrir IIRC)

we considered allowing 'range 2' set up but thought 'about 1 and a half' seemed better.

I dunno about the long lines looking wrong. There are bits in the film at endor where you just see lines and lines of TIEs swarming at the rebels.

My full list was this: (im aware i made a pointless and illegal choice in taking eperimental interface *twice* and taking it for ships that didnt have an upgrade action to allow them to actually use it. My fault getting confused and just thinking it would allow me to TL as a second action )

This is my 600 point list, im well aware ive got a stupid amount of points invested in bombers and ordnance but we play for fun and variety not to ‘min max’ to points efficiency. Its all about ‘characterful’ stuff to us. Also we’re proxying tie adv upgrades

Tie Wing 1

Academy Pilot (12)Academy Pilot (12)Academy Pilot (12)“Howlrunner” (18)

Tie Wing 2

Black Squadron Pilot + Swarm Tactics (16)Black Squadron Pilot + Swarm Tactics (16)Black Squadron Pilot + Swarm Tactics (16)Mauler Mithel (17)

Interceptor wing 1

Saber Squadron Pilot + Push the Limit + Autothrusters (26)Saber Squadron Pilot + Push the Limit + Autothrusters (26)Saber Squadron Pilot + Push the Limit + Autothrusters (26)

181^st Interceptor wing

Soontir Fel + Push the Limit + Autothrusters (32)Turr Phennir + Push the Limit + Autothrusters (30)Tetran Cowell + Push the Limit + Autothrusters (29)Lieutenant Lorrir + Autothrusters (25)

Bomber Flight

Major Rhymer + Advanced Proton Torpedoes + Proton Torpedoes + Deadeye + Munitions Failsafe + Cluster Missiles + Cluster Missiles + Proximity Mines (49)Captain Jonus + Proton Torpedoes + Advanced Proton Torpedoes + Deadeye + Munitions Failsafe + Assault Missiles + Cluster Missiles + Proximity Mines (46)Gamma Squadron Pilot + Proton Torpedoes + Advanced Proton Torpedoes + Munitions Failsafe + Assault Missiles + Concussion Missiles + Proximity Mines (41)Gamma Squadron Pilot + Proton Torpedoes + Advanced Proton Torpedoes + Munitions Failsafe + Cluster Missiles + Homing Missiles + Proximity Mines (41)

Tie Advanced wing

Maarek Stele + TIE/x1 + Push the Limit + Experimental Interface + Proton Rockets + Advanced Targeting Computer (41)Storm Squadron Pilot + TIE/x1 + Experimental Interface + Advanced Targeting Computer (31)

Shuttle Support

Colonel Jendon + ST-321 + Engine Upgrade + Rebel Captive + Heavy Laser Cannon + Advanced Sensors (46)

I had no idea what Simon would field but given he's as much into 'character' as me i was correct to expect to see a fair few xwings to be out there which should mitigate the fact that my bombers and low PS interceptors are a bit sub optimal.

I know on the last turn of the game my three sabre squadron were screaming towards my right flank and pretty much hugging his deployment edge

Like i say , hardly any camera battery so i stopped taking pics very early in.

Needs more transports!

(seriously though, they are amazing. Kit each out to do a single role, and they excel!)

Wow! That sounds and looks like it was an epic experience. Sorry to hear that the health issues impeded on the fun though, that really sucks. I'd absolutely love to have a game that big and have the time to actually get through it. I played in a 300pt team battle and we didn't even clear half the board before the store had to close.

Additional fun fact, Mauler Mithel died in the battle of the first Death Star. He's the one that freaked out when Han showed up and ran into Vader.

I think the epic rules actually let you deploy up to range 2 onto the board, otherwise things get a bit too tight.

Additional fun fact, Mauler Mithel died in the battle of the first Death Star. He's the one that freaked out when Han showed up and ran into Vader.

I have always thought how lucky that pilot was that he hit the wall and crashed after that. Can you imagine what Vader, not to mention the Emperor, would have done to him for preventing Vader from shooting down the ship that was about to destroy the Death Star?

The raider needs to come out. There needs to be more factions with Epic ships other than just the rebel scum.

we thought of having some more transports and maybe a corvette as scenery, raider would have been no use to us though as we were trying to use ships and characters at 'endor'.

Shame mauler slipped through the net

Long lines is probably more realistic than tight clouds anyway. Real combat pilots tend to fly in spread formations, separated by miles of space to allow room to maneuver. If you put these ships in a proper combat spread, the way you would do in modern aviation, you'd need about a 30 foot long table to fit the ships in properly.

As to this battle itself - looks fantastic. Also, it makes perfect sense you didn't finish - Han got that shield down!

Actually that would have been a good idea actually to have a 'variable' time to the game with say a red dice being rolled per turn and once an amount of hits or crits were rolled the rebels were deemed to have disabled the shield.

If they dont get enough by 'turn x'' the emperors plan works and the star destroyers and death star wipe out the rebel fleet.

No limits: Want to see 'Bring as many ships as you own, fully loaded'.

I worked out i have over 1000 points per side if i did that on my own. We'd be doubling it with simons collection.

I like Xwing but i dont really want to give up a week of my life to playing one game

The other crucial thing about this game was the narrative.

Except for the mistake with mauler the idea was for everything to be part of a (fantastical) 'historical battle' with only the ships and pilots present at it.

Trust me, a lot of stuff got left at home, look at my sig file

**** that looks EPIC

Totally freekn awesome

Trust me, a lot of stuff got left at home, look at my sig file

How do you have 1.5 CR90's? Awesome looking game though I wish I had someone to play that against (and the fleet to do it). I am so jealous

You have 1.5 CR90s when your mates dog eats one of them and you have to scratch build it back together with plasticard, paint and luck.

It was a long running thread a few months back. My best mate is dying, he went on a last holiday, i looked after his dog and his dog freaked out in the night missing him and jumped on my wargames table and ate the front and back off the CR90 (and a tie figher and an interceptor).

A very kind company who i wont name so they dont get people trying to blag off them and FFG sent me replacements for everything eaten (as i asked nicely). I ebayed all the cards off the CR90 that were unique lik 3p0 to raise money for cancer research (a uk charity) but repaired and painted up the old damaged CR90 to make it a 'pirate one'. So i can only really use one at a time but have slightly more than one.

hence

1.5 CR90