So… some friends and I had our first experience with Cinematic Play a couple of weeks ago. I have had a transport for some time, but never used it as anything but scenery. One of the other participants has (I think) three transports and a CR-90 and never used any of them. With the Imperial Raider arriving soon, we decided to give Huge ships and Cinematic Play a whirl.
As the instigator for the whole thing, I chose mission H2: Blockade Run as our entry point as it just looked like a lot of fun. Let me say up front that I designed both of the lists to save some time, and that we bent the rules a bit here and there, though it didn’t seem to affect the final outcome. I would be running the transport only, so I built it around the Jam action to have some fun & games. One friend would be flying the remaining Rebels and another friend would take the part of the Imperials.
The Rebel fleet is based around the popular Bloody Daggers list, though with several additions since we had points to burn. I expected Imperials to bunch up invitingly at some point, so LT Blount with Deadeye and Assault Missiles also seemed like a good choice.
The Imperial fleet is fairly optimized for transport hunting. If you’re not familiar with the mission, the Imperial player starts with only a couple of ships on the board, then receives waves of reinforcements in Rounds 2, 4, 6, and 7. The game ends if the transport is destroyed (Imperial victory) or survives 8 rounds (Rebel victory). As such, I expected the Imps to struggle in the first several rounds until their heavy hitters showed up in the second half.
Rebel Fleet:
GR-75 Transport w/Combat Retrofit – 61 points
· WED-15 Repair droid (2), Toryn Farr (6), Slicer Tools (7), Frequency Jammer (4), Dutyfree title (2)
Dagger Squadron B-Wing – 34 points (x2)
· Heavy Laser Cannon (7), Advanced Sensors (3)
Red Squadron X-Wing – 24 points (x2)
· R2 Astromech (1)
Lieutenant Blount Z-95 – 23 points
· Deadeye (1), Assault Missiles (5)
Imperial Fleet:
Initial Deployment:
Gamma Squadron TIE Bomber – 25 points
· Concussion Missiles (4), Proximity Mine (3)
Academy Pilot TIE Fighters – 12 points (x2)
Group A:
Echo TIE Phantom – 39 points
· Outmaneuver (3), Fire-Control System (2), Advanced Cloaking Device (4)
Academy Pilot TIE Fighter – 12 points
Group B:
Colonel Jendon Lambda-class Shuttle – 34 points
· Weapons Engineer (3), Fire-Control System (2), ST-321 title (2)
Group C:
Major Rhymer TIE Bomber – 40 points
· Marksmanship (3), Advanced Proton Torpedoes (6), Proton Torpedoes (4), Munitions Failsafe (1)
Group D:
Turr Phenir TIE Interceptor – 26 points
· Adrenaline Rush (1)
Close observation will note that we went over on the Rebel point total; it didn’t really seem to matter. We also didn’t quite follow the Imperial deployment guidelines, as Group C is short on points but my friend decided that moving another Academy Pilot there to make up the difference would leave him too short on the front end.
So, the game went more-or-less as expected. The Imps were badly outnumbered for the first half of the game and got beat up. The heaviest hitter proved to be the transport itself, accounting for a TIE Fighter, the Gamma TIE Bomber, and a slow-to-move B-Wing. Despite the buckets of dice thrown around by the Rebels, one of the TIE Fighters proved quite elusive and managed to survive the entire game, though it was otherwise ineffective until the final turn.
The game hinged, as I thought it would, on the last couple of turns. The Imperial Admiral had chosen his reinforcement points well, and the Lambda-class shuttle showed up right along the Rebel edge, prompting a flurry of effort to remove it. Not only were we unable to do so, but the efforts left everyone out of position to deal with the real threat of Major Rhymer when he arrived on turn 7. As turn 8 started, the Rebels were all on the other side of the board trying to mop up the (largely irrelevant) shuttle so it was all down to Imperial gunnery practice. With a clean stern-on shot, Rhymer rolled max damage with an Advanced Proton Torpedo, stripping away all of my shields and a nice chunk of hull. The TIE next to him also rolled full damage. I had reinforced the aft section, so I got an automatic evade, but the amount of hits flowing in had me sweating.
It all came down to that pesky Academy TIE that had been floating around since the opening deployment. I had one hull left on the transport, and an automatic evade from my Reinforce action. He was at range one, so throwing an extra die… I COULD make it, but only just. My friend rolled and came up with three hits! This ended the game and is shown in the pics.
All in all, it was a pretty good game. Rebel shooting was pretty good at times (taking down Echo despite being cloaked), awful at others, and maneuvering left a bit to be desired. Had we done a better job of mopping up the early Imperial waves, we might have been a little better off in the late game.
The turbolaser/ion cannon mechanics were fun, though largely ineffective. I think one X-Wing was lost to a turbolaser, and we dinged the shuttle with an ion cannon, but other than that nada. I think the idea of shooting your own forces proved too scary, with both sides opting for cautious token placement.
In the end, all of the points I had sunk into beefing up the Jam action for my transport were wasted; I never used it. For most of the game, I had energy to spare but no-one in range. When I finally had enemies in range, I was Reinforcing or Recovering. At the end I just didn’t have enough actions to go around. In retrospect, I think I should have foregone the Jam upgrades and tried to beef the transport up a bit more. A few more hull or shield points and we’d have won…
If you haven’t tried it, this is a fantastically fun mission! I know that mission play isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, though I prefer it to dogfights, myself. I’d definitely like to try the other transport missions at some point, though I suspect we’ll break out the CR90 the next time we get together… need to get a handle on things for when the Raider arrives!
Thanks, all!
- SFC Snuffy
One post-script: I picked up line laser from my FLGS, and tried it out for the first time in this game. For those not familiar, it's like a small laser pointer that projects a straight line rather than a dot. The version I got is an Army Painter product and cost (I think) $6; I understand Harbor Freight Tools (here in the US) has a similar product for $3-4. At any rate, this was a huge assistance in marking firing arcs and determining shot eligibility, especially for the turbolaser and ion cannon tokens which are very light and move easily. If you don't have one, I'd recommend getting one.