For about the past two years, I have been developing a variant of DagobahDave’s original Death Star Trench Run mission for X-Wing. After playtesting several rule changes and additional modifications, we have developed a balanced game with plenty of strategic and tactical decisions, all while attempting to capture the cinematic tension and memorable moments.

DagobahDave was very creative with his initial concept and I give him credit where it is so well deserved. I appreciate his work and thank him for inspiring me to take a crack at it too.

You may download a copy of the variant here at boardgamegeek.com.

Comments, questions and feedback are greatly appreciated!

I hosted two events of this mission variant at GenCon 2015 (NMN1568495 & NMN1568630). Each session culminated in a tense last minute gamble to secure victory. In the first match, the Rebels were victorious when Luke was able to secure a 4 hit shot on a fully shielded exhaust port that had its defense roll fail to generate any evades. In the second session, the Rebels, after having failed in two attempts to enter the trench, finally inserted a Y-wing into the trench only to run out of time within an inch of the firing line. Han, the only other surviving Rebel, was unable to destroy a TIE and secure another round of play.

Hmm. Some nice additions. I have played it several times with the original set-up with a few exeptions:

-The imperial starting forces may start range two further into the board.

- There is a range 5 long section take out of the middle of the rebel set-up preventing the rebels from reaching the trench in round 2 .

- All Y-wings must carry the BTL-A4 upgrade

Were you playing with DagobahDave's original Sept 2012 version or his most recent Aug 2014 updated version? I'm guessing it was the Aug 2014 version based on my understanding of the exceptions you note.

What was your reason or reasoning behind having the Imperials start closer to the trench?

I was very excited when the BTL-A4 upgrade was announced/released. Not only was it appropriate for the cinematic theme, it eliminated a major issue we experienced in the trench. In our testing, the Ys would decimate following TIEs with its rear-firing Ion cannon. In our experience, this was especially unbalanced when deep in the trench and other TIEs could not simply drop down in a subsequent turn to maintain pressure on the rebel craft.