So seeing the pics of GenCon and the amazing events, got me motivated to finally finish one part of the update I have been working on. Part of the goal of this for me is to learn more efficient ways of working on my video game development and how to incorporate new systems. One of those is learning to use Substance Painter for texturing. So I modeled and textured a new Turbo Laser tower. Sits at 15 000 polygons, and 2 x 4k texture sheets.

Going to use it in the new mat design. If I can I want to turn it into a papercraft model you can cut out and use with the mat.

That turbo looks great! I’m a sucker for great scenery.

I've been experimenting with 3D printed towers too. Most of the x-wing ones I found on Thingiverse didn't look quite right, but I found a huge one someone made for Legion and modified it so the turret could rotate. Here's a shot with one at 50%, 2 at 33% and one at 25% scale.

While the 50% scale one is probably the most realistic size, the 33% scale ones seem to be the most practical for the tabletop. I also made another base which is just the bottom part of the tower scaled to fit the turret, taking out the 2 middle sections for a low-profile turret rather than a tower.

21 minutes ago, whittaker007 said:

I've been experimenting with 3D printed towers too. Most of the x-wing ones I found on Thingiverse didn't look quite right, but I found a huge one someone made for Legion and modified it so the turret could rotate. Here's a shot with one at 50%, 2 at 33% and one at 25% scale.

While the 50% scale one is probably the most realistic size, the 33% scale ones seem to be the most practical for the tabletop. I also made another base which is just the bottom part of the tower scaled to fit the turret, taking out the 2 middle sections for a low-profile turret rather than a tower.

I think the largest looks the best.

I want a 100% one modified into a dice tower. could you do that?

maybe 75%

23 hours ago, PanchoX1 said:

I want a 100% one modified into a dice tower. could you do that?

maybe 75%

It could certainly be done. You could Tinkercad ( https://www.tinkercad.com ) to load the original model ( https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2810454 ), hollow it out and add entry and exit holes using negative shapes, then add some internal shapes for the dice to bounce off of and away you go. I reckon maybe using the version of the model which has each segment as a separate piece to make it easier to work with and glue it together at the end. You could maybe make some pegs and holes at the corners of the sections to allow them to be push-fit together without glue.

If you're asking if I could do it, I probably could, but I'm not short of projects at the moment

yeah, I have no experience working with 3d print files and I don't have a printer. Someday someone will make a sweet one . Anyway, cool models!

Check out http://www.creat3dprops.com/star-wars.html

They have a turbolaser dice tower.

I ran 2 Trench Runs at GenCon this year (2018). It was with 1.0 rules as I hadn't cracked open my 2.0 kits yet. I borrowed @LagJanson 's Trench he had built. It is fantastic, but it doesn't account for the shift in Trench that @DagobahDave put into the latest version. So, I have the Rebels deploy at R3 and the Imps at R1 of their respective board edges.

I did drop the turrets getting a free eyeball to hit as it seemed brutal in play testing.

Game 1

A Dad who got his son and wife to play. They had 3 going for the Trench and the rest on the far left side to draw the troops away. The problem was that it took 2 turns for the Rebels to get into the Trench...and they they went 2 forward after that. It was enough time for Vader, Backstabber, and Mauler Mithel to drop in behind and blast the crap out of them. After that, the other ships were just too far away to get into the Trench.

Game 2

We had some serious gamers in this one, but still more Imps than Rebels. I coached the Rebels pretty heavily. I told them to maybe have one T-65 not drop into the Trench right away and try to come in behind the Tie Fighters. I suggest have some fighters in the middle. It worked pretty well, but still the Imperials wore down on the Rebels. Tie Fighters were chasing Biggs and Luke. They got Biggs, but Luke managed to drop behind the Tie Fighters, except one. Han came in and blasted the Tie Behind Luke. It came down to the last turn with Luke having a shot on the exhaust port. He fires....and rolls terrible. Imps win.

*************

Looking at it, it was just really tough for the Rebels to get down the Trench to take a shot. I'd think of a number of things to re-balance it, but......2.0 is here! Already there are built in power ups for the Rebels that they didn't have before. They get 2 Torpedo shots and Y-wings can even reload. They get to repair Shields or Hull with Astromechs (well, at least twice). There is also the possibility of getting Boost by closing their S-foils. You can also have the turrets require a rotation like @2J-W is doing. Will it be too much? Time will tell.

I do like having Energy in the game as it gives the ships not in the trench something to do. It makes the Power Nodes more of a target and more relevant. I'll have to think about it.

55 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

Game 2

We had some serious gamers in this one, but still more Imps than Rebels. I coached the Rebels pretty heavily. I told them to maybe have one T-65 not drop into the Trench right away and try to come in behind the Tie Fighters. I suggest have some fighters in the middle. It worked pretty well, but still the Imperials wore down on the Rebels. Tie Fighters were chasing Biggs and Luke. They got Biggs, but Luke managed to drop behind the Tie Fighters, except one. Han came in and blasted the Tie Behind Luke. It came down to the last turn with Luke having a shot on the exhaust port. He fires....and rolls terrible. Imps win.

Don't sell this game short. This one went right to the wire which is what a good epic feeling mission should. It could have gone either way on that final roll and I missed the first half of the game so I can't say what the decision making was like at the beginning.

Sometimes tactics tried are just not valid and they make it look lopsided, but that doesn't take away from the scenario.

55 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

I borrowed @LagJanson 's Trench he had built. It is fantastic, but it doesn't account for the shift in Trench that @DagobahDave put into the latest version.

To be fair, it was never designed to match this particular scenario as I went more cinematic. I think your deployment adjustment was a good fix.

55 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

There is also the possibility of getting Boost by closing their S-foils.

Boosting in the trench is broken OP! PLZ NERF! Seriously though, now that I have you twitching, yeah boosting in the trench allows the Rebel fighters to OUTRUN the TIE Fighters. That's not good!

I'm also in the preliminaries of figuring out how to balance my 'Run' for 2.0... I may just adjust the points a bit and give the Rebels less. TIE Fighters are still your key balance point here, and with the extra munitions on the torpedoes the Rebels can now afford to expend munitions on the Imperial fighters.

I did realize that I never implemented the rule that if you blow up a Tie Fighter that the timer goes back a turn. Whoops!

1 hour ago, heychadwick said:

I did realize that I never implemented the rule that if you blow up a Tie Fighter that the timer goes back a turn. Whoops!

Making mistakes so so you don’t have too!

Made lots of progress with my construction kit in Unreal and building up the map. This is rendered in Unreal engine in real-time.

Still more work to do but its coming along.

That looks amazing! What are you planning to do with it? Play the trench run scenario virtually? 3D print it physically?

13 hours ago, whittaker007 said:

That looks amazing! What are you planning to do with it? Play the trench run scenario virtually? 3D print it physically?

The plan is to release it as a new mat design people can download and print out on vinyl and use it for the new Trench Run variant for 2.0 that I have been working on.

3d printing wouldn't work as this is actually fairly low poly and there's a lot of detail in the textures, and you could use virtually. That would actually be really cool as a mod for table top simulator but TTS doesn't use Unreal so would be too much work to port it over. Mainly just a project to learn Unreal engine for me, as I work with Unity daily.

This is an A-mazing thread. THANK YOU!

Just finished up the new mat design for the 2.0 scenario:

*Note this is a low res image. I'll release the high resolution image for printing along side with the new 2.0 scenario when it's all finished!

Looks great, the lighting really sells it!

On 8/21/2018 at 5:08 PM, Ccwebb said:

This is an A-mazing thread. THANK YOU!

Thanks! To think I started it 2 years ago. I think having Dagobah Dave enter into the thread makes it even better.

I am interested to see how 2nd Ed changes things.

On 9/9/2018 at 12:55 AM, 2J-W said:

Just finished up the new mat design for the 2.0 scenario:

*Note this is a low res image. I'll release the high resolution image for printing along side with the new 2.0 scenario when it's all finished!

Looks really good! Too bad I already printed mine.

I finally got a chance to test my version of the Trench Run using the new X-Wing second edition ruleset that I have been working on.

You can read the BETA ruleset on Google drive: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h8gxBQd9bikn3JH0iIgpLJa5lPmgBv_59Tk_3bh3k08/edit?usp=sharing

While the ruleset isn't finished yet, now that it's been play tested once I thought I would share the working copy to get more feedback on it. The plan is to release a whole HOTAC style scenario book along with the new mat design, updated rule set and make the Trench Run a complete package that would be easy for any game group to pick up and play.

After the first play test here were some thoughts:

• The Imperials were very strong and easily defeated the Rebels in this play test. We played without the Tie Fighters Elite pilot talents, and the strength of the swarm was too strong.
• The turrets were overpowered. Being able to rotate, and focus made them very deadly. Also there were too many turrets, going to remove one from the map design in the future.
• Forgot to add wording about entering or leaving the trench when above or below a ship and how overlaps work.
• Having a list printed out with cards and stats for everything made life so much easier being the game master and running everyone through the game. Need to add that to the scenario kit.
• The current deflection tower bonus is way to strong making it very hard to knock out the structures.
• I need to change the wording on the crit bonuses on structures I have in the current ruleset, some were unclear.
• Phil has a great idea on changing the Trench turrets which I want to play test next time. Basically, if no Imperials are in the Trench, the Turbos can fire at all Rebel ships, and roll green dice based on their movement speed that round. No firing arcs to check would help streamline this part. Going to investigate this further.
• One big compliant was with a 3 x 6 mat, the Trench is too long. It takes 5 rounds to get into firing range of the exhaust port. It wasn't very fun trying to get to the end. We came up with a good idea that I would like to try next time on how to shorten the length. By lengthening the Trench entrance zone once a deflection tower goes down. It would allow the Rebels to come in at a shorter distance, and give more reason to attack the structures.

There's still some work to do to streamline the scenario and make it quicker to play. We tried to do it in a evening, but it became clear it just wasn't enough time. Second edition seems to take longer than first, and I think this would make a great evening scenario for play groups with some streamlining.

Here are some photos of our recent play test.

Round 2:

Round 3:

Round 4:

I updated my variant of DD's trench run mission to 2nd edition rules. I didn't add anything to the scenario, only adjusted it for the conversion (pilots, abilities, actions, weapons, etc.).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10w3L0ANbK3caj9VYJBxcxxgctP5OceAj

Hi, Thanks a lot for this V2 version.

We plan to play it 15th December. 😀

I have done Backstabber's card, I'm doing Dark curse asap.

Thanks a lot to Strange eons too. 😉

5 hours ago, Malburet said:

Hi, Thanks a lot for this V2 version.

We plan to play it 15th December. 😀

I have done Backstabber's card, I'm doing Dark curse asap.

Thanks a lot to Strange eons too. 😉

Ahhh....so you are recreating the old pilot abilities? I wonder how that is going to go.

I redid DD's games and did a straight up translation to 2.0 as best I could. The Rebels won pretty handily for the first time in a long time. Not sure if it was the new rules or luck.

On 10/11/2018 at 1:46 PM, 2J-W said:

I really just want the trench to have a dashed yellow line down the middle. . .

Here is Dark Curse 😉