I know you had fun, but from the pictures, all I can see is a dice fest. Nothing of this game outside of the models and dice were used. You guys just went straight and K turned and fired again. You need to toss out something to break the formations, otherwise, this is just an exercise in RNG.

So true, when I look at those pics I just think "ugh, could have just saved everyone's afternoon and played Quarriors or Yahtzee or something."

There's no obstacles, no secondary objectives, no space to flank or vie for position, just gigantic blocks of dice moving toward one another.

Dials and non straights maneuvers were used often, actually all non shield tokens were used, only not used was cards. Players including myself played the way they wanted and thats fine by me.

As long as they had fun then that is all that matters. To do a game of the size with obstacles, objectives, etc... it would take a few days. My guess it that they were able to play and pack up in a day. How long did it take you guys to play from start to finish?

For the next mission I'm considering making it a 9x3 or reducing the point total.... but in the end everyone there had fun and I'm satisfied with how well it went with not using Damage cards, crits or using some tokens and even how to handle large groups of the same PS, and rapid engagment so overall I'm happy with the turn out.

Obstacles and objectives would add more but to Johnny's point it may have delayed the game, yes it was quick not including lunch it was about 4h20min from starting to unpack to repacked. I feel it would have went faster but the 4th player couldn't make it that slowed down the rounds and I have to handle both battles.

There's too many of them!!

OK, wrong battle, but still...

*Disclaimer: First this completely breaks the limits of the game and was done for fun. Secondly, I tried my best to stay faithful to the lore according to what I found whether it's true or not and maintain balance so don't grab the pitchforks if I missed something/got it wrong/balanced it a certain way.

This was a Ultra-Epic game inspired by the battle at the end of ANH. 821 Points per side, based on the info I found the internet it was 30 Rebels (22 X-Wings and 8 Y-Wings) + Han VS. Darth Vader and Black Squadron (for balance 39 ties). Only historical present pilots and droids were allowed: Han, Wedge, Luke, Jek, Garven, Biggs, Dutch, Vader, Mauler, Backstabber and Dark Curse.

PS3 cardboards were used to seperate other people's tie collections *all generic were PS4*

Here are the lists:

Rebels: https://geordanr.github.io/xwing/?f=Rebel%20Alliance&d=v4!c=100!36:140,-1,33,-1:2:2:;0:57,-1,2:-1:20:;5:16,-1,3:-1:20:;83:18,-1,5:-1:6:;1:-1,6:-1:20:;4:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;2:-1,2:-1:20:;7:0,-1,-1,7:21:2:;9:0,-1,-1,7:21:-1:;9:0,-1,-1,7:21:-1:;9:0,-1,-1,7:21:-1:;9:0,-1,-1,7:21:-1:;9:0,-1,-1,7:21:-1:;9:0,-1,-1,7:21:-1:;9:0,-1,-1,7:21:-1:&sn=Battle%20of%20Yavin

Imps: https://geordanr.github.io/xwing/?f=Galactic%20Empire&d=v4!s!22:57,-1:23:2:U.124;17:57:-1:2:;15::-1:2:;16::-1:2:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:;12:57:-1:6:&sn=Battle%20of%20Yavin%20Imp

How I did it:

Lists were printed out and marked as the Hull/Shields were lost. The Damage Deck was numbered 1-33 and the rolled 2 d20s minus 7 (reroll below 0) and suffered the crit, which was written on a piece of paper. (My first thought was using a random number generator site using 1-33 and this may not be the best statistically but we enjoyed the suspense having to roll to see what the crit was and in our case Direct hits were about 1/3 of all crits)

I used Red Sq. since Rookie Pilots would create a PS imbalance, since Black Sq. were hand picked by Vader (what I read) each had HU and Predator to represent their skill and help add points to keep the number of ties closer to the rebels.

You could only place in R2-R3 of your edge, using this many ships I wanted to force a quick engagement in round 1 which worked well.

I left it to the players to vote if they wanted a delayed entry of Vader, Mauler, BS and Han. They choose yes so at the end of Rd 1 Vader and wingmen appear behind the Rebs, the round after Han appears with R3 of Vader.

To handle Initiative, I separated the 17 Reds into 2 Groups of 9 & 8 while the 36 Blacks were divided into 3 groups of 12. All 5 groups rolled off against each other to determined the order when it hit PS4, this made setup, movement and firing rather smooth. As each group went up it was encouraged to go in numerical order to track who had already gone.

I also used this to help try to distribute the points somewhat equally:

Heres the setup

Heres Round 1, before and after

A smaller detachment of Ties lead by DC was sent to pin down the named Aces while the generics overwhelmed the Rebel generics.

Vader choose to hunt the Y-Wings first like in the movie

Round 2:

Round 3:

Round 4: The rebels were suffering, and a new player joining, we added 4 Xs and 2 Ys to bolster the Rebs.

It was not enough and Han was removed from Vader's tail

Round 5 and last few rounds:

Game was called with the overwhelming victory of the Imperials, the Alliance fighters were crushed while only 15/40 Ties were lost, and the Rebel base was given the "Alderaan treatment"

In conclusion:

It was a great game and it started with large amounts of ships but over 100 pts were lost each round making the game faster than expected, some great moments and Biggs survived!!!

If I would do it again I would....

- allow some time for each sides to discuss tactics and allow dials to be shown and planned amongst themselves.

- predetermine who was flying what before the day of the event.

Hope you enjoyed this and by all means try this out and let me know how it went for you and if I can help with anything.

Fly Casual and stay tuned Part 2: Escape from Hoth...

Going by listed Pilots present, and it was just "one squadron". Black Squadron only had around 9 TIE Pilots in it, at least named, still it was a squadron, theirs a limit to howmany people are in a squadron till it becomes something else. I can't stress how much this does make IMPs look like that actually are good pilots, and they are, despite what Star Wars Rebels shows us.

Only 1-2 Black Squadron Pilots survived.

Only 2 Red Squadron Pilots survived

Only 1 Gold Squadron Pilot survived

Only 2 of Green or Blue survived, one squdron was completely wiped out.

Excluding AAS kills, Black Squadron still had the higher KDA ratio.

I am just pointing that out for lore purposes, I understand in this game you wanted it balanced.

There's too many of them!!

OK, wrong battle, but still...

Lol close enough

4.5 hours for a game of this size is quick.

I love me some Epic bit the game does begin to break apart once you exceed 300 points without Epic ships.

You end up with so many ships on the board that you cannot avoid any arcs and forced to take a bucket full of dice on every engagement. You cant move properly and it really, really is a joust fest.

That being said, it is fun to fire off 3 crackshot/Guidence Chipped Assault Missiles into a block of 12 TIEs.

That's how Star Wars really is. Hasn't anyone seen Star Wars? Look at Battle of Endor. Not all ships on both side were sure to survive.

This looks like half fun, half headache. I think I would use 4 play-mats.