Round 1 began with 2 squadrons of 6 tie fighters each flanking the elite Upsilon carrying a squad of imperial death troopers and escorted by a squadron of 6 interceptors.
If the Upsilon docked with either docking area of the station, the death troopers would kill the occupants of the station and disable the ion cannons, 2 at a time until they were all disabled resulting in a loss.
The station was defended by 6 ion cannons holding the capital ships at bay and concentrating all their fire on the Omen in an attempt to disable it long enough for the fighters to escape. In order to succesfully disable the Omen, it needed to suffer 36 hits from the ion cannons at which point, the Irregulars could spool their hyperdrives to escape.
Imperial fighters had attack ai against the ion cannons and Irregular squadrons job was to defend the cannons against enemy fighter attacks and fend off the upsilon shuttle and its death troopers. The capital ships were throwing 5 dice attacks twice per turn each at anything that flew within range 5 of them and moved forward 1 every turn. Also, 1 elite spawned from a random capital ship every turn with attack ai against the closest irregular.
Ion clouds were representative of the nebula where the irregulars base was hidden and only obstructed attacks without causing any effect to anything that flew through them, making the field an open range for aggressive flying without fear of obstacle impacts.
Setup for the mission was anywhere on the mat occupied by the space station and each irregular was accompanied by the first ship they flew in the game that operated as a wingmate to the pilot they flew with and used their ai to move with the pilot designating attack targets and actions for the ship.
All non-elites are basic ps0 pilots and respawned from the front of a random capital ship every round that 4 or more were killed in the previous round with the Upsilon respawning in the same manner.
Also, all elites had 1 higher than the highest pilot skill on the board at all times and came equipped with double their normal shields. The raiders and Omen also had double shields and hull, making them essentially impossible to kill for this mission ( didn't stop me from trying though!)
Table full of Irregulars!
Our resident bomber firespray has a custom ability that allows him to deploy multiple bombs at once and drag the bombs he dropped onto a target of a successful primary weapon attack! Using this, he gave the Upsilon shuttle a very fine hat full of explosives while the arc-x1 and the rogue shadow pulled some incredible flying and flanked the upsilon and it's escorts to trap them in a devastating crossfire!
Our primary goal was to eliminate the Upsilon as quickly as possible, so the Gamblewraith star courier, firespray, arc-x1 and rogue shadow devoted the entirety of their firepower in turn 2 to bringing down the giant bat.
Our squad of starter ships were set to run protect actions on the turrets and defend them at all costs
Round 2's concentrated fire really did the trick! We wiped out most of the interceptors and the Upsilon in a monstrous crossfire and destroyed the heart of the wall of death streaming toward us while still staying just a hairs breath out of reach of the capital ships weapons!
The Sienar Stealth transport triggered it's area hack ability and caused the ties behind it to be forced to only move forward at speed 1!
Round 3 beginning with a fresh Upsilon with 4 more interceptors and an elite Delta shuttle incoming!
And who is that sitting on the Omen?
Grand Admiral Thrawn!? What are you doing in the Aturi Cluster???
Grand admiral thrawn deploying his space pachycephalasaurus, because drunken hotac is best hotac.
Another squadron of ties spawned in front of the Omen and round 3 was mostly the Irregulars trying to stave off the large volume of fighters getting ever closer to the station. Our squadron of starter ships sprung into action and angled to destroy the ties on the eastern side of the base before they could knock out the turrets in that area!
Round 4, and the Delta was joined by an elite tie advanced that the ARC-X1 proceeded to joust with. Meanwhile, the delta wasted no time in punishing one of the measly y-wings that flew too close, reducing it to a single hitpoint.
At the other end of the field, we lost an x-wing pilot to a terribly unfortunate double direct hit!
More space dinosaurs!? Round 5 and a fresh batch of ties coming to bear against the irregulars! Everyone is damaged at this point to some degree, but the Ion cannons have been protected well and are building up hits on the Omen!
Die stupid spaceship!
The Arc-x1, damaged from it's joust with the elite advanced was forced to fly in between the Omen and one of her escorts to avoid taking fire from the capital ships and the tie fighters. She survived the encounter if only barely, taking the ship effectively out of the fight. Meanwhile, the Rogue Shadow was able to hack the tie advanced and cause it to veer off the map!
Unfortunately, the rogue shadow was faced with an absolutely massive wall of enemy ships. Could it possibly survive so much concentrated fire?
The Arc, damaged but alive.
The rogue shadow survived with a single hull point remaining! At the other end of the field, the second upsilon shuttle was destroyed by concentrated bombing and fire from the J-type Nubian the firespray and the Star courier. Only one turn left to survive and the Irregulars could escape!
The firespray was able to deploy virtually its entire bombload in a last ditch effort to stop the western ties from destroying the ion turrets! Between this damage and the Nubian firing on them, the swarm of ties was destroyed before they could trip up the passing of the mission.
The Arc-x1 was able to fly just far enough away from the capital ships that they concentrated fire on the other members of its squadron and it managed to live to fight another day!
MISSION SUCCESS! The base was lost, but the Irregulars were able to spool their hyperdrives and escape with no loss of life. An incredible effort by all pilots involved and a stunning conclusion to an incredible season 1 of heroes of the aturi cluster!
Came really close several times to dying and lost a couple of the starter ships, but it was one hell of a swan song for the irregulars going into season 2.
