So - we ran the Force Awakens Scenarios with some friends last night, and had a very good time.

the two sides were:

'Attackers' (playing the First Order)

• Quickdraw - Spec Ops Training, Adaptability, Fire Control System, Pattern Analyser, Lightweight Frame
• Colonel Vessery - TIE/D, Veteran Instincts, Ion Cannon
• Omega Leader - Juke, Comms Relay

'Defenders' (Playing the Resistance)

• Darth Vader - TIE/x1, Veteran Instincts, Advanced Targeting Computer, Cruise Missiles, Guidance Chips
• Quickdraw - Spec Ops Training, Veteran Instincts, Fire Control System, Targeting Synchroniser, Lightweight Frame
• Lieutenant Kestal - Veteran Instincts, Cruise Missiles, Autoblaster Turret, Guidance Chips

Mission F1 - Ambush

List changes - Attackers get a 115 point list - adding Winged Gundark to the squad (as his ability to trigger criticals at range 1 was seen as a good idea for minesweeping.

It became clear that the attacker's commander hadn't been entirely paying attention during the mission briefing and thought his goal was to clear the minefield. Which he did, by setting them all off with his own ships.

This resulted in a bit of a rout - the attackers' patented 'Red Army Minesweeping Technique' successfully allowing the defenders to detonate all six three-attack-die-range-1-blast mine tokens over the course of the game! The first turn resulted in everyone being outside range 1 of the mines, but on turn 2 the TIEs largely overflew the mines and one detonated hitting every attacker except Colonel Vessery. Winged Gundark got vapourised in the first shooting phase, and then the generally higher pilot skill of the defenders allowed them to whomp targets before they could attack, with Quickdraw's targeting synchroniser allowing double-modified cruise missiles to take big chunks out of the attackers.

To add insult to injury, only once did Quickdraw take a hit - losing her last shield...and recieving a Blinded Pilot!

[NOTE: checking - I'm pretty sure Quickdraw should have got her shot since it triggers off losing the shield, before the face-up damage would have been dealt. In hindsight we rolled it out and it might have helped..]

Mission F2 - Raid

List Changes - Defenders get a 24 point 'reinforcement' ship - adding Duchess (Adaptive Ailerons, Veteran Instincts) to the squad.

This was a lot closer. First, the attackers had a new commander who had clearly paid attention during the scenario briefing (the previous commander presumably having been force-choked pour encourager les autres....), and whilst Colonel Vessery played "look at me!!!!" the two First Order ships actually went straight for the satellites and started sabotaging them. Being deployed on both sides of the defenders made them difficult to engage with the overwhelming firepower they'd used in Mission F1, and the game came down to the wire a couple of turns before the timer ran out - one satellite left, with both Omega Leader (on one turn) and a damaged Quickdraw (on the following turn) getting to within one turn's move of the final satellite, such that in each case if they hadn't been shot down that turn it would have been game over for the defenders. Luckily for the defenders, they were, although it was very close (Lieutenant Kestal powering into range 1, focusing and going "Ahahaha!" with the Aggressor's autoblaster turret, then rolling [blank][critical] was something of a face-palm moment...).

Duchess never got deployed, because the attackers never made a serious effort to bring down the defenders, instead concentrating on the satellites, and using barrel roll to line up on them as their most common action.

Mission F3 - Rescue

List Changes - Attackers get a 12 point non-unique 'reinforcement' ship - adding Academy Pilots to the squad.

In this case, the attackers went straight for the objective and just accepted their lumps on the way past. This time, Colonel Vessery was the star of the show - an Ion Cannon is a nasty thing to bring when the squadmate token can only do speed 2 moves at best anyway, and the squadmate moving at PS0 meant he found himself blocked by his own escorts on at least one occasion.

The squadmate nearly died from being ionised into a rock (a somewhat ignominious end) but eventually it died in a glorious quickdraw clusterfire (quickdraw fired her forward guns at it, then her tailguns at the enemy quickdraw, who fired back, taking off a shield, so she fired her forward guns at it, then her tailguns at the enemy quickdraw again)

Whilst every ship ended up a bit battered, the squadmate was the only ship shot down, so (again) no reinforcements were deployed.

Another evening of missions last night - well, two of them, anyway, run in the sidebar of a game night kit:

Mission 5 - Preystalker

Attackers (playing the Empire):

• Omega Squadron Pilot - Wired x 5

Defenders (Playing the Rebels):

• Dengar - Punishing One, Attani Mindlink, K4 Security Droid, Overclocked Astromech (BOUNTY)
• Fenn Rau - Concord Dawn Protector, Attani Mindlink, Autothrusters
• Nym - Havoc, Attani Mindlink, Twin Laser Turret, Genius, Bomblet Generator
• Inaldra - Light Scyk, Attani Mindlink

This was another of those examples of "just because a squad is great in a tournament meta doesn't make it good in any given scenario". Preystalker as the defender is a nightmare for an attain mindlink list, for two reasons:

• Every ship receives a stress token on setup. And the moment you assign the first one, you stress the rest of the squad - meaning that what you actually get is all but one of your ships (fortunately one of your choice) double stressed.
• You have to set up facing the 'wrong way'. I've often maintained that mindlink lists don't like stress - not because they can't keep generating tokens (they can; getting everyone focused is a trivial exercise) but because stress limits the entire mindlink squad to white moves at best. When your opponent deploys at range 1-2 of you behind you, not being able to pull a red move for the first 2 turns of the game is a really, really bad place to be.

The scum ships set up in a line across the board pretty much at the midpoint - Inaldra at the left hand side (facing the top of the board), then Nym about 1/3 of the way across, Dengar pretty much dead centre, then Fenn about 1/3 of the way across to his right.

3 TIE/fo fighters deployed on Dengar's tail at range 3 from the Imperial board edge (that's really disturbingly close!) and the other two deployed behind Inaldra, who was the single-stressed ship.

Inaldra burned off with a speed 3 bank, clearing stress and focusing everyone. I'd forgotten Light Scyk makes all your banks green (I genuinely think it makes the Light Scyk better than a TIE fighter in many ways), so her chasers were only at range 2 and despite target locks, failed to hurt her.

The three chasing Dengar moved up straight and focused whilst Dengar did a speed 3 turn to the left (shock horror).

Assorted shots were exchanged, hurting one TIE/fo fighter quite badly, and winging Dengar rather a lot.

The following turn, the left-hand TIE/fos hard turned in to face Dengar head-on, letting Inaldra continue to run, whilst the others banked in to chase Dengar (the damaged one evading). Nym dropped a bomblet then moved up to the defender's board edge, Fenn moved up, bumping into the chasers, whilst Dengar......banked again and realised he'd just parked on the bomblet Nym had just dropped.

Both left-hand TIE/fo fighters lost their shields to the bomblet, but Dengar lost his last shield and took a console fire critical into the bargain. Fenn Rau confettied TIE/fo, whilst Dengar and Nym fired on the damaged one....and due to a combination of jammy dice and the evade token, didn't kill it.

Facing 2 range 1 shots and 2 range 2 shots, Dengar then decided to seek alternate career options as a cloud of expanding debris.

Preystalker is a nasty scenario for the defender. You start with a massive positional disadvantage - stressed, forced to face a certain direction, with the enemy deployed behind you.

Given that the enemy has only to kill one ship to win, you need to get said ship the heck out of Dodge at the first opportunity; boost, cloak, whatever it takes.

I think the choice of Dengar as the bounty was probably a bad one, resulting from the Defender using a squad he had lying around.

The bounty's squad point cost doubled, and the cost of upgrades reduced by 10, meaning he was essentially paying 22 points to gain an extra elite slot that he wasn't using (and wouldn't have done anything regardless - Trick Shot is useless with no obstacles, Adaptability irrelevant against a low PS swarm, and you do not want to attach A Score To Settle to a ship whose destruction auto-loses you the game!)

I think the best idea for the Bounty is probably one of the mid-tier 'good ability but no elite slot' aces - Red Ace, Kir Kanos, that sort. Paying a net 10-15 points or so (when you take off your free upgrades) is more palatable, meaning the rest of your squad (who have to do the heavy lifting) is bigger, and turning a pilot like that from having 0 elite upgrades to 2 elite upgrades is a big whack of capability.

Mission 16 - Payback

Attackers (playing the Empire):

• Epsilon Leader - Primed Thrusters
• Epsilon Ace - Comm Relay
• Epsilon Squadron Pilot x 4

Defenders (Playing Scum):

• Dengar - Expertise, Advanced Proton Torpedoes, Extra Munitions, K4 Security Droid, Unhinged Astromech, 'Hot Shot' Blaster, Stealth Device

So....actually Dengar playing the Dengar scenario! I was much more nervous this time. Despite a 6-1 numerical advantage, Dengar has always been bad news for swarms, and he only had to get 3 kills to win.

I was surprised not to see the Punishing One title, but I'm pointedly aware how brutal advanced torpedoes are with the combination of Expertise and K4 security droid.

the three microjump tokens were set up in a triangle - two about 2/3 of the way up the board to the defender's edge, one right in my face in the centre. I set up the TIEs in a broad arc around it within range 1 of the attacker's edge and nominated that jump token (unsurprisingly). Dengar set up on the left-hand edge of the arc, facing the left hand board edge.

My first turn was the right hand TIEs accelerating in and the left hand ones koiogran turning and segnor's looping rather than chasing Dengar directly. I had a nasty fear his first move would be a segnor left, giving an early advanced proton shot into the face of whoever chased him. As it happens, he pulled a speed 3 bank and ran for it, firing a largely ineffective 2-dice turret shot back, but at least with Epsilon Leader the stress quickly vanished.

The game was great fun.

The TIE swarm shook out into a battle line and pursued, picking up Dengar as he looped through the centre of the board and doing a bit of damage and (finally!) taking off that stealt device (he must have completely dodged about the first half-dozen shots I put into him, though). He then micro-jumped behind them (back to the original token), ready to zoom in and pounce - only to be deeply aggrieved as the entire swarm koiogran turned and then shook off the stress immediately thanks to epsilon leader (whose ability to segnor then 'shuffle' his range 1 bubble thanks to primed thrusters must have got rid of nearly a dozen stress tokens over the course of the game!). In the ensuing exchange he jumped again to the right-hand token, and did get an advanced torpedo off, flattening epsilon leader's shields and half his hull - the TIE/fo declining to shoot back at this point as a return shot with the hotshot blaster would probably have finished him off - whilst the rest of the swarm put more punishment into Dengar, dropping his shields.

Dengar jumped again, this time to the left, and the swarm turned in to engage - but by now I was coming in in a line, so whilst there were some range 1 shots, they were mostly range 2. One green speed 3 bank and the fearsome advanced proton torpedoes were armed and..... [blank][blank][blank][blank][blank]

Despite this, he ended up with 3 hits and I (inevitably) also blanked my green dice. Still, a TIE/fo's wonderful shield token saved the day, and that was a range 1 shot back he (quite justifiably) hadn't been expecting. The revenge shot finished him off, but not before he was left on a single hull point.

Next turn, due to me being strung out, the only shots ended up being a head-on, range 1 pass between Dengar and Epsilon Ace.....who, being undamaged, was PS12 (again, I know Omega Leader gets all the glory, but all the TIE/fo fighter's pilot abilities are amazing, especially for their points cost!). one Target Lock-ed range 1 attack later, and Dengar was taken out, with a blinded pilot critical for good measure to stop any last-minute chance for glory with the revenge shot.

This is a very fun scenario. Big ship versus a large group of smaller ships is a staple of the game, but unlike the "I can't beat fat turret' arguments of tournament yesteryear the big ship has no accompanying ace or generic wingmen to protect him. Being forced to take at least 4 ships does make it awkward to field capable units, and the microjump means the big ship can play hit and run even better than they normally can - Epsilon Leader's ability to turn my squad around without multiple turns in a row was invaluable.

TL:DR - Scenarios are very good fun. The main lessons from the games so far:

• Remember the mission rules. Often (Raid, Preystalker, Rescue) going for the target that matters even at the expense of even bothering to shoot at the rest of the enemy squad is the right call.
• A squad which is build around a 'gimmick' which pays for a strong bonus at a low cost with a negative rule, like Attani Mindlink (also passes stress), Lone Wolf (forces you to split formation) or something like the Auzituck (with its normally manageable lack of a segnor or koiogran) can come unstuck in a scenario far more easily than a 100 point 'first one to die loses' game.