Last night I had the pleasure of sitting down to play with xBeakerx at my local store, and man it was fun. I felt a little bad because I invited him down thinking we'd drag a couple of other people into playing with us, but I totally failed to realize they were having like three different release events for Magic and WoW. So there were a ton of people…buuuut just us playing X-Wing. Alas.
Anywho, our first game he ran Howlrunner, Mauler, Backstabber, and four Academy pilots to my Wedge, Garven, and Dutch with a pile of upgrades to go around. I probably could have selected better, but I'd yet to play with any of them and wanted to try them out. He kind of annihilated me. And by kind of, I mean utterly. Through my own stupidity, I didn't even take a single ship with me. Wedge got a good shot off but didn't kill his target because I forgot to use his ability. Then he got turned into space jelly before R2 could even string a few binary curses together, let alone fix any shields. Dutch and Garven fared a little better, if only for a moment, but still failed to kill anything. Ultimately, watching Garven go kablooey proved to be the kick Dutch needed. At that point he turned and ran for his life. He tried to make it to the hyperspace lanes awaiting at the edge of the board, 7 ties all in a knot coming after him. But it turns out cowards just die from a shot in the back.
The second game I played Howlrunner, Mauler, two Black Squadron pilots, and a Storm Squadron TIE/a to his Wedge, Luke, and Dutch. Howlypants and his noob went wide left, Mauler and his noob to the right, and the TIE/a went straight up the middle. Why? I dunno. I like symmetry. Anywho, everybody closed in and the first round of combat was at extreme range. Howlface tried to swallow a torp like he was the Hulk or something. That didn't pan out, and the noob on the left was left alone, though he did manage to land a vengeful shot on Wedge somehow. The second wave of combat saw Wedge taking some pretty good damage from Cluster missles and luck, while the angry noob on the left tied up the Y-wing. But unfortunately, my calling is clearly not to be a traffic director, as I managed to cause a pile up of my own ships on the right flank. Mauler paid for my folly and flipped me off all the way to his grave. At this point I had little hope. Oh and I still managed to ram myself at least two more times. But miraculously, the rest of the battle went a good bit better. Wedge dodged a lot of shots beyond what I would have expected, but eventually my remaining forces put him down. Another Fighter died in the process, however. At this point I'm just going to fast forward a bit, cuz everybody just went round and round and round for a while, never landing much damage. I finished off the Y-wing, but lost my last Fighter immediately afterward. The advanced tried valiantly to pull a win out of its exhaust ports, but ultimately Luke's Marksmanship was just too much. The final blow, with 2 hull remaining was a crit, a hit, and two focus. And that was that. BAM, dead.
All in all, it was a lot of fun despite the fact that I got thumped. And it's always good to make new friends around the gaming table. I look forward to the next time I get to do so.