X-Wing French National Championship Part 1 : SWARM HELL!

In the few next days I will try to do a battle report for each of my games in the French National.
This is the Part 1 : SWARM HELL! with my first game.

First game was against Red51 and his 8 academies Tie-Swarm.

First shooting turn shot

Swarm Hell exists, and I've seen it! 16 Ties on the table, 32 attack dices against 64 defense dices:
1 damage!

After that first shooting turn, it became a tense game of maneuvering, with him trying to block me and me trying to get actions. In the end the PS advantage won me the game, as my obsidians could reduce his firepower while any of my academies destroyed still got to shoot.

The game was a bit slower than my usual games with only 5 turns as my opponent was not used to facing a swarm.

Modified win : 4 Academies destroyed to 2 Academies and an Obsidian.

Time to reload!
Ica

X-Wing French National Championship : Wave 1 FTW!

Just came back from the French national X-Wing championship : Minneapolis here I come!

No time for a full debrief now, but you can expect one soon.

Wave 4 was legal, 71 players entered the tournament with 6 Swiss rounds on Sunday then a top 16 on Monday.

In the top 16, there were 6 falcon lists (2 double falcons), and I think 6 phantoms + mini swarm.
I came second in the swiss part (with no loss but 2 modified wins) then won my 4 games on Sunday facing : phantom, single falcon, double falcon and another phantom list in the final game.

Time to reload!
Ica

Comic Strip Battle Report part 1: Dying in the Nostromo 2!

A Space Hulk battle report in comic form.

I'm a great fan of webcomics, reading daily Schlock Mercenary, PVP and a few others, so I've always wanted to try my hand at drawing and writing one.

However I fast realized that drawing a comic would be out of my current abilities, so I would need to use photos. I had the opportunity to play a Space Hulk game in the fantastic board of my friend Philippe Morino so I took a lot of pictures for a photo battle report.

This is part 1 of the tale. You can click on the pictures for a bigger view.

If you arrived here : the battles in the Hulk are played using modified Second edition 40K rules and profiles, which means that the stealers are really deadly in close combat... if they can reach it! Usually Philippe plays the stealers in a dungeon master like role, while a group of players, each with a squad of terminators tries to survive and complete the mission objectives.

I'll try to publish the next part soon, probably next week as I compete in the French National X-Wing Championship this week-end.

Don't hesitate to comment, this is a new art form for me. I'm really open to suggestions for improvement.

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Ica

Showcase : Tie/Ln Jet Squadron repaint

Several fighters have broken off from the main group. Come with me! 

You may remember my first Tie repaint : http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/03/blog-hiatus-over-x-wing-miniatures-tie.html

With the French National X-Wing Championship coming I decided to finish repainting my 2 flights of Tie Fighters to give them more presence on the board. The fighters are all painted in standard Tie/Ln black, with 4 white stripes : the markings of Jet squadron.

Jet squadron first and second flights

Close-up of second flight

Close-up of first flight

All fighters are on a ball magnet for banking

Close up of second flight banking

Close up of Jet squadron markings

Now I'm wondering if some battle damage would look good...

Time to reload!
Ica

Building the Death Star Trench : Part 1

Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him? 

A quick post to show you what I've been working on lately : a table to replay the legendary Death Star Trench run in X-Wing. The idea is to have 2 boards separated by a deep trench to be able to replay the trench approaches, pursuit in the trench and the arrival of He who shot first.

The table will be for my gaming club, the Ludothèque de Boulogne Billancourt, and has to be movable and easy to store, which means a modular design. Each modular piece (4 trench sections and 8 board sections), will have a foam core for lightness and a wood exoskeleton for resilience.

First mock-up of the trench for sizing:

Wood cutting in the living room (Yea for sales season!) :

The first modular sections :

To spice up the table I also ordered a turbolaser turret from Shapeways:

The shape and details are amazing, but I'm slightly worried by the fine lines created by the printing process even in detail plastic which was the best available for this item (edited after Regnirok comment). I will need to fill them or sand them before painting as they will definitely show after an airbrush paintjob.

On a related note, I also got some Eta-2 light fighters from Shapeways:

Sorry for the bad pictures, but it's really hard to photograph translucent models. They are in frosted ultra detail. They have some of the lines issues of the turret in places but less pronounced, we'll see what I can do with them.

Time to reload!

Ica

Battle Report : The Tie Swarm versus Echo

Today a quick battle report for my first encounter with the terrible Echo.

I played my usual Tie swarm, an 8 Ties variant, with 4 Academies and 4 Obsidians.
Across the table was :

Echo, veteran instincts, recon officer, advanced cloacking device, fire control system 40
Holwrunner, predator 21
3 Academies 36
97 pts for the PS bid.

Bothanspy decided to take the initiative.

I deployed the asteroids mostly close together in my opponent half of the table to disrupt the holwrunner formation and reduce the decloacking options of Echo.

He deployed his mini swarm in the middle of the board, probably to switch from one side of the table to the other depending on my deployment. I had clear movement lanes so did the same, to see where Echo would go. He deployed Echo on my left, close to the board edge.

First turn:

He went to my right to pass the thicket of asteroids and echo advanced to cloak.
All my ships went as fast as possible toward echo.

Turn 2:

I wanted to maximise my firepower in case Bothanspy made a mistake and advance echo in front of the swarm so I kept going toward Echo (plus is miniswarm was also headed to my right flank).

He decided to change course with echo with a 2 bank to the left then a 4 forward to  switch sides, while the mini-swarm reoriented toward mine.

There I stopped taking picture as the fight was joined. Suffice to say echo flanked me (you can see his moves in green in the turn 5 picture), while I blocked and concentrated fire on holwrunner, then the other ties.

He took down 2 ties, while I destroyed Howl and an academy. 4 dices is nothing to sneeze at, but even with focus against 3 agility you will usually need at least 2 shots. Due to his unique moves he was unable to concentrate fire as much as I did.

At the end of turn 4, I had 6 ties left, with 2 down to one hull and 1 down to 2. He was down to echo, 1 academy on 1 hull and 1 academy on 2.

Turn 5 (before shooting):

I moved my ties to cover echo  most obvious approaches and still keep a couple of guns on his 1 hull academy. He decided to close the range with a 4 forward, but had to go through an asteroid.

Firing first Echo destroyed a damaged fighter while I destroyed the 1 hull fighter and took one shield off echo (asteroid means no focus!!).

Turn 6 (before shooting):

Echo is good at range but not so good in a furball, as he has to move quite a lot to decloak. I jammed as much fighters around him as I could while keeping 3 fighters on his remaining 2 hull tie.

He did manage to decloak but lost his action to a bump and could only target an undamaged tie. With no action, even with 5 dices, he only dealt One damage.
Returning fire, I stripped another shield of him and took another hull off the academy.

Sadly we had to end the game there due to time, with a modified win for me: 45 to 38.

I would probably have stayed in the lead for 1 or 2 more turns as I would probably have killed his academy and he has to destroy 2 of my ties to go retake the lead, but after that, I don't see how I could have killed him (bare poor flying on my opponent part or luck of the dice). With 4 damaged ties it would have been pretty difficult. 4 agi is just hard to take down with 2 attack ships, and that's if you even manage to have him in your sights.

Time to reload!
Ica

Massive X-Wing miniatures gallery on Hobby before I die

Awesome collection of X-Wing repaints on Hobby before I die!

 

Tuz from Hobby before I Die has contacted a lot of X-Wing painters for this great hobby showcase and I'm really happy to be in such good company. If you like X-Wing repaints,  go there!

Time to reload,

Ica