Rebel Aces...

Thanks to the game club my brother is a member of we managed to score Rebel Aces for cheap, NZ$31, I think its around $60 in the shops so it was a steal at that price.

Which gives us a 2nd A-Wing and our first B-Wing. Some cool builds can come from it. Although I keep all our X-Wing stuff at his place since he goes to the cub more than me.

Anyways the guy that did the orders also had a HWK-290 for $14.50 so grabbed that too, better than paying $25 in store.

Unboxed the lot and set about making up a list to try out at 100 points.

2x A-Wings. Tycho and Jake
1x B-Wing. Blue Squadron Pilot
1x HWK-290. Kyle Katarn.

With a few upgrades:

Push the Limit.
2x Chardaan Refit.
Mouldy Crow
Veteran Instincts
Blaster Turret.

The guy I played is a rebels only player though so we ended up in a Rebels vs Rebels game with virtually he same ships, but differing pilots other than Tycho.

He had.

1x B-Wing.
2x  A-Wings.
1x Headhunter.

My game lasted about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. No photos this time, forgot the camera. He won and funnily enough everyone had bets saying the Crow would go down fast... It was my last ship to go. Sadly screwed up the piloting 3 times costing me actions as the Crow slammed into either one of my ships or one of his.

Quite fun playing a Rebel vs Rebel list and seeing how other ships like the B-wing and HWK-290 work. Its one of the things I really like about X-Wing Miniatures. Even though a ship might not be the most manoeuvrable or able to evade well, all the ships have a chance to do damage or be useful. 

In the background of me playing this game my brother was in a game of 40k. Tyranids vs Necron/Chaos Marines & Cultists for 1850 points as a play-test for an upcoming Tournament.

It took them 5 hours. 6 if you include the set up. Tyranid's lost. Necron's had some kind of Lord of War which did the instakill bubble thing. Which leads me to one of the issues I have with 40k. You can field things that A. Nothing can hurt (Unless you want to spend $200-300 for a single model). and B. You get no saves against.

It really sucks playing a game where you can't do anything at all to your opponent. Now one work around some people use is the ability to up one sides points in order to field things which can help out like tanks and stuff, but with 40K, the price is a bit too high for starting out players or to really be a continuing player. Of late I'm hearing a lot of people upset they are losing units and characters from their codex books, making whatever money they invested for those things a waste.

So for me, I've started to look at playing 40K more as a Kill Team game than the full on battle game. It gives a better game IMO, we're both fielding things for the most part which have a chance. And for me, I like the story side of gaming, where you get a bit of a challenge and grind it out to a bitter end, win/loss/draw where it doesn't matter so much because it was an amazing game. Not Turn 1, deploy army, take turn, opponent takes turn using LOW object, watch as half your army is killed in one go with no save chances. No cover or anything. Just "this is where the shot lands and everything is dead." Turn 2 is the end of the game. Doesn't sound very fun does it? Where are the epic moments of that?

Take the above X-Wing game. My opponent at one point got to roll 5 attack dice on me, where I luckily got to also roll 5 defence dice. He rolled 5 critical hits. 5. That is what insta-death looks like for many ships. I rolled my dice hoping I'd maybe cancel 2-3 of those crits. I rolled 5 evades. 5. That my friends is an epic moment in a game. Like in 40k having Rangers CC'd by Tau Battlesuits in the 3rd turn... Getting cut down to 1 Ranger who refused to flee by the end of the 6th and taking 2 other suits in the mean time. Can you imagine how awesome that would be in the fluff? A Ranger survived against what should have been impossible odds.

The Falcon vs Slave 1...

Managed to get in 2 quick games of X-Wing Miniatures today with my brother, him playing Lando in the Millennium Falcon vs Boba Fett in Slave 1.

Game 1 had no pics taken and sadly was just getting interesting when I made the fatal mistake of miscalculating distance with my prior move.... Any move I could make mean Slave 1 flew off the table to a gory death. Win to my brother.

Game 2 got a few pics while I was playing him, hopefully uploaded below. Must say going into it I was thinking it'd be an easy-ish win for the Falcon, more hull points and shields but in the end not so. Careful moving this time made for some good shots going in on both ships, but my rolls and that extra evade die with Slave 1 really saved the day. I think my brother knew it was going to go downhill after one of my rolls at range 1 ended up with 2x Crits and 2x Hits. His 1 Evade die utterly betrayed him and due to a mishap with an asteroid, he had been unable to take an action. Luckily he'd taken an upgrade that allowed him to ignore a critical's text and regain a shield. Just the same the single crit he got in on me was brushed off thankfully by my upgrade to ignore the crit text for Pilots.

All in all I love X-Wing as a game, this was my first win using the full rules so was chuffed with that. I think in many ways going for that single ship battle can be more fun, you get to really focus on what your ship can do and how best to use it where as in games where its been 100+ points and multiple ships (E-Wing, X-Wing, Y-Wing, A-Wing, etc) can be heavily bogged down and full of ships hitting each other in the movement phase.

Also I'd have to say sometime's playing for the fun and learning factor is sooo much better than that stupid play to win, uber awesome unbeatable army thing.