Just to set the scene, Chris has never played a wargame in his life, never fielded an army of miniatures, composed army lists or pored over rule books for hours. I, on the other hand, have done all of the above for over twenty years. Whilst I would never consider myself a master strategist I do think that I can pick up games quite quickly… and I don't like losing, haha!
We went for the very basic set up to begin with. Chris took Luke Skywalker in his X-Wing accompanied by R2-D2, whilst I fielded the Tie Fighters of Mauler Mithel and Night Beast. The Imperial fighters are fast and very maneuverable but the Alliance craft has shields. It was pretty balanced on paper but how would things pan out?
Game one was finished quite quickly as Luke took down Night Beast in turn 2 and chipped away at Mauler Mithel for another couple before the game ended. I managed to take down Luke's shields on a couple of occasions but couldn't do enough to kill him. The whole thing took barely 20 minutes and was a great introduction to the surprisingly simple gameplay.
Game two was time for Imperial revenge… except it wasn't. Whilst I played the Tie Fighters much better, my dice rolling had deserted me and even point blank shooting (and all the bonuses that entails) wasn't enough to score even a single hit (photo above). Chris on the other hand was rolling like his life depended on it and was scoring hits with ease.
For game three we mixed things up to help our learning experience, I took Luke's X-Wing and Chris switched to the Imperials. The shields had been a real pain in the earlier games so I felt that I could be somewhat cavalier in how I played the X-Wing. Alas, again, the dice kicked me in the backside and after several turns of chasing each other around the board Luke was taken down, having only inflicted a single hit on the Imperials. Awful dice yet again and Chris could do no wrong.
A great evening of gaming and learning something completely new to boot. The fact that you can have a game so quickly is great and, as our model collection grows and we try out missions, we can have larger games with more tactics and challenges.
Chris went home unbeaten in his first three games of X-Wing, a very happy man. I commiserated with my latest purchase – the Millennium Falcon!!!
A big thank you to Chris for making the trip down to Folkestone after a busy day at work.
The Empire will strike back!