Saturday Night Shenanigans

During the week I was away supervising a school camp. It was a great experience, but the 18 hour days have taken a toll; I am pretty wrecked. When I returned, I organised a little gaming session with the usual suspects: Jimmy, KuriboGoomba, Heinz, Wade and Del.

We started off with a three-way game of Pirates of the Spanish Main, followed by two missions of Imperial Assault. Wade recently blagged a whole heap of pirate ships on eBay for a steal, and kindly shared his doubles with me. He also got a whole heap of new captains, crew and unique treasure which we were keen to try out, including a treasure piece called The Black Plague...

My little fleet consisted of HMS Lord Algernon captained by Calico Cat; a ship that slow benefits from a captain that allows it to double its movement, and a 10 shot 2+ broadside is incomprehensible.

Meow.

I also took the Wycliffe, which is resistant to ramming and packs three mean cannons. The other guys had fleets with smaller ships, including some very maneuverable ones.

Early on in the game, we focused on pillaging the islands closest to home. I used the Wycliffe to transport gold back to my home island, whilst the Lord Algernon acted as the ultimate deterrent. Doing so, I quickly scored 10 pieces of gold out of the 50 on the board, needing just 15 more for victory.

Yarrr, put yer back into it ye scurvy dogs.

Sensing that they would need gold from each others islands to compete with me, KuroboGoomba and Wade quickly engaged each other. Wade maneuvered his ships spectacularly well and raked Goomba's raider with dual broadsides.

Dual broadsides: a captain's nightmare.

At the same time, Goomba managed to find the plague on one of the islands and immediately sought ways of spreading to everyone. Soon he had contrived for it to be on his fastest ship and he powered towards the Lord Algernon: blaaaaargh!

Goomba resorts to biological weapons. I resort to sailing away as fast as possible...

Having put myself into a comfortable lead through the threat of incredible force, the guys decided to team up against me with ships that were immune to my long range cannons (two Batavian Bats). This put me in an unwinnable position, which I had hoped to avoid. Even with the support fire of the Wycliffe and an effective Marksman, I couldn't prevent the Lord Algernon from being made derelict. Bloody pirates!

Proof that there is no honour amongst thieving pirates.

I did as much damage with my short range cannons as I could, but it wasn't enough.

After disabling my best ship and destroying the Wycliffe, Goomba and Wade took stock of what they had left and decided to call the game a draw. They were content that the biggest ship was sunk and everyone else was starting to arrive for Imperial Assault.

The group of guys I game with have been playing through the campaign in Imperial Assault on a fortnightly basis. We have an interesting situation whereby we have a few too many players but not everyone can make it to every session. As a result we swap in and out between missions, or play as allies instead of heroes on occasion. I have already missed the first two scenarios, so it took me a bit of time to settle in with my Bothan Agent. By the end of the session though I got into a good rhythm of finding the best firing positions, combining buffs and relocating to avoid assaults; maintaining that vital 4 square range.

In the first scenario we were joined by Chewbacca and a bunch of comatosed Wookies. Our mission was to prevent the Imperial troops from capturing the Wookies by protecting them and unbinding them if they have been previously restrained.

I sniped quite a few Stormtroopers and managed to wound their Commander, forcing him to seek cover. Goomba charged his rebel soldier in and tried to use his weapon's blast to take down multiple enemies, but he was very unlucky with his rolls. Jimmy, the GM, has a depressing knack of rolling the maximum result for any roll he needs, whilst we were knee-deep in ones. We had a lot of trouble finishing off enemies, which are quite capable of doing maximum damage regardless of the fact that they are on their last wound. We came very close to losing this one, but clawed back a great victory through careful tactics.

In the next scenario we needed to access three terminals around the playing board to obtain information about General What's-his-name (Weiss). I started the game by taking a sneaky/jammy firing position against an E-Web gunner and giving him hell.

Our failure to finish things off was taking its toll. Time to upgrade our weapons; we need more dice!

Still, I couldn't knock off that last wound and was assaulted before I could finish him off. Thanks to some exploding probe droids and ridiculously good rolling by Jimmy, we were soon playing to not lose. The Imperials would win if all of the characters were wounded, which was looking quite achievable early in the game. We split up so that we could not concentrate his efforts or catch more than one of us with exploding probe droids.

On no less than 5 occasions, Jimmy rolled the equivalent of a 6 for defense. We equaled that with 1's.

Somehow in the midst of all that, Del's smuggler and Heinz's Jedi managed to activate two terminals, unleashing all manner of nastiness on the characters in the open. They were the last unwounded characters at the start of the second last turn and we threw everything into defending them. In the last turn, when it appeared that we would make it, I advocated for some really conservative play that turned out to be unnecessary. I think next time I will go at it a little harder and support players when they stretch themselves.

This can only end well...

All in all, a very fun homecoming. I'm looking forward to playing through some more scenarios and sleeping for more than 3 hours at a time ;-)

See you across the table,

M4cr0

P.S. I did a mad 4 hour mission into Sydney to visit all the major gaming stores today. I managing to find a Y-wing and Millenium Falcon for my X-wing collection and a Carcossone expansion for my wifey. I also bought some Space Marine Centurions for my Iron Snakes...