Imperial Assault: Sniping at Vader

Hi folks,

We have two missions left before the finale in our current Imperial Assault campaign, but before we could make our move on the final objective, Jimmy sprung this side-mission on us. Every now and then we have been given the opportunity to complete a mission to prevent him from getting a shiny new Imperial thing. Most of these missions have ended in failure, most notably the one where Jimmy obtained Darth Vader. This time around he was gunning for an upgrade to his stormtroopers, which can only mean trouble considering the number of the blighters we always face. Along for the mission we had Wade's Wookie tank, Heinz's speedy Jedi apprentice, Joe's human commander dude and my Bothan sniper, "Mak":

The weapon I have is a DXR-8 disruptor rifle. It is outrageously good. The Marksman Barrel and Tactical Display aren't equipped, they are just spare bits of kit.

Most games I have played move at a blisteringly desperate pace; you don't have any time to muck about (...or miss). If you want to win you need to kill things dead the first time and run like hell. My new weapon, a disruptor rifle, finally allows me to one-shot stormtroopers. This is a massive improvement, which I hoped would allow me to clear a path for the Jedi or Wookie to run through and complete the objective. We had the opportunity to take Han Solo, but decided not to; having Darth Vader appear right in front of us on the first turn would just slow us down. Besides, we all know what happens when Han brings a blaster to a lightsaber battle:

Denied.

As always, the map was deceptively small. The briefing warned us that the base had a "reactive defense mechanism", whatever that means. We had to get through a door within five turns and destroy a mainframe computer. There were two ways to get to the objective, the long way (through a hairpin corridor) and the short way (by blowing up a door). Knowing that speed wins games, we all agreed that the shortcut through the door was our Plan A. We also wondered what horrible thing was going to happen to us as soon as that door was destroyed!

The setup. This post was proudly brought to you by lemon Solo, bananas, green tea pocky and baby monitors.

Turn 1: Our Wookie brawler charged forwards and smashed a Stormtrooper, cleaving into his squad mates in the process. The Jedi moved up as well preparing for a mad dash through the door next turn. I used my first action of the game to snipe the probe droid into oblivion. It was a lucky hit, managing enough damage to one-shot him: priceless.

Turn 2: I used my disruptor rifle to target the door and blast it apart with the help of an extra action, provided by Joe's commander. Blowing up the door increased the defense value of the objective door by 10 points; there's the reactive defense mechanism. Heinz's Jedi bolted through into the next room to confront an E-web gunner, while the Stormtroopers shot up the Wookie a bit before he pulled their arms off. We later figured out that the second shot I put on the door could not have happened, as the card I used to shoot past the blocking Stormtrooper had to be exhausted and didn't cover both shots. After playing through the game though it was decided that the effect of this was negligible, putting the second shot on a stormtrooper would have been just as helpful in the grand scheme of things.

Turn 3: The Wookie charged the Plan A door and cleaved the wounded E-web gunner in the process, killing him. Heinz's Jedi skipped through the destroyed doorway and headed for the objective door, which increased in defense value to 30. The Jedi started dealing damage to the door immediately but took damage in return thanks again to its reactive defense mechanism. During his turn, Jimmy brought another E-web gunner in directly behind us, pouring shots into my Bothan (owwww). Oh... and Darth Vader appeared at the start of the objective corridor. I positioned my Bothan and took a shot at Vader doing 5 damage! Do you think I got his attention?
























Turn 4: Both the Jedi and the Wookie were now pounding on the objective door, taking damage from the door and from Vader's Force Choke. The Jedi survived the onslaught but our Wookie friend died a horrible death-by-doorframe. I moved Mak out of the line-of-sight of the E-web gunner and positioned him in the objective corridor. Our strategy now was target saturation to slow down Vader and put as many characters in position to win the game as possible.

Turn 5: We get the door down to 1 hit point and we are all held our breath. Surely we couldn't lose from here...

...Heinz makes his roll and it looks absolutely rubbish, but with some creative use of his special abilities he manages to put exactly one hit on the door. We scraped through with a win as Darth Vader breathed down our necks!

As the dust settled we organised our loot for the mission, deciding to buy a force pike for Wade's Wookie. It took a group effort and the selling of some excess kit, but he really needed it. Early in the game he struggled to finish off some Stormtroopers in the same way I used to struggle with my old rifle. As I have mentioned before, in such a fast paced game, you really do have to take things out quicker than that.

To finish the session off Jimmy gave us the briefing for the next mission, something about plans for a secret weapon. Sounds like the kind of thing "many Bothans" are going to die to neutralise, if you know what I mean ;-)

See you across the table,

M4cr0

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...