Bargains

For about the last year I have been using trade-me quite a bit. It is a New Zealand Ebay equivalent I guess you could say. Last week I got two items I am pretty stoked about. Item one is a Monsterpocolypse starter kit a strategic war game with giant monsters. Whats not to love?

In all honesty I don't really know how to play but it is highly rated and comes with heaps of cool monsters and buildings and a map for only $30. I am picking it up at Call To Arms tournament in a weeks time. The second item is the Tantive IV which is a giant x wing spaceship. 

It is a beast.

I thought I would give some tips which hopefully apply to wider than just trade me.

1. Always ask for a better price. If you don't ask you will never know, and if they say no, no skin of your back! 
2. Create watch lists.  On trade me I have set searches for games I am interested in however don't feel any pressing need to get straight away. 

Here is a screenshot from my favourites,
I get an email if anything comes up every 3 days. 

3. Don't get it if you feel the price is to high, something else will alway come up. If the seller can't sell often they will re-list it with a lower price, I have got items this way a few times including the tantive IV.

I am sure there are other tips which are not on the top of my mind currently but you get the picture. Always ask questions, be patient, keep an eye out! If you have any other ideas put it down below. I guess I should share my major success story. Twilight imperium which is normally $150-$200 I scored for $29, bargain huh! I waited about 2 years before this bargain came up however I didn't care so much as its such a long game (looking at 8 hours) I knew it wouldn't get much table time. 

X-wing table complete

Last week I made headway on a space board to use for X-Wing. However to make it playable I had to mark out a 3 by 3 square. As it was already three foot wide I just had to divide up the length.

Marking the line. I was going to paint it white however I decided to go with blue in the end so the contrast wasn't so stark. 

I am happy with the final result. I preferred the table as solid space however the line had to be made for a game of X-Wing. Of interest, while cutting the wood originally I didn't think about size, so if you were to play two games of X-Wing at once, there would be one 3 foot side and the other about 1/2 a cm off. 

The table even looks good for an epic board game. My green felt however does provide an easier surface to use, namely when picking up tokens and cards. Here Dan, Alex and I are playing a game of Arkham Horror. 

It was nice playing Arkham Horror as it is truly a classic. The mechanic is very clunky although it is impressive that it manages to hold such a complex co-operative game and keep it fun. We didn't quite finish however I am pretty sure Shuddle M'ell would have consumed us and inevitably the whole world. 

Grr, I am Shuddle, call me uddle for short. 

Rebel Aces - B Wing

A new post so soon? It was kind of an emergency as this morning Fantasy Flight released info on the new B-wing spaceship in the rebel aces expansion pack. I guess I am pretty excited as I genuinely think the B-wing is one of the best spaceships in Star Wars X-wing at the moment.

The new B wing with the new paint scheme. 

Pretty good looking ship huh. Fact is I don't care much for how it looks, at first I thought it was an ugly ship and who would buy that however it has grown on me. However more importantly what does it add to the X-Wing game. First up the new pilots:

Both these pilots have pretty sweet abilities, Keyan being able to negate the negatives of stress which is especially potent with the new technology to stress enemy ships. Nera Dantels (cool last name) who effectively has a torpedo turret! I think with the release of the Tie Phantom who is criminally manoeuvrable lots of fans cried foul saying it is an unbeatable ship so FFG decided to add some more turret ships into the mix to negate this and here we have another and on my favourite ship!

Now another exciting addition is:

Now you can add crew to your B-Wing. Nice. Consider this for a admittedly point expensive ship

Nera Dantels with

B-Wing/E2
Recon specialist (gain 2 focus)
Dead eye
Advanced proton torpedoes
Ftorpedoes. 

at 39 points it is a tad silly however now you can take a focus action and get the focus you need to spend on firing the missiles with dead eye and then a focus to convert eyes to hits, with Advanced proton torpedoes this is insane as you covert up to 3 blanks to focus out of your 5 attack device. That is a huge alpha strike! Probably a better way to use Nera is

Nera with

2x F torpedoes

munitions failsafe

at 31 points still expensive but not so bad. The Ftorps are a 3 attack torpedoes which always stresses the target you shoot at. Being a turret it leaves the phantom little places to go and stress really hurts it. The munitions failsafe stops you from having to discard you torpedoes if it misses which with the Ftorps is nice as it stresses the ship either way. 

Needless to say I can't wait for this expansion and some more B-Wing shenanigans. 

Hello world and DIY X-Wing space table

Well it has been a while! I finally decided it is time to get back into the blogging world again! First off I better give a shout out to Paul from Dog of War for nominating us for a Liebster award which I will have to work out how to put on our website. I think that means we will have to nominate some lucky bloggers out there.

What have Dan and I been doing lately? Well after our last post we played a fair amount of FOW honing our skills. Unfortunately I am a terrible procrastinator when it comes to painting so that took a lull. Dan has been working on some large scale model planes. After FOW we played a fair amount of Star Wars X-Wing. I even attended a FLGS tournament and came 4th out of 13 which I was pretty stoked about!

Store championship range ruler! #selfie

With that in mind I decided for the upcoming Wellington Call to Arms tournament I will join in on the X-Wing tournament. It's pretty happening over here at 50mm game room. So without further to do here is my most recent DIY project.

The eery science of space, and a grassy knoll.

Not so bad. Pretty much just used black spray paint for the base layer (I had to use 2 cans) and blue to create the nebula/stars. As you can see its outside drying right at this moment. Next step is to paint a white stripe down the centre to split the table into two as its 6 by 3 where a standard x wing game is 3 by 3. Conveniently enough it can work as two tables side by side or the 6 by 3 size works perfectly for the x wing epic rules.

"Play more games" Wil Wheaton.
(Yes I did back Wil Wheaton's Table Top season 3 while we weren't blogging). 

Attack Wing: D&D

Thats right folks, Dungeons and Dragons are making a game utilising the FlighPath game system seen in such games as Star Wars X-Wing which I have blogged about now and then. The game will be called Attack Wing: Dungeons & Dragons.

But there are no spaceships in D&D right? Well apparently players will control dragons which they will fly around the table. As far as I am aware like Star Wars X-Wing and Star Trek Fleet Captains they are releasing a starter set with 3 dragons. However unlike Star Wars and Star Trek D&D is planning on introducing ground units like giants and wizards.

Dogfighting dragons huh? I think it sounds like it would be a fun game and adding ground units will make it a more diverse game. However my gripe would be that in the space dogfights the manoeuvre dials which are used to fly can be quite clinical with either basic turns, banks or moving straight forward, this works well for spaceships, I would imagine Dragons to be able to move in a more versatile manor. Who knows what will happen anyhow, I look forward to see what they come up with. Admittedly I probably won't get this game due to already investing in Star Wars X-Wing. 

Star Trek: Attack Wing

I feel like we need to get back to more posts about miniatures. Although this post is not 100% about miniatures it is a step in the right direction. Lately at our games night we have been playing through a D&D campaign and interchanging with boardgames. Last night we played Eclipse, which was pretty darn awesome! So lets look into Star Trek: Attack Wing, WizKids new game using Fantasy Flight Games 'flight path' game mechanic from Star Wars X-Wing.

Star Trek: Attack Wing

I have known about this game for a little while however only just recently looked up the progress. It looks as if they will be able to release this game soon! However is it worth it? I am thinking maybe not. Attack Wing uses the 'Flight Path' game system which was created for Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game, which is awesome! However now that I have a decent range of X-Wing models I am not sure spending more to get a game which is similar is a good idea.

Lets have a look at some of the ships!

The ships come pre-painted.

By looking at the bases they seem almost identical to the X-Wing ship design, at a guess I would say they are a similar size to. The Stats seem to be, well, attack, evade, hull and shields. Notice anything familiar to X-Wing?  

A giant pilot card,
over a giant ship!

Some of the symbols seem similar to X-Wing. Perhaps from left to right, evade or bost, target lock, not sure about this one, focus. 

Looks like you attach the captain to your ship

Jean-Luc Picard was an awesome character! 

As I said before, although this game looks pretty cool, I feel it won't have much more to offer than X-Wing. Although I do prefer Star Trek. It seems pretty similar so far. I also feel the other disadvantage is that Star Trek was more about Exploring New Worlds, rather than in space combat, although this does feature a little bit. Where as X-Wing uses specific fighter ships, the theme seems more appropriate. 

I think if I was to get a Star Trek game Star Trek: Fleet Captains (also by WizKids who have the Star Trek license) looks pretty sweet! 

A promo game in progress

It comes with a lot of ships! 

This game by the look of things has more of a Star Trek feel with specific agendas to match the different fleets. It also has a lot of space ships! Where the base set of Attack Wing comes with 3 ships then there are I believe 8 separate ship expansions worth about 20NZD each. 

However on the whole I am excited about trying out Attack Wing some time and maybe if I did not have X-Wing I would buy Attack Wing instead. I will leave you with some pictures of an Attack Wing game in action with a very large set... and my favorite Star Trek intro scene quote...

"Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

Feel free to check out some of our X-Wing Miniatures game posts which uses the same 'flight path' game mechanic here. 

X-Wing Wave 3 Announced!

So apparently the wave 3 Star Wars X-Wing ships were announced on May the 4th. Heh. My FLGS posted about it on Facebook and now I'm in the know. I am getting my information from the Star Wars Common Ground blog. The release date is TBC. The photo quality is not top notch sorry to say. 

So here we go.

Lambda-class Shuttle

This new imperial ship looks awesome, probably my favorite of the lot. As you can see on the tag its not final but still, its looking awesome.

A sample pilot

Looks similar to the falcon in terms of stats, but why is it so cheap? I assume it doesn't have 360 firing. What's that new upgrade? Well apparently its Advanced Sensors.

Advanced sensors

TIE Bomber

All we have here is the photo. Obviously it will be able to have bombs. However I am not sure that that is a great thing for me as I officially suck at dropping them. I have a 0% hit rate. I kind of think the ship looks ugly but I guess its designed for functionality.

The Moldy Crow aka HWK-290

I really like the look of this new rebel ship, thought I noticed some distaste from others to it. It doesn't look that strong, only 1 attack and 2 evade. It isn't amazingly cheap either, seems to come at a similar price to the Y-Wing.

Moldy Crow

A blurry side shot.

It has some good upgrades with the pilot upgrade and the turret. Hopefully they will make another turret rather than just the ion cannon turret (which is pretty good however).

B-Wing

I don't really like the look of this ship I must admit. I assume being a B-Wing it is a bomber so like the TIE Bomber It may not be a good buy for me.

Final Thoughts

I think I am the most keen for the Lambda-Class Shuttle, it looks awesome. Second to that is the Moldy Crow, just not sure about its stats. The TIE Bomber and the B-Wing don't quite do if for me... Yet. I guess I have enough ships as it is, so I may just expand my collection by two. 

Photo Source: Ryan “Picasso” Krippendorf @ FFG’s Star Wars Gaming Experience. Photo by Ryan “Picasso” Krippendorf. See more about Star Wars X-Wing here. (EDIT: I found some new photos here. They are much better photos and make the TIE Bomber and B-Wing look cooler than the photos above look making me more keen on them). 

X-Wing vs fire-spray from wave 2

X-Wing Preystalker mission thoughts

A few weeks back Matt, my regular X-Wing gamer, and I tried out our first X-Wing mission, Preystalker. This mission came with the Slave 1 and I thought it looked pretty cool. The basics, the imperials have a bounty on one of the rebel ships and they have to take it down. To make things more complicated the imperials only have 90 points to spend but the rebels 150, although the ship with the bounty costs double points! I will briefly go over our game and then some thoughts.

Set Up

As you can see the rebels have to set up backwards, a major disadvantage. The imperials can set up within range 1-3 and the rebels range 3 from their side of the table. Oh and did I mention the rebels also all have stress... Oh Dear.

I opted for Boba Fett, I mean how could you not use him in a bounty hunting scenario! I also added in a tie and an interceptor. Matt used a 4 X-Wing build, putting the bounty on Luke and using Bigs to defend him. When choosing the character with the bounty you have to double their ship points, but as a bonus they get 10 free points worth of upgrades.

The Game

The game was a swift victory for me, I think starting facing the wrong way can be pretty hard and needs some quick and cleaver manoeuvring while protecting the bounty.

Keeping Boba at Heavy Laser Cannon distance

Interceptor in some trouble

X-Wing down!

So I may not have got these photos in the right order. Also, I did some pretty bad manoeuvring this game, but managed to load the damage quickly onto Luke and took away the victory. 

Thoughts

We played another game after this which ended similar thought Matt lasted a bit longer. I don't think the sides were uneven just needed some pretty swish manoeuvring from the rebels to survive. However did I think it was a good mission? Not really. I thought it was still for both sides just a shoot out, pretty similar to the base game. I think the other missions may be better as they add new gaming mechanics and interesting objectives. With that in mind...

4.5 out of 10

Though it's advantage is it is quicker than a standard 100 point game. I am keen to try out some more missions however, but this one can collect dust. 

See more on X-Wing? Click here. More boardgame reviews? Click here. Photos taken with a Canon 600d.

X-Wing wave 2 report and thoughts

Finally, wave 2 arrived and I had the chance to take the new ships for a spin. I have managed to play 2 games. The first game I played as Imperials with a decked out slave 1 and second game with Rebels and a decked out Falcon. Once again, I won't go into huge depth but with give an overview of the game and some thoughts.

Imperial

The first game I played Imperials. I feilded:

Kath Scarlet (firespray) with; Slave 1; Engine Upgrade; proton torps; Weapons engineer; Ion Cannon; 

and proximity mines. Soontir Fel (Tie Interceptor); Marksmanship; Stealth Device. Academy Pilot.

I felt like this squad was OK but as I mentioned on BGG previously I only overloaded the firespray the first game to take it for a proper trial run. I think next time I won't deck it out as much. The Rebel squad I faced was a 4 squad build of 2 x-wings, a y-wing with ion cannon turret and a A-wing. I am afraid I can't recall what the upgrades where.

The game:

To start with, one of my biggest upsets of the game, my interceptor was destroyed, by a y-wing... Or so I thought, it got 3 hits, lost its stealth device, but then I realised it was an ion-cannon so it only took one of those hits. Still I was disappointed as that was 1/3 dead. Then because I was ionised I crashed into him and he got a clear shot of my firespray.

He quickly took out my tie fighter, as you can see here it had allot of bad token on it! 

His x-wing and a-wing hunted down my interceptor and slave-1 eventually getting his x-wing destroyed and my interceptor hit the dust followed by the a-wing.

What was left in the end was a show down between his y-wing and my damaged Slave 1. He came out on top with about 3 hull left. 

Thoughts? 

Well the slave-1 was great! I would not deck it out as fully but it has some powerful weapons and really packs a punch. I also though equipping it with engine upgrade giving it boost was important as it ment I could always position the front or auxiliary guns for firing   The interceptor is good but 3 hull sucks! I think the A-wing is defiantly the better of the 2, though it only has 2 attack the addition of shields and missiles is fantastic. Next time I will use the slave but will not deck it out. I think the interceptor is in order again also as it made some good shots here and there. 

Rebels report with the falcon. 

Next I had a game as the rebels. Like the other I decked out the Falcon as well as the a-wing in a 2 ship build. This gathered a bit of critique on BGG when I suggested this squadron but it ended up working a treat. (although i had a fair amount of luck). The squad was Lando Calrissian (Falcon) -Mellennium Falcon -Engine upgrade -Luke Skywalker - Nien Nunb -Homing missiles -Veteran instincts. Tycho Chelchu -Elusiveness -assault missiles - stealth device This was against a 5 squadron Imperial build. 

The A-wing was amazing! It zipped around getting hits here and there including a sucesful multiple hit with assult missiles, this killed his interceptor and wounded a tie. He avoided fire with its stealth device and elusiveness. Being Tycho elusiveness worked well as he doesn't care much about stress. 

The falcon looked great as it lumbered around the board. I just felt however, though it is a tank it doesn't hit as hard as I would like. Maybe this is because I just played with the slave which can have some powerful upgrades. However it could take a lot of damage and give back hard enough. I am interesting in trying the outer rim smuggler some time but only 2 attacks worries me. 

All in all it was a success, I defeated the empire with no wounds to my A-wing and no shields left on my falcon with some pretty lucky rolls. 

Overal thoughts? 

Wave 2 is amazing! It really adds some great diversity to the game. I love sitting down and planning potential squadrons, though getting frustrated I can never get everything I want in there. 

See my wave 1 session report here: http://50mmgameroom.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/x-wing-and-wings-of-war.html also check out my BGG profile steveisatree.