Apologies readers…due to brainworms I posted the previous article of this two-part series as a Page, rather than a Post, at first. See the first post now here! So, having chronicled my previous two games, I can now talk about the latter three in the series. I was feeling pretty confident about Scramble the Transmissions, both because that’s generally my preferred scenario, and because I thought I had iterated a pretty solid version of the Vader List for it. Darth Vader (BoY) (6) Marksmanship (0) Hate (0) Afterburners (0) “Dark Curse” (BoY) (4) Ruthless (0) Precision Ion Engines (0) “Backstabbe ..read more

So, 6 months into this whole Baby Thing, and I’m still exploring and defining my relationship with The Game. Long story short, my in-person games fell off for a spell, so I decided to get back on Tabletop Simulator. Fulcrum helped me shake the dust off my TTS skills and get in my first 2.5 games in the format. So right along this time, Gold Squadron Podcast dropped their new tournament format, Sector Series. It reminded me, in a good way, of the quirky online tournaments that sustained my interest and activity in the game during the “lockdown” days of 2020. The main twist of Sector Series–apar ..read more

I feel like if you’re going to claim expertise in anything, accountability and honesty are important. So I’ve wanted to check out what I guessed right and wrong in this post, now that we (at least in theory) have H&A2. Also, I’m kicking myself for not including this image last time. The only RAMBO film that I have ever seen And now for the honesty: I’ve only played ONE game with the new pilots (which I lost, but it was fun). So this is in some ways still a preview post. However, certainly impressions, or at least scuttlebutt, are forming about most of these pilots and their place in the ga ..read more

Earlier this month a new kind of product dropped into the game from AMG: the Battle of Yavin Scenario Pack. Rather than including models or upgrade cards, the pack consists of new objects (the trench to be used in the scenario), Standard Loadout cards that contain a pilot plus all their upgrades, and cardboard plates for all of the new pilots in the scenario. (In order to get the rest of the cardboard, you will need the Core Set, the T-65 X-wing Expansion, the TIE/LN Expansion, and the TIE Advanced x1 Expansion.) The intent of the scenario is to create a new play experience. Using the cards ..read more

-Get to know limited pilot abilities Traditionally, generic non-limited pilots were cheaper than named, limited pilots on the same chassis. That meant that you could afford more of them, and more upgrades on them. Now…it’s a little more complicated. Since list-building is done out of 20 points rather than 200, out of necessity, generics generally overlap the relatively low-initiative named pilots on a given chassis. But that’s not all–in most cases the named pilots will have more loadout points AND their pilot ability, all for the same cost as the generic. You might think, in that case why tak ..read more

So, most of my archive here at this blog has been obsolete since last Tuesday. That’s when Atomic Mass Games, who publish the X-Wing game, dropped their long-awaited rules update, points update, and scenarios for official (as in, tournament) play. Look out! A range 0 attack! Many of the new rules had been previewed by AMG and trialed by the community. For instance, Random Order After Dials, after an initial round of extreme skepticism, became the de facto law of the land within weeks, with the attendant removal of the “bidding” system for determining First Player. And many of the most popular ..read more

Greetings readers! Since last time I wrote, I have had an Entire Child, so unfortunately updates aren’t going to start coming any more regularly. You get the idea We did however get some particularly exciting news this week: the confirmed pilot list for the “reinforcement pack” Hotshots & Aces II. The original H&A, like this a release of cards only with no models, was an important source of new pilot cards, introducing everything from competitive staples like Zizi Tlo in the RZ-2 A-wing, iconic characters like Captain Phasma in the TIE/SF, and oddities like G4R-G0R in the M3A. Being f ..read more

Apologies for it being so long since my last post! To be honest, I just haven’t gotten all THAT many games in this summer, since we are coming up rapidly on New Baby Time. So really, my apology for it being so long since my last post is turning into a warning not to expect real high posting volume for the foreseeable. That’s not all though, I have to confess to a slight bit of writer’s block. Since the last points up date, the game has felt pretty stable and enjoyable. There’s probably refinements yet to expect (Darth Vader in the TIE Defender could probably come up to an even 10 points) but w ..read more

New Stuff Month! We got a pair of two-packs, filling out options for Republic, Separatist, and Scum factions with a couple of conspicuously missing toys from The Clone Wars series. However, the ship now known as the Rogue-class fighter has a more interesting conceptual history than you might be aware of. Back in the day, the “Incredible Cross-Sections” books were cherished by the “techie” fan set. This gorgeous two-page spread is found in the Revenge of the Sith ICS by Curtis Saxton. One thing though…it’s not in the movie! Or is it… Blink and you’ll miss it…ok fine, you’ll miss it anyway…but ..read more

Generally when a new product is released you expect to see a points change, if only to integrate the new product, and we have Rogues and Clone Zs on the way. But this is also the first points change since 2.5 dropped, and so we have a wide range of changes, including errata and rewritten scenarios, designed to even out the roughness and squash the bugs. (This is NOT an exhaustive list of the changes, or an exhaustive ANYthing really.) Farewell, Faction Redshirts…mostly As previously observed, at the start of 2.5 every faction got 1 or 2 pilots with a point value of 2 and a loadout value of 0 ..read more