Wargaming Overload!

So I've been in my new (temporary) home for six weeks now and still no new posts so what's going on? Well I've been suffering from gaming overload. The gaming scene is very active up here and it's possible to game seven nights a week plus most afternoons and weekends. So with me being retired and having suffered a dearth of gaming for the past year or so I've been pigging out at every opportunity. This hasn't left me with much time to blog. So here's a quick update on what I've been doing.

Most of my gaming has been X-Wing with some Star Trek Attack Wing thrown in for good measure.

I resisted X-Wing for a long time but I'm well and truly hooked now. I started out playing Imperials because I used to love flying the Tie fighter in the old X-Wing vs Tie Fighter PC game.

I added a Tie-Advanced and Slave-1 to the two Tie Fighters from the starter box because Darth Vader and Boba Fett 'nuff said. I played around with pilots and loadouts to get a feel of the game and then settled on a build I was happy with and played that for quite a few games until I learnt how to use them effectively. As there are quite a few Imperial players locally I decided to branch out and get some Rebels. Also because Imp vs Imp games take forever with their low attack dice and high defence. I decided to buy two B-Wings, a Z-95 and another X-wing after I read about a build using B-wings that sounded interesting. As it turned out not the best bit of planning I've ever done. I've done ok using two B-wings, an X-wing and the Z-95. But the B-wings don't really suit my type of play with them so lacking in manoeuvrability. But they do have one saving grace that I found out by accident, Autoblasters. This is a 5 point, range 1, Cannon upgrade and any normal damage can't be cancelled with defence dice, couple this with Ten Numb's pilot ability which prevents 1 critical from being cancelled makes it deadly at close range. (Old news for experienced players no doubt)

As I said I found this out by accident. I was playing a newbie who only had enough ships to make a 60 pt game. So to give him an easy win to encourage him to get into the game I decided to take a B-wing and just load it with the most expensive options I could and then add a cheap, easy to kill, Z-95 to round out the build. I thought this would be so crappy he'd have no trouble beating me. To cut a long story short, three attacks from the B-wing three dead Imperials and game over in no time. Luckily there were three of us playing that night so I lent him my now super B-wing and let him have a 100pt game with Vince.  He did get a couple of kills with it and had a much closer game so hopefully I didn't put him off!

I've also invested in Star Trek Attack Wing. I bought the starter set and subsequently added a Borg sphere. Like a lot of people I was put off by reports of the poorly painted ships but I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, the Enterprise is so so but the Romulan warbird is quite nice and some of the Dominion ships are as good as X-Wing. But what I really like is the extra level of complexity you get with all the abilities and upgrades. Its based on X-wing but, tactically, it plays very differently. Sadly I'm struggling to get anyone to play as they're happy with X-Wing. But, strangely for me as I hate tournaments, I have entered an organised play event at my local club which takes place on the 17th. I'll let you know how I get on.

That's hardly scratched the surface of what I've been up to, so I'll post more updates each day this week. Hopefully that will get me back in the swing of updating things regularly.

Star Wars X-Wing for 'free' and an update on my move.

Things are finally coming together with my house move. I'd hoped to be all sorted out April/May time but I had a bit of a health scare which has put things back a couple of months (don't you just love getting old!). So I'm going to be renting somewhere now until I find a place to buy. That means a lot of my gaming stuff will be in storage so I'm currently trying to sort out what to take with me.

I have a bunch of things I want to play like the 'Heroes of Normandie' board game stuff I got from the Kickstarter which has just arrived and the X-Wing miniatures game.

I'd resisted X-Wing for ages as I thought it was expensive for what you got. But I kept reading batreps and it did sound fun and the clincher was that I found I could get the starter set free, well sort of.

Most people in the UK will know that Tesco have a reward scheme that gives you Clubcard points every time you shop. Normally I save these up all year and use the vouchers to buy scifi/fantasy books from Tesco Direct books as a Xmas present to myself. Last year I noticed that they had the 'Force on Force' rulebook available and I used some of my points to get it. So when the urge to splurge on X-Wing reared its head again I checked out Tesco Direct to see if they had it and they did! A quick check on my points total showed I had more than enough to buy the game and a couple of days later it arrived.

There's a lot more to the game than I'd thought and I've had fun playing it solo using an excellent AI opponent that I found online. I think the starter box is great value (especially as it cost me nothing) but the booster packs do seem expensive although you don't need many models to play a standard 100pt game. (Like wargamers will ever resist buying everything that comes out for a game!)

I'm off up to the frozen north next week to check out some rental properties and I'm planning on popping in to the local wargames club to say Hi and check out the local gaming scene at the same time. Hopefully I'll be back gaming and posting regularly sometime in July.