X-WING "Courier Escort" game report

We picked up a copy of Fantasy Flight's X-WING game a few months ago but never got around to playing it despite the fact that we have been buying ships for it.  After going down to the FLGS today for a quick demo I purchased 5 more ships then came home unboxed all my ships and painted up a star field table.

My wife and I decided to play a 75 point escort mission.  The Rebel goal was to escort a Y-wing courier off the far corner of the sector.  The Imperial goals was to stop them.  My wife played the Rebels and I played the Imperials.

The Imperial force consisted of:
Two TIE Fighters from Black Squadron
One TIE Interceptor from Alpha Squadron
Maarek Stele in a TIE Advanced with "Swarm Tactics"

The Rebel force consisted of:
Two X-wing Starfighters from Red Squadron.  Red 2 had R5-K6 astromech droid and Red 3 had R2-F2.
One Y-wing Starfighter from Gold squadron with an Ion Canon Turret and R2 Astromech.

  By turn 3 we were already in a heavy furball.  The Alpha Squadron Interceptor was hit by the Y-wings Ion Canon.  Red 2 lost it's shields to combined fire from the Black Squadron TIEs and Maarek Stele.

As the Interceptor drifted the Black Squadron TIEs and Stele took out the Y-wing's shields.  The Y-wing scored another Ion hit on the Interceptor.  The X-wings ended up completely outmaneuvered.

As the Rebel ships came about Red 2 destroyed Black 27 scoring three hits against no evades.  The Y-wing took a couple hits this turn as well.

The Interceptor preformed Koiogran Turn (Immelman?) and scored an impressive long range critical hit on the Y-wing doing double damage.

 The Y-wing scored an Ion hit against Stele after taking another hit from the Black Squadron TIE who had preformed another Koiogran.

Black 26 scored the final hit against the Gold Squadron Y-wing dashing the Rebels hope for victory.

This game ran very smoothly and all the ships preformed as expected.  The Rebel ships were hard to damage with their shields while the imperials were weaker but highly maneuverable and evasive.  The Imperials scored a lot of critical hits that only served to weaken the Rebel shields.  We played this game in just a couple of hours and I had only played one session of the game if that gives you any indication of how simple the rules are and yet they did not seem all that simplistic.

Hell Knights Army Book coming soon for No Limits

Hey folks I'm working on getting a Hell Knights army book written for the No Limits free war game rules system.  As we have been playing the Station 42 War campaign I have been developing this army and I have enough material to star putting together a more formal book.  I not only be including the army list but also pictures of every unit in the book as well as information about how I built and painted the miniatures and models.  I hope to release the book as a free PDF on the No Limits web site.
This will be a major undertaking so I plan to provide samples of the content here as I put the army list together.

Battletech Terrain

 Hey guys sorry for the lack of updates recently.  I've been playing a lot of Battletech but I didn't really want to post much here because it has all be map based until now.  We've finally managed to get some good terrain together.

Also myself and a friend of mine have started a new campaign for our local group.  It is set on the planet Antallos during the 2nd Succession War.  I have a blog for it up here:  http://antallosshadowfeed.blogspot.com/

Anyhow I just wanted to post some pics of what we are using in the next game.  Most of it is scratch built from junk except the buildings in the top photo.

Ancient Ruins WIP

Hey it's been a while since I posted anything but I have been working on a lot of projects.  This is a set of generic "Ancient" ruins I'm working on for my Conan project but really they could be used for a number of settings.  I'm sure they will get used in Call of Cthulhu and other fantasy and pulp games as well.  As you can see we have mostly covered a 4x4' table with ruined building made from cork tile.  Cork is a great material for making ruins.  If you want a comprehensive guild to building with cork check out Matakishi's Tea House.

I'm really looking to add at least one centerpiece building to the set.  Probably a temple of some sort.  We are also going to be adding some more ruins.  We are planning on making some jungle bases to add to the table including some to add to the buildings to look overgrown.  The buildings will probably be painted dark stone and we will use flocking and turf for moss.

Hyborian Adventurers

I've been going through my miniature collection looking for miniatures to use for the Conan game we are putting together.  I've been so focused on Sci-Fi and Pulp over the last few years that my fantasy collection has really suffered and only some of what I have painted is really good for a Hyborian setting.  I did manage to pull quite a few unpainted minis out of my collection that I though would work well.  This is the first batch I have painted up so far.  All four of these are from Reaper's Dark Heaven line.  

Cthulhu and Conan

I work nights and it's really hard to get in gaming time because weekends tent to be catch up on family time and even though we are a gaming family there are sometimes other things that need doing.  To that end I have contacted some gaming friends who have Friday afternoon off and we have decided to try and have a game session from noon to four on Fridays.  We've rolled up characters and decided to alternate between Call of Cthulhu and Conan adventures which is cool because we can use a lot of the same miniature resources.  Even though the settings are very different since Lovecraft and Howard influenced each other so much the two settings work well together. 

Another good thing about these settings is that the protagonist are all humans and that makes it easier to have a flexible miniature collection for each setting.  I've already got a nice collection of "Pulp" era protagonist painted and a large number prepped and ready to be painted.  As far as the Conan stuff I have a fair amount of that in my collection too although not as much of that is painted at the moment.

So I will likely be post a lot of new projects based on these two settings in the near future.  

Pegasus Sandbags and my Improvised Military Base

I picked up a couple packs of Pegasus Hobbies Sandbag packs to create an improvised military base for an Episode of Maxed Out my science fiction Savage Worlds game.  I picked up a set of "Straights" and a set of "Corners".  Each set was $20.00 a piece.  I really like these.  They are nicely detailed and finished and they are ready to use out of the box.  I think they worked well in this situation.