Star Wars Battle Reports

Our local gaming group, which used to be fixated on Pirates, has embraced WizKids' other constructable games as well. This is the archive for our Star Wars battles.

Sep 15, 2009
Dec 08, 2009

Episode I: The Phantom Meanies
Star Wars Battle Report for 09/15/2009

Some time ago, our Pirate admirals mysteriously found themselves transported ahead in time, into the world of Rocketmen. Tonight, time went the other way, and we found ourselves a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Past, future, it's all the same; we still know how to blow each other up. We just assumed some new identities so we could blend into our new surroundings, acquired some spaceships and ground units, and began picking targets.

In this universe, there was no gold to steal, no mineral resources to fight over. There were no islands, no asteroids, not even a vending machine. But drifting in the middle of deep space was a mysterious alien artifact, glittering silver in the pale starlight. Scientists were calling it a Cloaked Double-Reflecting Orbital Mechanism (or, for short, a CD-ROM), and the reward for bringing it back to civilization would be huge.

We played with the latest version of Darth Sillious' rules for using Star Wars Pocketmodels as a minis-only game. Each point of damage scored one point for whoever caused it; if something blew up, whoever destroyed it got as many points as the destroyed unit had stars; and at the end of the battle, each player got two points for each star's worth of units in contact with the alien artifact.

As the curtain went up on this unusual battle, it devolved into three separate actions. Zackuss was trying to shoehorn as many units as possible onto the artifact, and taking potshots at anyone who came close. Antonio and Aimeedala were trying to dislodge Zackuss so they could get their own units onto the the artifact, and were blazing away at each other as well as at him. And Admiral Jakebar and Darth Sillious ignored the artifact completely and just shot the merry blazes out of each other. We played for only three turns, but we still saw some pretty savage action.

On the first turn, nothing happened. Well, everybody moved, and almost everybody got all their reserves into play, but nothing interesting happened.

That changed in the second turn. Zackuss got his Rogue Shadow and his ARC-170 fighter into contact with the alien device, which made him burp. Antonio's speederbikes also reached the artifact. He didn't burp. Aimeedala's high-speed fighter tank didn't quite get there, but they were close enough to take a shot at the speederbikes and score a glancing hit. The bikes fired their lasers at Squad Seven and missed.

Nearby, where the Admiral's fleet met the ships of the Dork Lord of the Sniff, almost nobody missed. The Millenium Falcon traded shots with Darth Vader, leaving both ships heavily damaged. The freighter turned to flee the battle, hoping to buy enough time for its Droid to repair some damage. Vader gave chase, and they traded shots again. Storm Squadron tried to help the Falcon, but their aim was off. The two 3-star ships didn't miss, though. The Millenium Falcon, pride of Admiral Jakebar's fleet, came apart spectacularly, while Vader's fighter spun out of control and then blew in half. His final words were, "I find my lack of life disturbing."

At the same time, the rest of the two hostile admirals' fleets met head-on. Darth Sillious put great faith in his black WizKids dice, which usually rolled high for him when used in Pirates games. But he was forced to tell them, in his Vader voice, "You have failed me for the last time." He landed some hits on the Tyridium and on Blue Squadron, but nothing else of Jakebar's exploded. The only fireworks were from Sillious' Imperial shuttle, which took hits from Y-wings, TIE fighters, and Jakebar's own shuttle that tore it apart.

Both the Falcon and Vader's ship then reappeared in their admirals' reserve fleets and rejoined the battle. Someone in that galaxy is awfully good at putting pieces back together, I guess.

At the start of the third turn, the region around the artifact became hopelessly crowded as three commanders fought over the alien device, and as the slow-moving land units finally got into attack range of each other. Sillious and Jakebar continued their merciless attacks, and Aimeedala sent her Razor (isn't she kind of young to be shaving?) out of the crowd to find targets in Zackuss' backfield.

The shooting near the artifact was intense, but inaccurate; perhaps the alien device has a strange effect on dice. The only unit to be destroyed was Antonio's speederbike unit. Everyone except Jakebar had something near the artifact that got shot up, though; even Darth Sillious' Obsidian Squadron caught some fire from Conan Antonio's Eta-2's as it guarded his flank. The Razor found a target, Zackuss' big AT-TE, and did what Aimeedala had spent most of the night doing: it missed. But she got enough hits elsewhere to cause Zackuss' Elite Squadron to vanish in a fireball and his Rancor to fall down dead. Antonio's horde of Rancors tore into Aimeedala's land units and inflicted some cruel damage, but nothing fatal.

In the center of the battle zone, everything went wrong for the Master of the Dork Side. The Harasser fired a total of four shots, and they all missed. Admiral Jakebar's 181st Imperial TIE Interceptors hit the big frigate once; then Blue Squadron's Y-wings caught her with a torpedo that penetrated her engines and blew Darth Sillious' flagship into very, very small pieces. This caused the Admiral to rejoice a little, but in a good-sportsmanly way. After that excitement, the destruction of Sillious' 181st Imperial and Black Eight Squadrons (the latter taken out by the newly-arrived Millenium Falcon) was almost an anticlimax. The Dork Lord's ships hit back the best they could, which wasn't very good, but at least they caused some damage.

Time ran out on the battle at this point. The Bounty Hunter had four of his spaceships parked on the Orbital Mechanism, and he thought he'd won for sure. Admiral Jakebar was counting the hits he'd inflicted on Darth Sillious and kept his hopes high. Here was the final tally:

CommanderHitsKill PtsArtifactTotal
Jakebar1612028
Zackuss521623
Sillious83011
Aimeedala44210
Antonio2024

Jakebar won without even going near the artifact; he just kept his units shooting, and they shot well. Zackuss, like Aimeedala and Antonio, was held back by his slow land units, but his spaceships got near the artifact and stayed there, giving him a solid second place. Darth Sillious did what Jakebar did, but he didn't do it nearly as well. He's too good a sport to blame the dice, so he'll say he was betrayed by the Dork Side. Aimeedala didn't seem to have a cohesive plan; she tried a little of this and a little of that, and wound up with a little bit of points. Antonio went with a ton of cheap units, which would have made it hard to finish him off in a long game, but the land units were all too slow to make a difference in the short time we had.

Notable units were:

When the fighting was all done, we had an energetic trading session for some of Darth Sillious' doubles and extras, in which everyone came away happy. Everyone said they had a good time, which was good news for the author of the game rules. Next time, to make things go faster and get more action in, the rules will be a little simpler in places.

Data recorded on September Fifteenth,
Year Two Zero Zero Nine,
by Darth Sillious

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Episode II: Where's Admiral Waldo?
Star Wars Battle Report for 12/08/2009

A highly-placed Republic officer, Admiral Waldo W. Warrick, has decided to defect to the Separatists! He wanted a web site named after his initials, and the Republic wouldn't allow it; they said a site named www.www.com would confuse people. Like many admirals, Waldo was accustomed to getting his own way, and if the Republic wouldn't give it to him, then maybe the Confederacy would. So he is hiding on a small asteroid in the Feenamint Cluster, waiting for a spy to deliver him to General Mayhem of the Banking Clan. The Confederates are anxious to learn his military secrets, while the Republic wants to get him back before he talks. Who will find him first?

Our fleets were made up of 12 stars in the active fleet and six stars in reserve. The asteroid field was made of 32 Rocketmen resource tokens; the sole Titanium resource in the field would be Admiral Waldo. Ships could shoot an asteroid to look at it; if the Admiral wasn't on it, it was removed from the game. The Admiral would load himself onto the first ship that touched him.

We played tonight's battle with the latest version of Darth Sillious' rules for using Star Wars Pocketmodels as a minis-only game. Each point of damage scored one point for whoever caused it; if something blew up, whoever destroyed it got as many points as the destroyed unit had stars; and having Admiral Waldo on your ship or base at the end of the battle was worth five points.

(In a totally unexpected development, no one except Chewzacca had brought measurement cards to the game, and he had to loan out his cards to everyone else, including Darth Sillious. This is the first time in living memory that Sillious did not come fully prepared.)

The first turn consisted of everyone's fleet leaving their bases and heading for the asteroid field in the center of the battle zone. No one got close enough to take any shots, although Chewzacca's AT-TE found one of Antonio's X-wings just barely out of range. For reserves, Darth Sillious brought in his 39th Recon units and Black 8 Squadron; Jakebar got Scythe Squadron and all four of his cloud cars (#3 on an Airborne roll); Aimeedala could only bring in her vulture droid and her Rancor; Antonio got his entire reserve into the battle, thanks to an Airborne roll for the 38th Armored; and Chewzacca got all of his AT-RT's and Saber Squadron moving.

This peaceful state of affairs lasted only until someone got close enough to shoot someone else. Sillious' first aggressive act was against a harmless asteroid, courtesy of Darth Vader; he found nothing, as did Aimeedala, Chewzacca, and Antonio, who took multiple shots into the asteroid field and found nothing but shattered rock. Jakebar had promised to aid Aimeedala if she needed help, but first, he had an important mission: he had to take out Darth Sillious' flagship, the Devastator. The sight of all that firepower made his blood run cold, and he resolved to do something about it, even if it took his entire fleet. When the Devastator fired at long range and vaporized his Dark Squadron, that was all the provocation he needed.

Jakebar's ships all turned to starboard and closed on the big star destroyer. The Millenium Falcon, Oddball, and Squad Seven poured in fire and landed three damaging hits; the Tyderium could have finished her off, but failed to connect. Jake must have known that vengeance would not be long in coming, and it wasn't. The first unit to fire was the Dork Lord's speederbike unit. "You'll never hit me," Jakebar boasted, counting on the penalty that all ground units suffer when attacking spaceships. He fell silent when the speeders' weapons landed a hit on the Millenium Falcon, knocking out its lateral stabilizers, tangential null-torsion adjusters, and doubletalk generator.

Next to arrive were the TIE fighters of Black 8 Squadron. Again, Jakebar sneered, "Just try to hit me, baby," and again he went very quiet as Sillious' fighters got another hit on the Falcon and wrecked something else that sounded really important. This set up the scene for Lord Vader's attack run. When Sillious explained how a named unit like Vader's fighter could take a second shot if its first shot destroyed its target, Jake left off with his boasting and quietly said, "I really don't like you." Vader's initial burst was far off target, but he corrected his aim and unleashed a stream of laser fire that not only sliced the Falcon in two, but also inflicted hideous damage on Squad Seven. The Millenium Falcon's last shot missed the TIE-Advanced fighter, and Vader had another kill.

Chewzacca had observed that "we should call this battle the Attack of the Clones, because we're using the same ship" (he meant ARC-170 heavy fighters, which were prominent in three of the five fleets). Then he shouted, "No clones!" and set about making his ARC-170 the only one on the battlefield. His big AT-TE walking tank took careful aim at Antonio's Red Squadron and blasted it out of the sky with one shot. His own ARC-170 fired on Antonio's Rogue Squadron with another crushing hit. This looked worse than it really was, because Antonio tacked all three smoke markers onto the X-wing's nose, making the fighter look like it really needed a Kleenex. Rogue Squadron got off one shot before it exploded, and that shot took out Chewzacca's 10th Group of Geonosian fighters.

Back at the asteroid field, against all odds, Princess Aimeedala had located Admiral Waldo on her second attempt. (She also dragged her stealthy freighter into the battle faster than it ever moved before, by getting it caught on her sleeve.) Antonio's 128th Flight pounced and loaded the reluctant Admiral a moment later. Both the Admiral and the 128th Flight ceased to exist a moment after that, when Aimee's Shadow Squadron caught the vulture droid with a well-aimed shot. No one would benefit from getting Waldo home, and the Admiral learned a permanent lesson about not betraying people. Robbed of his prize, Antonio opened fire on Shadow Squadron to get revenge. His 38th Armored gunship fired at her twice and landed one hit, which didn't quite destroy her. There was a minor distraction at about this time which caused a brief lull in the fighting (Aimee fell out of her chair).

The big Devastator's time ran out at this time; Oddball connected a second time and watched a chain reaction spread across the star destroyer until nothing was left to blow up, leaving a huge hollow smoldering metal shell. Before the final blasts, two of Sillious' weapons fired one more time at the Tyderium, which missed, and at Scythe Squadron, which tore out the middle of the fighter and left nothing but the outer wings drifting in space.

At the same time, Sillious came under fire from his other flank, as Chewzacca thought he'd pick off some easy targets while the Dork Lord was busy fighting Jakebar. It didn't quite work out that way, though. The big Warspite closed and fired on Darth Vader, and completely missed. His Squad Seven lined up on General Veers' AT-AT, and this time he scored a good hit. But the four-legged war machine shot back and inflicted as much damage as it had received. One more exchange of fire like that, and both units would destroy each other.

A few more combats took place at this time. Oddball's fighter (Antonio's version) got Aimeedala's 72nd Flight in his sights and blew them to space dust. Chewie's big frigate and Saber Squadron tried to support his attack on Sillious' AT-AT, and both missed their shots, as did his 501st Legion when it tried to swat Antonio's Red Squadron X-wings out of the sky. Aimeedala's huge cruiser finally got into the fray, fired on two of Antonio's units in one turn, and missed them both.

Time ran out on the battle at this point. The hits and kills had piled up so thick and fast that, even though historians had a full written record of the action, they could not tell at a glance who had won. As an afterthought, each player got one point for each asteroid he/she blew up, and two points for finding Admiral Waldo. Here was the final tally:

CommanderHitsKill PtsBonus PtsTotal
Sillious145120
Jakebar105116
Antonio83516
Chewzacca83112
Aimeedala2046

The main reason Darth Sillious won was that Admiral Jakebar presented his entire fleet at close range; all Sillious had to do was pick his targets and shoot. Jakebar's only goal was to take out the Devastator, and while he succeeded in this, that was all he did. Antonio had made trouble with both Chewzacca and Aimeedala, and tried to find the Admiral at the same time, which put him in a good position to find multiple targets. Chewzacca also picked on two enemies at once (Antonio and Sillious), but found Sillious' units a tougher nut to crack than he'd expected. Aimeedala's problems were that one of her best units, the Razor, sat in reserve the whole game, and too many of her other units were on the slow side.

Notable units were:

When the fighting was done, Darth Sillious gave away some doubles of his ships, which made the others happy (especially Chewzacca, who added a Trade Federation battleship to his fleet). Admiral Jakebar wanted to do some trading, but half of what he offered, Sillious already had. They made deals for the other half that left both of them saying, "It's nothing, it's nothing," but secretly bragging about what they got (Proverbs 20:14). Not one of the younger players had realized they were playing a space version of "Where's Waldo."

Data recorded on Eight December,
Year Two Zero Zero Nine,
by Darth Sillious

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