Tune in for the National Finals of X-Wing!
October 2, 2013 by dracs
A few days ago on a YouTube channel not far away... X-Wings and Tie Fighters went head to head in the battle for the National Finals of Star Wars X-Wing!
In this game a three man force of X-Wings, comprised of Luke Skywalker, Biggs Darklighter and Wedge Antilles go up against a seven man force of Imperial Tie Fighters. Will the Rebels win their freedom, or will the might of the Emperor be victorious?
It says a lot for the popularity of the game that the National Finals recieves this sort of coverage, the coverage itself provided by gaming blog Team Covenant.
Which side are you routing for?
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This is pretty good coverage actually. The legibility of some of the on-screen elements could be improved a bit, but overall this is really well-done. This is kind of what I want all video battle reports to be like. Good game too.
Bit one sided but was good to watch.
Might try and catch up on some of the earlier games
As a Rebel player, I find that playing Rebels tends to be a lot less forgiving of errors than playing Empire. Always being outnumbered really puts a high price tag on every little mistake. Misjudging one turn into an asteroid field (as happened in this game very early on) takes out 1/3–1/2 of your firepower for a full round. Whereas stacking up TIE Fighters and bumping around like the Keystone Kops often doesn’t dramatically effect their collective hitting power. I’m really hoping the new support options in the HWK-290 alter that balance a bit, maybe make each error a little less do-or-die.
The bumper car tactic has me a little confused
Is there no penalty for hitting other ships?
I guess being outnumbered and up against it is suitably thematic.
Not much comfort in a tournament though
The commentators discuss this near the beginning of this game, but essentially if your ships begin their turn right next to each other (in contact), they can move exactly the same distance in exactly the same direction and not collide with each other again. If a ship would end its movement in collision with another ship, it has to stop short of doing so, which is basically being in base-to-base contact. So once two ships have “collided” (which actually means they would have collided if the colliding ship wasn’t forced to stop short) you can move them in tandem without them “colliding” again (they’re essentially flying in very tight formation).
Obviously these forrmations always fall apart eventually, as it did in the video. The main penalties for “colliding” are:
1: The colliding ship (the one who moved into the other ship) loses their action for this turn. No barrel rolls, focus, target locks, etc.
2: Neither ship can fire at each other (ships can’t fire at any ships they’re in base contact with).
When you collide with your own ship, penalty #2 is pretty meaningless. And when the enemy is lined up in your sights, essentially a sitting duck (like the rebels were for most of this game), penalty #1 doesn’t add up to much either. Also, even if your ship does end up losing it’s firing for that round because there are no valid targets, for Empire players that’s just two dice they’re losing per ship in a fleet of 5–7 ships. For rebels who frequently fly with 3–4 ships with 3 dice per attack, losing that one attack hurts more.
What the TIE swarm ends up being is essentially one big ship with a whole lot of attack dice and potentially multiple special abilities (depending on pilots). That big ship occasionally loses small bits of its firepower due to asteroid collisions or bad firing angles, but overall it remains a huge threat on the table until your opponent starts peeling ships out of it.
It’s a hard tactic to face, and when you lose one Rebel ship’s worth of firepower on the first turn of engagement you really screw yourself. If Biggs hadn’t hit that asteroid he could’ve taken a TIE out of that formation on a good roll. Really, the rebel player started the game with some truly lousy rolls, both offensively and defensively. In an average game like this at least one TIE would’ve died on that first turn of engagement, oftentimes two and if you get lucky with the dice you could take out three. He just got really unlucky with his dice and he really misjudged that turn into the asteroid field.
As an academy pilot myself I found that batrep very useful abd easy to follow. I’ll be checking out the others as well.
Looked very entertaining if a little one sided on the part of the Rebel player. I might have to actually give this a go. That or pick up Attack Wing…Star Trek is better than Star Wars!!!
*runs away*
BoW Ben
You know… I find the Star Trek iteration of this game less interesting in every single regard. It feels less interesting, less balanced, and more like a toy/cash grab than the surprisingly tournament ready, and incredibly diverse X-wing game. I think this is an instance of FFG’s production value and experience adding that, pardon the pun, x-factor, to the game, even if they share core mechanics.
I think you can tell that FFG was working on this game for a long time before releasing it. That and their experience from working on Wings of War really helped them get it right the first time. The Wizkids game (Attack Wing) just feels rushed, like they were more interested in striking while the iron was hot and getting the product to market riding the coattails of the X-Wing system than they were in really getting the game right. I think it could be a good game (despite some lingering doubts about using the maneuvering system for fleet combat instead of dogfights), but I think it needs some revision to reach the same level that X-Wing is at right now.
Well, if that’s the case then that’s a let down 🙁 I was looking forwards to it a lot more than X-Wing.
Late Night Poker for X-wing. Nicely done.
PS, collisions between fighters aren’t considered (in a narrative way) to actually be collisions. The pilots are assumed to have missed each other (space being 3D) but lost some concentration in the process,