X Wing... Stop the Transport!

This week's game was an X Wing game with regular opponent Andrew fielding a Rebel Transport supported by an X Wing [with Luke and R2D2 on board], a Y wing and an A Wing.

Matching this were a 3 TIE fighters, my new Imperial Shuttle and an Advanced TIE fighter with Darth Vader at the helm.  New-ish club member Julian joined us taking the 2 TIE fighters.
The objective was pretty straightforward...destroy the rebel transport!

The Transport is an impressive model, if rather pricey.  The Transport isn't cheap [the Corellian Corvette is even more expensive] but has some interesting new rules for the game and comes with a campaign system of linked games based on the rebels attempting to flee Hoth.

It is unarmed but has the ability to allocate its power each turn which means it can rather annoyingly boost shields and carry out repairs.  Damage is also allocated to either the front or rear of the ship with 2 separate damage decks giving appropriate critical hit effects depending on where it has been hit.  The Rebel player can choose to fly slowly but have lots of energy to reallocate, or speed along but risk being too badly damaged.  At least the lack of weapons on-board meant that it wouldn't be able to damage any of my ships.....hmmmmm........

 

The Imperial and Rebel fighters face off....

 

The Imperial plan initially worked well with the shuttle, advanced fighter and bog-standard TIE fighter heading straight for the rebel fighter while Julian's better class TIE fighters [ie with named pilots with special abilities] took the long way round, avoiding a fight but then swinging round to attack the transport.

Vader vs Luke

 

 

The fighters spent a few turns dog-fighting with no one actually any significant damage although Vader's shields were beginning to take a bit of a pounding.  The Rebels were very annoyed to discover that the Shuttle had some Rebel prisoners on board which meant that they were given a Stress token each turn if they attacked it....I'm not sure how they knew they were on-board...presumably the Imperials were dangling the Wookiee prisoners out of the cockpit like some kind of fluffy dice ornament!

The shuttle then managed to break through the line of fighters and, along with Julian's fighters began to attack the transport.  The combination of firepower was beginning to tell when I realised that I'd left my shuttle sitting directly in the path of the transport.  Andrew sensibly increased to full speed and crashed straight into the shuttle...collisions in X Wing don't normally cause damage except in the case of the Huge ships like the transport in which case they destroy the other ship!  Boom went  third of my total points!  At least it took a couple of the transport's shields with it...

The Imperials continued to harass the transport but time was beginning to tell.  The Rebel fighters were beginning to get a bit battered but the ability of the transport to restore shields and repair itself was making it hard to cause significant damage.  Time was now against us so we called it a night.... the result was still very much in doubt but the loss of the shuttle was an embarrassing loss for the Empire.