Corellian Corvette Event Playtest Episode II Attack of the Waves

The initial setup was along the short edge of the table.  We wanted to make sure that the Corvette had a decent amount of distance to travel in order to ensure that the Rebels had enough time to at least disable the small capital ship before it got off the table.  We also wanted to make the velocity of the big ship believable since its also a blockade runner and designed to move quickly.  On the first playtest we had the TIE Advanced escort on each side of the ship.  After thinking about it, I imagined them coming out of Hyperspace first, slightly ahead of the Corvette to make sure the coast was clear.  So we set up the TIE Advanced in front of the Corvette.

We set up the A-Wings inside range band three of both the bottom and side edge.  The interceptors were facing the Corvette on setup, but we are strongly considering changing that to having them run along the long edge instead.  The A-Wings aren't supposed to engage the TIE Advanced fighters directly.  Their mission is to draw the Imperial fighters away from the Corvette.

We had the TIE and X-Wing fighters start at a distance from the edge of the table equal to their fastest straight movement, (5 for the TIEs and 4 for the X's). The trigger for these ships to show up was any exchange of fire between the A's and Advanced.  Another reason I want to have the A's facing the other way. It might give that an extra turn to get the fight closer to the middle of the table.  One of the balancing factors we have to consider here is to make sure that the Corvette moves just fast enough to keep the game well paced but not so fast that it gives to great an advantage to the Rebels.

Concussion missiles kill A-Wings.  That is a cautionary tale.  Homing Missiles kill TIE Fighters.  That's just duh. The big deal about this turn is whether the X-Wings are going to be free enough to unload some Proton Torpedoes. In this turn the X-Wing player decided to split the difference.  Two decided to hurl some hurt at the Corvette and the other two decided to hit some TIEs. I don't really know what happened to the A-Wing that decided to hide behind the X-Wings, but the galaxy is crazy like that.

It's crunch time now.  Once a TIE Fighter shoots at an X-Wing or vice versa the Y-Wings come in.  The Imperials get no reinforcements this turn.  The reason we went with that was because the Y-Wings already have an adversary, the Pontiff itself.  The only ships that really have a chance of pulling this off for the Rebels are the Y-Wings. On the flip side, the Y-Wings are the only ships actually threatened by the Turbo Lasers.

I have to say that this turn really made me happy.  We got to see the lowly Y-Wing shine.  This is a true bomber mission and it really turned out that way.  I don't know if the dice gods were all in favor of the Y-Wing's vindication, but it was the perfect storm of Proton Torpedo awesome. Out of 16 dice attacking and 12 dice defending the Y's got ten points of shields down. With a second deadly load of torps still slung snugly underneath, things were looking grim for the Pontiff.

The fight between the fighters was not as deadly as we thought it would be.  I think that it will be different when we have players that aren't so involved in the meta of mission design. There is so much on the board its going to be fairly impossible to really predict any outcome, especially when we get random people from Gamex playing.  We decided to allow the Ion Cannon to be a little more versatile against the capital ship.  It does not have the classical effect of halting movement.  What it does do is "Ion Damage".  This damage does not have a chance to destroy the vessel but will disable it.  But the CR90 will recover from this "Ion Damage" and if the Y-Wings don't keep the pressure on, it could re-activate and start moving and shooting again.

Also, the TIE Interceptors come in on the turn after the Corvette's shields go down.  We might change their start zone so they get into the mix quicke.

Here is where we came into a problem. We decided to let the CR90 keep shooting after it was disabled.  Stupid.  Well needless to say it shot down the Assault Shuttle.  We used  a YT-1300 with an evade value of 1.  Mercenary Market was closing down so we decided to shut it down.  If you want to see a PDF of the playtest click HERE to get it from our Google Drive.  We also learned a few things which are all summed up by the good admiral down below. We are another step closer to getting this ready to play and thats good since we have a little less than a month to get it ready for Gamex.