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We had 7 players and a GM for our game of Starfighters, with lots of laughs heard around the table
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Keith wanted to run a
Starfighters game using the
Wiley Games rules. We had played it once or twice before and enjoyed it, so why not? After our first game or so, I felt there was a play balance issue with X-Wings being incredibly deadly. Keith felt he had discovered a patch for this problem in online, so this game was to give it a try. The scenario was set in the Mandalorian time frame, with the Empire being reduced to remnant holdouts and the Rebels being promoted to the new government.
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The new government squadron (formerly known as Rebels) were escorting heavily-armed freighters
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The New Government players (Mike W, Mike S, and Allen) each controlled a large, heavily-armed freighter and an escorting fighter. Keith had two sizes of the Millennium Falcon and a Mando Razor Crest. Two X-wings and one Y-wing completed their flotilla, with the mission of simply moving from one edge of the table to the opposite, eight feet away.
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A flotilla of Tie fighters & bombers draw a cordon across their path and attempt to turn them back
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The remnant imperials job, of course, was to ambush them and stop them from crossing our patch of interstellar turf. We had four imperial players (Jenny, Joel, Tom, and myself) each controlling an identical force of three ships. We had a classic light Tie fighter, an advanced Tie Fighter, and an imperial bomber. In our previous games, the Tie Fighters had been consumed like popcorn, blowing up at an alarming rate. Keith tried to minimize this with making only 1/3 of our force light ships, the other three being classified as "Medium" and heavier armed.
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It was four remnant imperial players (12 ships) against three former Rebels (6 ships)
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The biggest change, though, was the damage table when scoring a hit on an enemy. The classic Wiley Game model present throughout most of their rules was modified in one crucial area. The 9-10 on 1d10 was no longer "Out of Action". Instead, it was a single point of damage (our light Tie fighters could take three), and a score of 10 leading to a d6 roll on a separate critical hit table. Only a "6" was a kaboom, the others causing the loss of a weapon or movement or something. As it turned out, this was too much of a fix and absolutely erased the X-wings chief advantage.
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Keith had placed his foam planets and asteroids as terrain on the tabletop for ships to hide behind
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In previous games, the X-wings were armed with four lasers, getting four separate rolls to hit. Each hit would make its own roll on the classic Wiley Games damage chart, with the result of every other shot or so leading to an exploded Tie fighter. Now, there was less than a 2% chance of that happening per hit instead of 20% per hit. The result was the empire drove off the former Rebels' squadron. There was a rule that if your ship had more "Pilot Shock" than remaining hits it would disengage and fly away. When we called the game, more than half of the enemy ships were in retreat and we had suffered almost no damage.
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Jenny channels Darth Vader and closes in on Mike S's ships, 'I've got this one now...'
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Keith went home that night and promptly came up with a new damage chart which we will doubtless try again some Sunday evening. It was fun to get the star fighters out on the table again, though. Of course, with our success, it was even more fun for us than them, possibly! Still, laughs were heard all around the table on both sides. I credited our victory to the leadership of our new tactical mastermind, our friend Tom, who has been attending again on Sunday. It is good to game with him regularly again, and hear his chuckle across the tabletop!
