Asteroid Buster game at Cold Wars

This past weekend was Cold Wars 2014 in Lancaster PA. All the time and effort I put into my Asteroid Base was about to be showcased.

You can see all my WIP posts building the Asteroid Base here:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

The battle was for 8 players. I had 5 signups and 3 Walk ups. I set up Saturday night in the main ballroom and we got down to it. It was a mix of beginners and veterans. I split up the veterans and we had at least one kid/grown up pair on each side as well. So the rookies were in good hands.

Scenario Set up:
The Rebels have taken over a smugglers base on an asteroid. The dense asteroid field keeps out the bigger ships. The Empire has to send in small fighters and bombers to destroy the base.
Rules:
The Empire has to use Proton Torpedo's to destroy the hanger bays. Also the hangers have 2 shields each. Too take down a shield, you need 2 hits from a Proton Torpdeo or 2 hits from blasters from the same ship in the same turn. Meaning, you have to overwhelm the shield with blaster fire in one shot.

The turrets would shoot last unless you were making a run at the hanger bays, in which case they would shoot first.
The Imperials had 2 Bombers each with 2 Torpedo's and specially modified Advanced Ties with one Torpedo. 6 Torpedos total. The Rebels knew they had to stop the Bombers, and they also knew some of the other ships might carry torpedos, just not which ones.

Here's the board just before deployment. I added rock outcroppings at the last minute(painted Thursday morning before heading out). I had also found some craters that I forgot I had. Bought from the flea market  4-5 years ago and never used.

The other last minute change was the addition of turrets my friend Lou sculpted and cast for me. They were so cool I had to use them. All the terrain is for scenic effect. So as players moved, they slid the outcroppings and impact craters aside. I wanted to build some rock spires to fly around, but ran out of time.

 A pic facing towards the Imperial Deployment zone. Sorry about the lighting. The camera kept turning off the flash for some reason.

 The Combat Air Patrol is deployed of 4 X-Wings. 2nd turn will launch 2 A-Wings and 2 Y-Wings.

The Imperials come in 2 waves. I think the first wave was 2 Intercepter, 2 Advanced 2 Ties. The 2nd wave will be 4 ties and 2 Bombers. The X-Wings accelerate to attack speed.

 Stay on target!

  2nd wave of Rebels launch! I might have photoshoped out some flight stands on this one.

The Bombers and escorts drop down into the crater.

 There should be a flaming pile of X-Wing in front of that first wave of fighters. 1 vs 3 didn't work out well. First blood, Empire!

 View from the Imperial side

Now really starting to mix it up. The Imperials had a very hot dice hand early on.

 Too be honest, about here, all the players were moving on their own and all the work of putting on 2 games was catching up with me. I zoned out on actual play by play action. I was pretty exhausted.

The attack up the right side was making more headway. The rebels got some bad Crits that really slowed them down from going after the Tie Bomber.

 The Bomber's escorts took out the small turret. The Imperials used massed blaster fire to bring down the shields, and then the Tie Bomber took out The Rebel Hanger Bay. One down.

 The rebels were really starting to be short of ships at this point. However they did manage to bring down the other Advanced and Bomber. Now the Imperials only had 2 torps left.

The Imperial Squad does a nice formation turn towards the other hanger bay. All rebel ships are now trying to head them off.

 Looks like the Rebels only have 2 A-Wings and 2 X-Wings all of which are pretty banged up

Rebels Closing in. The Advanced and Interceptor take out another turret. I think the A-Wings become flaming wreckage right after this picture was taken.

Imperials use a torpedo to bring down the Hanger shields. Next turn could be it. 

The X-Wing lining up to shoot the Bomber is destroyed before it can get a shot off. The Imperials just have to fire a torpedo. NO TARGET LOCK!!!! The Imperial player who had been playing brilliantly forgot the Target lock. I think he started banging his head against a nearby wall. He cannot fire the Torpedo. He will have to swing around and line up another shot.

At this point, the Rebs had one X-Wing left, so we called it. It would have been very easy for the Imperial to swing around and come in again and very little the lone X-Wing could have done about it. Imperial Victory with the last torpedo.

Conclusions,
I think everyone had a good time. It was a well mannered, fun bunch of players. I think the kids had a great time.

I spend a lot of effort to make a very balanced scenario, but there are things beyond your control. I have no control over a hot dice hand. I have no control over how much or how little players get involved. You just have to take what comes and roll with it.

I think if I run this scenario again I will make some small changes. In our play test, with nearly equal points, The rebels destroyed the Empire, because they knew to ignore the ties. So I swung the points to the Empires side by a good margin, and "hid" the torpedos.

I think that was the right call. The mistake I made was ALL the Imperial Pilots were better than all the Rebels. I need to vary the skill levels. It was still a close game, but could have been better.

It was a lot of fun planning, building and hosting the game, I hope the players and readers enjoyed the show.

Xin

Asteroid Base, Last update

I'm leaving today for Cold Wars. I'm mostly done. Even if I had another week, I'd still be making addons to the Asteroid Base. The hard deadline of departure has force me to say, Done!

My very good friend Lou, has sculpted and then cast up some gun turrets for me. He is just crazy good with wargaming talent. Here are a few last pics before I leave.

I'm still playing around with the scenic pieces I want to add to the battle board. Hell this morning I was up at 7am painting new terrain pieces.

So that's it. Off to Cold Wars. The final board will look a little different once I set up the game, but I have 95% done of what I want.

I'm out, see you at Cold Wars, Xin

Building my Asteroid Base, Part V

I got a lot of work done last night. However that was complete negated by my own hand when I started adding design changes. I added a few elements that then needed to be glued and or painted. Then having to wait for them to dry is the longest step. While waiting for the paint to dry, I did manage to get the LED lighting done. With LED lighting kits, it is super simple. Almost as simple as plugging in a light.

Here are the pics:

 The crater was too clean. It's easy to add debris and clutter, but the X-Wing game really needs a level flat surface to play on. So my compromise was to add rocks and sand into the rim along the walls. After lining the walls with sand and rocks. I soaked it in white glue from a spray bottle. Then turned up the heat and put a fan directly on the table.

I had always intended to have an entrance to the crater, but forgot about it. A hot wire foam cutter took care of that pretty quick. Some more brown paint and it's almost as far along as the rest of the crater.

 Once the white glued dried(which took awhile), I went back and and painted over the sand and rocks with the base color. I watered down the paint a lot as I needed it to flow into the nooks and crannys. The cost of that is a long drying time, even with the fan. So the dry brushing will have to wait till tonight.

Here is a close up of one of the entrances and my newly painted debris.

 Another thing I started working on while all this drying was going on, was the LED lights.I bought 2 "miniatures kit" from http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/. Each kit somes with a battery lead, switch and 5 LED lights. LED's require resistors, but these come already attached. All you have to do is twist the wires together.

 I ran all 5 LED's in parallel. Then just taped every thing to the roof of my Hanger Bays. The battery is heavy, I will have to put more tape on it as it keeps dropping.

The junction of all the wires I just covered with Electrical tape. It really couldn't be simpler.

Power on!

 The Rebels won't need to work in the dark

Red 5 launching

The last part I got done yesterday was to start painting the Hanger Bays

I could have easily gone into diorama mode detailing out the bases, but I had to restrain myself. As it was, my friend Lou decided that wasn't good enough and started adding details anyway. Lou is an incredible scratch builder. It didn't take him long to come up with a few visual improvements.

2 Build days left!

Xin

Building my Asteroid Base, Part IV, A New Hope

There is hope I can finish! The convention, Cold Wars is 4 days away. I am starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. I might actually finish this monstrosity. One of my friends came over Saturday night to play Lords of Waterdeep and he looked at my board and said "you should have told me, you went off your meds"

I should get the LED kit today in the mail. When I get that I can finish the Rebel Base.

I got the board painted last night. Well the first coat and a light dry brush. Tonight I will sponge on  the 2nd color. I also will add in some details on the base.

Some fighters out for effect

That Tie Bomber is a big boy.

Well that's it for now, Xin

Building my Asteroid Base, Part III

Another day gone and not as far as along as I had hoped. On the plus side I am making progress.

While at work today it occurred to me I am a better improvisor than planer. I have been wasting time, thinking about how I'm gonna to this or that and nothing gets done. But if I just start trying to do something like, install the LED Lighting, I get something done. Sure I might have to take a step back here and there and start again. But again, the project is moving forward.

Ok on to the updates. Last night I got most of the Crater Floor texturized (spell check doesn't seem to think that is a word, what do they know, pfft). What I have been doing is taking a piece of Coral that I found in the garden(from the previous home owners I assume.) anyway, taking this round-ish piece of coral and rolling it around the insulation foam and pressing down. It dents/ cuts/ scores / and scuffs up the foam in a very non-regular pattern. That is the key, random pattern. Nature doesn't do regular patterns and the human eye looks for that.

Here is my coral, oh and USE a glove. It can be a little hard on the hand.

Here is a piece of foam that has been texturized. It can be hard to see all the damage done to the foam in a photo.

Here is the same piece next to another piece that has not been texturized. If I keep using that word will it make it into the dictionary?

This is a test piece of foam that I was using to see how it would look. Again hard to see all the dings and dents. It will look better in person.

I also got more work done on the crater walls. I'm using a light weight spackle to cover up and or fill in the seams and joints of the foam. Unfortunately it takes a long time to dry. So I do it last before going to bed. I will go back over it with some steel wool or sand paper to scrap off the big blobs that can be left behind.

Just another shot. I have 2 more seams to cover up. I supposed if I had spent more time when cutting the foam I might have less seams to cover up. Actually it goes fast, it's just waiting for it to dry is the problem.

That's all for now, Ciao, Xin