An X-Wing Affair

Local mate Ben P came over the other night for a couple of games of X-Wing, which he has fallen for quite hard. Ben was running a youtube channel for a while on things related to learning English in Japan, and once our kids got wind of it (they are big 'youtuber' fans) he became something of a celebrity in our household; thus, when they heard he was coming over, they got a bit excited and found all sorts of excuses to pop into the room to say hello.

Ben is also an extremely nice guy. Our boy therefore found the combination of youtuber Ben and Star Wars miniatures too much to resist, and joined in.

He had to disappear for a bath, but it was the quickest bath he's ever had in his life, and he was back in no time to continue on. It was quite lovely to see. Eventually he had to push off to bed, but not before he'd got to move models around the table and roll a few dice (and score quite a few hits!).

Ben very kindly put up with it all and treated the boy throughout as a young adult, patiently explaining how to do the movement, how to read the stat cards and so on. Next day the boy said to me "Daddy, wargame please!" so Ben was clearly doing it right!

Anyway, here are a few shots from the games.

Game 1. I only snapped a couple of shots of this game, but it involved two small, high quality forces - my and the boy's three Imperial ships up against four Rebel vessels.

The boy rolls four hits to take out one of the Rebel ships just like that!

...and Ben returns the courtesy and takes out one of mine!

Thanks to the boy's imperious dice rolling before he took off to bed we managed to get enough of an advantage to secure an Imperial win.

Second game was a swarm of TIE fighters taking on Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon and a pair of Rebel support vessels. 

And we're off!

The Imperials landed a lot of hits on the Millennium Falcon early, but none of them were critical, and once the TIEs started getting in one another's way, the Falcon's 360 degree firing along with the annoying support acts began to wear the swarm down.

All of Chewie's roars were needed to fight off the enemy here!

The TIE fighters can't combine their fire effectively and are picked off one by one.

The superiority of the Rebel pilots tells, and eventually the TIE fighters are forced to run for home.

The games were fun, were filled with action, and had more twists and turns than the report or photos show. It's a little bit like Commands & Colors: Ancients in that there is a nice mixture of skill and luck involved, and so you never quite feel comfortable when you are in the better position, nor totally out of it when you are not.

I'm tempted to use the boy's enthusiasm as an excuse to get a couple of sets for ourselves, and our girls might even like it too. Something to consider, anyway. 

So many thanks to Ben for coming over with his models, for putting on a couple of games for us, and for lighting a bit of a fuse under the boy.

What the boy got up to the next day (I knew those WHFB figures would come in handy!).