The Hustler

I won’t be at the club this week, I was going to sit in on a game of “To the Strongest” but when at the cinema last week we passed The Grand theatre and noticed fellow Scot Kevin Bridges was appearing, so my wife immediately put her name on the waiting list for tickets, and for once the gods smiled on us so we have two front row seats on what otherwise would be a club night.

 I do have one report to file though, when my son agreed to come through and have stern words with PC No.2 we did manage some time for an X-Wing game, he wanted to try out a build he was intending to use in upcoming X-Wing tournaments so I was the lucky guinea pig. Having bought new ships my build contained one Phantom and one Defender along with two Tie Advanced, I don’t care what anyone says, I like that ship. My heart sank as I watched him draw out ship after ship from the box, two B-Wings, three Z95’s and one A-Wing, “Hey, give the old man a chance why don’t you”. Apart from the advanced cloaking device I had no modifications, although neither did he having so many ships, but I still felt hustled. My tactics were simple, I went straight ahead for the two B-Wings and ignored his mini-swarm, first kill to the Imperials, one B-Wing disintegrates, then the damage starts to pile up, an Advanced goes south, then the second B Wing, then my Phantom bites the dust. Some unusually bad flying by Stewart gifts me another kill, a Z95. Sadly my last Advanced goes down in flames, he lasted some time with just one hull left but the odds were stacked against him. I now had three enemy to contend with, one of which, the A-Wing was down to one hull, twice I had him in my sights by pulling off the Defenders non-stressful K-turn (a space Immelmann) while the Rebels were in disarray, twice he dodged, but eventually he takes to his escape pod. At this point Stewart gets his mojo back and my, up until now, lucky Defender pilot hits the eject button.

 The fearless squadron hurtles forward.

 Straight into the lions den.

 The A-Wing runs out of luck.

What I thought was going to be a walk over turned into a very good fight, my Defender played a blinder, while the Phantom on the other hand deserves a court martial. At least three times he was in an excellent firing position with five attack dice, he completely failed once while managing only one hit on each of the other two rolls, aaaaaagh! Now that would have been a game changer as he could have taken out any of the Rebel ships with one pass, a point I laboured throughout the remainder of the game but which elicited no sympathy.