Maps and Darth Vader

I am still not 100% and what with feeling sorry for myself I have not touched a paintbrush in about two weeks, the 51st glower at me from the side of the keyboard and plead for their redcoats, I really must get back to my almost automatic one hour a night routine.

I have been unable to call a halt to maps though, and despite my heart not being in it I manfully continued, finishing three projects and starting another, the maps which I am working on at the moment are time consuming and complex, I intend to break the back of this project next week, so nose to the grindstone.

War and Soldiers in the early reign of Loux XIV

William III's Italian Ally. Piedmont

Killing Hitlers Reich

I went to Darlington early this morning for some X-Wing, a pleasant enough drive if boring. I would be playing son Stewart who is simply too good for me at this game, when fighting him I rely on luck while he has things worked out to perfection (or almost). I don't think I have ever beat him at X-Wing so thankfully on real battlefields I can recover some of my dignity.

The first game involved a Lambda Shuttle for me escorted by two Tie Advanced against a Firespray and two Fang fighters. As the game kicked off I got some bad hits on my ships and thought 'here we go'. The game then settled down and the Shuttle dealt out a lot of damage, one Fang Fighter went down and the Firespray limped around in the dogfight, I lost both my Tie's but if I could hold on against the next bout of incoming fire there was a chance I could kill the Firespray and that would leave only the Fang Fighter and I was quite confident the Shuttle might come out on top. Sadly she took a critical hit which meant my one remaining hull point was taken in the next move, game over.

I was quite chuffed I had given Stewart a run for his money, the Lambda used to be fairly useless as once the enemy got on her tail it was all over, now however she has a rear arc from which to fire, not as good as the front arc but enough to annoy anyone following.

The second game was Imperial v Imperial, I took two Tie Interceptors and a Tie Phantom, the enemy had a Tie Defender (why didn't I take one of them), a Tie Fighter and Darth Vader in his Tie Advanced. Looking across the table I did not get a good feeling about the upcoming dogfight. I thought I might knock out the bog standard Tie and then have three ships v two, not going to happen. I completely mucked up the flying of the Phantom and it proved useless to me, my Interceptors did get into a good position at first but couldn't hit a barn door, Stewart on the other hand hardly missed, my glass starfighters popped one after the other.

Darth Vader gets a shot in.

A minute before it went to pot.

Can't see me, oh yes we can.............

I did not do enough preparation and only looked at my squads last night as I lay in bed wanting to be asleep and not building squads, Stewart had worked on his for days. My own fault, preparation pays in this game and I view it mainly as a pick up game which is wrong, way wrong. I did pick up some things and learned others which I was hoping would be the case when fighting Stewart. Overall I was quite pleased with the first game but I was totally taken apart in the second.

I am not going to the club on Tuesday, the week after next I believe it is Bolt Action and I am looking forward to that.