Scratch one Princess

This week we settled down to Star Wars Armada, my second game. It involved Princess Leia and was set before the first Star Wars movie where her ship was intercepted by Darth Vader, she had the Death Star plans and was on a Space Station awaiting transport. Admiral Tarquin had of course got word of this and had jumped two star destroyers and another warship to within range of the station, I meanwhile with the Rebel fleet had to get the Princess away before she was killed or captured.

I decided to play a reckless gamble, I would jump in on the flank of the Imperial force and roll it up, I reasoned that to take on the enemy frontally would simply be too much and I would not get the opportunity to sit around for three moves and rescue the princess, in hindsight probably the wrong move.

Surprise!

  I caught the Imperials off guard and began to hit the nearest destroyer while overwhelming its protective fighters with my own, sadly however as the enemy had the initiative I had to chase the damn thing for several moves before once again being in a position to fire. In this game you fire first then move, so the destroyer let off some salvoes then legged it, I was then out of range and had to chase.

While I did this the friendly squadrons defending the space stations moved on the rest of the enemy fleet, they lasted longer than expected but did almost no damage to the big Imperial ships which now found the range and concentrated on one station while ignoring the other, sadly the one with the Princess on it.

Space Station 1 takes a lot of punishment.

I eventually got to a position where my target could no longer outrun me and it began to take some serious damage, all her shields at the rear were down and it would not be long before her crew would take to the lifeboats. I had failed in my mission though as the space station blew up in the distance taking Leia and the plans with it.

Gotcha!

With more time I would have taken one destroyer down and started on the next with what should have been overwhelming firepower but it was not to be, with their mission accomplished despite heavy fighter losses Tarquin jumped away.

Space station about to go south.

I went for the flank attack as taking on the Imperial ships frontally is a tough job and I think I would have come out the loser in a stand up fight, if I had stopped a ship for three moves while waiting for the Princess to pack her bags it would have been an easy target for every Empire ship in the area and I doubt it could have survived three turns in such a predicament.

A couple of guys called off so Simon bravely umpired and ran the Imperials on his own, a big job with such a large scenario and so little time, but well done nonetheless. There is a lot to remember in this game and the addition this time of some of the upgrade cards was too much for us and we kept forgetting to use them.