Rescue mission

            My latest addition to my ever growing star fleet, the Lambda-Class Shuttle 

The Mrs and I managed to grab a game of X wing last Sunday night so I finally managed to get to use the Lambda class shuttle which I had purchased a few weeks before. I had decided to use the scenario which comes with the Lambda box set which basically involved the empire player having to rescue 5 passanges from the 3 disabled ships randomly placed on the gaming area. The rebel player had to capture 6 passengers or destroy all the empire ships to win the game. I played the empire and Catherine was the rebels.

The game at set up

My force consisted of Lambda class shuttle Piloted by Cononel Jendon with intelligence upgrade, Tie interceptor piloted by Turr Phennir and two tie fighters, night beast and Academy pilots 

Giving Catherine the choice of rebel ships she choose 2 X wings piloted by Biggs Darklighter with proton torpedos and R2-D2 and Wedge Antilles with proton torpedos, Marksmenship and R5-K6 and finally a B-Wing with heavy Auto blasters 

The early running s in the game saw Catherine quickly capture 4 passengers through some good shooting onto the disabled ships, I had tasked the tie interceptor with the task of engaging the X wings while my lambda shuttle was to head to the closest disabled ship and rescue all 4 of the passengers on board. However while heading towards this objective Biggs X wing torpedoed and knocked out the shields from the lambda which was making slow progress thanks to some rather dodgy moving ( I spent two moves flying into and overlapping the tie interceptor). I have never used a ship with a large base before and it definitely took some time to get used to how the ship handles.

One of the t fighters was involved in a dog fight with the b wing and gradually I was managing to whittle down the shields of the ship with some close range fire.

Both X wings fly to safety after another attack onto the Lambda shuttle but this time the empires ship escapes any major damage.

My second tie fighter had slyly managed to rescue a passenger from a disabled ship, however I made a mistake as I thought I had to escape at the far edge of my deployment zone when I could have escaped to the left hand table side aswell, this was to prove costly as I made a mad rush towards the far table edge.

The b wing fighter managed to intercept the tie fighter as Catherine executed a very good move and managed to get into the position to use the heavy auto blasters which made short work of the tie fighters last hull point blowing it up. This ment the rebels now had 5 passengers to the empires nil, one more would see them claim victory.

However I managed to fight back and the tie interceptor finally managed to out manovere biggs X wing and destroy the X wing before R2-D2 managed to repair a shield point as he had done of a number of occasions into the game already, keeping Biggs in the fight up until this point. However the rules of the mission state that once a rebel ship is destroyed a model of the same ship is returned to the game using the stats for the poorest pilot available and can re-enter play in the following turn.

The Lambda shuttle had 4 passengers boarded and was one move from exiting the table as the b wing closed in for the kill. However this time my tie fighter got the first shot off and scored a critical hit which led to the b wing suffering double damage and exploding before it could get its laser shot at the lambda shuttle. The following turn the Lambda exited the table mean if both me and Catherine needed one more passenger each to win the game. I lost my final tie fighter night beast to Wedge's X wing and my remaining ships were down to only one hit each left. With the reinforcement rebel forces Catherine had almost a unscathered fighter force. I made a final dash with the Lamda shuttle to reach a disabled ship as The rebels went all guns blazing to capture the final passenger. Somehow, amazingly I managed to save all the attacks on the disabled ships which allowed me to close into the disabled ship with my lambda shuttle while my tie interceptor tried to off set the X wing piloted by Wedge.

However it all proved to be in vain as the rebel X wing which had arrived as a reinforcement managed to find its target with a critical hit ending the involvement of the Lambda class shuttle. With this the Rebels had gained victory as my remaining tie interceptor only had one hull point remaining so couldn't pick up any passengers (when rescuing a passenger the empire player suffers a point of damage for each passenger rescued times by the speed of the move which proceeded this, meaning I would suffer at least one point of damage). It ended up been a very close run game, at one stage I thought the game was going to be over very quickly as The Rebels were 5-0 up but once I managed to get the Lambda shuttle off table with the passengers on board it led to a mad rush from both sides to claim the final passenger for victory. Great fun again, the X wing wing game is really a fun way to spend a couple of hours gamimg!

The Lambda shuttle and colonol Jendon go down under the laser fire of the X wing as the Rebels win the day