I'll be bringing X-Wing with me as well.

Dennis,

As I said, I probably will not be able to make it...but I will try.

Just to let you know something of interest:

There was a group at Origins last year that ran a BoH scenario that got rave reviews. My friend, Padme's Lover on d20 or hobieslacker here, played it and was able to get the rules from them and we ran a fairly successful version a few months back with our boys.

I do not have any good details on this as my buddy really ran the show. The idea is to simplify the heck out of the game by using limited rules (especially card-based rules and stats). Troopers on either side were grouped into squads that moved together (hobie made little bins to group the troopers together). I believe each time a trooper in the squad was defeated, the player would get one +1 less to attack (sort of worked like a swarm i.e. ewoks). The groups of squads and uniques would also have a much more organized set of activations. Like the uniques would go, then the AT-AT, then the squads, then the wampas, then the droids. I can't remember the details. I seem to remember the victory conditions were that the Imps had to take out the field generator and the Rebs had to destroy the AT-ATs or something like that.

My son and I were the rebels and actually won because we had a few lucky roles on the harpoon guns. The Imperials did have a fairly big advantage.

Regardless, I would be really curious how your event will go with full rules and individual activations. I am also loving the inside outside thing you guys got going...very cool.

I will try to get you the set of rules that we used but I believe hobie got permission from the guys who made these rules first before we did it. Maybe I can get them and bring them on Saturday if I can make it. We have to be back home by 3:30pm for the OSU Wisconsin game so...it aint looking good....we'll see...

Take care,
DM

Dennis to make things easy, I'll bring the pieces for the Echo Base battle.

2 more days!
I full of nerdous energy

Dennis,

Unfortunately, my bud promised not to disseminate the rules he borrowed any further....but I will contact them myself and try to get permission mayhaps for next year?

But...I think I will be trying to make it down tomorrow to watch...my son would never make it long enough to play...

See ya all tomorrow,
Steve

It was great to see everyone yesterday! Special thanks to Darph Nader for making the long trip from New York with his son and to editor for coming in from Pennsylvania to play. Also, thanks to DarthMatter for stopping by and introducing himself to everyone and bringing his son along. It's great to see fathers teaching their sons how to play this game. Further thanks to jak for showing up and leading the imperails. We were also glad juiceman could make it, considering the day he had, it was nice that he could make it!

Editor and I did a lot of discussion before hand trying to figure this battle out and give the rebels a fighting chance. The outside battle took some time and by the end of round 1 it was more than obvious that the imperials would be victorious. The rebels had managed to put A LOT of damage into one of the two AT-AT's and had we continued into round 2 it would have been taken down. However the Imperails would have easily previaled beyond that.

This battle was a bit of a beta test for us all. There was good discussion concerning rules and how to adjust the scenario in the future to give the Rebels a better chance.

Jak, no worries, making a point with consistancy is not a bad thing, as mod, I was just trying to adjust the game on the fly since I saw that it was going to be a VERY lopsided victory. We're good.

Ultimately, Jak used the very wise strategy to eliminate the officers that gave deadeye (which gave the rebels the ability to put some serious damage into the AT-AT's). Since the rebles only had a few of these officers set up, this abliltiy was taken away rather quickly.

The rebels were doing thier best to focus on one AT-AT at a time and bring down one, then move on to the next one.

Lessons learned: After some discussion trying to do this scenario more to the movie I think in the future, we will not have ANY Imperail snowtroopers on the ground and place them all inside the AT-AT's. Also, we ONLY let the Imperials use the AT-ST blizzard scout and no other AT-ST's. Also, we let the Imperials use either 4 or 5 AT-AT's. We will also have to figure out the max number of snowspeeder we will allow for the rebels.

Now adding additional AT-AT's might seem counter-intuitive to make this a little more fair, but we decided to modify the rebel snowspeeder harpoon gun rule a bit for future BoH scenarios that will work like this.

Harpoon Gun - Replaces attacks: range 6; target enemy with Mounted Weapon cannot move this round; save 6; target enemy must make a second save 6 to avoid being defeated.

Expert harpoon Gunner - Replaces attacks: range 6; target enemy with Mounted Weapon cannot move this round; save 16. If the save is less than 6, the target enemy must make a second save 6 to avoid being defeated.

That really gives the snowspeeders some teeth but it also allows for having more AT-AT's and looking a bit more like the movie.

I know that others have put many long hours and have created excellect Boh scenarios, not the least of which is the one that they run at Origins. I know that others have come up with great ideas on how to work this scenario. We are not trying to re-invent the wheel here or replace any other scenario, just trying to come up with a different perspective on the scenario that looks and feels a lot like the movie as we see it.

I'll leave the indoor battle to DN to describe. We came up with some very good ideas on how to run that, and ultimately our discussion kept going back to making it very similar to the movie. Getting Leia off the map and to her ship(the Falcon). I think we can tweak that one much quicker than the outdoor battle and next year it will be very cool doing the outdoor battle and then moving to the indoor one.

Again, my thanks to everyone for showing up, bring their pieces and for being patient with me as I tried to get this battle fleshed out. My goal is to make this much clearer to everyone especially the rules BEFORE the start and getting the scenario to a point where it gives the rebels a fighting chance (without being an equal chance).

I did take some pics, I'll post links soon.

Thanks for reading.

Dennis

Well after a long day yesterday time to reflect, mission number one accomplished meet new peeps. Kreg and Steve it was great to meet you both and your son Steve and Jak, Juicy and den25 always my pleasure! It is my hope that beyond Buffacon we'll see you at FrostyCon and the WNY regional in 2013, which isn't too far in the distance now.

Dennis & Kreg nice job on the setup and as stated above lots of refining and brainstorming will smooth out the the go forward end product. I'll post up our thoughts as to the inside battle in the coming days.

All the best!

ps--the empire crushed the rebels (again)

news flash...............AT-AT'S are lethal as fixed artillery guns