Yesterday, November 16th we played what has now become our annual Battle of Hoth at Underhill Games in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio and it was a great time! Juice Man, Jak, Editor and myself squared off in a battle for the ages! The J & J boys playing the Imperials and Editor and I playing the Rebels.

The Rebels and Imperial squared off once more on the icy moon of Hoth. The Imperials attacked with 3 AT-AT's and 2 AT-ST's against a rag-tag bunch of Rebels bent on trying to stop them from destroying the shield generator in 10 rounds.

Round 1 saw both AT-ST's go down and one of the AT-AT's sustain heavy damage. Meanwhile most of the Rebel Hoth Officers bit the dust which took away the troops getting deadeye. The Rebel snowspeeders lead by Luke Skywalker took to the field to try to even the odds a bit. As the round ended, the AT-AT's had lowered themselves and dropped off 3 squads for Hoth Troopers to dispatch the Rebel scum.

Round 2 brought the snowspeeders within attack range of doing damage to the AT-AT's but not before the Rebels heavily splash damaged the troops that had just disembarked the AT-AT's. The Imperial troopers got slaughtered in the ensuing rounds, but not before removing the remaining Rebel Hoth Officers.

Round 3 got interesting when the damaged AT-AT finally met it's demise and bit the dust. But the remaining AT-AT's had their revenge and managed to stomp one of the Rebel snowspeeders and heavily damage Luke's snowspeeder. Even though one AT-AT, both AT-ST's and most of the Imperial troops were down, things started to look bleak for the Rebels.

Round 4 saw most if not all of the remaining Imperial troops get destroyed, but the Rebel shield generator started to take massive damage from the remaining AT-AT's. In a tragic turn of events, Wedge's snowspeeder failed his save and he was crushed by the approaching AT-AT. RIP Wedge, looks like you and Jansen didn't make it this time. Finally, as the round closed, Luke's snowspeeder also failed his stomping save but managed to make his dismount save that enabled Luke Skywalker Hoth Pilot to be Unleashed upon the battle field.

Round 5 saw Luke make his first attempt at destroying one of the remaining AT-AT's and the Rebel shield generator take more heavy damage. The three remaining snowspeeders tried to put some damage into the other AT-AT as the remaining Rebel troops tried desparately to get a crit on one of the AT-AT's to do some damage.

Things looked very bad for the Rebels at the beginning of Round 6, when suddenly, they won initiative and then history repeated itself. In a scene straight out of The Empire Strikes Back, Luke ran underneath one of the two remaining AT-AT's and fired a repel line into the belly of the beast. Once there, he ignited his lightsaber, cut open a hatch, tossed in an explosive charge and dropped to the ground. The AT-AT, failing it's save, crashed to the ground in defeat, could the tide of battle be turning? In a stunning act of defiance, Luke managed to deflect a heavy laser blast from the remaining AT-AT. The Rebels began to leap from the trenches and advance upon the remaining AT-AT.

The next few rounds moved rather quickly as Luke raced across the battlefield to get to the remaining AT-AT and all Rebel troops concentrating firepower to bring it down. Relentlessly, the remaining AT-AT pounded the shield generator bringing it to the brink of destruction.

And then came round 10, the final round. The last AT-AT standing needed only to hit the shield generator with one of its 2 heavy lasers to destroy it. The Rebels needed to only put 30 damage into the AT-AT to finish it off, and Luke had finally made it across the battle field to be within striking distance, it all came down to initiative.

With an Imperial roll of 15 the Rebels didn't have a big chance to win initiative, and they didn't. The AT-AT lined up the smoking shield generator and took it's first shot.... MISS! Could the Rebels actually have a chance? The second shot was fired, a glorious explosion was seen from space as the generator blew and the Imperials won the day!

Postgame:

What a great battle! Jak and Juicy ran the Imperials well, the only reason it was close was because of bad rolls of the dice on their part, with the key being the failed save on Luke's demolition attack. That and Juicy kept missing his attacks on the shield generator, it made it much closer for the Rebels than it actually was.

On the other side Editor set the squads for the scenario and did a great job! The 6 custom maps he had made up looked great and played really well. He did a great job of running our Rebels as I just mostly got in his way and rolled the dice...lol.

It was a ton of fun playing this scenario! I had a blast, I hope everyone else did too.

It ran so much smoother this year. Kreg did a fantastic job setting the squads and streamlining the game play. It only took about 3 hours to do the whole thing.

the most cannon moment..............

AT-AT crushes Luke's snowspeeder, then Luke blows up the AT-AT, cuz I rolled a KARKIN! 1

The driver of the last AT-AT saw that and was doing his best to run awayyyyy.

Here's the setup pix -- sorry I didn't snap more, but we got caught up in the fun.

http://WebGuruForHire.com/SWM/Hoth/BattleofHoth2.jpg

FYI: Last year, we had 2 AT-ATs and the Rebels got massacred -- due mainly to the 'cover' on the standard WotC maps. That's why this year, and many dollars later, the 6 custom maps rendered by Ryan Wolfe (who's worked with Christopher West) and designed by yours truly were used along with 3 AT-ATs.

Thanks to Jak, Joe & Dennis for giving me an excuse to justify the expenditure!

There's certainly a multitude of squad variations, but in keeping more to the cinema and less to meta gaming, I went with standard 'payload' of the 16 Snowtroopers (well, 12 plus an E-Web) per AT-AT.

There will be more tweaks coming soon, but as they said in Conan the Barbarian, "That's another story..."

They were custom maps that Editor designed and worked with Ryan Wolfe to get them rendered. Not sure if Editor or Ryan did the printing.

I'm not sure how much Editor paid to get it done, but I know it was far from cheap.