Starfighter

[The_Beast]

First time posting on Future Wars, be gentle.

What the heck, fire away.

Anyway, not sure everyone knows this from the posts so far, but those ARE Silent Death figs. At least, before I'd seen EM-4 had them out, they were in the SD set subtitled 'Next Millennium'. Of course, I can't say that EM-4 didn't produce them first then sold them to ICE. Wasn't the way I saw it in the press at the time, though.

Just in case you see in a close out bin, I have on the rare occasion, either the Next Millennium or Rookie box sets, even if you don't want the rules, go for the 48 or 24 ships, along with colorful missile counters.

Doug

[dijit]

they are very nice models, though they no longer have the torpedo minis in the boxes. Unfortunately. Does anyone know where I could get some?

[dijit]

Well, I think I've found me the rules I want to play - Bag the Hun! by Too Fat Lardies. Admittedly they are WWII rules, but as the dear George Lucas based the fighter scenes on the WW2 aircraft actions, it seems only appropriate.
Well, I had a run through of the rules against myself to see how they work, I pitted 4 Master-Smith 109f's against 4 Firespitter IIBs.
The game started out thus:
A long time ago in a galaxy very very close, two great star-fairing nations are locked in a battle of pride and football scores, when two patrols meet in a lonely segment of space.


Although the Master-Smiths (grey) are the first to spot the enemy, they quickly get out manoeuvred by the Firespitters (yellow). The flight leader flt. Smidt decides to take the fight to the enemy and performs a beautiful Split S - unfortunately although he is a veteran pilot the rest of his flight aren't and get rather surprised when their flight leader suddenly ups and disappears!


The Firespitters flight leader flt. Smith opens fire on the number 3 Master-Smidt, only to damage the directional controls. Meaning he gets easily on it's tail.


Now begins a game of weaving and dodging trying to get into position to fire or escape the tailing starcraft.


At which point number 3 Firespitter also receives a hit  to it's directional controls, letting the number 2 Master-Smidt easily get on it's tail.


The starcraft end in a bit of a conga line, with multiple craft being tailed and shot at.


Number 3 firespitter goes down in a ball of flames as it's fuel explodes, lucky none of the nearby starcraft are damaged in the blast.


Meanwhile the remaining Firespitters return fire, taking down one Mastersmidt by a lucky shot through the canopy killing the pilot outright, whilst another explodes again as the fuel lines leak and a fire breaks out.


flt. Smidt having by his own cunning gotten clear of the dogfight watches on in horror as two of his crew die and the last is mercilessly hunted down, then decided to turn home and drink a glass of Schnapps instead.

I'm quite impressed with the rules. Reading them made them sound much more complicated than they actually are, and although there are several different dice, it's mainly just D6s (lots of of!), with a D10 for rolling on a damage table and a D4 for adjusting speed, so i think I can cope with that. I've also got the 'Bag the Jedi' supplement, which now I've tried a 'standard' Bag the Hun game I'll give a try. It's nice to find a rulesset that you feel pleased with and don't sit and think "hmmm, maybe if a tweak this or that, then it'd be better." Now to explore the finer details of the game. Hope you like the game report.
Duncan

[General Roos]

Dijit: That looks fun! 

[Gluteus Maximus]

Bag The Hun seems to work very well for a "Hollywood" style starfighter game. Might be worth looking at 

Great report, thanks for posting!

[dijit]

Well I've now added to the fleet of merchant vessels, mainly with a huge bulk transport, I think I'm going to call it the 'Black Whole-sailer', but any other ideas will be gratefully received.




Duncan

[dijit]

Well, I've dusted off my minis after working on my own little ruleset for on and off for the past year or so. I've had a few trail games to test things, but this morning I decided I'd take it out for a larger game.

Here's the Amman Defence Forces 301 and 302 squadrons escorting a Judge from the trial of a local pirate captain were he sentenced the pirate to death. Here can be seen 301 squadrons Dart Interceptor in the foreground, and 302 squadrons Harriers in the background, whilst the judge is in Shuttle E7A


Unfortunately the Captain of the Harlequins happens to be the pirate captains brother and wants vengence. Here piloting the lead Viper (in yellow), and accompanied by 2 Stag gunships (in red) and a squadron of Falcons (in Green).


After the first turn the Harriers form a screen in front of the shuttle, whilst the Darts try  to take out some of the lead Falcons. Meanwhile the Vipers make a loop using the superior agility to come in behind the shuttle.


The lead Harrier is vaporised into a red/brown mist by the gunships, whilst due to the angle of deflection the Darts only score a single hit and heavily damage a Falcon.


After a little more manuevering the Vipers get on the Shuttles tail and with a few good shots blow the thing sky high. This picture was taken just before the shuttle exploded.


Again there's a few things I'd like to tweek, but it plays a lot quicker that the other starfighter games I've tried, there's no paper work (keeping track of damage tables) and gives the cinematic feel.
Duncan

[Torben]

That looks great! We've got to arrange a test game pitting my "groundbased" Mecha Doom fighters against those dastardly pirates!

[Johnno]

Black whole-sailor is a great name

[Damien]

I just read through the entire thread and I am really impressed. The painting on these little guys is real nice, I especially like the grey/red scheme on the Harrier squadrons; Star fighter games always look amazing on the 'Space' mats.

I have a general question about all the star fighter rules out there: are the games 2D (forward, right/left and back) or 3D with vertical up or vertical down planes of movement?

Great thread, keep posting pics

Damien

[dijit]

There aren't that many starfighter rules system out there that I've been able to find. Silent Death is probably the biggest and that's a 2D system, but with optional 3D rules. Tac Ship (that I made a link to earlier) is also 2D. I think War Rocket from Hydra minis is also 2D. The problem with 3D space games are that they introduce a load of extra rules without introducing that much more dynamic, so just end up slowing the game down which generally equals less fun. Or at least that's my opinion.
Duncan

[Dr. The Viking]

Really nice Duncan!

Perfect example of a good narrative, that would make almost any rule set interesting.