Night Flight

Gaming & Guinness XIV Day 2

Day 2 of Gaming & Guinness XIV began with Pete's Death Star pancakes, a truly Imperial treat.

Scott handily won two rounds of Wits & Wagers; I was the question-master this year.

Last year, I came up with the bright idea of trying out one of the Death Star trench run scenarios created by fans of the X-Wing Miniatures game. Knowing Scott had a talent for building terrain, I asked if he could create a trench for us. I imagined something pretty simple, but as you can see, Scott went above and beyond to create a visually spectacular playfield.

Steve, Scott, Mike T and Pete played the Rebel side.

Jeff, Island Mike, Rob and I took control of the Empire.

With up to 20 ships on the table, six in the trench and the rest on the surface, with some flying over the trench, the logistics of moving all those fighters around got a little hectic, with a few little accidents here and there. But the battle was tremendously fun, and just like in the movies, Luke Skywalker used the Force to fire a proton torpedo right down the exhaust port. Aside from that, it was a strangely bloodless game, with only Biggs Darklighter and an anonymous Black Squadron Pilot being blown up.

Not so bloodless was the violent and depraved Vintage Miniature Deathmatch, a no-holds-barred battle to the death with medieval weapons and armor.

I believe Scott's mini walked away with this victory. It certainly wasn't me; my miniature was killed with one mighty blow. 

Exhausted Dice

Stay on Target

Box of X and TIE

Pew Pew Pew

The Fourth Awakens

Tower and TIE

A little something for Gaming & Guinness XIV. Scott is doing the lion's share of the work, but I will be, at the very least, contributing some painted terrain for a very special X-Wing scenario...

Visions of G&G XII

Earlier this month, I joined my G&G brethren in celebrating the twelfth (!) annual Gaming & Guinness gathering. By now, anyone who follows this blog knows the drill: once a year, I meet with some old buddies and we play games and drink Guinness (well, most of us; Scott and I are teetotallers). Every year is special in its own way, and this time around three highlights stand out: the swag, the group photo concept, and my successful attempt to make X-Wing more efficient.

You can see the swag above: Island Mike and Rob collaborated to mint challenge coins for the group. Not only are they quite handsome works of art, they bring the challenge coin tradition to G&G; for those unawares, members of any challenge coin group are meant to carry their coin at all times. If you run into another member of the group, you can challenge that person to present their coin; if they don't have it with them, they need to buy you a drink (or perform another service of similar value). If they meet your challenge, you buy them a round, and so on.

Jeff came up with the idea of staging a photo that presents us as a bunch of back-alley gamblers.

Since we were all wearing our jerseys from last year, we took the opportunity to shoot them from the rear:

As for X-Wing, I learned from last year's mistake of having everyone take the time to custom-build their own fleets. It's fun in principle, but it adds at least an hour of preparation to the game. I avoided that this time by pre-building ship options and limiting ship choices to those few that were to be used in the scenario I developed, which pitted a squad of basic TIE fighters and a Firespray against a hodgepodge Rebel fleet trying to get away with a stolen TIE fighter and a freighter full of defectors. The Imperials won this particular engagement, and the game flew by quite quickly. Lesson learned!

And now, some selected photographic highlights from the festivities...

Congratulations to Steve for winning Circvs Maximvs for the first time, and to Jeff and Scott for reaching the podium. And thanks to Mike for hosting!