After witnessing last Saturday’s crushing of the Spartacus rebellion, our intrepid reporter had no idea where he was going. Not being a devotee of the Star Wars genre but being told by Chris that the setting was before the “classic” Star Wars films of the 1970s and ‘80s, I think he went to Didcot IV “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away”. According to Chris, Tony was playing General Grevous,
a separatist leader defending a key installation with his Elite Battledroids
against Chris’ Galactic Republic led by Jedi Anakin Emo with his force of Clone Troops. Once again, the rules were the newly released Xenos Rampant. Greg came along to witness the “fun”.
Chris advanced on a wide front from one corner of the 4’ x 4’ board, seizing the moisture evaporator and a solar panel array.
Tony countered taking the buildings and sought cover.
He then began a flanking attack to which Chris responded with pretty ineffective fire. Chris then realised that his troops had heavy weapons which doubled their firepower, and in the next turn rolled 6 sixes with 10 dice which resulted in Tony losing three droids and halting the attack.
Chris was amazed at the distance Tony’s troops could move with “Aussie Inches”, but forgot that they had a better movement than his troops. Tony retaliated by asking me to read the rules. However, the game soon stagnated into a firefight across no-mans land as both forces sought cover. Tony did force two of Chris’ units to retire leaving the Jedi exposed, and at this point Chris sent him into hand-to-hand action against a drone unit, destroying three but taking two wounds himself.
The next turn saw a further Republican unit retire from action and Chris decided to call it a day leaving Tony’s Separatists victorious.
What were the positives. Firstly, everyone agreed that Chris’ forces did look surprisingly nice. Secondly, I managed to deploy the Snapdragon terrain I bought back in the ‘90s and which has languished unloved in a box for over ten years.
Negatives. Everything else. Chris made a valiant attempt to defend the rules, but I don’t think anyone else is convinced by them. As with the Secrets of the 3rd Reich game that Tony and I played two weeks ago, we seemed to have a lot of models on the table which meant a lack of manoeuvre room and resulted in a dice-fest of a firefight. Maybe that’s what some people want? Also, some of the rules look decidedly odd. In hand-to-hand combat defending units almost seem at an advantage as they use their invariably higher defence dice to “attack”. Even Chris thought this bizarre.
All I will say is that I’m glad I didn’t spend my hard-earned cash on Xenos Rampant. The Snapdragon terrain will be going back into deep storage until Chris buys yet another set of over-priced sci-fi skirmish rules of dubious quality.
Simon
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