Game #7 of 2011- Hawk Squad Down, using the Flying Lead rules. Doc Neodynium very sportingly has stepped up to bat as the VC in our games of CDS this year, so when he posted on our club Yahoo group he wanted to run out a Star Wars skirmish, it was only right to return the favour. Time to cue the fanfare, screen crawl and that all-too familiar theme...
A squad of ten stormtroopers with a captured rebel R2 unit chock full of intelligence await a shuttle to pick them all up. Looming out of the surrounding forest at regular intervals were rebel scum, including a certain cocksure smuggler and his walking carpet of a chum. Can the Imperials hold out until rescue arrives?
Flying Lead is very much a beer and pretzels game (ale and pork scratchings in my case). Essentially a figure chooses how many dice to roll against his/her quality. Each success allows an action, unless *horror!* there are no successes, in which case your side's entire turn ends! We were certainly able to create a plausible narrative around the events that occurred in the game as a result, and both players under the Doc's tutelage picked up the game quickly.
Especially amusing was the manner in which the rebels were cut down like so many weeds by the Imperials initially, and then the typically Star Wars turn around once Chewbacca turned up. Singlehandedly, the Carpet from Kashyyyk took out the Imperial characters with precise bowcaster fire, before loping into the crater in which they sheltered to finish 'em off!
End result? All Imperials destroyed except for two prisoners. To add insult to injury, Chewie even managed to bag the only Stormtrooper to make it to the long-overdue shuttle, potting the fellow as he raced up its ramp. However, the Empire could take comfort in the fact that a considerably larger number of rebels had fallen, and that Chewie's exuberance to reclaim the captured droid meant the R2 unit was in fact totalled.
A nice little quick flowing game, with the only suggestion from both players being some means to differentiate between ranged and melee combat skill. A single stat covered both of these. As a result, the relatively-melee weak but trigger-happy Han actually failed to shoot anything, (whether firing first or not), whilst the wrestlin' wookie made out like snipers standing on grassy knolls and in book depositories, enagaging in only two bouts of fisticuffs. An issue easily remedied, it was felt.
Apparently, the Empire is already about to hit back, or some such nonsense...
