Squadrons of Darkness - Task Force "Minos Freedom" and the Kubla Cartel

Facing the 1420th Imperial Strike Group we've got the Rebel Task Force "Minos Freedom"... Same drill: each player's alter ego is a lieutenant  (named using the same "Star Wars name" trick as the Imperials) commanding a squadron (with a "rainbow" naming scheme: the 4 original players had Red, Gold, Green and Blue squadrons). Again, NPC are generated as needed...

We briefly had an Indigo Squadron, but the player deserted the Rebellion and joined the Empire!

Squadrons of Darkness - 1420th Imperial Strike Group

As explained in a previous post, given the typical force deployed in a game, I decided to call each player a "Squadron Commander". For the Imperials, as a good Star Wars: X-Wing computre games series fan, I decided to name the squadrons with the letters of the Old Tionese alphabet. The original four players' squadrons (Alpha, Beta, Gamma & Delta) were made part of the 1420th Imperial Strike Group (1420 for the postal code of our town, "strike" as a random enough designation given the hodge-podge composition of the group various squadrons, and "group" rather than "wing" (the RAF/USN and USAF have diverging acceptation of both terms, I went with "group" as slightly more neutral altough both words are used in Star Wars although quite inconstistantly).

Not sure anyone can play X-Wing Miniatures without thinking about those games...

Your "Star Wars name" can be generated by adding the first syllabes (or first 3 letters) of your last name and of your first name to make your "Star Wars given name" and by doing the same to your mother maiden name and your birthplace to get your "Star Wars familly name". E.g. John Smith born in Chicago and son of Jane Carter becomes "Smijo Chicar"... After toying with that system a bit we decided to use the official "Star Wars first name" as our character last name in order to keep it a bit understandable: easier to make the link between your game budy "John Smith" and his character "Lt Smijo" than with a "Lt Chicar"...

Squadrons of Darkness - Welcome to the Minos Cluster!

While preparing our Squadrons of Darkness campaign I considered a couple of factors before drawing the map...

The Minos Cluster at the end of Episode III (of the campaign), the Rebels have conquered Gesaril and the Imperial Karideph (the points of the Rimma Trade Route segment between those two world are thus lost to both factions), more fighting occured over Adorlon and Shesharile but both sides scored the same numbers of "wins"...

We started with 8 players (spontanely but nicely split in 4 Imperials and 4 Rebels, the campaign started before "Scum & Villainy")... Given the number of fighters in a 100 game (3 to 8), and keeping in mind that players wouldn't be fielding the same list each game, I decided to call each player a "Squadron Commander" meaning that the corner of the galaxy we'd be fighting over should be small enough for the actions of two ennemy groups of 4 squadrons (50ish fighters) to be significant. I settled on a single sector...

Squadrons of Darkness - My gaming group X-Wing campaign...

This must be a first on Trojan Points: today, I'll be writing about a project I actually brought to fruition instead of yet another Gedankenexperiment...

About a year ago, and with the gradual but nearly general rejection of all things Games Workshop, my regular gaming (mostly RPG with a side order of miniatures games) group progressively adopted X-Wing Miniatures as our main miniatures game. January being our traditional "lauching new campaigns" season, I proposed an X-Wing one...

Picture from Max Wheeler's Blog

We had quite a bit of brain storm about what we all expected from a campaign: the"right" balance between the  "strategic" (the campaign rules) and "tactical" (the actual X-Wing "let's-put-the-minis-on-the-table-and-have-a-go-at-each-other" games) side, the importance of an experience system, logistics and economics, how to use named characters (can they appear on several gaming table at once, what does happen when they die), the story telling aspects of a campaign... 

X-Wing ressources

My (mostly RPG) group has always been exclusively GW has far as miniature gaming was concerned. When I reached my saturation threshold with their games, I just stopped playing with toy soldiers for lack of an alternative. Until fairly recently, when one of the movers and shakers of the group got fed with GW games too and started looking into, and promoting, other games.

His first extra-GW affair was Dystopian Wars but for various reasons (business model too similar to GW, unoriginal rules, lack of interest in the steampunk genre, lack of motivation to invest significant money, time and energy in a new range of miniatures and matching terrain, etc.) it remains a fairly confidential activity in the group.

More recently he came up with X-Wing... I was sceptical at first: although you don't need many, the miniatures are expensive. And I was cautious of anything coming from a major manufacturer and enjoying commercial success. Very snobbish of me, I guess: "if most people like it, I'm unlikely to appreciate it!" But he showed me the minis (which are very nice, a serious notch above what I was used to in pre-paint and a level I could live with having all my minis painted at), I read the rule online (I was certainly curious about the movement blind programming scheme, which introduce some fog of war and/or friction, two personal obsessions when it comes to wargaming) and ended up buying a box and playing a couple of games... And then I bought a second box... And two each of everything that's been produced so far! And that's not the best of it... I even got CINCHOME to give it a try! So far she likes it... She's got some days off coming, we'll see if I can hook her up for good!

A couple of ressources I've find interesting and/or useful...