This afternoon, The Boy and I broke out the Star Wars minis for a massive (by our standards) 250 pt per side battle. As expected, he opted for the bad guys, which suited me fine. Or so I thought.
We'd agreed that our armies could be drawn from any era, which was probably where things went completely wrong for me, as he drew a force composed of about 2/3 droids under the command of General Grievous (who has a really frightening and perhaps unbalanced Commander Effect) with the remaining third made up of Yuzhan Vong, the Force-Resistant baddies of some of the later fiction.
For my part, I went with a really well put together squad of mixed Clone Troopers, under the orders of Commander Rex, supporting Mace Windu.
(You'll note that even though we could draw from other eras, I went for consistency. Because that's how I roll. Not that it helped.)
Anyway, given the fact that his droids were ridonkulously deadly thanks to Grievous, and Windu was hindered by the Vong, I lost pretty badly. I conceded on Turn 3, much to his delight.
We'll be playing again tomorrow, but I think I'm going to check the errata on Grievous.
Errata checked. Grievous is just that buff. I may just have to concede that the boy, raised as he has been on a steady diet of Star Wars almost from birth, may just be better at this than I am.
ReplyDeleteAh well, I can still whip him at HeroClix. :-D
"Errata won't save you, Padme. Only my new powers can do that!"
ReplyDelete-Anakin
I'm not sure if that was the exact quote, but it's close. ;)
I could've fielded a couple of different Anakins, but I hate the character with such a passion, I couldn't be bothered to consider him.
ReplyDeleteAs it is, that Grievous figure is a nasty gamebreaker. For those unfamiliar with SWM (which I imagine is most of the folks reading this here blog), one of the cool things they do is provide commander types with a "Commander Effect;" something that happens to troops subject to their command when they're on the board. F'rinstance, all Clone Troopers have "Order 66" as a special ability. But what Order 66 actually entails depends on their proximity to a commander type. So if they're within 6 spaces of Captain Rex, they get an extra two spaces of movement. If they're near the generic Elite Clone Commander, they get a +4 to their defense rating.
The problem is, Grievous' Commander Effect isn't bound by range. It affects every single droid under his command, giving them a bonus to accuracy and damage, as well as an extra attack. And the only way to stop it is to take him out, a very tricky task, since he can hang back and let his troops (who are, in terms of offense roughly doubled) do a number on the opposition.
He's a really expensive piece to field, though, and I think this would balance out a bit in the more conventional 100 pt game. As it was, The Boy bought him and filled his ranks with a lot of cheap droids that were suddenly much more valuable than their cost would indicate.
Don't feel bad my son stomped me as well.
ReplyDelete