"A Rebelious Response: Star Wars via Savage Worlds" Topic

Setup:
Aerin III has not seen the last of the Rebellion. Three weeks have passed since they were forced to flee, and the Imperium has still sent no response. Emboldened by the lack of action by the Imperium, the Rebellion has decided to try to recover Aerin III, and use it as a staging point for systems nearby. The planetary governor has been closely watching the star ports around the planet for the past few weeks, but the strain on resources grows great. Now is the time to try to regain a foothold on Aerin III. A transport, needed to ship the growing stockpiles of Grox meat resulting from the planetary lockdown by the governor, will allow an advance force in to try to secure the starport. And what better way to promote success than to send in an advance force led by Iriqu Hin-Garri, Jedi Apprentice of the new school of Luke Skywalker. Let's see what these Jedi are made out of.

Terrain:
The board was six feet long by two feet wide, and represented the starport landing pad on the southern boarder, where the transport would land. Around the pad is a 20m burm, to prevent any accidental damage to surrounding buildings. Immediately past the burm, on the eastern edge of the board, is a control tower. To the control towers west is a storage building. To the north, in the center of the board, is another large storage building, with a water tower on top. To the northeast is a barracks for Imperial troops, and to the northwest is a storage building owned by the planetary governor.

Forces:

Rebel

HIN-GARRI'S HARRASERS
Hin-Garri, Jedi Apprentice
Mickna Reiswa, Personal Assistant to Hin-Garri
Commando x6

NICANA'S GNASHERS
Cpt. Osai Nicana
Rebel Soldier x12

YOLAN'S MASHER'S
Cpt. Yolan Matanaw
Rebel Soldier x12

Imperial

Stormtrooper Squad Storm Cloud-119-Gamma
SCG-442
Support Stormtrooper
Stormtrooper x6

RAISSI'S RANGERS
Captain Tuiric al'Raissi
PDF Trooper x15

CHIMI'S CRAZIES
Captain Quez al'Chimi
PDF Trooper x15

Objectives:

REBEL
1. Take the Starport! (Have control of it at end of game – no enemy within 12" of Landing Pad)
2. Defeat SGC-442! (Capture/Kill the Stormtrooper Sergeant by the end of the game – he may not flee)
3. Surprise Capture! (Take out the control center within 4 rounds to prevent alarm from getting out)

IMPERIAL
1. Defeat the Jedi! (Capture/Kill the Jedi Apprentice by the end of the game – he may not flee)
2. Control the Starport! (Have control of it at end of game – no enemy within 12" of Landing Pad)
3. Defend the Control Tower! (Prevent the Rebels from gaining the Control Tower.)

Placement:
The rebels enter on the southern edge. The Stormtroopers are split between the control tower and the central building. The PDF are split so that one squad have 1/2 in the building across from the control tower, and 1/2 in the barracks. The other PDF squad is split so that 1/2 are in front of the central building, and the other 1/2 are in the central building.

Game:
The Rebels started off strong, with the Commandos coming onto the board and wiping out several of the obvious PDF troops. They would lay down a barrage of fire throughout the game, wiping out many of the PDF. The Rebel Soldiers kept in tight groups, and tried to assault the Control Tower, but one squad was wiped out almost completely by grenades (bottlenecked as they tried to get close to the building). Massed fire by the Soldiers did manage to wipe out over 1/2 the Stormtroopers, however, from their position on top of the Control Tower.
The Rebel advance was stopped at the control tower by use of grenades by the Stormtroopers, and a solid line of fire by the PDF. The Rebels failed to commit themselves to any one spot, and spread themselves too thin to make an effective hole. The Jedi managed to bounce several shots made at him back to their shooter, but unfortunately they did not manage to cause wounds. The Jedi held back until the end of the game, and only accounted for 1 Stormtrooper by the end of it.

Results:
The only Rebel to survive was the Jedi, who managed to get off-board. The losses among the Imperials were severe, but they caused much more damage than they recieved. The end result was a Massacre of the Rebels by the Imperials. The two main factors in the game, as I saw them (impartial rules consultant), were the bunching up of the Rebel soldiers (~18 killed by grenades) at bottlenecks, and the failure of the Rebels to push forward whenever they made a gain (Commandos punched a hole early on, but the Rebels sat back and waited until it was filled by the PDF again). Also, the failure of the Jedi to even engage the enemy until the last two rounds of the game may have contributed (held back until the end).

I like the report. Your forces looked equal in size and strength, did the Imperial forces have to do little movement to get into firing lanes?

Rich

Too bad about the rebels.

Fortune favors the bold in Savage Worlds.

I'm guessing all the named characters were Wild Cards?

Greetings.

15 figs in a squad seem like a lot for Savage Worlds. Did you use the Cohesion rules from Showdown or just let the figures roam around where ever they wanted?

Also, do you have photos and/or squad sheets for the game?

Norm

Were you using the new miniatures from the Star Wars miniatures game. You may have covered this in another post?

Thanks!

Argh! I forgot to mention that the Rebels inflicted 23 PDF kills, and also took out 4 Stormtroopers and the Support Stormtrooper (5 total). The final tally for points (including for objectives) were ~1450 to ~2950. Thus, a total massacre of the Rebels.

@Operator5:
The Imperials had to a bit of maneuvering to get into position. With their squads spread out, it worked out to be a race for most of their forces to get into the battle – they didn't actually arrive until rounds 3-5 (we played 8 rounds). The only Imperial forces close to the Rebels were 4 Stormtroopers in the Control tower, and 8 PDF w/ Cpt. in the Storage building. Another 8-10 PDF were in a firing lane by round 3 as they moved towards the Rebels, but the terrain was set up to block firing for more than ~30".

@Hexxenhammer:
All of the squad captains were Wild Cards. The Personal Assistant was simply a standard trooper, but added some variety and fun to it (he single-handedly charged a partial squad of 10 PDF, and killed 2 of them!).

@Boldfist2004:
I did not use cohesion rules. I let the squads break down as they saw fit, but used the following:
1. Troops only get to use the Spirit of their leader if they are within 5" of the leader, or within 10" of the leader and within 5" of another squad member.
2. Troops that break off from their main squad form into a mini-squad, that uses their base morale. If the mini-squad takes casulties, they count as their own squad for morale purposes, and if they break they do not affect morale of the main squad.
3. Each trooper is independent, but the whole squad takes actions in order (to help prevent confusion). So the whole squad moves (or not) on a figure by figure basis, then each figure fires (just figure out the number of dice per unit fired at, and the TN) or runs (allows for some in a unit to provide covering fire while others run for cover).

Doing it this way seems to work out really well. Tactics are solid, and can be used well (the National Guard player uses squad tactics for his Stormtroopers, and they do very well consistantly, whereas the Rebel players are new to wargaming). There wasn't any confusion as to which figures were part of which unit except by myself (when I threw down initiative cards, I always managed to hit the same unit twice – it was split up, and was easier to place a card by than the figures in the buildings). The squad size didn't seem to work out too badly – it made the game flow faster, and since you could form smaller groups if needed, didn't seem to be a limiting factor.

As to stat sheets, I use a heavily modified set from Red24 link , and from Ted Arlauskas at naxera.com/starwars . I mostly based them off of Ted's work.

If you want a set of my sheets (which are in constant revision, and nowhere near complete), drop me an email @

bare NOspaM foot_traveller at yahoo dot com, without the spaces or the spam.

@zonk76:
Forgot to answer your question! Yes, I used the SWMB figures from WOTC. They work out really nice, and have a good selection to choose from. I also hit up ebay and some mini sites I know to get them at good deals.

Awesome report by the way, I look forward to seeing some pics when you get a chance to post them!

Thanks for the response!

Not sure if you'll even see this post, but I was wondering if you would be able to tell me which minis you used for the forces in your game. I was wondering if you made any conversions or custom figures.

Thanks!

I used SW minis, from WOTC. I used security for the PDF, and the others were pretty much as listed by WOTC.

As a side note, I'm also working on a d6 version of rules, because it's faster. The test rules allowed us to get 3 games in 3 hours, instead of only 1. I'm adding complication, though, so it may bog down substantially if I'm not careful.

Thanks! I've been collecting some of the troopers (rebel and imperial) for use in WEG miniatures battle game. I thought maybe you made some conversions or something. The nice thing is, for the most part, I can use the WOTC minis as well, but I will have to make some adjustments for things like Heavy Repeating Blasters and rifles, things like that!

I really enjoyed the Battle Reports, but I have never played Savage Worlds before..

Thanks!