Encounter 2

John put on this nostalgic game of Encounter 2 using his original figures and the traditional 'spaceship corridors made of books' table layout. The large quantities of naval fiction terrain were provided by me.

My personal character. Oh yes.

The defenders of galactic peace and order break into the rebel starship. Unlocated rebel scum are indicated by the inverted cross hand poker chips. Our aim was to escort Darth off the other end of the table.

Two of my squad cover the main corridor.

The rest of the Imperial platoon advance in an interesting sort of blob formation.

The rebel commander with his primitive communications device.

My chaps press on, advancing by bounds. The geometric nature of the battlefield and restrictions on facing make this a very tactical game. It is like playing team Call of Duty.

Darth stomps forward to see what is going on.

The blobs make contact, engaging some rebels in true 'completely stand in the open' Star Wars style.

A couple of rebels are despatched and the blobs press on. Darth lurks behind a bulkhead awaiting an opportunity.

My chaps do tactical pairs with interlocked fire and take advantage of the plentiful cover. So far in the exchange of fire with their opposite numbers (out of sight) the loss ratio has been around 3:1.

Whereas the blobs who like standing in the open have a fairly disastrous encounter with a group of very heavily armed and armoured rebel marines and are mown down. Well, I think we could all see that coming.

Darth effortlessly despatches a lurking rebel, but with most of the storm troopers eliminated, it is time to go home again.

So sadly on this occasion the forces of law and order are beaten off by the rebels. For such an old game this has stood the test of time remarkably well. Although it suffers from a typical late 1970s obession with minute percentages of hit probability which could just as well be resolved with a D6 as a D100 (or a D10 anyway), the game play is extremely tactical and thought provoking, if you choose to take advantage of the large numbers of corners to hide behind. Relying on armour and standing in the open also has fairly predictable results.

This was really good fun to play, and getting to push Darth Vader around was a bonus. The game doesn't have force powers or light sabers, but Vader was fairly intimidating all on his own.

Right time to go and regenerate in my sphere and then I have some Imperial section commanders to interview. I am sure their apologies will be accepted.