[GZG] GZG ECC XII: Saturday Evening AAR

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E: Assault on Hoth   GM: Phil Pournelle (nods respects)  Game: Modified
DS2

Scenario: Imperial Walkers on their way to Echo Base on Hoth. Rebels trying to
slow
them up to let the transports escape. AT-AT and AT-ST with stormtroopers
coming in, attacking to destroy shield generator to let Vader and more troops
come in. Veers leading. Rebel snowspeeders, infantry, and turrets defending.
Luke is in a speeder. Leia is in command center kicking butt to move
evacuation along.

Early on, the paired rebel speeders decided to take the battle to the
AT-ATs
as far down the table as possible. Out they went. Early attempts were made
to attack at range to avoid AT-AT air defenses. This tended to produce
poor
results. Rebels started trying to kill chicken walkers (AT-STs) with
turrets
and GMS from troops. AT-ATs used close formations for mutual support.

Early game looked like Imperial walkover - no real hits from Rebels,
turrets
being blown up by AT-ATs, and things looked bad. First snowspeeder shot
down
(by odd circumstance) - Luke Skywalker. AT-AT turned toward him,
tauntaun SAR dispatched, snowspeeders attacked walker and killed it from close
in, braving air defense, but it dropped troops.

Several walkers dropped stormtrooper missile teams to shoot at speeders. Rebel
losses mounted, but consolidations were taken and attacks were pressed
despite the cost. Soon, 2 chicken walkers and 3 AT-ATs were down. By
this point, about five or six of about 11 turrets were down, all on the side
with the shield generator. General Veers was already dead.

Chicken walkers overran infantry positions, losing one to final defensive GMS
fire, and then chased infantry away with RFAC and missiles. Turret fire
(to everyone's amazement) eventually killed the 4th (second last) AT-AT,
but again stormroopers were dropped. Luke came under blaster fire from
stormtroopers and snowspeeders tried to take the pressure off him with
tailguns, but to no avail. He ended up rushing to attack enemy infantry with
his lightsaber....

More turrets died. More infantry died. Stormtrooper infantry shot down more
speeders. The final AT-AT fired on the shield generator ineffectually,
but he had the shot. Then the remaining snowspeeders blew him away. A turret
killed the last chickenwalker and there wasn't much more to be done for the
Imperials. The shield generator would stand until another Imperial Wave could
be brought from orbit.

On the pathetic side, Leia had done a crappy job and only the complete halting
of the wave saved the day for the rebels, as only two transports (out of about
12 where the Falcon was 5th) had managed to launch by the time the shield
generator came under fire.

On the tragic side, Luke Skywalker was killed in HTH combat with stormtrooper
squads. I guess only Imperial Storm Troopers could be that precise. Ben was
right.

I did point out that Luke didn't do much in ESB or even in ROTJ - the
heroes and destroyers of the Empire's war machinery in those movies were
Wedge, Lando, Nien Numb, Han, Leia (still around) and the Rebel Commandos with
some fuzzy bear help. So Luke's loss was not so bad.

Leia would just have to go to Dagobah and become the Jedi eventually and lead
the NJO after ROTJ.

The battle was considered a minor victory for the rebels (would have been
major if not for Luke's death).

A well run game, with slightly odd dice mechanics. Phil needs to do a bit more
'typesetting' to make his charts more user friendly for himself! But the game
was interesting and fit the genre well enough. I think Luke should have had
some force points to cheat death, but that's just a minor flavour point.

It *felt* like Star Wars. I *felt* with all of the 1s we rolled on the Rebel
side (crazy) that the ground was shaking as the inevitable defeat approached.
Then we had a miraculous turn around powered by our attempts to
save Luke and making our attacks suicidally aggressive on the AT-ATs,
much like in the movie. And the Imperials, if given one more round or better
luck, could have blown the shield and our transports would have been screwed.

So, all in all, an excellent game. Nice job Phil!

TomB