Hello!

I’m Jeffrey Huffman but, if you’re a regular of any of the various X-wing Miniatures forums, you might know me by my usual handle, weisguy119. I answered the call for writers here at Friday Night X-wing and they were kind enough to accept. Thanks, guys!

About me

Introductions aside, I like to devote my creative energies to developing large-scale, custom Cinematic Play scenarios that typically take about a year to develop (patience is strong in this one). I’m currently working on an asteroid base scenario which I hope to complete in the next couple months. I submitted the summary and components list to the folks here at Friday Night X-wing and they seemed pleased with my work. I like the idea behind FNXW and am happy to part of the team!

Inspiration

Though the asteroid base scenario is months away, I do have some completed projects that I’d like to share in the meantime. My first custom XWM endeavor was a small Yuuzhan Vong mission titled “Skirmish at Helska IV”. As most of you likely know, the Vong are a pretty controversial subject amongst Star Wars fans. It seems people either love or hate them, with the scales tipped heavily towards the latter. I used to side with the haters. Then, for some reason, I decided to buy and read Vector Prime – most likely to find out how Chewie died in the old Expanded Universe (now Legends). To my surprise, I quite enjoyed the book – not enough to read the entire New Jedi Order run, mind you. There are far too many books involved to maintain my fleeting interest for that long. However, the book did inspire me to head to Shapeways to pick up some Yuuzhan Vong coralskippers and scour the web for ideas on how to implement the Yuuzhan Vong in XWM. The web rarely let’s me down and I found a plethora of pictures, stats and mechanics to guide me and help me form my own ideas of how the Vong should work in the game.

The ships

With inspiration and a mission in mind, I set out to bring the Vong to life on my table. FNXW has already published an article on Shapeways so I won’t go into extensive detail about the site itself other than to say I bought the skips from Mel’s Miniatures and choose the White, Strong & Flexible option. The options have since changed but, at the time, this was the material with the least definition. I chose the grainy WS&F on purpose because Yuuzhan Vong coralskippers are made of, you guessed it, a coral-like substance. The rough texture of the WS&F material helped to capture the desired look better, in my opinion, than an ultra-detail material would have.

With miniatures in hand, I set out to buy my first model-specific paint. I settled on Vallejo because I like the dropper bottles. I bought a cheap brick of styrofoam from Walmart and grabbed some toothpicks from the cupboard. These were the first miniatures I ever painted so I was a bit intimidated going in. I read some tutorials online until I felt comfortable enough to proceed.

I stuck 6 toothpicks into the styrofoam brick and placed a coralskipper on each. This allowed me to paint the ships from all angles without having to finger them up. First, I primed them with some Krylon plastic primer. Then, I used some cheap Walmart craft brushes to apply the paint. Finally, I protected the finish with some Krylon matte spray. I’m a bit of a perfectionist so the painting process probably took way longer than it should have but I was happy with the results:

Now that I had the ships, I needed to come up with a system to bring them to life on the mat. Much of the Vong-centric XWM custom material I found online attempted to use established XWM mechanics to shoehorn them into the existing rule set. To me, this didn’t capture the essence of what drives the organic ships employed by the Vong – Dovin Basals.

Dovin Basals were plants used by the YV to both shield and propel their ships. They could absorb laser fire, missiles and torpedoes as well as drain the shields of nearby enemy craft. They could also act as tractor beams and groups of them could perform the same function of the gravity well projectors of Interdictor Cruisers. They were the versatile hearts of YV ships.

Dovin Basals were the spark that lit the flame that got the creative juices flowing. I found them to be an interesting dynamic that could be exploited for a change-of-pace mission to mix things up a bit.

So, how could I use these interesting creatures to add a new dimension to the standard game? Well, the gears churned and I decided to borrow from the Epic game and tweak the Huge ship energy rules to use Dovin Basals instead. I settled on a Dovin Basal token system to drive the ships.

The cards and dials

I fired up Strange Eons, and it’s X-wing plug-in, and got to work. Strange Eons is a remarkable program that let’s you design custom cards for various tabletop games. The X-wing plug-in is a valuable resource for creating custom X-wing material.

I incorporated features of the Vong in the upgrade cards such as the Yammosk, which acts as sort of a central brain that gives the Vong fleet a mass coordination effect similar to Emperor Palpatine’s battle mediation. I made a full YV-specific damage deck for the skips as well as pilot cards, upgrades, dials, etc

The Vong, of course, needed a mission-specific opponent so I drew upon the Vector Prime novel and chose Kyp Durron, Miko Reglia and the Dozen-and-Two Avengers. For the setting, I picked the Skirmish at Helska IV where New Republic forces first encountered the Praetorite Vong (a YV scout force).

I whipped up advanced XJ X-wing pilot cards and dials for Kyp and Miko and decided to restrict the rest of the Dozen-and Two Avengers to ships actually used by the unit – Z-95s, A-wings, X-wings and B-wings.

The mission

Without further ado, here’s the mission I created:

SKIRMISH AT HELSKA IV

The Skirmish at Helska IV marked the beginning of the Yuuzhan Vong War. Arriving at the Helska system, unaware of the Yuuzhan Vong presence, Kyp Durron, Miko Reglia and the rest of the Dozen-and-Two Avengers headed into the Battle of Helska against the Praetorite Vong.

MISSION SETUP

Rebel: 125 squad points consisting of Kyp Durron, Miko Reglia and any non-unique pilots flying any combination of the following ships:

– B-wings

– X-wings

– Z-95 Headhunters

– A-wings

Yuuzhan Vong: 100 squad points

The players take turns placing six asteroid tokens from the core set in the play area. Players cannot place an asteroid token at Range 1-2 of any edge of the play area or at Range 1 of another asteroid token.

The Rebel player places his ships within Range 1 of the Rebel edge.

The Yuuzhan Vong player places his ships within range 1 of any edge. He cannot place a ship within Range 1-3 of a Rebel ship.

The Yuuzhan Vong player has the inititative.

SPECIAL RULES

Yuuzhan Vong ships use Dovin Basal tokens, much like HUGE ships use energy. Focus, evade and stress tokens do not affect Yuuzhan Vong ships.

Yuuzhan Vong ships gain Dovin Basal tokens in the following manner:

– 2 Dovin Basal tokens for a green maneuver

– 1 Dovin Basal token for a white maneuver

– 0 Dovin Basal tokens for a red maneuver

Activation Phase

1.) Reveal Dial

2.) Gain Dovin Basal tokens: Gain Dovin Basal tokens according to your maneuver. The maximum number of Dovin Basal tokens that a Yuuzhan Vong ship can gain per round is 2. Unused Dovin Basal tokens are discarded during the End phase.

3.) Allocate Dovin Basal tokens: Allocate Dovin Basal tokens by placing them on any cards requiring Dovin Basal energy for activation.

4.) Move

5.) Use Dovin Basal tokens: If allocated, use Dovin Basal tokens to perform a Boost action and/or a Shield Boost action (if equipped).

The Shield Boost action lasts for the duration of the round (unless removed by a hit) and expires during the End phase if unused. To use the Shield Boost action again, another Dovin Basal token must be allocated to it.

Combat Phase

A Yuuzhan Vong ship may attack with its primary weapon or, if allocated, use a Dovin Basal token to use the Dovin Basal Tractor Beam (if equipped).

If the shield drain upgrade is equipped, a Yuuzhan Vong ship may also, if allocated, use a Dovin Basal token to remove one shield token from an enemy ship it is attacking at Range 1. The shield token is removed before defense dice are rolled. A Yuuzhan Vong ship may strip a shield token and fire its primary weapon or use its Dovin Basal Tractor Beam in the same round.

OBJECTIVES

Rebel Victory: Destroy all Yuuzhan Vong ships. If Kyp Durron is the last remaining Rebel ship, he may flee off the Rebel edge for a draw.

Yuuzhan Vong Victory: Destroy all Rebel ships.

Until next time

Oddly enough, I never play tested the mission. I suspect I’ll have to tweak the points for each side for balance. As it stands, the Vong would likely be very swarm dependent and the XJ X-wings are probably overpowered. I think I just enjoy the creative part of it all. Perhaps, I’ll play it one day when I get some kind of mission creation form of writer’s block. Instead of playing and balancing this first foray into custom designed missions, I went straight into designing my 3-part Battle of Scarif scenario, which I’ll feature in my next write-up when I can find the time to put it together.

Well, I hope this first custom mission I designed gives you an idea of the kind of thing I like to do. Until next time, take care and may your Friday nights be filled with XWM fun!