No, I am your Father!

What better way to celebrate Father's Day than having the classic Father/Son face off in the form of Luke Skywalker verses Darth Vader? Well that's how Dean and I celebrated anyway. He rocked up to mine with his new X-Wing purchases, a Y-Wing, a new TIE Fighter and Darth Vader's TIE Advanced. Again, I was relegated to the Rebels, so I beefed up my forces with the addition of Luke Skywalker, Biggs Darklighter and some Ace Y-Wing Pilot called Horton Salm. With the addition of Astromech droids, proton torpedoes and other fancies, it brought my points to just over 100. Dean's forces consisted of four TIEs and Darth Vader's TIE Advanced. I had a bad feeling about this...

Dean also brought along his new game cloth and associated attire...

He split his attack into a group three TIEs and one with Darth Vader. I kept my ships close together, you know, strength in numbers and all that...

We had a discussion about what Darth Vader would be listening to in battle, I thought it would be Silver Back by High on Fire, Dean guessed it would be Clément Philibert Léo Delibes' Duo Des Fleurs.

The action heated up and the TIEs split formation as my ships got in amongst them, the Y-Wing tailing an Academy pilot.

The slow moving Y-Wing proved a bit of a pain for the faster X-Wings when Luke and Horton nearly collided...

Then Vader got on Bigg's tail... It wasn't looking good...

Biggs escaped, however, and turned his guns on one of the TIEs, but there was a lot of ineffectual firing!

My Y-wing kept a couple of the TIE fighters occupied as Luke and Biggs tried their hardest to destroy the other two, to no avail...

Chasing TIE fighters around called for lots of crazy manoeuvres, which again nearly resulted in collisions.

Things spaced out a bit, whilst Vader desperately tried to get into a position to fire at something!

Biggs was on the tail of a TIE but still couldn't destroy the flimsy ship:

Meanwhile as the Y-Wing was Ionising TIEs left, right and centre, Luke managed to slip in behind Vader, but did little to his fast moving ship.

And Biggs still couldn't bullseye a wamp rat.

And the action moved to the top of the table as the Y-Wing was destroyed by a combination of fire from Vader and the another TIE. Luke was too late to help!

Vader then broke away and turned his attention to Biggs:

Things were looking decidedly dodgy for Luke's chum...

A combination of TIE fire-power destroyed the plucky Biggs.

His last moments before Vader vapourised him...

The Rebels now had to rely on Luke's skill, and given that I'd only just noticed all the things printed on his cards that allowed me to do all kinds of tricks, this game never looked more one sided...

Luke fluffed his chance to destroy Vader...

And a vain attempt to fix his shields gave the Imperials the chance they needed to get in close on Luke:

With three TIEs blatting away there wasn't going to be much chance for Skywalker and there would be no Father's Day presents this year as Luke suddenly exploded into a million pieces then was suddenly silenced... Or something.

It was another enjoyable game of X-Wing, despite losing. I managed to destroy half of Dean's fleet and damage the other half. If only I had noticed all the tricks that were available to Luke earlier things may have turned out differently. I was in at the deep end with the upgrades, but had no bottle of rum to blame it on this time.

Today is also the 198th Anniversary of the Battles of Quatre Bras and Ligny, so here's a lovely picture by Lady Butler of a British Square at Quatre Bras: