The Revenge of Carlos Plynkes: More Slightly-Gay Star Wars Nonsense, Courtesy of Chronoglide

(Admiral Allahu Ackbar! Quite clearly a terrorist, with a name like that. Clicking on pics makes them bigger)

Don't worry about the "Slightly-Gay" part of the title, I'm just baiting Chronoglide.

So, Friday night Chrono turned up with more of his childish space-opera junk. Star Wars again, this time a space battle. Following the destruction of their base on Hoth, the scattered Rebel fleet is making its way to a new rendevous. One small convoy of transports, protected by cruisers, is sheltering in an asteroid field near a gas giant, while preparations are made for their next hyperspace jump. At this point an Imperial Squadron shows up to teach the rebel scum a lesson.

The playing area: A gas giant surrounded by nasty asteroid belts. The rules we used were the Mongoose Babylon 5 set. I had played them before and enjoyed the game, but this was the first time we had used the Star Wars mod.

I really like Chrono's groovy home-made gas giant. Far out, man.

The transports and their fighter escort (the red counters) prepare to leave the asteroid field. To the right the watchful eyes of the Mon Calamari cruisers are there to keep them safe.

Mon Calamari??!! What a stupid name. Phoned that one in from the Greek restaurant did we, George? What's next? Terror of the Scampi Men? Invasion of the Moules Marinieres?

Just as all is going smoothly, the bad guys turn up. This Destroyer-thingy comes with a special plot widget, that somehow stops the good guys from making the jump to hyperspace. Something like that, I wasn't really listening.

You have to have such a plot device, or there wouldn't be a game. Ah, the twists and turns of plotting that we have to make once we start making daft shit like this up. Tuh! Science Fiction, eh?

To win, the rebels would have to either defeat the Imperial Squadron in combat, or destroy the Hyperspace-blocking doohickey and then make their escape. The Imperials needed to capture or burn as much of the convoy as possible.

Here come more bad guys. Four Imperial Frigates, bristling with home-grown nastyness and rented malevolence. I was in command of three of them: The Imperial Vessels Useless, Useful Junk and Alien Artifact. They were so named because Chrono had provided no way to distinguish them, so I used some counters I had lying around from Doctor Who: Invasion Earth, which happened to have those words printed on them. Actually, I think they make good ship names.

The Imperial Squadron closes in.

The transports turned and fled back into the cover of the asteroid field, while the Mon Calamari cruisers turned in a wide circle to attack the baddies. Fire was exchanged, mostly just knocking out shields to begin with.

Most of the Frigates pursued the transports into the asteroids, while zillions of little fighters buzzed around the big ships, doing surprisingly little harm and generally just blowing up.

Unfortunately, the inept crew of Useless had not been concentrating. Realising they were about to fly headlong into a very dense patch of asteroids, the emergency order of "All Stop!" had to be issued. She would then have to spend another turn laboriously bringing herself about so as to move around the space-rocks.

As the other Frigates were now out of sight, this meant Useless had the full attention of the Mon Calamari cruisers. They pummelled her stupid, until a massive and catastrophic fire engulfed the stricken vessel. Almost the entire crew were instantly fried, and the ship was left as a charred, floating barbeque briquette.

Oh, the humanity! All my own stupid fault, of course. Hmm, any volunteers to inform Lord Vader? Anybody? Come on, what's the worst that can happen?

But the rebels weren't exactly showing themselves to be master navigators, either, with numerous close-calls and brushes with danger. No damage to speak of, though.

Unfortunately, just as two Frigates were overhauling one of the transports, it became clear that we had run out of time. Fun as it had been, Chrono's scenario had been too big to really fit into the time we had. It had all taken a bit too long, what with all those ships. A shame, really, as it was a good game, and the rules are pretty enjoyable.

Typical Chronoglide. You didn't think it through, did you, you big fool?

Still, I wouldn't mind playing another game of this some time.

By the way, is it just me, or is George Lucas growing to look more and more like Rolf Harris? What do you think? Personally, I think they should've got Rolf to direct the prequels. They certainly could hardly have been any worse...