A Weekend of Stars and Glory! Nashcon 2026

In my case, the “stars” were three space combat games I ran on Friday, and the “Glory” was my Wings of Glory (aka “Wings of War”) game on Saturday.

Never Mind the Asteroid, Full Speed Ahead!

The first star was Star Captain, my own rules for ship vs, ship captain’s duels in a not-Star Trek universe. Each player commands one ship, and makes all the decisions on what the ship does. It’s based on a very simple power allocation system, involving assigning dice (generated by the power plant) to various combat, maneuvering, and support systems— and of course, there’s never enough power to charge everything!
Depending on the ship system, the dice are either rolled and totaled, or just represent 1 point of action for whatever that system does. My scenario was a tongue-in-cheek riff on the classic “Balance of Terror” episode of classic ST (guest starring Mark Leonard). In my scenario the “Romanulian” frigate Guileas is sent into the Neutral Zone to destroy the obligatory listening posts, and the cruiser USS “Gambit” is ordered to protect them. And of course, being the Neutral Zone which no one is supposed to enter, everybody else is there, too.

Designer’s luck proved true as I wound up smacking the Gambit front-first into an asteroid (which my own rules state, “Don’t do that.”). Despite my own clumsy helmsmanship, the game was a hit with the players (including some old SFB hands), and people appreciated seeing my old collection of ‘90s Micro-Machine Star Trek ships. “Clever and a lot of fun,” was the consensus. (Alas, I forgot to take photos of this game, but there was a lot of picture-taking going on, so if you were at the con and have a photo, let me know.)

The Search for… Solo?

I followed up with two different scenarios for the classic Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game (alas, now OOP). The first involved a Rebel mission to disable and retrieve data from Boba Fett’s Slave-1 starship, only to find they’ve flown into a nasty trap. 1 Fire-spray, 5 TIE Interceptors, and 8 TIE fighters vs. the Millennium Falcon (Lando as pilot), 4 Y-Wings, and 3 X-Wings (including Luke Skywalker), in a point spread that actually favored the Rebels by 5. However, they had to get 4 ion blasts cumulative on the Slave-1, and then have the Falcon spend a Target Lock at range 2 (or 1) to “scan” Slave-1 for data on the location of Han Solo. 

Where did all those TIEs come from? Wait… can you say “It’s a trap!”?

Gettin’ hairy in the rocks!

It turned into quite a scrum. The Rebs were only half-way to their required ion blast total when the Falcon took her last hit, ending the battle. Boba Fett claimed that kill, and wound up with enough Victory Points to beat out the Empire (who had to destroy all 4 Y-Wings, and took out only two).

Close, but not enough. Gonna have to look for Solo somewhere else. Hey, ya don’t think Jabba has him?

Take Out the Secret Space Station— Wait, Didn’t We Do This Already?

The second X-Wing scenario was another Parzival original, an Imperial bombing raid against an orbiting space dock— Shantipole Star-fighter Construction Station, which was prepping the proto-type of the new B-Wing. (Any resemblance to a reverse Death Star assault is entirely coincidental.)

Shantipole Station is in distress! Where are our A-wings?!?

The Empire had three TIE-Bombers, who had to put 12 hits on the station to destroy it— and all of those hits had to be “explosive” attacks— that is, torpedoes or missiles, not beam weapons. The Rebs— 2 A-Wings, 2 Y-Wings, and maybe eventually a B-Wing— had to take ‘em out. Throw in a dense asteroid field and some TIE Interceptors as bomber escort, and things got pretty hairy. At the end the bombers had managed 11 hits when the final bomber got taken out by the Rebel fighters. (One “Direct Hit” crit on the station would have made a big difference.) The B-Wing did launch (barely) for a couple of rounds of combat, but made no real difference. A good, tight ending for a solid fight!

And Then for Something Not Entirely Different

Saturday I largely took it easy, wandering the con floor (and all the side rooms I could find), until my afternoon session of Wings of Glory WWI aerial dogfighting. We played two scenarios, a bomber raid over Mannheim featuring the enormous Handley Page O/400, and a four-player dogfight including the Red Baron’s Fokker Dr1, a DVa, Eddie Rickenbacker’s Spad XIII, and… a flying beagle-hund?!? Silly, but fun!

Alas, no photos for this one either (I wound up controlling the bomber and Snoopy, so had to set my camera down.)

Of course, no con is complete without vendors, and I perused a number of ‘em, finally walking away with a small lot including one rule book (Hordes of the Things), one resin bridge wide enough for Warmaster bases to cross or occupy without looking silly, and a new game, Dragonstrike, which is a fantasy aerial game much resembling Wings of Glory and X-Wing. Only with dragons. I will of course review this purchase in a later post.

In the meantime, if you’re a convention sort, consider adding Nashcon to your list. It’s a fabulous time.

Nashcon.org for details! (Also on Facebook, with links to con photos not taken by me.)

— Parzival