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Did you guys know such a thing exists? Vader apparently used this TIE/sa variant to board the Tantive IV. The TIE bomber was actually originally designed as a boarding vessel for A New Hope! I'm thinking it could be great for scenario play ... not sure what to cost it at, however.



TIE Boarding Craft
Cutlass Squadron Pilot 3
3 2 6 0

Action Bar: Focus, Board

Special: The TIE Boarding Craft is only equipped with a secondary weapon, the Hull Cutter, which can only be used in conjunction with the Board action.

Maneuver Dial
1: backward (red), forward (green), bank (white)
2: forward (green), bank (green), turn (red)
3: forward (green), bank (white), turn (white)
4: forward (white)

New Action: Board
May only take this action when the forward arc of the TIE Boarding Craft is moved into base contact with a target ship with a larger base than the TIE Boarding Craft. The TIE Boarding Craft takes an immediate attack on the target ship and the target ship defends as usual.

For target ships with Medium Bases:

If any critical hits are not canceled, the TIE Boarding Craft is considered attached and the player controlling the TIE Boarding Craft gains control of the target ship BUT the target ship (1) may only take green maneuvers, (2) cannot take actions, and (3) cannot attack. Additionally, the TIE Boarding Craft must move along with the target ship, remaining in the base contact while attached. Place one counter on the TIE Boarding Craft card for every attack phase it remains attached to the target ship.

The TIE Boarding Craft may detach from the target ship on any subsequent movement phase by using the 1 Backward maneuver. The Rebel player immediately regains control over the target ship. If there are at least two counters on the TIE Boarding Craft card, the TIE Boarding Craft gains the Rebel Captive card at no cost and one unique character upgrade (of the Imperial player's choice) is removed from the target ship.

This could include pilots, but the rules for that would be scenario-specific. For example, let's say the scenario called for an attack on the Millennium Falcon piloted by Han and Chewbacca. The Imperial mission objective is to capture Han Solo. Let's say the Imperial player accomplished that as per the rules above. Chewie would then take over piloting the Falcon and the Rebel player would switch out the Han base card for the Chewie one.

No more than 5 tokens can be accumulated on the TIE Boarding Craft card. If a Rebel Captive is successfully taken, the target ship takes a critical damage card for each token on the TIE Boarding Craft card in excess of 2 at the beginning of the following attack phase.

The TIE Boarding Craft can be attacked while attached (by either player). If it is destroyed while attached, the target ship immediately takes as many critical damage cards as counters accumulated on the TIE Boarding Craft card. The player who originally controlled the target ship regains control at the beginning of the following movement phase.

For target ships with Large Bases:

This would be scenario-specific with assigned boarding and defense values. The Storm Trooper squad carried by a TIE Boarding Craft might have a boarding value of 4. The Rebels Troopers aboard a CR-90 have a defense value of 3. So, after the TIE Boarding Vehicle successfully attaches to the CR-90, there is a special combat phase after the movement phase but before the standard combat phase where the Storm Trooper squad gets to attack the Rebel Troopers. If any damage is not cancelled, the Rebel Trooper's defense value is lowered by one. If all the damage is canceled, the Storm Trooper's boarding value is lowered by one. If the Rebels are reduced to zero, the Imperials take control of the CR-90 and win. If the Storm Troopers are reduced to zero, the TIE Boarding Craft that delivered them is removed from the game. The CR-90 may move and fire as normal during the action.

Of course, the possible variations on this are myriad. You can easily imagine a mission to capture Princess Leia or maybe Darth Vader personally leading a boarding action -- or both as per A New Hope!

This is a medium based ship?

I dunno if I like the way damage is effectively transfered if the boarding craft is destroyed. The way the rules are written once the boarding craft latches to another ship there isn't too much anyone can do. With the way the rules are written, boarding an opponents ship might as well be the scenario goal.

Rather than making the ships destruction result in a transfer of damage how about just making shots targeting it that miss hit the ship it's attached to. I think rebel fighters should be given more of an opportunity to shoot the boarding ship off the vessel it's boarding without necessarily damaging their own ship.

I think your rules seem very scenario specific while I think it might be more interesting to use if it had rules that were a little more general. Something like once the ship is attached you can choose one of a couple of boarding actions... Capture crew, disable engines, disable weapons... each with a consequence. Maybe something like rolling a number of attack dice based on the quality of the boarding craft's storm troopers versus a number of defense points equal to the cost of the pilot/gunner, weapon, equipment card you're attempting to disable. For each successful action a number of damage is also done to the boarded ship. With each failure diminishing the number of attack dice representing the quality of the boarding party.

No, it's a regular base. You would just use a regular TIE/sa model.

Damage is not "effectively transferred." The point is, if the TIE Boarding Craft is destroyed before the action is complete, the Storm Troopers who boarded are considered to have been killed in a firefight that damaged the target in proportion to how long the boarding action was underway. Considering the boarding action only happens if you make an unsaved crit to begin with, this is only fair -- you should have a pretty good chance of at least delivering that one critical damage card.

Think about A New Hope: the hull is cut open and then Storm Troopers pour in shooting. The Rebels have a chance to prevent any damage from the Storm Troopers if they can destroy the attached TIE Boarding Craft before its next attack phase after attaching, when the first token is placed on its card. One point of the scenario is to give the Rebel player something specific to do, something that the Imperial player can predict and try to plan for/guard against/bait a trap.

Per the OP, I wrote the ship for scenarios not for competitive play. I don't like the idea of trying to make something balanced for regular play -- mostly because the boarding action is only useful if your opponent has a medium or larger ship. I can't see a TIE Boarding Craft being used against a fighter-sized ship.

If you wanted to, say, disable the target ship's shields or engines then the best thing to do IMO is write a scenario about that.

IMO this should only be a scenario-specific option against very large ships. Fluff-wise it doesn't make much sense, even the Falcon is way too maneuverable to dock with it against its will, and I'd find it very difficult to imagine a boarding action against a shuttle.

 Peregrine wrote:
IMO this should only be a scenario-specific option against very large ships. Fluff-wise it doesn't make much sense, even the Falcon is way too maneuverable to dock with it against its will, and I'd find it very difficult to imagine a boarding action against a shuttle.

I would agree unless the target has been hit (a number of times?) by an ion weapon previously.

It's simply a matter of imagination either way. The SW setting entails far less plausible scenarios, after all.

I've been thinking about boarding action scenarios using the lambda shuttle craft. I picked up one of the blockade running models that warboss also has, so these rules are very interesting to me. I like the idea of being able to launch a boarding party.

Not sure how I'd use it in a normal game but I can see a lot of custom scenarios that could revolve around the Imps trying to board a vessel

I will write a more comprehensive boarding mission against a capital ship when we know more about the large models.

Once my blockade runner arrives and I get in a few games with it, I'll post some thoughts on it as well. I'm basically looking at 2 ideas for capital ships, having to destroy the engines as an objective and boarding the ship to take control of it. Defenders would be escorting the ship to a jump point. Just basic stuff with the Capital ship having some, but limited, offensive abilities. The main focus of the game will still be the fighter battles

How about this:
The boarding craft has a number of crew (say 3) to start with, there are options to upgrade some of the crew to actual characters.

Action: Boarding
If the boarding craft ends a green move in base contact with another ship, the boarding ship may immediately make a boarding action. This counts as a free attack with dice # equal to the number of boarding crew alive at the time of the attack. Use the defending ships agility to represent the defending crew's ability to fight off the attack. For each successful "dodge" rolled for defense that cancels an attack, the boarding craft loses one crew member (and therefore has a weaker boarding attack in the future). After the boarding action is complete, ships continue as normal.

Crew members can include characters from the movies:
Storm trooper- once per game, while using a boarding action, attacks may be "focused."
Heavy Weapons Specialist- Once per game, while using a boarding action, add 2 to the boarding action attack roll instead of the normal 1 per crew member.
Leia and/or Luke- during boarding, 1 <focus> can be converted to a <hit>.
Chewbacca- During boarding, the first canceled attack during each boarding action does not result in the lose of a crew member. Alternatively: if boarded, the first hit is automatically canceled, but does not result in the elimination of attacker's crew members.
R2D2- on a boarding action, if a critical hit is rolled, search the damage deck for a "ship" specific result of the attacker's choice and use that.

I'm just free-flowing right now, But it seems like this could be the basis of a boarding type, action.

So ... what if your boarding action succeeds?

The ship is disabled?

What does that mean? It is removed like a destroyed ship? Or it just sticks there to become terrain? Or it's drifting terrain somehow?

Personally, I prefer my original idea of the boarding Storm Troopers getting into the ship, getting whatever they came for, and doing as much damage as possible before leaving.

True, removing it from play might be the best course of action as it keeps the flow of the game going without adding in an extra phase where you move around a ship that's dead in space doing nothing.

In my original write-up, the Storm Troopers pile up critical hits to be taken upon their leave/death per turn they remain engaged in the boarding action. So if the Rebels pick the TIE Boarding Craft off the target ship or the Storm Troopers disengage early (say, because the Imperial player only wanted to take a captive), then the target ship survives and even returns to the control of the Rebel player.

What I was saying is that the boarding action is simply a special attack type that occurs during the movement phase. Whatever damage you roll is simply the damage done to the ship, Then the assault is repulsed (possibly with casualties), and the two ships move away and continue fighting, unless the boarding shi can collide again using a green maneuvar during the next turn, in which case it could perform a boarding action again with whatever crew is still alive.