The Spice Mines of Kessel

[Darth Nyrys]

Ruling for Xar Vs. Beth Andromina

 

This is probably one of the more unusual duels that I have had the pleasure of reading, but it definitely was a pleasure to read. Both combatants were forced to confront hazards that took priority over their opponents, and approached this framework in interesting ways. That being said, Xar was perhaps a bit overenthusiastic with his approach given that he did not have a landing strategy. Gravity was the real antagonist in this duel, and while Xar could potentially "survive" the fall in the sense of keeping his CPU operational, I feel that his frame would be compromised enough for Beth to have an insurmountable advantage planetside in finishing things off. I think that it's also worth mentioning that as written in the databank, it's questionable if a drone would have the problem solving capacity to try and ram someone if its blaster failed, since creativity and outside of the box thinking are specifically mentioned as flaws for this model.

 

Winner: Beth Andromina and gravity.

[Darth Nyrys]

Ruling on the Terra and pals vs Shimsinblimp and Zalis duel

 

Reading this duel really felt like reading two adjacent fights, and in the interest of coming to the most accurate ruling for what happened I'm going to treat it as such. In the Terra vs Zalis part of the fight, it was clear that Terra was in her element in this fight, and Zalis's attempts to compromise her visibility weren't landing. This culminated in a final charge by Zalis on Terra's position that left Zalis exposed to significant fletchette fire with little to mitigate it. 

 

Terra vs Zalis: Terra

 

In regards to the firefight between Shimsinblimp and Terra's squad, both sides gave and took punches well. I do know that we have an updated set of retinue rules under construction, but what I saw here felt unbalanced, especially against an NFU with no squad of their own. The retinue often felt like five additional PCs each with specialized gear for handling specific problems rather than a small squad of NPCs meant to support their PC with additional fire, and a number of the weapons they use were laid out in a way that traditional damage mitigation options like armor were not plausible. I believe that everyone was acting in good faith, but that the retinue was being used in a way that exceeded the mechanical role that it is meant for, even moreso given that this was not a duel vs an FU and I am evaluating them without the contributions of their PC owner.

 

Terra Retinue vs Shimsinblimp: Shimsinblimp

 

All that being said, I think that it would have been better to have avoided the 2v1 format to begin with, given how things clearly turned into two distinct firefights, and I'm wondering if the setup of the duel factored in to the portrayal of the retinue.