"The approach will not be easy. You are required to maneuver straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point. The target area is only two meters wide. It's a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station."
- Dodonna [A New Hope]
The attack on the first Death Star aka the Trench Run is one of the if not THE iconic Star Wars movie moment. No wonder that many different trench run scenarios were created since the release of the first edition of the Star Wars: X-wing board game. Several editions later this is yet another attempt to translate it into the board experience.
What is a trench run in Star Wars: X-wing board game terms: does it need a literal cardboard trench to simulate the experience and what about Interceptors? Well, answering these questions will explain the ideas behind this scenario.
Only Two Meters Wide
The thermal exhaust port is rey-shielded, thus it has literary 4 shields. It has also 3 hulls. Combined it has enough health to withstand a pot-shot, but with luck it can be destroyed with one Advanced Proton Torpedo: the thermal exhaust port is a structure and can be dealt Ship faceup damage cards, so a lucky Direct Hit! will be very handy.
The thermal exhaust port is a target only two meters wide and there is a lot of interference going on during the battle: the attacking ship has only one chance to hit the target with a special scenario attack per pass most of the time. This condition is realized through the thermal exhaust port's ability that removes attacker's target lock, after they have performed their attack. To have really good chances of hitting the port most pilots need a couple of rounds on their own to acquire all the necessary tokens for a what is know as a full mod attack, of course if you are not Luke Skywalker.
That brings the question: are 2 rounds (out of 12) enough? As we see in the movie: the whole sequence takes about 12 minutes of the screen time to unfold, with around 2 minutes for each trench run on average.
Making a ship fly a straight line is making that ship predictable, combined with setup that gives your opponent perfect visual information of where that straight line will start - is making that ship dead. That is why the port setup in this scenario has multiple places and angles available with the usage of its front arc. That makes the attacking player design their own approach which is needed to be figured it out by the defender player.
To further simulate the cinematic experience there is an additional condition for the attacker. A bullseye arc on the target fulfils their obligation to go on a straight line or to make some really tight and creative maneuvers on the approach.
That's No Moon
Defending the battle station are not only starfighters, but also turbolaser batteries. In this scenario you get two of them to help you. The FFG have already designed them for the Epic Battles Multiplayer Expansion. To make them feel less overpowered at times of too good natural dice rolls extra conditions were added. Turbolaser operators will try not to hit friendly ships resulting in less intense fire at close ranges in the trench and they absolutely do not want to hit their own station's structure when they have the thermal exhaust port in their sights.
It's Not Impossible
As you can see in the rulebook, two players can play a game on a kitchen table in a spur of the moment: scenario uses only already existing game components (well, you need only one new card for the port), but if you don't have some of them - the most common substitutions are listed and "new" components are provided for PnP with correct size, bleed and scale. If you prefer TTS, there is an additional mod (use it as "additive load") for the most excellent X-Wing Unified 2.0 / 2.5 mod by Flippster.
They Fly Now?
Now we are getting closer to the last question: what ships can players use? Of course, you can go with classics: X-wings, Y-wings and Falcon versus TIE Fighter swarms and Darth Vader. But you can try different ships from the classic factions, or go even beyond that and try any faction you like making some plausible story pretext for it. Your imagination is only limited by a chosen standard squad-building point limit.
Some factions, ships, upgrades or pilots might be better suited at attacking or defending the Battle Station than your average T-65 or a TIE Figher, but overall scenario restrictions aim to hold most high-tech or abusive abilities in check.
Rules were designed to be edition agnostic, but one would imagine that attacking 2.5 players might have an easier time with all those bumping rules and inflated loadouts as DEVs intended. But that makes the defending player to really think about their squad.
If you played this scenario, please fill out a small list with questions - all feedback is great and it potentially can lead to fixing or adding anything missed in the original design in the future updates.