So, I'm unexpectedly three for three today on the Wizards site.....both Starship Battles previews and the KotoR scenario. You can catch up on the scenario in my previous blog entry.

As for the Starship Battles previews, this week we cover the Trade Federation Battleship and the Droid TriFighter, both excellent pieces for the game.

Now this entry could have been tagged "gaming" instead of "expanded universe." While both apply, you can't use both at the same time, and I decided to, um, expand on the Trade Federation Battleship description as it pertains to the EU.

Most Star Wars Miniatures and Starship Battles previews merely introduce or restate significant elements of each character or ship. However, with a few of the Starship Battles previews, Gary "Jedi Counselor" Sarli and I had the opportunity to add or clarify some points of EU lore. This first came about with the Executor write up (mostly Gary's retcon there). This time it was the Trade Federation Battleship.

A few months ago, I ran across this diagram of the gun emplacement layout for the Trade Federation Battleship in Episode III. For those who aren't Hyperspace members, the image shows dozens of little dots on half of the top side of the ship, plus the core ship. The dots represent various types of guns and their locations.

For an EU contributor, this is a fantastic find. It might even be a unique find. When it comes to establishing a ship's weaponry, we're usually left with a combination of movie references, novel, comic book, Incredible Cross Section or game references and a helthy amount of educated guessing. To get an actual diagram directly from the movie production is....well, I've never heard of it before.

Anyway, I held on to this thing on the off chance I'd need it someday. Now, only a few months later, I'm handed the Trade Federation Battleship Preview. I realize that the game uses the Episode III version of the ship, as opposed to the Episode I version. Episode I TFB stats have long been established in multiple sources, but not so with the E III version.

Digging out the diagram, I set to work determining how many guns this thing has. It's a lot. Way more than some other noted capital ships, like an Imperial Star Destroyer. After conferring with Gary on gun types and RPG details, it is decided that while the TFB obviously has more guns, many are at a lower damage level and shorter range. I also determine a logical number of guns per battery (4) that works most best with the groupings shown on the diagram.

I won't go into all of the details (this is getting long enough), but basically, the assumption is that the gun layout is symmetrical both top and bottom of the "arms". At the rear quarter, there are likely fewer guns below the engines (which is typical for Star Wars ships). Finally, the core ship likely has the majority of its weapons on the upper half of the sphere, given than there is all sorts of landing gear and other stuff below.

Also, the Episode II Incredible Cross Sections book talks about huge numbers of weapons on the core ship. However a quick comparison shows that the Episode III coreship is different from the Episode II ship (as is the Episode I ship and the Droid Control Ship). So, the ICS Episode II number is overridden by the Episode III diagram for our purposes. Clearly there are many versions of coreships.

I also discovered a similar discussion of weapon placement going on over at wookiepeida in their TFB entry, which was interesting, but ultimately different from our conclusions.

Finally, it was a matter of crunching the numbers, writing the ship's description clarifying a few points and sending it off to Wizards (and Lucas) for approval. It looks like there were a few editorial changes, but it largely came through intact.

Some previews just take more work than others...