Boarding Party
Old Wiki Entry:
Boarding parties started as traditional pirate celebrations of their Captain's birthday. Since then the term has expanded to include any group of infantry who attack an enemy vehicle by boarding it, with the intent of either killing its crew and taking control of it or sabotaging it. This tactic is best used against heavily armored vehicles which would be difficult to destroy with conventional weaponry, and is most often seen in battles between boats at sea and Capital Ships in space.
At Sea
Since naval combat typically involves two or more boats sailing towards one another while shooting at each other, the boats will eventually be close enough together for minifigs to jump between them. At this point, armed troops on the deck of each boat will jump onto the opposing ship and try to slaughter as many of its crew as possible to disrupt its attacks; for example, they will kill the gunners manning the ship's cannons so it cannot fire on their own ship. If minifigs don't like jumping, they will deploy a plank to act as a bridge between their ship and their opponent's. If the boarding party is large enough, it will kill the entire crew of the enemy ship and take control of it. Ships can counter boarding parties by mounting antipersonnel weapons on their sides and carrying their own troops to kill boarders. Since most boarding attacks take place in the pirate era, boarding parties will typically be armed with melee weapons, the most popular of which is the cutlass, and short ranged weapons such as pistols. Long ranged weapons are impractical as the deck of a warship is rarely large enough for their greater range to be a factor.
The biggest danger in naval boarding attacks is that, if your ship is close enough to an opponent for your minifigs to board it, your opponent's minifigs can jump from their ship to yours and counterattack. For this reason it is wise not to send all of your troops over to the enemy's ship. Even if your force is not strong enough to seize the enemy ship outright, it can still do significant damage by sabotaging equipment and killing crew members, preventing it from effectively fighting against your ship.
In Space
In large space battles between capital ships, one or both sides will frequently employ boarding tactics to damage enemy capital ships, especially if they are space pirates. Most admirals are aware of this danger, and therefore fill their ships with infantry to repel boarding attacks. It's very difficult for a boarding party in space to kill off the entire defense force of a spaceship, so their goal is usually to damage the ship by blowing up control consoles, ammunition banks, and nuclear reactors. Such attacks can cripple or even destroy a spaceship. Boarding parties in space generally have access to higher teknology than their sea-based counterparts, and they are usually armed with area effect weapons such as flamethrowers and miniguns which can wipe out the defending forces in their path. Since capital ships typically fight at long range, boarding parties are usually deployed by smaller shuttles. In rare cases, a boarding party can reach an enemy ship by using a boarding torpedo, a missile whose warhead has been replaced with a cabin. Boarding torpedoes cannot carry large numbers of people, but move faster than shuttles and can penetrate the hull of an enemy ship directly, allowing their troops to bypass enemy defenses concentrated on the target ship's air locks.
On Land
Boarding attacks are rarely employed against land or air vehicles, since few of them are large enough to make the tactic worthwhile or sufficiently awesome. However, a boarding attack against an open topped enemy vehicle can be quite effective if you manage to take the enemy by surprise. Because so few people expect these attacks, they won't equip their vehicles with interior defenses, meaning that it's very easy to capture a ground vehicle with just one or two minifigs.
