Sunday Afternoon Star Fleet Battles

The Space Cadets got together Sunday afternoon at David's house for some Star Fleet Battles. Since David and Bill are still being broken in, this was our first game with Energy Allocation. (Shock and Awe!) In the previous games, they'd learned how to steer and shoot. Now they are learning how to work the engines.

The scenario was a three-party grab at a robot-controlled freighter. David and Bill used Lyrans (one FF each), Mike had two Kzinti frigates and I had two Orions (a CR and an LR). The goal for all of us was to capture the freighter via transporters or shuttles or both.

I put two disruptors and one drone rack in my CR and one disruptor and two drone racks in the LR. I was trying to be power-conscious.

The Kzintis - Mike only has one frigate model, so the DD is a proxy. Made them easy to tell apart.

The scumbag Kzintis sent an eight-drone greeting party towards my LR. I kept it a secret at the time, but I was rather displeased by this turn of events. Turn 1, impulse 1 and I have a major incoming drone swarm to cope with.

I put out two drones to intercept and had to keep side-slipping away from the drones since I was in no shape to contend with the swarm right away. The Lyrans and Kzintis were closer to the freighter to start with and were exchanging fire. Mike worked the two starboard shields down and flew a shuttle into the freighter's bay.

Turn two - my drones killed two inbound, I tractored five others and phasered the hell out of the lot, destroying them all. Killing all of those drones made it possible for Mike to launch more - this time at the Lyrans. ESGs and phasers would account for the swarm.

I think this is somewhere around turn 3. Bill and David hammered the Kzinti "DD" pretty well - Bill even managed a very nice ESG ram for 18 points on the rear shield of that Kzinti scow. My ships were still closing and I took a couple of pot-shots through down shields as they presented themselves. 

On turn four I set up to make a concerted push to run off the beat up Lyrans and Kzintis. I set my speeds high and overloaded as much as I could manage. 

I started by dumping three drones at the nearest Kzinti as soon as it had fired its last phaser for the turn. It was good to give them a little taste of their own medicine. Mike was slightly alarmed and his scow turned and ran.

My LR was moving at 16 and made a strong phaser run at Bill's healthy Lyran just after downing his 5 shield with an OL disruptor. Bill fired at range two and shot off most of my front shield but it held. I waited until range zero and scored a load of internals.

I made a major blunder with the LR's next move. I didn't realize that the Lyran's front weapons were still ready to go. I slipped in front of it. Should have gone to the hex with the smiley face in it.

My LR ended up looking like this after that volley.

The CR dumped its four Ph1s into the down shield of the Lyran and caused a boatload more mayhem.

The turn and game ended just before my drones could impact on the godforsaken Kzinti. He couldn't have stopped them.

After four turns, and roughly 5 hours we called it. I was in the best position with five transporters and load of boarding parties, not to mention a completely healthy ship so it was decided that it was a probable Orion victory. David self-destructed his frigate during turn 4 just before Mike could finish him off - we don't often get to see ships completely destroyed in SFB so that was fun.

I must say, the initial drone volley that Mike sent towards my ships really screwed up my gameplan. I had to go defensive right out of the gates instead of skulking in behind the Lyrans and hitting whichever one was still healthy after Mike had struck. To be honest, being delayed worked out fine because my ships were still in great shape to vulture in on the wounded ships already in the fight. Suits my style pretty well anyway.

It has been great getting back into SFB after so long. I can't wait for the next game!