Monthly Star Fleet (October)

We've gotten our act together officially and are playing Star Fleet Battles on a regular basis now. Last month after our last game, Bill and I decided that the third Sunday of the month was to be Star Fleet Sunday. Yesterday we got in a wonderful game of Cadet rules SFB. We had four players so we split to two teams. Bill and I took Klingons - he a cruiser and me with two frigates. I wanted to see how the baby F5s performed as escorts, since Mike has a strong preference to fly Kzinti Air and had promised fighters and drone swarms.Mike did take the Kzinti CVE with 4 AS fighters. Ray, who had never played, took the helm of a Fed CA.

I quickly concocted a scenario - two opposing convoys running into each other. Each side got two freighters and had to get them safely off the opposite map edge.

Our formation. Bill and I decided early on to only fire at the enemy freighters. Shots at warships would be a waste, given our objective.

Our opposition. Mike put a bucket of drones out early from his fighters. Curiously, they were targeted on one of my frigates. Ah well, works for me. They are escorts and meant to absorb enemy firepower.

The "good" guys made their turn first, to our right. We waited a few impulses and cut left. Our drones are being used for defense here, targeted on enemy drones. Playing against Mike has really helped me with my defensive skills. I'm getting rather efficient at dealing with drone swarms. Having properly-equipped ships helps.

The Fed and Kzinti warships turn into us. One of my frigates prepares to intercept the fleeing freighters, with our cruiser and the other frigate in pursuit. Since the Kzinti was cycling its fighters, we decided to make the enemy waste some phaser shots and pushed out three more drones - targeted on the Fed cruiser. The cruiser and frigate pair did manage to peel shields and put some good damage on the lead freighter. The Kzinti CVE did manage to punch through the D7's nose shield and did a trivial amount of damage.

Cap'n Ray finally empties the tubes - into a civilian transport no less. Damn Federation terrorists. Score one for the "good" guys.

Their grip on a win was to be short-lived though. The Klingon pursuit went swimmingly and the last phaser we had took out the last engine box of the lead freighter! It was too far away from the edge of the map to escape so score one for us. Heheh. Plus, we get to loot the cargo since we didn't blow the thing to smithereens.

We called the game there - a tie for all practical purposes. We all had a great time. Not being able to simply smash the enemy's warships made the exercise a lot different than we're used to. Looking forward to the next one for sure!