December Star Fleet Battles

It's that time of the month... yes, Star Fleet Battles Sunday was today. We had a four-player game today and it was a hoot. I concocted a multi-player every man for himself scenario whereby each player selected his own secret objective and attempted to complete it. We put an 80-point cap on things to keep ships very killable.

I took two of my dead-sexy ISC Fast Patrol Craft (PFs), Maverick and Goose.
Bill took a Federation FFG - an Improved Frigate. Rather vanilla but not a bad ship at all.
David took an LDR Police Carrier with no fighters. Weird choice but a solid ship.
Mike took a Jindarian Frigate. Not entirely sure about the actual designation.

As my mission selection, I was to destroy one opposing ship. Not easy but since I had PFs, some of the missions were off-limits. I didn't have transporters, tractors or shuttles which are pretty necessary for some of the missions.

We played in a thick asteroid field. The clear templates with yellow dots indicate asteroid hexes. It's a good portion of the table that's covered. My two PFs are in the foreground with the other guys' relative positions indicated.

The Feds come around the corner and get headed the right direction.

Evil David. I tried to make him look more Lyran.

Mike's school bus eases forward. He was driving it like it was his dad's new Porsche - VERY CAREFULLY.

For some reason I cut right, up the edge of the map instead of heading to the center as was my original plan. Perhaps I was afraid to get in amongst the bigger ships with my two glass cannons.

Half a turn on. It looks as though I've got a dance partner! Dave's carrier, ESGs ready, gets lined up on my pair of little guys.

Mike has revealed his hand - he's dropping boarding parties on the asteroids to hunt for the relic he's after. I call out Bill - he's making a dash for the opposite corner and no one but nobody is in a position to stop him or even challenge him! Feh.

I send out an ISC greeting party for the cats to work with.

His defense was good, and lost only his #6 shield and a single internal damage point.

A moment later his radius-2 ESG hit Goose. 17 damage reduced by 2 from general reinforcement, then 8 from shields. Seven internals! Gah! Both engines got hit, causing further damage due to the warp booster packs by little ships have. Oh well, at least I'm still in the fight and the weapons didn't get too messed up.

I got in position for two more torpedoes and let 'em rip. The first crushed the shield. I followed them with some phaser-3 fire through the down shield, then the second torpedo impacted causing a great deal of damage. Not bad, although the ridiculous shields on this Commie Cat Carrier are getting old.

Late during turn 2, Bill managed to make good his escape. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Grats, Bill for easily completing your mission.

Then I forgot to take pictures for a bit. There was a fair amount of drama as I got in position with both ships behind the nasty wasty LDR carrier and put two more torpedoes out. The first was a Pseudo, which David chewed up with his Gatling Phasers. The second plasma torpedo ripped through his ship - I'd taken out his rear shield with phasers prior to torpedo impact. The damage was close to killing his ship but just a bit shy. 

And then, treachery of treachery. The ignoble Lyran expats hooked to port...

Off the map. Curses! David completed his mission of exiting off the opposite corner, just as Bill had done, but with significantly more damage to his ship. 

Mike's Jindarian Frigate, pick up crew that were recovering the relic from the asteroid. We could have continued the fight since technically he needed to exit the map with the relic, but...

Considering the state of my ships it would have been a forgone conclusion. I had to destroy an enemy vessel and the Jindarian was undamaged. I conceded to Mike and we called it there.

My ships (#2 and 5). Ol' #5 got mauled.

Well that was a lot of fun! I think everyone enjoyed it and the secret objectives made it very interesting. I saw what Bill was up to, but just a bit too late for it to matter. I could have intercepted him if I'd stayed on my original course but that's life. Mike could have challenged but was facing the wrong way, and intent on getting a win for himself.

And the there's Dave. I really thought he was trying to kill my ships and it wasn't until he moved off the map that I realized I'd been had. Hitting multiple shields with my weapons saved him. A good 40+ points of damage that I caused were "wasted" on burning through shields. The pseudo torpedo worked nicely and because he did 38 damage to it, I felt a bit vindicated that I hadn't wasted a real torp on the shot.

Looking forward to the next SFB meet up -it's been a blast so far. I think we're going to do fighters only next time.