Star Fleet Sunday

The Space Cadets, plus Jason ( who gamed with us back on Memorial Day ), met at the Pizza Hut in Brunswick on Sunday afternoon for our "monthly" game of Star Fleet Battles.

The scenario / set up I'd come up with was this:

The Hydrans had captured an intact Lyran Heavy Frigate and are towing it back to Hydran space. The Lyrans quickly dispatch a special forces team (Puddytat 6) to steal it back.

Here we are a few turns into the proceedings. David's PFs are coming in fast, to board the HFF as soon as possible.

The PFs unloaded eight disruptors and eight phaser-2s into poor Mike's Gendarme just after this picture was taken. Mike's ship was left in tatters.

A few moments later, Mike made a terrible mistake by zigging when he should have zagged. The PFs emptied their Ph-3s into the Hydran ship. The Hydrans fired all they could bring to bear on the lead PF, all but destroying it.

Mike's ship is vaporized. Four of our boarding parties die in the process. Damn.

Seven Lyran boarding parties are transported to the frigate.

Stars begin to align for my pair of Stingers (hex 2820). Mike's pair had fired earlier at range 2. Mine were in rage mode.

The PFs turn, they slip, they're left without options. My Stingers (and Mike's for some reason) enter the PFs' hex and unload their weapons.

Two PFs are killed outright by fusion and phaser fire. The subsequent explosions kill the remaining PFs and all the Stingers in the hex. At least that tidied things up a bit.

Jason an I had gotten three boarding parties on the frigate to duke it out with the Lyrans. Our combat roll was good (two kills) but David rolled a lousy "1." We were able to contest the ship and things dragged out another turn. Three more BPs onto the frigate and we outnumbered the Lyrans.

Game set and match, Hydran win. It was fast and brutal like any good special forces engagement should be. Mike was pretty hosed about his tragic mistake that allowed eight Ph-3s to fire through a down shield, killing his ship instead rather than simply removing the front shield and knocking out a few internals. My fighters performed admirably, scoring two outright kills and inflicting a shedload of collateral damage.

Since we had plenty of time left, Mike pulled out Star Fleet Marines and set up a simple game of that.

My brave and well-trained bits of cardboard.

We pick up a few turns into the game. Mike was my teammate, using the green Hydrans. Jason commanded the Black Klingon troops while David led his yellow Lyran company. Each team had to defend a single-hex town near their board edge while capturing the opponent's. Mike and David pushed out hard while Jason and I hung back to play some defense. 

I was very bad about taking pictures during the early going. Mike got shot up a lot, as did David. Here we see David's lead force take cover in the caldera of a volcano.

Here you can get a better appreciation for my day of "herding cats" as it were.

The glare on the map covers up much of the slaughter of Mike's stunties.

My heroic troopers head into the volcano after their quarry.

We called the game at 6:00pm - a minor Coalition victory; congrats to Jason and David. Mike had been decimated, although I had lost no troops at all.

It was a good, mindless beer and pretzels wargame. Nothing complex, no rules to contend with. Just pushing the counters around and making "pew pew" sounds. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon.