Star Fleet Battles AAR: Wearing of the Green

Well, it started as a St. Patty's Day themed SFB game (not easy to pull off, mind you) anyway...

Last Saturday the SpaceCadets+ assembled in Brunswick for the March 2019 SFB game. We had an astonishing six players this go around which is where my plans for an all-green Hydran v LDR game went awry. To balance things properly, I has to switch it to a Hydran v Klingon matchup.

So, to summarize the scenario, Klingon and Hydran groups run into each other transiting through a narrow gap between a nebula and the LDR border. There's your excuse to put some spaceships on the table and shoot phasers for four-plus hours.

So yeah, we had six player for the March game! The usual suspects - me, Mike and David S, plus the occasionals, Edward and David D and ensign Ziggy!

The forces and teams were:
Team Hydran
Me - Lancer+ with four Stinger 2
David D - Knight+
Edward - Pegasus with four Stinger 2

Team Klingon
Ziggy - F5 (BK175)
David S - LD4 (shitbox)
Mike - F5V with six Z-Y

So here's our layout a few impulses in. The shaded area is nebula, but because it's the edge, the typical nebula effects have been reduced a bit.

The Hydran plan won't come as a shock to anyone with some SFB knowledge - get really really close and pull the trigger a lot. Mike spent upwards of 30 seconds preaching this to his team.

I suggested that we ride the edge of the nebula to take advantage of the ECM benefits. It didn't work quite as well as I hoped - I still lost a few shields on the ride in but it wasn't terrible. The pointy-eared angry men kicked their fighters out and launched some drones our way. Queue the vuvuzela sounds!

Into turn 2 now. The fighters send out a boatload of drones as we deploy our best drone defense tools - the Stingers. Note at the back of the pack the F5V is peeling off, followed by the F5. The D7, standing in for David's LD4 was going in for a closer look. Perfect.

A large stack of green counters deals efficiently with many many drones. I held one of them in a tractor.

David and his LD4 punished my Lancer's #1 shield but it wasn't long before we had him. Our fighters' fusions savaged the cruiser as you might expect. I was careful not to fire any weapons from my ship. The Klingons would be in for a nasty surprise later when they realized my weapons were all still hot!

We drifted apart as the F5s turned in to try to help their buddy. The Knight and Peg got mixed up with them and everyone got beaten up pretty badly. Three of my fighters pursued the LD4, ready to put it down. One of the Stingers had been crippled and went off on anti-shuttle detail.

Yeah baby. Turn 3, impluse 5... my fighters have caught up with the cruiser again and unload the rest of the fusion beams, destroying the ship. It's noteworthy that David's hellbores had knocked its rear shield down earlier making my job very easy. The explosion reduced three of them to a single hull box, the two shuttles were destroyed and Mike's F5V had a chunk of it's #6 wiped out.

Note also that my Lancer (far right) just performed a HET to get a piece of Mike's carrier which David's Knight was holding in a tractor for me. 😁

Cleaning up the map, Hydran style.

Meanwhile, the Peg and Knight trade shots with Zig's F5. The Knight was the primary target.

Eventually, I got to here with Mike's tractored ship and gave him three fusions, two Ph-2, one Ph-1 and one Ph-G. 

I didn't quite kill it but close enough... Mike was not getting the deposit back.

Although we enjoyed ourselves, it felt like a mismatch and wasn't the tense, exciting game we often get with SFB. I suspect is was a poor ship matchup. If we'd had 12 hours, the Klingons may have been able to play keep-away effectively, but as it was, we played the close-range game and the Hydrans of course excel at that. On the ride home, David and I discussed it and I think that if the Klingons had worked on our fighters before engaging, they'd have fared much better. As it was, the fighters handled the drones easily and caused massive damage to ships. We got tremendous value out of the Stingers whereas the Z-Ys caused a momentary panic but nothing much beyond that.

Looking forward to the next game. Since we've planned it for 4/20, it may feature some very rasta Jindarians! Be well and good gaming.