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.

Infinity AAR : Rescue Scenario

Ziggy and I finally got to put some minis on the tabletop last evening - it's been at least a month since we threw down last. It was Infinity again and I had an opportunity to use some of my recently painted miniatures that hadn't yet got to play. Now that I've got a good selection of miniatures, I can mix up the content a bit.

The scenario that I set up was Rescue out of the Human Sphere rulebook. We each had four civilians on the enemy side of the table that were rescue targets that we were supposed to pull back to our own side of the battlefield.

That translated to this on the tabletop...

I was to rescue orphans (Malifaux models) while Zig's PanO Knights were to rescue unpainted Blood and Plunder townsfolk. The yellow lines indicate that "exclusion zone."

Early into the proceedings, one of my Loup Garou chucks a stun grenade at the distant enemy. A lot of flash and bang, but nothing in the way of results.

The knights are pushing hard on my left flank, leaving the right side and one of the civilians (green circle) wide open! A Briscard and Moblot head towards her through the graveyard.

By the end of the first turn, I had led one of the targets back across to my side. You can see one of my Loup Garou down the street who'd been knocked down by a shot earlier in the turn.

The Knights' Crusader Bretheren (in black) drops in courtesy of his jetpack. We exchanged shots but I've wised up a bit since the last time I encountered this SOB; spread out and hide!

Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of it, but the Loup Garou sniper was able to set things right in the universe by putting down captain flying flamethrower. Hooray! He was soon joined in Valhalla by his Teutonic Knight brother. Again, photography was lacking but the Teutonic Knight had run around the corner and quickly dispatched my medic in the yellow jacket (towards the upper middle of the picture above). The Knight ran off but was pursued by the Loup Garou had just witnessed the carnage. As the Knight sped off, the Loup Garou quickly fired three shots. (In game-ese the LG activated and made a 4" move then fired his weapon needing 12 or less on d20 to hit. The weapon can fire three shots. Rolling the "target number" exactly indicates a critical hit with no armor save allowed.)

Not sure what the odds are of 3d20 rolled together all hitting the same result but the Knights would need a mop and a bucket to clean up the mess. Hey, there's that Crusdaer I'd taken out earlier making a cameo from beyond the veil!

Meanwhile back on the other side of the tabletop, the Father Knight made an appearance. First, he blasted my leader (not shown) and charged my Moblot paramedic. He did take a hit from the Briscard sniper (lower right) for his efforts but it would take more than that to put this gorilla down!

Ol' girl managed to go 8 seconds with Fu Manchu and did not die instantly! Unfortunately, there's nearly no way to get away from a close combat expert like this guy.

The sad plan was to set up a kill zone around the Knight and wait for the close combat to end.

By this point, three turns had gone by. I had lost five models killed out of my fourteen and taken out two of the Knights. Most importantly though, I'd gotten one of my civilian targets evacuated back to my deployment zone, scoring a fat four points! A hard-fought victory for the Ariadna Merovingienne forces over the very tough Pan Oceania Knights.

Yeah, I know I was slack with the pictures. The reality was that because of the very tight terrain, game play was very quick with lots of movement and relatively few shot opportunities. The lack of downtime meant that we spent more time playing and less time waiting for the other guy which is when most picture taking normally happens. The game was a hoot and we both had a good time.

Shiny Things!

Although there's been a dearth of gaming since Rapier, I've managed to stay semi-focused on the hobby. I did finish up that helicopter for Batman Minis, in nice Riddler colors!

It's teeny bit large, at 1/32 scale but will work perfectly as either decoration or as an active vehicle.

I also ordered some 6mm sci fi stuff from Khurasan primarily because I enjoy painting 6mm things.

And in one episode of X-Files (The Field Where I Died), got them based and together. The mechs got their arms after the fact. I've been kicking around some rule / mechanics ideas recently and these will help with that inspirational process.

Ziggy and I have Infinity on the slate for Saturday - I'm really looking forward to slinging dice. It's been way too long! For now, it's off to a Thursday night showing of Captain Marvel!