A Bit Of 420 Starfleet

Saturday afternoon the Space Cadets converged upon Brunswick for the April 2019 iteration of Star Fleet Battles. This month's scenario was a meeting of Gorn and Jindarian and a bit of a "kitchen sink" game with ships, PFs, seeking weapons, a space station and ground combat. The outline...

One Toke Over the Line

Size 3, Class M planet in 2215 – Rastah CDXX

Hex 2214 is an ancient Jindarian ruin that Gorn scientists are studying. The Gorn have 2 BP in that hex to start the scenario.

Hex 2611 contains a moon. The Gorn have a Mobile Base, currently in 2511. It orbits counter-clockwise every other turn, with its first move at “Speed 1” of turn 1. It does not rotate as it orbits. The MB has a Barracks Module, a Hangar Module carrying 6 G-12 fighters (2 may be deployed CAP), a Power Module and a Sciences Module.

The Gorn mercenary Free Escort Carrier “Golden Egg” is in hex 2811, heading A, speed-0, WS-1. It carries six G-20 fighters.

A Gorn Battle Destroyer+ “Sharpened Scale” is set up on a map edge of sector F, WS-2, any speed, any heading.

Two Jindarian ships, an FFV (Kingston, carrying eight Meteor-3) and an FF (Marley) accompany three Ground Assault PFs. They have been dispatched to run the Gorn away from the ruins which hold significant cultural significance to the Jindarians. Any damage to the station will be a welcome bonus for sure!

They may start in anywhere along hex row 01XX any speed, any heading, WS-2.

We broke into teams - Mike and David took the Jindarians, I got the Gorn base, Ziggy took the Battle Destroyer and David D captained the CVE.

The evil Jindarian captains try to get their act together.

I was terrible about taking photographs. I managed to get my fighter group wiped out in short order by a wall of phaser and rail gun fire from the Jind. That kind of put me in a foul mood. The hate was ready to flow through me.

What I did have though was power and tractors. David's frigate started close enough to me to get snagged. A few impulses into the turn, Mike ended up in the same hex and I snagged him too. They were both pretty irritated. They proceeded to pummel my number 5 shield and caused plenty of damage but were still held in place for the Sharpened Scale to zip on over and smash the frigate with plasma and phasers. The tractor fun more than made up for losing my fighters.

Ziggy takes David through the damage allocation part of life.

The part of the game that mattered. The battle for the planet! The Gorn were represented by the orange and yellow counters. The Red were Jindarian.The battle began in earnest on turn 2 when the Jindarian PFs and Gorn shuttles made planetfall. We Gorn were heavily outnumbered, 33 to 22.

Somewhere around turn 4. David's FF is running from the BDD. David D's escort carrier "crosses the T" and hits Mike's carrier with a plasma D. Moments later he tractored Mike and shoved him into the planet. Hilarity ensued. The shuttles and PFs ascend through the atmosphere.

My favorite part of the game... to start turn 5, the PFs and shuttles had all broken atmosphere. We'd had a gentleman's agreement not to fire at eachother while within atmosphere. Once out, our five shuttles opened up on the down #1 shield of one of the PFs, exploding it. The explosion killed all the shuttles but it was worth it.

So, the ground combat, which really was the important part of the affair went like this. This are the number of BPs present on the planet at the start of combat of each of these turns:

               Jindarian    Gorn

Turn 2        33        22

Turn 3        28        25

Turn 4        16        21

Turn 5         9        20

End             3        15 

Suffice it to say, poor Mike and David were seriously betrayed by the ground combat dice rolls, whereas the Gorn rolls were excellent.

In the end, it was a solid Gorn victory, although the base had significant damage and all fighters had been destroyed. The BDD and mercenary carrier were in fine condition. Mike and David didn't really do anything wrong, they were quite simply screwed by the dice - reverse a couple of those ground combat rolls and we'd have had a different result. Clever use of the tractors threw them for a loop and helped us manage the space game. It allowed Ziggy to approach and smash with impunity. 

In the end, we all had a good time and it was an interesting and different type of game that featured lots of new or rarely used systems for us. That's much of the appeal of SFB for us - it's such a deep but flexible system that can be modified as necessary depending on the player mix and type of game that's desired.

Periodic Check In

No a whole lot of excitement to report. I've been up to "stuff," but not a whole lot of gaming. Zig and I did get in a game of Infinity last evening (Saturday night) featuring my newly-painted Combined forces against his Pan Oceania Knights. It was a total massacre which I lost. Had a good time though!

Part of the issue was my own unfamiliarity with my troops / army. These guys have a lot of special abilities and while I spent a good bit of time painting them up for the table, I didn't spend any time whatsoever figuring out what they're good at. Regardless, Ziggy played well and his dice were on fire. I'd have struggled even if I'd spent 3 hours studying the army list and wiki.

In other news, I started planning for the annual Memorial Wargame Bash. We've decided that without a doubt, Victory at Sea: Age of Dreadnoughts MUST be included. It was a hit last year and perfect as a group game. To that end, I bought an Italian Navy to square up with the Austro-Hungarians in a conjectural Battle of the Adriatic.

The Figurehead 1/6000 collection showed up in Friday's mail. They're tiny and impossible to keep track of without properly ID'ing and tracking them. Very excited about this upcoming battle!

I'm still deciding on game 2. It'll be a land game of some sort but I just haven't made up my mind. We talked about an oversized Dragon Rampant game a couple years ago - I need to check into that. Hmmm.

Recent Painting

I have been a bit productive with the paintery in the last month or so. Nothing like I was years ago, but not terrible. First off are some Infinity guys. I started collecting a new faction - the Combined. They're considerably different from the Ariadna I've been using, with the added benefit of being on sale when I picked them up! Half price is good bait for sure.

The completed group. It's the Shasvastii starter box plus a Charontid (the big purple guy). The Shasvastii are plant-creatures and rather bizarre.

 Three Shasvastii seed-soldiers.

 A Malignos (yellow), Shrouded (blue green) and Speculo Killer (the feminine one).

Big Un. He doesn't fit my typical M.O. but that's part of the interest - it's a big departure from the other faction I've been using. He's a very powerful single model and should be a blast.

Some other angles. I've got eight more Combined models in the queue so before long I'll be able to take them for a spin on the tabletop.

Also completed are some 6mm Sci Fi stuff I picked up a month or so ago from Khurasan.

They were a guilty pleasure pickup. I love painting 6mm stuff and had not for a while. It was a relatively inexpensive scratch of an itch. It did inspire me to work on some new rules ideas. Maybe I'll give them a play test some time.

Tanks of course

 Heavy weapons teams

Anti-vehicle infantry teams

And walkers of course!

A fun little project. I'm looking forward to having them square up with the Space Marines or Orks.

X-Wing: 2.0 Debut

It's been inevitable for the last three+ months, since i received the X-Wing v2 set at Christmas. Yesterday afternoon David and I finally had a chance to put version 2 on the table in a meaningful way with full squadron builds. A few weeks ago we did try the game out with the basic contents of the starter kit, but that's not quite the same thing. We have both plunked down for conversion kits - I went with my Scum and Villainy guys while David is still wearing his Stormtrooper uni.

This is what I put together - a couple of upper-tier heavies with a Firespray and IG-88 plus a Y-Wing that was more of a curiosity than anything. I doubt I've ever fielded a Y-Wing without a turret.

Scumbags assemble! The Firespray and IG are on the new-fangled medium bases.

The Imperials (two Interceptors and a Punisher with gobs of ordnance) truck it down the left flank. I'm going to have to re-arrange quickly to react without getting massacred.

A bit of twisty-turny later and Frosty is able to cash in an Interceptor. Her rear-arc attacks are much more dangerous than the front ones. There's a diet / GI tract joke in there somewhere.

And shortly, I caught the Punisher in a crossfire with the Y-Wing and Aggressor. Scratch one Pun.

So then the game turned into a fox hunt. My three space whales wheeled it on around to track down the super-quick and nimble lone Interceptor.

But it wasn't long before we had him locked down. He ended up behind the Firespray at range 1. It's really just a bad place to be.

The game was 120 minutes - that included a couple of scans through the rule book to check on some new mechanics. I was very happy with my ships, although I'd like something a bit quicker to replace the Y-Wing. It just couldn't keep up with the rest of the ships on the table. David showed that the Interceptors got the improvements they desperately needed. Previously they were very pretty one-hit-wonders; now they are very strong arc-dodgers able to play with anyone. After the game David tweaked his list to something altogether much scarier, replacing the Punisher with a Decimator. Looking forward to that meeting!

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!