EDIT: grove has an awesome comic report on his blog about this same battle from his pov,
Link:
HERE
Location
Graveskul Orbit
Background
The War for New Texas is in full swing, and in the previous action (Link:
HERE) the telemetry of fighters that engaged revealed the location of the enemies' capital ships.
Cpt. Thuries, commanding the Shelley, coordinates with the Lone Starr
...and both ships max thrust to intercept
The Dragon and Cerberus eagerly turn to meet them
...and the Lone Starr and Shelley deploy their boarding teams to be ready for whatever the battle brings.
LAUNCH FIGHTERS!
The initial salvos are savage. Unexpectedly, the allies roll...
...then counter, to end up in the rear arc of the enemy.
...and blast the aft turret of the Dragon
However, Krang's Technodrome begins to fire massive barrages on the Lone Starr from the surface of New Texas
Even as the ships in orbit continue to maneuver,
the Lone Starr takes heavy damage to her boarding deck and port side guns
The dogfight is furious, but neither side achieves a breakthrough to the enemy ships
Attrition among the bombers is worst
The capital ships swing back for one more pass...
With the enemy ships receiving fire support from Krang's Technodrome, the allies are outgunned, and withdraw out of range. The Cerberus and the Dragon dealing with heavy damage themselves, stand off to lick their own wounds.
Cpt. Thuries
Major Guiscard, we cannot contest the space above Graveskul as long as the Technodrome is operational.
Maj. Guiscard
Understood Captain. Vasken has a commando mission in mind that I think will address the situation.
_________________________________
Woah, what a fight. The edge in inflicting damage was to the allies, but the bad guys had the fire superioirity and it was wiser to pull back.
As in the previous fight, we used the Ace of Aces book system to run the maneuvering of capital ships. This time however, we included the fighter rules. It was non stop action. If you want a final count of damage, I took a pic of the control sheets (you might have to zoom in)...
Thanks for looking!
Yeah great fight but you do need to take out that planetary unit....it's really tilting the balance!
ReplyDeleteIf you pop over to grove's blog, he has a better description of the damage to the Lone Starr. I forgot how much the Technodrome influenced the battle.
DeleteThanks for the heads up about that. I've been trying to watch Grove's blog, but that one slipped by.
DeleteNo problem, I think my maps give a good technical telling, but I summarize too much and his posts convey more of the drama.
DeleteThat. Was. AWESOME!
ReplyDeleteWoah, a comment from Famous Tim!
DeleteI've been following your blog for a bout 2 years now. Thanks for coming by and taking a gander.
BTW- That hexagon camo pattern on your new knight is OTT!
I'm not sure I'm reading the damage sheets right. From the sheets it looks to me like Cerberus and Shelly took the brunt of it, but from the maps and description it sounds to me like Lone Star was actually hit harder and Dragon took at least some significant hits aft.
ReplyDeleteBut then it can be tricky to get a damage report right when the ship's on fire.
Wow, but that looks intense. Sounds like it was even better live and in person. :D Can't wait for the next installment.
So, first, I must apologize, due to operator error, I posted the sheets before they got all marked up. I'll fix that tonight.
DeleteIt was great, and it was truly the first time we had all the rules working together. They worked pretty much how we wanted them to,
However, from a playtest/data gathering perspective, nobody tried to board, so that section went untested.
This is insane, I love it all!
ReplyDeleteVery insane. grove , lopez and I are still rehashing it.
DeleteEpic! It must have look superb in the flesh.
ReplyDeletegrove had a HUGE basement, it was quite a spectacle
DeleteLooks fantastic, again your maps really add to the story. Were you guys using a similar system to Space Fleet? I see the box lid with the areas marked off.
ReplyDeleteNice eye. :)
DeleteThe concept of the box lid was a little different than Space Fleet.
While we were testing out the firing mechanics, we found that if a player was just allowed to shoot at specific locations on a ship, then critical systems (like turrets) were destroyed too quickly. The box is designed to spread out the damage a little. A player just rolls his firing dice in the box and removes any dice that roll 5 or less (6+ is a hit). The box has squares marked, -2, -1, Hit, +1, and +2.
So, you declare the target of your shots, then roll the dice in the box.
Remove misses. A any dice that rolled 6+ and landed in a square with a minus result (-2, -1) move the hit location counter-clockwise that many spaces, and conversely any dice that landed in a square with a plus result(+1, +2) move the hit location that many spaces clockwise. Hit results strike the target system.
Stupendous! Glad to see this all finally come together.
ReplyDeleteThe real question though... where do you go from here? Rent out a church basement and have a whole fleet show up? Change to fleet scale games? Epic? Get out the action man/GI Joe dolls and go hyper detailed?
DeleteI think we try to codify and document how we do it, so next time (yes, there is going to be a NEXT time) we have a system that can handle many ships, and anyone who wants to come (or run their own) can understand what they are getting into.
That Starfighter battlebook....I'm intrigued. Did you guys use that as well?
ReplyDeleteThe book is just a Star Wars adaptation of the Ace of Aces game. There is a companion Tie Fighter Book. I have to say though, surprisingly, there are fewer maneuver options and certainly less cinematic maneuver options in the Star Wars version as opposed to the original.
DeleteIronically, I think we are going to move away from the books. It really is not a scalable approach. Once you get beyond 2 ships, the system breaks down. I think we are going to a card system, which simplifies the choices, but allows for more and more ships.
Thanks for the info Maj. I've only ever used cards for combat resolution in a few board games, but the idea of using them for space battles sounds appealing. I think with enough variety of cards it'd work fine too.
DeleteI wonder if there's any available on the market already? Making your own sounds like fun anyway. And besides which, you don;t have to create a whole rule book to go with it so it shouldn't be too time consuming.
I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with.
Not only is this series brilliant in its narrative scope and ability to bring such wide range of models from your mutual collections into play, but also incredibly informative in terms of rules and build ideas. I tip my hat to you sir, I really do.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much StuntCat. The buildup and preparation for the event was as much fun as the event itself.
DeleteI'll be posting the rules and stuff as we wrap up the story.
Absolutely jaw dropping stuff! This is such an inspirational blog!
ReplyDelete