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Showing posts with label Starship Combat+AAR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Starship Combat+AAR. Show all posts

Sunday, 24 February 2013

A Delayed Update

Twilight Imperium in full swing!

Hello out there! Sorry for the lack of updates recently. You might remember I said I'd post a tactics article on how to play the with the Rebel fleet in X-Wing. Unfortunately I chose to type it out in Word for some reason and I ended up deleting it by mistake when it was pretty much finished. This made me a bit frustrated and I couldn't find the energy to blog for a while. Plus I'm simply lazy. Haha! Don't worry though, the tactics article will make a re-appearence further on once I've absorbed the new Wave 2 ships. I have been busy playing games though so I thought I'd post a quick round-up of my gaming and geeking activities this past month.

First off, Ed from Two Hour Wargames sent me a review copy of the recently released 5150 Star Navy and I've managed to get a couple of games in. It's been an interesting experience since it's quite different from your run of the mill Full Thrust-esque game. It's more about the big scale stuff and just as much about what happens between battles as what happens during them. Some more games are needed before I feel ready to write a proper review though.


I realised that I had forgotten my GZG ships so we used figures from Twilight Imperium instead. 
Worked great!

Not only was it fun to play Star Navy it also resparked my dormant passion for spaceship gaming! I've been come to the conclusion that what I'm lacking the most right now is carriers and fighter craft, so my next order from Jon at GZG will include some for both the FSE and the UNSC. I have also been looking through my collection of Babylon 5 Earth Alliance ships and managed to get hold of some old Starfury fighters for them (although I think I might use them for my UNSC as well) so there might be some B5 in the future as well.

Great haul but... sad. 

In more spaceship news I got a whole box full of Lightning Strike/Jovian Chronicles models from DP9. Awesome... yes, but it was a bitter-sweet package to get as they've now discontinued their JC line of miniatures. Jovian Chronicles have been one of my great sci-fi/RPG inspirations since I got hold of the first edition book back in the late nineties. I've always wanted put together two proper fleets of Jovian and CEGA forces, but the large scale difference between the ships and the EXOs (mecha) and the price of the models you need most of have meant I kept postponing it. Now, in this final order I only bought ships as I couldn't afford enough EXOs to fill out a fleet.

Instead I'm planning to get fleet scale mecha from different sources. There are the Japanese fighters from GZG and there's a whole bunch of different variants on Shapeways (like these), besides Eli's sculpts available from 15mm.co.uk. I've even considered doing my own 3D models of Jovian Chronicles EXOs in fleet scale and print using Shapeways. I've always wanted to learn 3D modelling so this might be a good way to start. Expect to read more about Jovian Chronicles going forward, I'm not letting it go that easily!

Oh, and being inspired by both this thread on TMP and by watching the altoghether excellent remake of the original Space Battleship Yamato / Starblazers (Yamato 2199) I painted one of my Earthforce cruisers and have started working on other ships as well. I've just been using simple block colouring as it gives the model a bit more of a cartoon feel.

Hopefully the first of many.

As for the new anime series, I really can't recommend it enough! It's nothing like the absolutely awful live action film released a couple of years ago. Yamato 2199 simply modernises the original series and have made it more logical and removed some of the over the top sillyness. There are some additional characters as well and the space battles are gorgeous! Check it out!

Turn one. My fleet is lined up in formation to take over the galaxy!

Next up we played a six player game of Twilight Imperium which was a lot of fun! We haven't played it for close to a year I think as we burned out a little on it last time. I got to play the Yssaril tribes who are generally considered to be the best race, with their ability to skip turns and hoard action cards. It was a fairly close game with only the Mentak player lagging seriously behind. After having been at it for about nine hours we decided to end the game as if the Game Over card had been drawn. There were three of us sharing first place at eight victory points - me, Letnev and Sarr - but since I had the most completed objectives I was the victor. Yay! Now, don't let the nine hour play time scare you off. We take it very slow and this includes breaks for eating and lots of talking on the side. We do have another game lined up for next week that I'm looking forward to!

Finally... I've payed my first Infinity campaign game! You all probably know that I hold Infinity in very high regard, but the excellent rules and the beautiful models have sometimes feel wasted on simple deathmatch games like we've been playing up until now. Sure, there are loads of fan made scenarios, but having an official scenario/campaign book like Paradiso feels like the final piece of the puzzle being slotted in!

That's no Pangguling, I hear you say. Well, that T/O marker IS a ninja so... ha!

We (of course) played the first scenario, Data Recovery, and my opponent was the mercenary heavy Qapu Khalqi. He fielded a group of Kaplan Tactical Service, a group of Odalisques sprinkled with some specialists and a remote. I had a very diverse list featuring several different hackers (going from a Shang Ji to a Ninja) some light infantry, a couple of remotes, an Engineer and finally a Tiger Soldier and a Daofei to lay down the hurt.

My opponent seized the initiative early and analyzed the first alien tech which revealed where the relevant data was located. Unfortunately for me my opponent had that area well covered by a Odalisque with a Spitfire. He dropped two Yuan Yuan who threw smoke all over the place and allowed his engineer to get close to the alien tech. The tide turned when I brought in my Tiger Soldier armed with a HMG though! With the greater range of the HMG and the Mimetism to make him harder to hit the Tiger Soldier pretty much cleaned house on my left flank, allowing my engineer to make her way to the alien tech and download the data. She made it back to the Pangguling remote but failed the upload roll. Grrr!

On the right flank my Shang Ji charged forward and torched a couple of KTS operatives. That meant my opponent was in retreat and his last few models ran off the table. This of course meant that I didn't have any more chances to try and upload the data and I won with a measly two points! Sometimes it doesn't pay to kill your opponent!

It was a fun game and playing a detailed scenario like this really shows off all the cool stuff in Infinity that you normally don't see in tournament style games. In most of these scenarios Baggage Remotes are either mandatory or helps you greatly if you bring them and although I've got a couple of Pangguling I hadn't managed to assemble them in time for the game. This weekend I took time to put them together and magnetise them though and they certainly are cute little buggers!

The total reaction version.

I need to put together my spec-ops model as well and then it's time for painting!

That's most of what I've been up to. Expect another post going through the new Infinity releases I missed last month as well as the new ones for February (Bao troops!!) tomorrow or so...

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Sunday, 23 December 2012

X-Wing Kessel Run Event

The Millenium Falcon and Red Two.

Hello dear readers!

Sorry for the meager amount of posts lately. Seems life and Christmas and stuff got the best of me. I've squeezed in some board gaming in the form of High Frontier and Gears of War, and I've got my hands on some of the new Dust Warfare models from Campaign Book Hades! More on that later though.

We were actually prepping to play some Dust Warfare this weekend, but then Anders discovered that Alphaspel, a local games store where I buy most of my stuff, was running the X-Wing Kessel Run Event! Having some excellent prices like the Millenium Falcon and Slave-1 on offer we decided to enter. Now, playing the game is a reward in itself, but getting one of the big boys... that gets you fired up. Hehe! It had been a while since we played X-Wing though so we decided to meet up early to get in a practice game, so we could refresh our memories of the rules as well as test out our squadron builds.

With this event coming up I found an great excuse to put some extra paint touches on my models. I looked through some different reference photos as well as Buckaroo's excellent blog for inspiration and ended up painting Wedge's Red Two and Luke's iconic Red Five. And since I will be getting two more X-Wings for sure Red Leader and Red Three (Biggs!) will join them. Beside painting individual detailing on the fuselage I also decided to paint engine glow and I think this really helped to add some dynamic flair to the models!

Red Five flanked by Red Two and Gold Two. 

Is it a bit too pink? Maybe.

Anyway, getting back to plannig my squadron...

The way I see it a three ship rebel build don't have enough staying power or offensive power to measure up against larger imperial swarms of 6+ ships, so I knew I wanted four ships at least. At first I considered four X-Wings, but that would have meant buying an extra core box, which is not within budget at the moment, so three X-Wings and one Y-Wing. Garven Dreis (Red Leader) and "Dutch" Vander (Gold Leader) have a great synergy between their special abilities so those would form the core of my force. To provide extra strike power and hit points I also broght two X-Wing rookie pilots - they only have a pilot skill of 2, but I've found that as long as you have one or two pilots with decent skill, some with lesser isn't that big of a problem. Here's what my squadron looked like:


Total Squad Points: 99

Pilot: Garven Dreis, X-Wing (26)
Upgrades: R2 Astromech (1)

Pilot: "Dutch" Vander, Y-Wing (23)
Upgrades: Ion Cannon Turret (5)R5-K6 (2)

Pilot: Rookie Pilot 1, X-Wing (21)
Upgrades: No upgrades Selected

Pilot: Rookie Pilot 2, X-Wing (21)
Upgrades: No upgrades Selected

The idea obviously being to get target locks aplenty from Duch with his astromech and extra focus from Garven, allowing me to attack as often as possible with both - making for some seriously deadly shots. This worked well during my test match against Anders; I flew in a tight formation on my left flank, with rookies at the front and Garven and Dutch staggered behind them. For the first three turns I simply flew 1 straight ahead to allow the imperials to break formation as they tried to move through the asteroids. When they finally were in range they were pretty much tangled up and I could start overlapping my firing arcs fairly effectively - ending in a win for the rebels.



Now it was time for the real event however!

The turn up wasn't as great as the organizer had hoped as there were only six of us, however I wasn't too upset since that meant better chances of winning. Hehe! We would play two games each, in a Swiss style tournament, and then the top two players would meet in the finale using two pre-built lists consisting of the new ships.

Match One

In my first game I faced a guy named Micke and his imperial semi-swarm. Not a full eight TIE swarm fortunately, but six fighters was still the most I had ever faced. He had four academy pilots though who all have a pilot skill of 1, meaning they have to set up first. Micke deployed them in two pairs, one on each flank. This was just what I was hoping for as this would hopefully allow me to deploy in a refused flank and deal with the pincers piecemal.  I set up my tight formation and as he had already committed himself Micke split up his two "star pilots" - Vader and Howlrunner.

First turn.

I advanced slowly... almost a little too slow I feared as I saw his pincer element coming towards me at considerable speed! Things looked up when I got into contact with his frontal force though as target locks and focus tokens flowed like wine! Howlrunner was the first TIE to meet his demise and I damaged a couple more, however the TIEs returned fire and vaped Rookie 1.

First exchange of fire.

In a critical moment in the game my formation and the two remaining TIEs from his frontal element wanted to do Koiogran turns (Immelmans) past each other, but since Howlrunner (with Swarm Tactics) was out of the picture the academy pilots had to move first, stopping them as they came into base contact with my formation. In return I made a coordinated turn with all three ships leaving me in an almost perfect position on the TIE fighters six!

"It's called a Koiogran turn, suckers!"

Around this time Vader and his cronies had arrived, however they had some trouble staying in formation. Some shots were exchanged but although damage was applied (to the imperial side mostly) I didn't manage to destroy anything (one TIE got disabled by the Ion cannon though!). The next turn proved bloody! Vader made a neat move putting himself behind my formation, but the rest of the TIEs were out of position and couldn't line up any clean shots. The rebels on the other hand destroyed two TIEs and in the following turn the ionized TIE revved his engine a bit too hard as power came back on and he ran off the playing field (counting as destroyed). Vader shot at me but didn't do enough damage and that was the end of the game.

I'm happy that I managed to stay in formation all the way through!

Counting up points I got 55 points vs Micke's 21 earning me a Match Win (five points). This put me in the lead of the tournament as the others only had Modified Match Wins (three points). Looking good!


Match Two

In my second game I met yet another imperial player. Although it would have been interesting to play a mirror match I was still happy with this as it's what I'm used to. Fredrik, who commanded the imperials, had put together a different squadron from Micke. There were more named pilots but one less ship on the whole. I used my refused flank tactic again while Fredrik deployed his in two close groups at the center of his deployment zone.

Big empty space is empty. I need to get cracking with my 3D asteroids!

I trundled forwards slowly but the imperials were in a great hurry and raced towards me at max speed! During the second turn I made the mistake of continuing dead ahead when I probably should have banked right, robbing me of some shots. I did manage to destroy a single TIE but then made some stupid decisions where I wasted target locks and focus trying to shoot Dark Curse, who's immune to that stuff!

I should have banked...

The following turn was a big mess in every way! My ships all managed to crash into TIEs, asteroids or each other meaning I didn't get to take any actions - and of course I lost a hit point from the asteroid (something I would keep doing). This was a turning point for me and from this point forward it was pretty much every man for himself as everyone was flying all over the place! In the tumult Rookie 1 was destroyed (again!) and both Garven and Dutch were taking heavy damage.

Everything was going wrong at the same time!

The following turn both Dutch and Garven kept flying into asteroids in desperate attempts to get out of the TIE firing arcs, while the rookie made a koiogran turn to get his bearings on his enemies. Dutch managed a couple of shots behind him with his Ion cannon, stunning one of the Obsidian Squadron pilots for two turns straight!

In the end this wild gamble paid of as both Garven and Dutch barely espaced with one hit point left each and it came down to the shot by the rookie. Garven coached him through it and Dutch had linked his targeting computer with the rookie's. He pressed the firing studs and patchow-patchow - the TIE went up in a ball of dust! This was the final turn of the game so we added up the points.

I got 33 points vs Fredrik's 21 earning me a Modified Match Win (three points). This put me at eight points, tied with a guy named Steve who also played rebels. As we were only six players we only played two seeding games before the finale and me and Steve rolled off to see who would get to pick which pre-built list first...

Finale

I rolled the more hits on the dice and decided to forego the huge Falcon, flown by Lando, with A-Wings in favour for the more hard-hitting Firespray 31, flown by Kath Scarlet, with TIE interceptors.

Sorry for the fuzzy pictures during this match. Guess I was shaky from hunger.

The first couple of turns proved bloody as the interceptors and Firespray made quick work of one of the A-Wings and all but killed the other. Soontir Fel also put some heavy damage on the Falcon before succumbing to a fluke roll (even with his four evade dice thanks to stealth device).

Interceptors are absolutely deadly! I see a lot of all Interceptor lists in the near future...

The limping A-wing blasted away from the Firespray at top speed but couldn't evade it for long (having a large base makes these big ships surprisingly quick!) and was eventually blown apart by the heavy laser cannons of the Firespray.

That dot in the distance is an A-Wing running away.

What followed after this was a cat and mouse game between the Millenium Falcon and Kath Scarlet. While the Falcon was more heavily damaged the 360° fire arc meant that it could pretty much fly however it wanted, not needing to "aim". The Firespray can fire to the rear as well, but I lost one or two turns of fire when I made maneuvering mistakes, and this allowed Lando to catch up - damaging me heavily.

I had managed to put a critical hit on the Falcon, Damaged Cockpit, meaning Lando's piloting score was reduced to 0. However it was looking like Kath wouldn't make it as her ship only had a single hit point left vs the Falcons four! In the final turn Lando flew a bit too close to an asteroid and bumped into it, causing a hit, and then I rolled a very lucky four hits... Falcon evaded.... one of them! Which wasn't enough and Kath Scarlet flew off with a feeling of having been extremely lucky. Still, a win is a win. :)

No turret, but rearward facing guns is the next best thing. Go Firespray!

This meant I was the champion of our little tournament and I decided to pick the falcon to bring with me home. Although I play mostly rebels the final match didn't really matter all that much to me as I want Slave-1 as well. Still the Falcon is even more iconic and I'm looking forwad to trying her out in our future games.

Final Thoughts

I had a great time and was happy to see that the other players were all nice, sporting people who didn't stink of sweat and could hold a conversation without nerding off too much. Thanks for a great day guys! I'm definitely up for more later on. :)

What today taught me when it comes to the game is the importance of formation flying and maneuvering. You really want to create overlapping fields of fire - kill zones - with your ships and the moment your formation breaks is usually the moment you hand off your chances of winning to lady luck. Kind of like the battle of the second Death Star...

I probably wasn't able to exploit the Garven-Dutch combo quite as much as I had wanted to (mainly due to poor planning from my part), but it proved devastating when it did go off, often netting me four hits. So these two feel like a strong pair. Still, I think I'd like to try out Wedge next time.

Asteroids make things much more fun! When me and Anders had played non-mission games earlier we had simply played on a totally open table, leading to boring, predictable jousting battles. Asteroids help to break up the board a bit and make things more interesting.

The more I play X-Wing the more I start to appreciate the mechanics. Sure it's luck driven in many ways and fluke dice rolls can turn the tide in either direction. But being able to realiable create these kinds of flukes is one of the keys to the game (like the target lock/focus combo). However what I'm even more impressed with is how real life dog fight tactics can be applied to the game. In modified form of course, but it's nice when there's a proper connection to real life tactics rather than being simply "game tactics". It's very much like how I feel Infinity rewards real infantry skirmish tactics. It's neat!

Also Heavy Laser Cannons are... awesome! Sad that I didn't get to play with the bombs.


This has gone on long enough, so I'll simply leave you with some shots of the beautiful Millenium Falcon. I'll probably do some touch ups on her here and there - enhance some detailing and add engine glow for starters - but the model really looks great straight out of the box as well:




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Thursday, 27 September 2012

X-Wing - First Impressions

 Setup for scenario one: civilian escort.

Finally I got my crooked claws on the X-Wing core box from FFG! Yesterday I managed to play a couple of quick games against Anders, and today I played once against Kosta before our three-way Dust Warfare battle (more on that later). The expansions haven't arrived yet for either of us, so we simply played the first couple of scenarios in the rulebook.

In the first scenario a lone x-wing is trying to escort a civilian transport to the other table edge while accosted by two TIE fighters. As written it's a basic scenario with no extra equipment or named pilots, but even so the game is fun! In my first game against Anders I managed to blow up both his TIEs in two turns and we thought "that was quick!". Of course, we totally missed that the imperial player gets reinforcements in that scenario and we also, for some reason, got the notion that a TIE only has two hull points instead of three.

Pew-pew!

I played the same scenario against Kosta today and it was a very different experience! I played as the Imperials this time while Kosta took control of the single Red Squadron pilot. I flew straight at the x-wing with both TIEs, aiming to cripple it early in the game. I managed to strip both his shield and doing one damage while not taking any damage in return! However as we closed in on each other further some accurate rebel fire severely damaged my academy pilot's fighter and he desperately turned right to get out of the x-wing's firing arc!


My obsidian squadron pilot raced past the rebel ship and fired a salvo at the transport, bringing it down to half hull points. So far, reasonably good! During the next couple of turns my damaged tie made a koiogran turn (Immelman) and started heading back into the fight. In the meantime the obsidian pilot continued to stay close on the transport, firing at every opportunity, but that thing had some kind of hot shot pilot behind the stick since it managed to swerve and jinx in a most un-transport like way!

"Acthung, x-wing!"

The x-wing was hot on the obsidian TIE's tail and it wasn't long until it was simply dust floating through space (target lock is powerful!). The transport was nearing the opposite table edge now and would probably make it off in another couple of turns. I would be able to bring on a reinforcement TIE though so I was still in the fight! My damaged academy pilot had finally got back into the fight and the x-wing was just within long range of its cannons. I didn't expect to do any damage at this range (two attack dice vs three defence dice) but in a stroke of luck I rolled two damage and Kosta rolled... nothing! Ka-boom! Of course, I still had to destroy the transport to win, but considering the escort was gone and that I had reinforcements arriving just in front of the transport we called it as an Imperial victory. This time we forgot about the special defence manuver the x-wing can do, providing the transport with evade tokens. 

In the second scenario I played as Luke Skywalker himself as he was hiding in an asteroid field, trying to repair his ship so he could escape into hyperspace. Naturally, the Empire was not about to let that happen and sent Dark Curse and "Mauler" Mithel to take care of it. Luke had to hold out for five turns where he couldn't go faster than speed 2, and then escape off any table edge.

Target loking "Mauler" Mithel didn't do much good as he stayed behind me...

The two TIEs came at me from two different directions. I target locked "Mauler" and then headed towards Dark Curse and came out of the asteroid field blasting! I hit Dark Curse but not enough to destroy him. Fortunately for me he took care of this himself as in his next maneuver, obviously disoriented from the attack, he flew straight into a nearby asteroid and exploded into a million pieces! Pew-pew! Boom! 

"Mauler" was a different matter entirely though. He managed to get in close, netting him four attack dice, and cause some serious damage! His speed was a bit too high though and he overshot Luke as he banked right and headed towards the hyperspace point. The ship was repaired and I just had to leave off a table edge. I still had two hull points left and "Mauler" was some ways off behind me. This was looking good! Anders fired a pot shot at the far-off x-wing and rolled two hits while I rolled... nothing! Luke got blown up and another win to the Empire!


Like I said, even playing like this with basic pilots with no upgrades we had a blast! It plays quickly but there are still all kinds of tactical decisions to make during your turn. Trying to predict your opponent's moves as well as deciding what action to take and how to use it to best effect. We bungled the first game but the other two were both very close fought affairs! Two lucky long ranged shots ended both games, but those seemed like flukes to us and we were all fairly surprised when it happened! Cool though. :)

It seems to me like the game is weighed in the attackers favour. While you can absolutely escape unharmed with some lucky dice rolling I think you can expect some damage to be done in most attacks at favourable ranges. This is a good thing though as the games become fast and action packed! Nothing is more boring than firing away at each other and nothing happens (this might be a problem for Empire vs Empire).

I've got the X-Wing expansion on its way as well as three Y-Wings. I just couldn't help myself, I really love those big burly things! And who can say no to a 360° firing ion cannon?! The basic game mechanics are solid and makes for a fun game, and on top of that there is the whole pilot/equipment/skills combo game that I think will be a blast to explore. I've already started thinking about different 'combos' and which pilots have good synergy together. I really want to try out some Astromech droids and proton torpedoes as well!

A proper review will follow after I have some more games under my belt.
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Friday, 1 May 2009

Full Thrust battle report

So today I had my first proper Full Thrust battle. Granted we were using the light rules and fleets, but it's a step up from cruiser duels.

I was using the Green fleet represented by the UNSC and my friend Paul took command of the Red fleet represented by the FSE. As you may know the red fleet is the faster one with most ships having a thrust rating of six. The green is generally slower with its four, but makes up for that with more hull points and a few more guns. Please excuse the weird green space the ships have stumbled into. I'm going to get a black piece of felt for the next battle.

So we started out at opposite corners about 60 MU apart. Paul split his fleet up a bit with two destroyers and a light cruiser heading off on his right flank.

The Red fleet moving out.


I on the other hand kept my capital ships rather close together with the escorts picketing my flanks; this seemed like the thing to do considering the lower thrust rating on my ships.

The starting setup for the Green fleet.


The first three turns were spent with the two fleets slowly closing in on each other. Having the slower fleet I tried to close quickly so as not to let the red fleet use it's superiour maneuverability. Paul on the other hand started off rather slowly.

On the fourth turn my (surprisingly heavily armed) frigates fired their first shots on one of the destroyers facing them, but not doing much damage. The turn after the two fleets were close enough to open fire en masse and it did not go well for me. Although I did manage to inflict some damage here and there Paul's fire crippled one of my light cruisers, a frigate and a destroyer. It was looking grim...


The two fleets starting to exchange fire.


However things were about to change. The following turn Paul accelerated and split his main group into two, with the battlecruiser and a light cruiser turning starbord and the heavy cruiser continuing straight with the two frigates. I on the other hand braked hard and tried to concentrate my fire on the battlecruiser. At first my fire kept being rather ineffectual but then my own battlecruiser made up for it by destroying both pulse torpedo launchers as well as completely blowing up the engines. Since the red battlecruiser had a velocity of 14 and was pointing to a close by table edge it was effectively out of the game.



"Can I fire on that destroyer?" Yes, yes he could.


The following turn Paul continued with his pincer movement as he kept encircling my core fleet. I tried to make a hedgehog kind of formation, so I wouldn't get overflanked, with my light and heavy cruisers turning one way and my battlecruiser turning another.

The pincer closing and the hedgehog balling up. The FSE light cruiser to the left was destroyed by fire from my heavy cruiser after this picture was taken.


During the fire phase I managed to destroy one of his light cruiser and cripple a frigate while he crippled one of my destroyers. By now my two frigates were dead in the water with no guns left so they were out as well. I managed to inflict some damage on his heavy cruiser but it still had about half it's hull points left.

"Fire broadside!"


By this time we decided to end the game as time was starting to run out. However, Paul admitted defeat as he was in a disadvantaged position, having lost his battlecruiser and a light cruiser while my battle and heavy cruiser were practically unhurt. You can see how the game ended on the picture below.


After the final turn.


I got to say, Full Thrust is as much fun as I thought it would be! I'm really glad I got into it. However I'm looking forward to playing with the full rules next time as things could have been very different if we had used the rules for repair teams etc.
And I want to use fighters, missiles, ECM and... well, all the fun stuff! Hehe!

This time we had eight ships per side and played seven turns which took about three hours, most of which was the last two-three turns when the firing got more intense. Eight ships was good for a starter fleet but as I got more used to writing orders it felt like 10 or 12 wouldn't be a problem. I think around 10 ships is about right for an afternoon while a larger fleet engagement is better reserved for an evening with a pizza break.

Again, loads of fun! Highly recommended!
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