"Phaser Lock battle report" Topic

Got a chance to play Phaser Lock with 9 players Saturday night. It went well. Here is a quick battle report.

The forces were 3 federation cruisers and 2 destroyers (man:3 shield:4 hull:4 weapons:as cruiser) versus a Romulan Bird of Prey and 3 Klingon Cruisers (sold to the Roms).

The Feds were responding to a call for help from listening station 5 along the federation/neutral zone border. Several Romulan Battle cruisers had been detected crossing the zone on course to federation space.

Early on, the Romulan battle cruisers clustered around a large asteroid near a long edge of the board in a failed attempt to outflank the federation. The federation was spread all over the board, distracted by the Romulan bird of prey which swung wide to the right away from the main force. The Federation Countered with the Yorktown (CA) and the Hermes (DD) warping ahead of the main force to engage the battlecruisers. Initially things looked good for the boys in green as the Yorktown lost a phaser bank and 2 warp bubbles early in the exchange.

However, the initial advantage of enjoyed by the Romulans was fleeting. The focused and intense assault by the Yorktown and Hermes (with some assistance from the main force) resulted a scattering of the Romulan formation. Things could have gone in favor of the Romulans again, when a romulan captain made the ultimate sacrifice: Self-Destructing his heavily damaged Battlecruiser which had been surrounded by Feds at point blank range. The Resulting explosion rocked the shields of the Federation ships, but did little real damge. The remaining scattered Romulan Battle Cruisers quickly fell in succession as the Federation ships concentrated fire of each in turn. I blame the inferior Klingon engineering and humbly suggest the Praetor buy domestic in the future!

In the end, a lone Romulan Bird of Prey swooped in for a final attack on the Saladin (DD). Rolling well for the first time all weapons found their mark, but the Romulan plasma projector the Feds had been worried about all game, did minimum damage (snake eyes) . The feds were able to focus great firepower on the poor Bird of Prey before it's cloaking device could be engaged. There was not a single Romulan survivor. The border was held and for now the federation is safe.

Rules can be found here: link

Actually, don't you have to join a Yahoo! group to get the rules? Might as well put that link, though the UK site-o-links is AWESOME. ;->=

link

I'll see if I can't get on, though the AAR above could have used a bit more explanation of the mechanics.

How long did the game take? How did you like the rules?

Thanks,

John

I liked the rules although I did make a few tweaks.
The game was over in 2 hours. This was partly because I was miss-allocating damage (applying all damage which penetrated shields directly to hull), which made the ships a bit more fragile than they should have been.

I think I could run a group of 8-10 players in 4 hours as long as the players are eager to engage each other.

Never heard of these rules … can you give a synopsis?

Doug

Sounds like fun.

I'd be interested in more info about the rules as well.

The Rules are quick play and presented in 3 pages Excluding a few tables which are on the ship templates.

Frigates, Cruisers and Dreadnoughts are presented for Federation, Klingon and Romulan races.

Turns are split into 3 phases: move/shoot/damage control
slowest ships act first in each phase.

weapons are rated by dice and arc of fire. All arcs are in 90' increments.

hits are determined by counting range (1,2,3,4,5+) and rolling dice. All dice which score over range are hits. Results of '6' are always hits, '1's always miss.

There are rules for beam weapon, torpedoes, Romulan plasma bolts, cloaking devices, transporters, tractor beams, boarding actions, ramming and self destruct.

There are a few ambiguities in the rules but they are simple enough to straighten out.

I joined the group and the rules look decent. I even saw some Klingon BOP and Mirandas in pics. However, no ship sheets. Do they or any others exist?

Thanks,

John

The klingon BOPs are stated as Frigates IIRC. I imagine the Mirandas are simply Cruisers.

I played the Bird of prey (he of the cloak and plasma). I liked the rules a lot but my ship was tricky to play and i only got off one good shot. I rolled snake eyes for damage on 2D6 (all other weapons do one damage per hit). So I had to scratch a crew box to reflect the purge of the gunnery deck.

The game was a play test for CincyCon.org when it will be run on May 8. I like the rules but they definitely need to get some more ship cards posted.

But my one complaint with all space games (so far) is always the same: Boats In Space! No third D…

I'll be checking this out at the show. Serves me right for not paying closer attention to the rules being used. What scale ships?

Thanks,

John

Most of the ships are old Galoob Micromachines. Their Federation Cruisers are in scale with the Starline minis (1/3788). The Fed Destroyers are old Zochi plastics. These are also 1/3788 scale I believe.

That's great. Over the years I have picked up 9-10 boxes od the AMT TOS Trek ships. I converted the Fed ships into Destroyers and Dreadnoughts aside from just Cruisers. They run 6-8 inches long.

Can't wait to see the game.

Yes the rules do look good and nice and simple, would like to see any startrek ships covered at some point… Please..

What distances do you use for the weapons ranges?

For those interested our group has a quick play version based on Star Fleet Battles. Theres 3 impulse a turn, moving and shoting each impulse, we have 4-5 ship SSD's for each of Fed, Rom, Klingons, Gorns, Lyrans, Hydrans and Kzinti. The move and firing are geared toward minitures.
We can do a 10 ship battle in a couple hours, a 20 ship in 4-5. Rules are about 3 pages. Heres the link if anyone wants to look link

Travis

Thanks for the link Travis.

I'll have to check those out as well.

I came up with a few stats for different vessels, so will post those, when I have the time, in case anyone wants to check them out.

No problem, we like it.
One thing that suprised our group was the inititive system. At a glance its easy enough, highest roller decides which side moves first, so the answer is obvious, you always want to move last, right, not always:) You see its like this, side A moves half their ships, side B moves all their ships, then side A moves the last half of their ships.
The trick is after we played a game we realized that because you had to move half your ships first to move last the other side got a clue as to what you where up to and then could move all their ships to counter your plans. Sometimes the side that won wanted to make the other side move first just to see what they where up to even though it ment they would not be moving last.
Turned out to be a very simple mechanic that added alot of fun challenge to the movement.

Travis

More proposed weapons and vessel stats are now up on the Yahoo Group.

Check them out, and let us know what you think.

Yeah, a lot of activity now. Is a new group going to be started due to lack of an owner?

Thanks,

John

I believe so.

I just ran a solo test battle using my proposed stats and other rules, and it was a fairly near run thing, but a Klingon D7 finally squeaked out a win over a Fed CA.

Nip and tuck right up to the very end, when the Fed CA was trying to escape the D7, after having all of its weapons knocked out.

Would have made it too, except for the Bridge critical on the last turn of the straight Warp Speed Run.

The D7 was pretty badly battered too, but its crew and commander survived to savor their rare victory.

In all of the other attempts, the Fed CA has won, so I've been trying to add in drone rules, and to tweak them to make for a more balanced game. Looks like that may have finally been achieved.

I'll have to post more on the Drone and Anti-Drone rules, when time permits.

I finally got around to putting my custom federation SSDs for Phaser Lock together. I can't seem to post them to the Official Phase Lock Group, so I'm posting them On My personal Web site.

PDF link

Thanks for the effort, I know I appreciate it, Mighty!

Doug

@MightyChthulu

I forgot to ask; while I've never tried, if I find I can post there, do you want me to add it to the group files?

Doug

Edit: Nevermind; I don't see an upload button.

Scale Creep – if you want 3D Star Trek, try these free rules: salute.co.uk/3dstartrek

Very simple rules (although the 3D stuff is the brain taxing bit…) All the play sheets are there too as PDFs

The shots are from ships 25 years old but I have better balls nowadays (!) – crystal plastic for making xmas tree decorations polystyrene-balls.co.uk and they are very effective (with the little lug snapped off). You could even use flexible mounts and rare earth magnets nowadays if you didn't want to put ships in balls…

John T

The Phaser lock rules look interesting, the yahoo group seems dead anyone have the link for where it migrated to?

Brian

Yea, it is pretty much, due to a lack of moderation, and spammers taking over.

I'll check on the name for the alternative site. Can't recall it right now, but will post soon.

New group: PhaserlockStarshipCombatSystem

link

Did someone here post this site? :

link

Doug

No, I hadn't seen that site before. i added the info to the yahoo group.

The rules appear to have changed.

Thanks,

John

TheBeast beat me to it.

I wish the Google site had all the rules in one place, and/or a PDF to download.

I don't relish cutting and pasting all those pages, to try the other Phaser Lock system out.

While we're on the subject, has anyone come up with some TOS Gorn stats for their vessels?

I'd love to be able to give some of them a spin, against the Feds, Romulans, etc.