This time around we tried out two fleets that are very fragile, very fast, very maneuverable and heavily Stealth-ed. For those of you that are familiar with the Eldar from Battle Fleet Gothic, I tried to stick to the theme of the ships. Hard to hit but once damage they fall apart quick. My opponent decided to fly his white stars in two flotillas of three with two other ships operating independently. I had a feeling the game was going to look more like some kind of aerial dog fight rather than a typical spaceship game. That's exactly what happened.
First the mat. I just received this from Corsec Engineering. Its their red nebula #2 and is amazingly vibrant. So much so that taking pictures of red ships against it was extremely difficult.
And now to the fleets.
ELDAR
The White Star Fleet
Unfortunately for (the Eldar) a great many of my systems would be moot in this battle. ECM, ADS, etc. On the other hand, his needle beams would be just as useless as long as my Holofields remained operational.
Turn One saw both fleets, esp the white stars split up to get around the asteroid fields and envelope the enemy. I was pretty cocky I admit. After all, I'm fighting against ships that looked like small plucked chickens.
The Reaper was able to line up one flotilla of White stars and vaporized all of them in one volley with its twin spinal mounts. Unfortunately one of the fighter squadrons the Eclipse launched got in the way and was destroyed as well.
The next turn was a complete disaster for the Eldar. I had badly miscalculated the turns for the Eclipse and Aurora. Ive been too accustomed to playing ships with conventional engines. The idea was to maneuver around the asteroid field. Both ships ended up in it prompting us to look up the rules for what happens as neither of us have ever flown ships into asteroids.
Long story short- at the speed i was traveling (17) there was no hope of any ship surviving so both were destroyed outright. With half my firepower now wreckage all over some floating space rock things were looking bad.
The next several turns both fleets flew back and forth unable to line up any shots despite our broad firing arcs. More often then not we ended up tail end right behind one another or too far away to fire because of our stealth hulls. Only my surviving fighter squadron was able to do any damage but it continuously had to use its secondary moves to get in behind the whit stars where they were vulnerable. Consequently fuel became an issue quickly and after three turns they ran out of gas and became spectators.
After five turns of chasing each other around the shadow cruiser and Nightshade destroyer ended up head on with one flotilla of white stars at point blank range where the stealth hulls did no good. Again, bad luck for me had my opponent winning the initiative and he fired one of his ships Gatling Batteries virtually gutting the Shadow cruiser. I returned fire with the Nighshade and missed with all of its weapons- typical. The next white star in line destroyed the Shadow. The Eldar Reaper cruiser was out of position and was unable to fire on any ship. The last white stars fired and destroyed the Nightshade. at that point we decided to call the battle.
All in all the Eldar ships worked pretty much as I expected despite their destruction. This was about the worst kind of battle for them to be in – against an opponent that they couldn't capitalize on their superior speed, maneuverability and stealth. Hopefully next time i can try them out against a more "traditional" navy.
Any and all comments welcome!!!!
