This was a 'training game' for one of our newest players who is in the process of collecting his own Battlestar Galactica fleet. I loaned him mine which gave me the opportunity to try out a fleet of my own creation using the Dindrenzi by Spartan Games. We also chose to use the Full Thrust Random Event Cards.
The Dindrenzi Navy
I chose to use gunboats instead of fighters with this fleet. The short background on these guys – their defensive technology is fairly advanced but their engines and weapons are nothing spectacular. They cannot build reactionless drive engines small enough to fit in a fighter so they must rely on gunboats instead. The gunboats all have FTL drives so may get to any battle on their own.
The smaller ships are the gunboat squadrons.
Each squadron has 4 craft armed with Gatling Batteries, 1 with an ECM suite and 1 with Scatter Pack guns.
The Colonial fleet
Terrain was set up without any real thought of how it would affect the battle. I put the ringed planet off to one corner and then set up a row of asteroids half way across the table to represent an outer ring of the planet. Then I placed a small earth like planet in the opposite corner.
The first turn the colonials fired all of their missiles at extreme range hoping to swamp my defenses or at the very least burn up some of my scatter packs. Two of the gunboats raced out to meet them.
All of the missiles were shot down save for one which did minor damage to the battleship.
I played this card which enabled me to take one of his.
One viper squadron would start with one less point of fuel.
The battlestar launched two of it viper squadrons and everyone else maneuvered trying to get firing solutions though the asteroid field. The 'terrain' would prove to be a major hindrance to both sides and it became clear whoever could get the first clear shot would at an advantage.
The next turn the colonials launched missiles again. I played this card which cause the IFF on one salvo to mistake the launching ship for the target. Fortunately the gunners manning the PDS batteries were able to shoot them all down.
The rest of the missile and the vipers roared in on the Dindrenzi. After the ships moved one viper squadron was too far away to attack. The colonial player did not want to burn any fuel on a secondary move.
This is where the Dindrenzi scout came in handy. Its area ECM reduces engagement range by one for eah Area ECM system so by three MU total.
Most of the missiles were shot down by scatter packs but but I was rapidly running out of the things.
The colonial player used this card for one of his viper squadrons but after being hit with two scatter packs the single survivor only did two points of damage.
The Dindrenzi had the initiative and I chose to fire the spinal mounts on the battleship. It was the first chance Ive had to use anything like them against regular ships and I was eager to see how it worked.
The blast almost cut the escort ship in half. the asteroids prevented me from shooting at anything more valuable.
Never the less 24 dice pretty much gutted the ship. I also fired a boarding torpedo at it on the off chance I might capture it but the torpedo missed.
The next turn the colonials launched the last of their missiles and with me running out of scatter packs I had to pull back two of my gunboats to screen the the fleet. He also moved up the rest of his vipers and intercepted one of my gunboat squadrons.
This was the result. Three gunboats destroyed. In return I only managed to destroy three vipers out of twelve.
Of the attacking missiles most were destroyed tho a few managed to do some minor damage to the battleship.
Having the initiative again I fired the Scythe cruiser
( not shown in the picture, sorry)
and completely obliterated one of the Lakota escort frigates. Unfortunately the beam also caught my escort frigate knocking out one of its shields and damaging the engines. It also vaporized my gunboat squadron but on the plus side both viper squadrons went with it. All in all an acceptable exchange.
The two fleets maneuvered as much as the terrain allowed trying to line up their guns. The gunboats swung around hard, burning fuel for a secondary move to line up on the missile cruiser. The big disadvantage to gunboats is they can be engaged by regular ship weapons. The colonial player managed to destroy two of the gunboats but only fired his PDS at them choosing to save the ant-ship weapons for bigger prey. As a result the missile cruiser was destroyed.
I had the initiative again and with the spinal mounts on the battleship recharged I fired on the Kaladan Battlestar damaging it and causing critical damage to one gun and both forward turret mechanisms. The secondary beam weapons then finished off the damaged escort.
The Battlestar returned fire causing more damage to the battleship but not enough to do any real harm.
On the final turn the gunboats maneuvered into the battlestars aft arc. The colonial player used this card
which enabled combined with his plotted move to out-range the gunboats. They were forced to take a secondary move. this combined with an attack run would leave them out of gas for the rest of the turn.
However it wouldn't matter. None of the battlestar's weapons destroyed any gunboats. Admittedly it was very bad rolling. The ship was very much destroyed.
The final damage tally. Minimal damage to the battleship and minor damage to the escort frigate (all by friendly fire).
This proved to be a great learning game for my opponent and a good chance for me to try out some weapons I hadn't experimented with before. I'm still on the fence about gunboats over fighters. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. In a campaign empires armed with fighters would be at an advantage I think.
As for spinal mounts? Cool, intimidating, but if you cant line up more than one enemy I'm not sure if they are better than more conventional weapons. Of course there is also the problem of hitting your own units!
Any and all comments welcome!!!
examines the remaining heroes in the first release.
