This is an after action report on the scenario I ran at the Ground Zero Games convention this weekend (March 22-24, 2019).
I ran a scenario called "Assault on a NAC shipyard", wherein the NAC had found a derelict spacecraft, apparently from an alternate dimension (Federation Galaxy class), with the crew incapacitated.
The NAC tows the ship to a shipyard to try and learn its secrets, but the ESU, via a spy, learns of this and they send a large force to capture the shipyard and derelict.
The UNSC, hearing of this planned act of aggression, sends a force to assist the NAC in resisting the attack… but they also have their own agenda as well.
Each faction had their own specialized victory conditions, which weren't immediately apparent to the other players. One nice touch was that if a player had a ship captured and failed to get it back by the end of the game, said player would "lose", even if his faction did win. He would be court-martialed for having a ship(s) captured, and possibly even shot.
The ESU did eventually capture the station. During the fighting, several ships docked to the station to send over crew units to join the fighting. Unfortunately some of them were blown up by the ESU while docked and the resulting explosions crippled the shipyard. That spelled the end of the chance of anyone having a major victory due to too much equipment and research materials being destroyed.
I may run this game again at Historicon, after tweaking the boarding combat segment of the game to incorporate a few player suggestions, and possibly reducing the ship point cost a bit to speed up the game.
Initial setup:
End of turn 1:
End of turn 2:
The honored dead, turn 2:
End of turn 3:
The honored dead, turn 3:
End of turn 4:
The honored dead, turn 4:
End of boarding action on turn 4:
The previous turn and current turn had seen several ships blown up while docked to the station, which caused a lot of losses to the defending troops even before the boarding had commenced. I think this was the biggest factor in the ease at which the ESU took the station.
End of turn 5:
The honored dead, turn 5:
End of turn 5 boarding action:
The last boarding action round on turn 5: The ESU wins handily, with 10 Marines and a crew unit versus 4 UNSC Marines and 2 crew units…
I am already looking at some improvements to the scenario, and hope to run it at Historicon in July.
I also have some ideas for a followup scenario that is linked to this one for future development.
