A Bit Of 420 Starfleet

Saturday afternoon the Space Cadets converged upon Brunswick for the April 2019 iteration of Star Fleet Battles. This month's scenario was a meeting of Gorn and Jindarian and a bit of a "kitchen sink" game with ships, PFs, seeking weapons, a space station and ground combat. The outline...

One Toke Over the Line

Size 3, Class M planet in 2215 – Rastah CDXX

Hex 2214 is an ancient Jindarian ruin that Gorn scientists are studying. The Gorn have 2 BP in that hex to start the scenario.

Hex 2611 contains a moon. The Gorn have a Mobile Base, currently in 2511. It orbits counter-clockwise every other turn, with its first move at “Speed 1” of turn 1. It does not rotate as it orbits. The MB has a Barracks Module, a Hangar Module carrying 6 G-12 fighters (2 may be deployed CAP), a Power Module and a Sciences Module.

The Gorn mercenary Free Escort Carrier “Golden Egg” is in hex 2811, heading A, speed-0, WS-1. It carries six G-20 fighters.

A Gorn Battle Destroyer+ “Sharpened Scale” is set up on a map edge of sector F, WS-2, any speed, any heading.

Two Jindarian ships, an FFV (Kingston, carrying eight Meteor-3) and an FF (Marley) accompany three Ground Assault PFs. They have been dispatched to run the Gorn away from the ruins which hold significant cultural significance to the Jindarians. Any damage to the station will be a welcome bonus for sure!

They may start in anywhere along hex row 01XX any speed, any heading, WS-2.

We broke into teams - Mike and David took the Jindarians, I got the Gorn base, Ziggy took the Battle Destroyer and David D captained the CVE.

The evil Jindarian captains try to get their act together.

I was terrible about taking photographs. I managed to get my fighter group wiped out in short order by a wall of phaser and rail gun fire from the Jind. That kind of put me in a foul mood. The hate was ready to flow through me.

What I did have though was power and tractors. David's frigate started close enough to me to get snagged. A few impulses into the turn, Mike ended up in the same hex and I snagged him too. They were both pretty irritated. They proceeded to pummel my number 5 shield and caused plenty of damage but were still held in place for the Sharpened Scale to zip on over and smash the frigate with plasma and phasers. The tractor fun more than made up for losing my fighters.

Ziggy takes David through the damage allocation part of life.

The part of the game that mattered. The battle for the planet! The Gorn were represented by the orange and yellow counters. The Red were Jindarian.The battle began in earnest on turn 2 when the Jindarian PFs and Gorn shuttles made planetfall. We Gorn were heavily outnumbered, 33 to 22.

Somewhere around turn 4. David's FF is running from the BDD. David D's escort carrier "crosses the T" and hits Mike's carrier with a plasma D. Moments later he tractored Mike and shoved him into the planet. Hilarity ensued. The shuttles and PFs ascend through the atmosphere.

My favorite part of the game... to start turn 5, the PFs and shuttles had all broken atmosphere. We'd had a gentleman's agreement not to fire at eachother while within atmosphere. Once out, our five shuttles opened up on the down #1 shield of one of the PFs, exploding it. The explosion killed all the shuttles but it was worth it.

So, the ground combat, which really was the important part of the affair went like this. This are the number of BPs present on the planet at the start of combat of each of these turns:

               Jindarian    Gorn

Turn 2        33        22

Turn 3        28        25

Turn 4        16        21

Turn 5         9        20

End             3        15 

Suffice it to say, poor Mike and David were seriously betrayed by the ground combat dice rolls, whereas the Gorn rolls were excellent.

In the end, it was a solid Gorn victory, although the base had significant damage and all fighters had been destroyed. The BDD and mercenary carrier were in fine condition. Mike and David didn't really do anything wrong, they were quite simply screwed by the dice - reverse a couple of those ground combat rolls and we'd have had a different result. Clever use of the tractors threw them for a loop and helped us manage the space game. It allowed Ziggy to approach and smash with impunity. 

In the end, we all had a good time and it was an interesting and different type of game that featured lots of new or rarely used systems for us. That's much of the appeal of SFB for us - it's such a deep but flexible system that can be modified as necessary depending on the player mix and type of game that's desired.