Wrong place, wrong time!! A Stars & Lasers battle.

You know when something goes so wrong and it’s all down to ‘timing’ and you realise that you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and your day is probably going to end badly because of it… well that’s what Captain Sanchez realised now, and he was cursing his bad luck.

But he didn’t have much time in which to curse though as the enemy super dreadnought was heading his way!

His Fenneris Colony force had been sent into this sector to deal with any Lathern Free World ships they could find, and his orders were to destroy any of these enemy ships that he finds.

With the strong force he had he felt that he was able to take on most of what the Lathern had to throw at him, but he hadn’t expected to find a heavy dreadnought!

As soon as his force had entered this sector it had been spotted by the Lathern Super ‘Frigg’ Class Heavy Dreadnought and her escorts, and now they were moving towards his force.

These huge ships were a heavier class of the standard Leviathan and Captain Sanchez knew he was in for a lot of pain.

Yes he was sure, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time…

Forces for this battle –

Captain Sanchez’s Fenneris force –

All of the Fenneris ships have turreted Railguns and full complement of engineers plus ablative armour

Battleship

Fighter Carrier – with three fighter and three fighter bomber stands

2 x Heavy Cruisers

Lathern force –

Heavy Dreadnought – has two turreted railguns plus two turreted twin lasers and carries two fighter and two fighter bomber stands

Five Frigates

Set-up

Both fleets start facing towards each other on opposite sides of the table with several asteroids scattered around.

I started with the basic ten random event cards plus two non-events cards.

Game length would be seven turns, at the end of that time any remaining ships will withdraw.

Turn one ( no event ) saw both forces power towards each other with the Lathern frigates releasing a wave of missiles with two of those missiles finding their target but the fighter carriers PDS made short work of them.

Turn two ( two frigates arrive ) Captain Sanchez saw the two frigates enter the area and was very pleased when he heard the Fenneris call signs as they joined his force, these two ships had been nearby and had rushed at full speed to help.

One of the Fenneris heavy cruisers moves forward and fires its lasers and railgun at the closest Lathern frigate and almost blows the small ship apart!! The rail gun causes huge internal explosions which take out most of the frigates weapon systems, Sanchez saw this and cheered along with his bridge crew.

The Fenneris carrier moves away from the Lathern missiles and uses an asteroid to trying to gain a little cover.

The badly damaged Lathern frigate manouevres around the incoming missiles and launches two of its own into the Fenneris heavy cruiser, but its PDS takes out both missiles. The frigate does manage to take down one shield on the carrier and one on the heavy cruiser.

Another Fenneris frigate moves to take advantage of the heavy cruisers PDS recharging and launches two more missiles into the defenseless ship stripping away its armour.

The Fenneris battleship and the heavy cruiser powered towards the lone frigate to their right and fired everything they had at it, but the little frigate managed to survive!

The two Fenneris frigates moved towards the rear of the dreadnought firing their lasers and managed to take down a few of the big ships many shields… let hope they don’t regret that!!

The dreadnought slowly moved forward closing the gap between it and the Fenneris battleship, but it hadn’t forgot those little annoying frigates and opened up with a huge broadside of lasers and almost destroyed the closest one!!!! then it turned more of its many weapons on the battleship… its railguns took most of the battleships ablative armour and its lasers stripped the battleship of shields, if the battleships engineers don’t manage to get them back up then it will be in a whole lot of trouble!

Turn three ( no event ) all ships managed to get their shields back up and running except the Fenneris carrier.

A flight of fighter bombers goes in for a bombing run against the Fenneris battleship, the big ships PDS only manages to destroy one of the bombers. A second flight of bombers fly in to attack the now defenseless ship but only manages light damage.

A bad turn for the Fenneris bombers all but one was destroyed and all they managed to do was destroy one Lathern frigate and damage two others.

The Fenneris heavy cruiser moved slowly around the two Lathern frigates and opened up with it the weapons it could bring to bear, but today the gunners were not managing to find their targets and the frigates only took a little bit of light damage.

The Fenneris carrier turns in close to one of the Lathern frigates and tears it apart with its railgun, the dead ship spins off into space.

The Fennis frigates push their attack into the rear of the dreadnought launching missiles and hitting the huge ship with their lasers, but all the first one managed to do was to take off a little of the big ships armour.

The second frigate moves in and tries the same tactic but this time the huge ships PDS easily deals with the incoming missiles.

Captain Sanchez seeing that dreadnoughts PDS was recharging decided to commit his battleship and moves it in to the attack and launches a full spread of missiles into the dreadnought, and opened fire with every weapon it could, once all the firing was done the dreadnought had lost all of its armour and only had one shield left, Sanchez prayed that he hadn’t committed his ship too early…

The huge dreadnought turned and moved slowly forward bringing the Fenneris battleship in close and fired!!

Huge holes appeared all along the side of the battleship, Sanchez was seeing damage reports coming in from almost every section of that side of his ship, but somehow, he still had control and his ship although it was badly damaged it was still in the battle.

The Fenneris heavy cruiser moved in close to give the battleship some support and was pleased to see most of his weapons doing damage to the dreadnought.

Turn four ( a random ship has a power failure ) the Fenneris heavy cruiser covering the battleship was having trouble with its weapons systems! Its engineers were working frantically to get the systems back up and working.

The engineers on board the dreadnought were also having trouble and could not get the big ships shields back up so it will be defenseless against laser fire for this turn!! This could be bad for the big ship.

Both sides fighters flew in to destroy the enemies bombers and successfully destroyed most of them, after the combat very few fighters were left in one piece.

Seeing that the dreadnoughts shields had not come back online Captain Sanchez ordered his battleship to move around and behind the huge ship bringing as many weapons to bear as possible.

From close range the battleships lasers did huge amounts of damage on the dreadnought and then the railgun found the dreadnoughts shield generators destroying them beyond repair, really bad luck for the dreadnought.

But the Lathern dreadnought was not out of this battle yet it slowly moved forward and brought its full broadside and all its turrets onto the Fenneris heavy cruiser and ripped it apart! When the vacuum extinguished the fires all that was left was a dead and burned hulk.

The crews on the Fenneris ships were silent, Sanchez stared at his tactical console in disbelief…

The Fenneris carrier moved into fire at the dreadnought, now it had no more fighters to launch it had to start adding its firepower against the big enemy ship.

The remaining Fenneris heavy cruiser found itself slightly out of position but still managed a couple of successful long shots into the dreadnought, and also managed to finish off a badly damaged Lathern frigate.

The captain of the Lathern dreadnought decided it would be best to leave this fight while his ship still could, he recalled his few remaining fighters and ordered his last frigate to FTL away with him… and that was that, the Fenneris force and Captain Sanchez had won against this huge and powerful dreadnought.

Well that was a lot of fun, the ‘Frigg’ class heavy dreadnought is a monster but with just a little bit of luck the smaller ships won, but it was very close.

The battleship and the two frigates were down to their last two points of damage each so I don’t think they would have survived long in this battle.

Once the Lathern engineers failed to get the shields up the big ship took loads of damage, and to lose the shields altogether with a critical hit on the shield generator was the end for the dreadnought.

Losing the heavy cruiser to one broadside was crazy, I only missed with one laser shot, that heavy dreadnought is brutal if it gets in close. I did also think I was going to lose the battleship the turn before as almost all of that broadside hit as well.

Well both forces will go back to their home systems and repair and refit ready for their next battle.