Almost Home… a Stars & Lasers battle.

Ceptome Colony ship CC Patriarch an old Zeta Class Fighter Carrier left over from the alien wars is travelling back from a policing mission with her only escort CC Hampton an Epsilon Class Frigate when they run into a scouting force from a nearby enemy sector.

The Captain of the Patriarch is unable to make contact with the enemy force so realises they don’t want to talk so immediately orders his fighters to launch and form a screen against enemy fighters and missiles, he then orders the Hampton to keep close behind and watch for any enemy ships that get in behind the carrier.

The Comm’s Officer on board the Ferrious Colony Light Cruiser Teal reports again to the Captain that the Ceptome Colony carrier is again hailing them requesting passage through the sector, but again the Captain refuses to speak to anyone on the enemy ship.

“Order all ships to attack!” The Captain orders his Comm’s Officer “We will teach these fools not to enter our sector, destroy them!!”

A fighter carrier and its single escort are travelling through this sector after completing a mission in a nearby sector, they are travelling back to their colony several sectors away when they are surprised by an enemy scouting force.

Communications have failed so they now have to fight their way through…

The forces are as follows –

Ceptome Colony.

CC Patriarch a Zeta Class Fighter Carrier with turret and Rail Gun, plus three fighters and three fighter bombers.

CC Hampton an Epsilon Class frigate.

Ferrious Colony.

FC Teal an Omicron Class Light Cruiser.

FC Celeste an Omicron Class Corvette.

FC Aqua an Omicron Class Corvette.

Three fighters and three bombers.

The set up is on a long thin board and the Ceptome ships set up within 12” of one end and the Ferrious ships start within 12” of the other ( before the first turn begins all the Ferrious fighters move forward one full move )

Turn one, sees both forces move towards each other at full speed, and the Ferrious ships using their superior speed to close the gap faster, the carrier launches two flights of fighters.

Turn two and two fighters streak away from the Patriarch and start to form a screen in front of the big ship, in response the Ceptome fighters just power forward towards their prey.

Turn three the two Ferrious Corvettes turn in towards the carrier and fire off a missile each but both of their ships lasers miss.

The Captain of the Patriarch orders his ship to take evasive action and it turns away from the fast approaching Ferrious Corvettes as two more fighter groups launch from the big carrier.

All shooting was at long range from both forces and missed all targets…

Turn four and the fighters moved into range and dog fights between fighters raged around the bigger ships, one group of Ceptome fighters managed to take out one of the Ferrious missiles but one managed to get real close to the carrier before the PDS of the CC Hampton the Ceptome frigate took care of it.

The dog fights didn’t go well for the Ferrious fighters they lost one flight of fighters and one flight of bombers to the Ceptome fighters.

Turn five and the Ferrious corvettes streak around behind the frigate, firing off missiles into the rear of the ship causing some damage.

The FC Teal move in towards the the carrier and fired off a spread of missiles and one managed to get through the carriers considerable PDS doing some light damage.

The CC Patriarch then moved alongside the light cruiser and opened up with all the weapons it could bring to bear… and missed!!! I am sure that my dice rolling is getting worse 😢

The Ceptome ships need to do better than that if they want to make it out of this sector in one piece, the Ferrious ships are not doing well but at this rate they could seriously hurt the big carrier.

The CC Hampton moved in close behind the carrier again and fired off everything it could at the Ferrious Light Cruiser FC Teal stripping its shields away, but its missile was stopped by the cruisers PDS.

Turn six and the engineers on the FC Teal didn’t manage to reinstate the ships shields so will be defenceless until they can get them back up.

The Ceptome fighters harried the Ferrious fighters again and picked off a few more of the light craft, in return the Ferrious fighters destroyed a flight of Ceptome bombers.

Then two flights of Ceptome bombers swept in and attacked the FC Teal hitting the light cruiser doing severe damage to its hull and its shield generators, this will mean the engineers will have a real hard time getting them back up.

All three of the Ferrious ships turned and followed the carrier and its escort as they pushed towards safety.

Turn seven and both sides fighters took more losses, two single bombers swooped in to try and hit the carrier, one was obliterated by the ships PDS but the other managed to get in one missile to do some damage.

The four remaining Ceptome bombers from two flights moved in to target one of the Ferrious corvettes and did huge amounts of damage but somehow the small ship survived!

The FC Teal moved in behind the carrier and fired off a full spread of missiles into the rear of the big ship, and managed to get two missiles through the ships PDS doing lots of damage, then the two corvettes moved in behind the FC Hampton and hit the small ship with two missiles taking it out of the battle.

Now the carrier was in trouble, all of the bridge crew were silent as they watched their escort ship spin slowly away into space, if the Ferrious ships could keep on the pressure they may be able to stop the carrier from getting to safety… but two of the Ferrious ships were in bad shape so they had to try and keep away from the carriers weapons.

Turn eight and again there was a deadly dog fight amongst the fighters trying to stop the bombers getting close to the ships, bombers and fighters were lost on both sides but before they were destroyed two Ceptome bombers did some more damage on one of the corvettes.

The CC Patriarch moves forward towards safety and gives the Ferrious light cruiser a final parting shot with its rail-gun and almost splits the ship in two!

Seeing this the two corvettes decide to pull away and let the carrier escape…

So the victory goes to the CC Patriarch as it leaves the sector, its Captain will remember the sacrifice of the CC Hampton and its crew.

Well that was very interesting and didn’t turn out the way I thought it would, I didn’t think the battle would be that close.

At the start of that last turn the light cruiser and one corvette were down to the last one or two hull points and the other corvette only had three, the carrier was down to its last four hull points so the battle could have gone either way.

But luck was with the carrier as it activated first and managed to get a hit with its rail-gun, only the second of the game!!! and that was that the light cruiser was toast 😉

The fighters and the bombers were great fun as always, timing with them is so important, you have to time their bombing runs perfectly or they will get taken out by the target ships PDS or enemy fighters.

But if the bombers do manage to get in they are likely to give any ships Captain a very bad day…

Early on in the game both sides had some really bad shooting, my dice rolling was at an all time low 😢 but it picked up for both sides about half way through the battle which is why the battle ended so close.

Well the Patriarch’s crew are off down the pub to have a few drinks in memory of the crew of the Hampton…