Dead Centre… Again!

Dead Centre… Again!

This was a re-run of a scenario that I did for Miniature Wargames a while back, two waring factions find a large alien ship hiding within an asteroid field waiting for help to arrive from a rescue force, but before the rescuers arrive the big alien ship dies.

The two factions see this as a chance to get information from the alien ship or even technology that they could use against the other faction…

This was an intro game for two friends that had never played Stars & Lasers before, so it was a good scenario for their first game.

I gave them a nice simple force list, which was –

1 x Battleship

1 x Destroyer

2 x Frigates

1 x Corvette

Once they had done their initial set-up they moved on to turn one, this saw some careful maneuvering on both sides, and some long-range missile firing, most of which never found their targets.

This is always the turn for learning the rules, ready for turn two and some crazy close-range shooting and missile fire!!

Some of the positioning and maneuvering of their ships on the second turn was, how can I put this… not great!

There were a few close shaves with asteroids! And at least one bump between enemy ships, but nothing too serious, their shooting wasn’t the best either, one or two shields taken out was about all they could manage, at least the PDS on both sides seemed to be working very efficiently.

Then the third turn was upon us, some of the missiles started to find their marks and ships were starting to be taken out of the battle.

The controller of the white ships was starting to get a good lead over his opponent, he had managed to take out three of the enemy ships to his one loss, but the Battleships hadn’t really been close enough to make any real impact on each other, but that was about to change on turn four.

Turn four saw the first real battle between the two big ships, they pounded each other and then decided that it was more fun to just crash into each other! I must admit it was funny to watch.

Part of the scenario allows for a third person to play the rescue force of Alien ships, that would be me for this game, all I needed to do was roll a double on two D6’s to have my ships arrive at the asteroid field, and well amazingly I managed to roll a double 4 and placed my three alien bio ships on a random table edge and started to get into the action.

The Aliens had one Light Cruiser and two Frigates, which was far too much for the remaining damaged ships to cope with, but it gave them a chance to see how tough the Bio-ships are, and for some reason I was rolling really really well, which was so unlike me!!

I actually managed to roll two 20’s to get two critical hits, see I have evidence…

Over the next couple of turns the Aliens proceeded to finish off the two badly damaged Battleships, who had spent the last turn or two ramming each other!!!

After taking out the Battleships my alien ships chased off the last Frigate before towing the big alien ship back to their home world…

Both players seemed to have fun and enjoyed ramming into each other’s ships, I think they did more damage to each other by ramming than by shooting!!

This is a good scenario for a teaching game and is still challenging enough for people who have played the game many times.

You have to try and keep enough of your ships in good condition for when the aliens turn up, as they are very tough and very good in a short fight, or you must destroy the enemy force really quickly to win the game before the aliens turn up… or hope that they don’t turn up!

Or even join forces to fight the aliens…