I had another great teaching game of Stars & Lasers at the club on Monday, my opponent wanted to see how the game played because he is starting to get some of his old Battle Fleet Gothic ships sorted and ready for the table top ( he had two Cruisers which he used as light Cruisers for this game )
I thought that I would simply do the “kill the Battleship” game as it is a good way to see how the different ships work on the table and is a good introduction to the rules.
Note: I remembered about half way through turn two that my friend is a good tournament player and really knows how to work his forces to get the best out of them, this is not a bad thing, it just really showed in this game by how badly things went for me.
Turn one saw my opponent split his force slightly he sent his Destroyer and Corvette to my left flank and his main force consisting of his Battleship supported by his two light Cruisers towards my left flank.
I ran everything I had towards his centre giving me the option to swing left or right depending where he threatened me first, also keeping some ships close to my Battleship for the extra PDS protection.
Note: I have noticed over the many games of Stars & Lasers I have played ( or any game I play really ) either against opponents or playing solo, I never seem to manage to keep to a plan, not completely anyway, I always seem to lose sight of what I am meant to be doing…. but I am guessing with my bad dice rolling it probably doesn’t make that much difference to the outcome!
Turn two saw him firing a mass of missiles towards my ships which really caused me problems! Now I am not sure why but getting around them seemed to be the right thing to do, so I moved as many of my ships as I could towards his Battleship, either taking out the missiles as I went or simply just moving around them… but now in hindsight I can see what I did wrong, my Battleship was being left behind! It couldn’t keep up with the faster ships, this was not what I had planned to do.
Turn three saw my Frigate spin off into space as dead hulks, my Destroyer was starting to take lots of hits and it had lost most of its weapons because of a critical hit, my Battleship was also starting to take damage form enemy missiles now.
Turn four saw my Destroyer finally die, one of his cruisers took a pounding but the thing just would not die, his Battleship did take a few more hits because his shields were down, but my shooting was really rubbish and he got off lightly ( that should have been the turning point in the game for me but the dice god was again looking away from me! )
His shooting though was really accurate again and so was his damn missiles! My Battleship was really looking shaky now, I was being out maneuvered by a skillful opponent, things were not looking good.
Turn five and his Battleship and Cruisers moved in for the kill, and they got a critical hit on the bridge of my Battleship and my comm’s went down, the ship could do nothing while it suffered hit after hit from lasers and missiles… that was it, a complete disaster for my Battleship, that last turn was really bad for me, that critical hit to my comm’s finished any hope I had of pulling off a crafty win in the game.
Well that was that, another great game, lots of fun moments and edge of the seat excitement, my opponent was really happy with his victory, and I was left kicking myself for not protecting my Battleship better than I did, who knows maybe next time I will do better..…
