New Stars & Lasers Scenario Playtest.

In light of the new supplement I want of release very very soon I thought that I had better have at least one more playtest of the new scenarios in the supplement.

The first one I played is a fun one where two factions find a new asteroid field with huge amounts of valuable minerals and ores, and whoever stakes their clam first gets hold the rights to mine.

But one of the factions has gained an advantage and have sent in one of their Ore Harvesters to start mining before the other faction can get there, they have sent a small force in with the Harvester to try and keep it safe until a bigger force can arrive.

The other faction have also sent in a force of their own to try and stop the other factions Harvester for mining while their Harvester travels to the asteroid field.

So for this battle I had the huge Ore Harvester supported by a light cruiser and three frigates.

The enemy (boo hiss, it’s the bad guys!) have a battlecruiser with pulse lasers on the main turret with a light cruiser and three frigates.

This was already looking like a hard fight for the Harvester and its supporting ships as that battlecruiser was probably going to deal out a lot of damage!

Well the table was set up and the target big asteroid was set just outside the main asteroid field, and the two fleets were ready.

Turn one, the Harvester powered forward towards the asteroid supported by the light cruiser.

An enemy frigate moved in to attack and fired off its missiles at the Harvester, I sent in one of my frigates to try and deal with those missiles but its PDS failed to destroy them, so it fired off two of its own missiles at the frigate and managed to do critical damage in three different places on the enemy ship and cheering could be heard from the crew of my frigate as the enemy ship exploded!!

But the cheering soon stopped as my frigate took damage from large sections of the enemy frigate as it flew in all directions… luckily there was no serious damage.

I moved another of my frigates in to try and deal with those missiles heading towards the Harvester, but again its PDS failed to stop them.

The remaining enemy frigates both moved towards my frigate to attack it and were very pleased when their missiles ripped it apart.

The battle cruiser and the light cruiser moved in to attack the Harvester and both fired off missiles.

Turn two and I used all my PDS on all my ships to take out the five enemy missiles… that’s twelve PDS for five missiles!!

The battlecruiser moved in to attack the Harvester firing everything it could including three missiles, it also stripped the shields from one of my frigates.

The light cruiser also moved in to attack the Harvester taking down its last shield and firing off two more missiles.

Seeing how defenceless the Harvester now was with all those missiles heading towards it, the captain of the light cruiser ordered his ships forward to take out three of the missiles using the ships hull to stop them! The shipped rocked from the explosions, but fortunately it was still in one piece!

The captain of the frigate to the right of the Harvester ordered his helmsman to do the same with the two remaining missiles. The crew of the frigate breathed a sigh of relief as they realised that their ship had survived as well.

The frigates captain then ordered his gunnery chief to fire at the battlecruiser, it managed to take out the big ships last shield and actually cause bad damage on its engines, would that be enough to at slow the big ship down?

My other frigate then moved in to attack the battlecruiser as well and managed to damage its some more.

One of the enemy frigates decided to get around the back of the Harvester and put the first bit of damage on the huge ship.

The Harvester then moves forward again towards its objective, but puts a few shots into the battlecruiser as it goes by.

Turn three, almost every ship failed to re-instate their shields for this turn including the battlecruiser and the Ore Harvester, and the engineers on the battlecruiser fixed their engines!

The enemy light cruiser not wanting to let the Harvester get away pulls right around and alongside the big ship and fired at point blank range, but all it managed to do was take down a couple of shields.

One of the enemy frigates gets in behind the big ship as well and fires off as couple of missiles, my light cruiser was close enough to deal with them, but only manages to stop one and the crew curse as they see the other explode as it hit the Harvesters hull.

One of my frigates moves out of the way of the battlecruiser as it was about to ram it and attacked the enemy light cruiser.

The battlecruiser follows my frigate and fires off its lasers ripping holes in the small ships hull and also fires off a broadside at my light cruiser as it went by.

My light cruiser limps in behind the Harvester and fires everything it can at the battlecruiser and the light cruiser and was very pleased as it saw that it had at least done damage to both ships.

My frigate does a similar move except it fired off its missiles at the battlecruiser, but with the help of the nearby frigates the missiles were easily dealt with.

Turn four, all ships restored their shields except my light cruiser.

The enemy light cruiser slips past all my ships to land a few shots on the Harvester as it moves around behind the target asteroid, to safety, I hope.

The battlecruiser moves slowly around to chase my badly damaged light cruiser and finally the valiant ship is destroyed, but it had done a great job of defending the Harvester.

My last frigate to move this turn swings around wide to get in behind the battlecruiser and fires off its remaining two missiles, but again the battlecruiser’s PDS easily deals with the missiles.

Turn five and the Harvester lands on the asteroid.

The battlecruiser does the only thing it can do, it moved around the big asteroid trying to get closer to the Harvester so that it can get some final shooting at the big ship. It fires every thing it can and pounded the big ship.

My two remaining frigates did the only thing they could do, they harried the battlecruiser and saw with great pleasure that it took more damage.

The remaining enemy frigates fired off a few long-range shots at the Harvester, but the beast of a ship shrugged off the hits.

At the end of the turn a supporting fleet arrived to secure the asteroid field and to protect the Ore Harvester…. The enemy knew they had failed and jumped away.

Well that was fun! I thought I had lost that battle at the point when all my ships had used their PDS to destroy a load of missiles, which meant they were then unprotected from missiles for the rest of the turn, if the light cruiser and the frigate hadn’t taken one for the team by running over those missiles I may have lost the Ore Harvester because of those five enemy missiles.

As it was, both the frigate and the light cruiser were almost ripped apart by those missiles, I was lucky they were not destroyed.

The first turn was fun with the fight between the frigates, and me rolling three critical hits was spectacular, the poor frigate received another half a dozen hits from things exploding on board.

When my frigate got the critical hit on the battlecruiser in turn two, I thought that it was going to be a short game, then all I rolled was damage on its engines that could be repaired… and it was.

Not an easy scenario, but a good fun one that will also test your tactical skills.

Watch out the release of the new supplement for Stars & Lasers.