Raiding Party… a Stars & Lasers game

The battleship and her escorts are travelling between sectors in their normal patrol route when they are attacked by a small and deadly Bio-fleet.

Most Captains know that a raiding party of Bio-ships is not something you want to stay and face off against, they know that they are tough and can give most human ships a bad day in a toe to toe fight.

So the human Captain orders his force to keep together and to get through this sector as fast as possible, and not to split up and engage the alien ships.

The Bio-ships just want to feed…

The Bio ships have –

1 x Heavy Cruiser with a front mounted Bio-spitter and two extra Electopulse systems fitted in a turret

2 x Light Cruisers

3 x Frigates

2 x Corvettes

3 x Fighter Bombers stands

The Human ships have –

1 x Battleship with a turret mounted rail gun

4 x Frigates

3 x Corvettes

This was the first play through of a new scenario in which the Human fleet has to get across the table and off the other side and the Bio-ships need to stop as many human ships as they can ( because they will feed on any ships that they can destroy or stop! )

This will be a solo game and the human force will be controlled and I will play the Bio-ships, the humans are set at defensive at the start of the engagement and their main objective is to get off the table.

Setup, and the human fleet is coming in from one corner of the table at one end and the Bio-ships are coming in from the opposite corner of the other end of the table.

Turn one and both fleets power towards each other, the human ships wanting to get to the other end as quickly as they can and the Bio-ships just eager to feed!

Turn two and the Bio-ships start to close in and start hitting the human fleet as they do so, some good long range shooting sees lots of damage on two of the human frigates forming a screen for their battleship.

The human force moves steadily forward getting a few points of damage on the Bio-ships, but the alien ships are tough and totally ignore the laser hits.

Turn three and the human fleet carried on towards the end of the table hoping to get there before they take too much damage from the alien ships, the battleship moves in between some of its escorts to take on the two closest alien frigates but missing almost every shot!! in the end the battleships launches a full spread of three missiles at the closest alien frigate.

The alien light cruisers moved in and opened up on the closest frigates and sent one spinning off into space destroyed, the human battleship took some light damage as well.

One alien frigate was badly damaged this turn as well taking hits from the human corvettes and frigates.

The alien heavy cruiser moved slowly forward and finished off another human frigate, but its huge Bio-spitter failed to hit the battleship, the crew of which breathed a sigh of relief… but then it fired the rest of its weapons at a distant corvette and was pleased to see the tiny ship lose its shield generators.

At the end of the shooting the Bio-ships had also lost a frigate, its tough armour just not able to keep it alive.

Turn four and the engineers on board the battleship don’t manage to get the ships shields back up, but the Captain doesn’t get any time to worry about this as the alien bombers start to make their run towards the big ship as they swoop in and rip another human frigate apart, and put some light damage on another, all for the lose of three bombers, that still leaves six bombers within striking distance of the human battleship 😯

( Even after losing the three frigates the aggression level of the human force didn’t change and they are still on defensive )

The battleship moves steadily forward and comes in close to two of the alien light cruisers and opens up with everything it has stripping away layers of armour and hull from each of the alien ships, you could almost hear them scream in pain!!

In reply one of the alien light cruisers moves around and takes out a human corvette, then the three human corvettes slow down and move in behind the alien light cruiser to try and get revenge.

They hit the light cruiser with all their laser shots and three missiles, the ships tough armour couldn’t save it and the Bio-ship spins off lifeless into space.

Turn five the alien bombers make their run at the battleship and lose two to the big ships PDS as they fly in, the remaining bombers hit the battleship with their deadly payload, the big ship badly rocked from the impact but was somehow still in one piece!

The crew on the battleship were well trained and quickly got themselves back into the battle as the big ship moved along side the alien heavy cruiser, the big Bio-ship was badly mauled by the battleship every weapon hit from a full broadside and the rail gun added its power to the attack causing more damage, even managing to take out the aliens Bio-spitter, the heavy cruiser was now in real trouble.

Turn six, at this point things are not looking good for what is left of the human fleet, they still have a fair distance to travel across the table to get to edge and safety, but the Captain of the battleship hasn’t given up and is hoping with a little bit of luck and his ships shields he may still make it…

The alien bombers came in for another bombing run and the battleships PDS took out another two with a little help from a frigate, this must have shaken up the bombers as the remaining two only did light damage on the big ship.

( I thought that was the end for the battleship, but somehow it survived and is still in with a chance of getting off the table… even if it is only a little chance! )

The battleship again powers towards to table edge and fires at the chasing alien light cruiser hitting it causing some more damage, but not enough to kill it.

The alien light cruiser moves in right behind the battleship ( it didn’t want to risk missing the battleship ) and takes down all of the big ships shields…

The remaining human frigate moves around to lend its fire to the attack on the alien light cruiser and a big cheer goes up on all the remaining human ships as they see the alien ship roll over and away, finally dead.

But the celebrations are cut short as the alien ships move in and hit the battleship with several shots finally taking the big ship down.

At that point I called it a night, the remaining human ships should have managed to get off the table as they were in fairly good shape, and anyway the Bio-ships were too busy starting to feed on the battleship and the other four destroyed human ships…

Well that was a hard one, lots of things didn’t go well for the human fleet, including my dice rolling!! they stayed on defensive for the whole game so didn’t fight aggressively enough to put maximum pressure on the tough Bio-ships.

I failed to get the battleships shields up on one turn so it took extra damage which it shouldn’t have, which didn’t help.

They did really well though, they had taken out the two light cruisers and a frigate and the heavy cruiser was down to its last hull point, I just rolled badly when firing at the Bio-ships on at least two turns.

The alien bombers were a problem right from the moment they got to within striking range, so I think the next time I try this game I will either not take them or I will take some human fighters to counter them.

But having said that I did roll badly for them on their last attack, I thought they were going to destroy the battleship but I rolled really low for the amount of damage they did.

Well not bad for a first play through of a new scenario, there is still some work to do including changing the points for the sides by either reducing the attacking force or increasing the defending force.

I have found that it is much harder for the force that is running away from their attackers as most of their weapons and firepower is either on their fronts or sides leaving very little or nothing firing backwards, which allows the attackers ( chasers ) open to sit behind and fire at the fleeing ships backs in relative safety.

The hard thing is getting the points difference right to make the game playable but not too easy.

Any way even though it was really tough for the human fleet it was still a great game that was a lot of fun, so after a little tweaking I will be playing this one again.

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2 Comments

  1. trynda1701

    Nice battle report.

    Love the colour scheme on the ‘Human’ ships. Using mine as the original Kra’vak, I went with a military dark green, slightly darker than your bioships.

    Are those the older Kra’vak sculpts from Ground Zero? I think I have all of those except for the battleship.

    • Mac

      Hi,
      Thanks, it was a great battle.

      I think most are the older sculpts from GZG, I have some of the newer ones as well.
      I think that the Kra’vak ships are some of the nicest ships that GZG do.

      I do have rather a large fleet ;O)

      Mac

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