I had a lazy day and decided to get some spaceships out and have a game of Stars & Lasers, this time I thought I would use some of my Aquan Prime ships, but as I haven’t managed to get any rules done for these ships yet they will just be used as normal “Earth” ships maybe from a water world colony!
Their mission today was to attack a nearby enemy colony mainly their shipyard and space-station, as soon as the Aquan fleet was detected the space-station called for help and a fleet has been dispatched to help fight off the attacking fleet.
Note: not 100% sure about some of these pictures I started late at night so the light wasn’t great but finished the game off today so the pictures should have been better, I hope they don’t ruin the battle report.
Attacking Aquan fleet ( solo opponent )
Battleship with railgun turret
Fighter carrier with railgun turret ( three fighter stands and three fighter bomber stands )
Heavy cruiser with pulse cannon turret
Three light cruisers
Three frigates
Three corvettes
Defending Human colony ships ( controlled by yours truly )
Initial force
Repair station ( 3 ablative armour upgrade ) ( this will be the shipyard )
Outpost space-station with pulse cannon turret – ( replacing missiles with two Torpedoes ) also has three fighter stands and 3 ablative armour upgrade
Three corvettes ( two patrolling out by some asteroids and one docked with the outpost space-station )
The remaining force that will hopefully arrive to help in time!!
Battleship with railgun turret
Fighter carrier with railgun turret ( three fighter stands and three fighter bomber stands )
Heavy cruiser with railgun turret
For the solo controlled Aquan fleet I will set them as aggressive to start the battle and I will not use the top four random cards from the solo rules.
Defenders re-enforcements –
At the beginning of the third turn I shall roll three D6 if I get an even double then all of the reserve fleet will arrive together, if I get an odd double then I will roll a D3 and that is how many ships arrive this turn, if I don’t get a double then I will roll again next turn and the next until I get a double.
( The ship under the shipyard and the freighters are not part of any force and will not take part in the battle, they are just for show )
The points for this battle come out at around the 2,000 points each with the defenders having about 300 points more than the attackers, I just need to get them into the battle as quick as I can.
Set-up the Aquan fleet comes in from the far corner from amongst the asteroids there, two defender corvettes are patrolling between one of the small moons and a couple of asteroids in the lower corner and one is docked with the Outpost space-station.
Turn one –
No event: I pulled one of the two black cards from the event deck.
This turn saw every Aquan ship move forward at full speed and fire off missiles ( although this was outside the normal 16” solo rule for firing missiles I took it that the scenario was to destroy the stations so they would fire as many missiles as possible while they had them )
The carrier launched two fighter bomber stands ready to move up to the big stations.
The tiny patrolling corvettes turned around and started to move back towards the stations to lend their limited firepower and PDS, the one docked corvette started her engines and moved off turning towards the oncoming Aquan fleet.
The outpost station launched two of its fighters to try and deal with some of those missiles heading its way.
Turn two –
Event 7: Malfunction!! An Aquan frigate lost half of its weapons… maybe some water got into the controls 😉
Those missiles moved steadily forward, I had no idea how I was going to stop them all, the two stands of fighters were not going to be in position to stop many… I just hope there is something left of the space-stations when the reserve ships arrive.
The pulse cannon on the Outpost space-station opened up with five long range shots but found no successes, I decided to launch on of the torpedoes and targeted the Aquan battleship, if nothing else it would cause a little panic as it moved towards the big ship.
I couldn’t find where I had put the torpedo tokens I had so I just used a blank piece of card of the same size for the game.
Turn three –
Event 4: Help has arrived, two frigates have arrived on the defenders side ( what a perfect event for me 😊 I rolled for which side they were for and I won )
I rolled my three D6 to see if my reserve turns up… and no doubles!!!! at least I managed to get two frigates they may help a little, they turned up right behind the Aquan fleet even better.
The frigates flew straight into trouble the Aquan fighter bombers were within striking distance and flew in for a bombing run, the closest frigate took out one of the bombers as it came in to range of its PDS but the remaining two hit home causing lots of damage, the second flight of bombers moved in for the kill against the badly damaged and defenceless frigate… and misses!! They only needed 5’s to hit on D20’s oh dear, I can see some Aquan pilots not getting their goldfish flakes tonight 😉
I needed the reserve ships to arrive this turn to give me some chance of halting the Aquan ships as they powered towards my space-stations, even if I manage to get them all next turn it might be a little too late.
The Aquan fleet moved forward lasers blazing away at my ships, I lost one corvette early on in the turn to two enemy missiles fired from close range.
Then one of my corvettes defending the stations took several critical hits and exploded sending pieces of her hull into the nearby ships taking out one of my own fighters and then hitting an Aquan frigate causing critical damage o one of its hardpoints and also managing to hit one of the Aquan light cruisers doing some more damage to its hull, when your ship is going to die its good when it hurts some of the enemy 😊
My fighters managed to destroy almost all of the first wave of enemy missiles, but I don’t see much hope of them being alive to help with the second and more deadly wave of missiles coming at the repair station.
My two frigates moved in to hit the Aquan heavy cruiser hurling everything they had at it stripping away its shields and PDS and managing to do 5 hull damage and causing them to lose comm’s so stopping that ship at least from doing anything this turn.
The badly damaged frigate was hit by a broadside from the Aquan carrier and it was finished off with its railgun the dead frigate spun off into space…
Then the Aquan’s huge battleship moves slowly forward and vaporizes my last corvette, things are looking really bad for my space-stations now.
Turn four –
Event 10: An inspiring captain, one ships captain gets to activate twice this turn and I won the roll again!! So the only ship I have on the table is the frigate so that will be the one with the inspiring captain… it just needs to stay alive long enough to benefit from the event.
My fighters managed to only take out three missiles screaming towards my space-stations but the Aquan fighters were doing much better they managed to destroy my last two ships on the table so if no reserves turn up this turn then I am finished!!
I rolled an even double and all my reserves turn up, all three ships power in from the best place on the board right behind the Aquan Prime battleship, too late to save the space-stations as the repair station has 12 missiles hitting it this turn!!!!! and the Outpost station has 6, so this could be the end of them…
13 hits on the Outpost station, causing a huge explosion inside almost destroying the station, then 27 hits vaporized the repair station.
The Outpost station’s torpedo managed to do a small amount of damage to the Aquan battleship as the ships PDS wasn’t able to stop it getting through.
Turn five –
Event 8: Fire on board, a random ship ( I rolled well again ) has had a fire on board and takes damage, this damage has caused critical damage to the ships comm’s so one Aquan light cruiser moves forward out of control.
My reserves moved into the battle and started to put a lot of shots into the Aquan battleship and carrier but to no real effect, the Aquan carrier then moved round and stripped away my battleships shields, my carrier moved forward and launched two fighter bombers ready to pounce on the Aquan battleship if they get a chance.
The Aquan fleet for the most part was ignoring the threat of my big ships and were starting to strip away my space-stations shields…
The Aquan heavy cruiser turns slowly around to face my Outpost space-station and fires at extreme range and well…
Three hits which takes out her last systems and station goes dark, the Aquan Prime fleet simply jump to FTL and leave the sector with a good clear victory.
Well that was great fun I had some really exciting moments in this battle, it may have gone more in my favor if my reserves had turned up a turn earlier, I may have been able to put more pressure on the Aquan ships, but it wasn’t to be.
Even though on occasions during this game my dice rolling was erratic I think both sides had some good shooting, although both sides PDS was pretty awful, my fighters didn’t manage to stop enough of the missiles aimed at my space-stations.
And if the Outposts torpedo had managed to get through at full power that would have changed things a little, probably not the final outcome though.
Still it was a good fun game and if I run through this again sometime I don’t think that I would change much, maybe give the initial defending force a couple of extra ships or maybe one bigger one, but as always I like scenarios with a challenge rather than just an even chance.
