I had a couple of hours free time today so I thought I would get in another playtest of the Stars & Lasers Star Wars add-on using the 3D printed ships, this time I would be bringing some Rebel fighters to the battle to see if they even things up a little.
The main forces are the same as last time, one large Star Destroyer against the three smaller Rebel ships which are a CR90 Corvette, a Hammerhead Scout Corvette and a Nebulon C Escort Frigate.
The Imperials will have the normal four fighters and four fighter bomber squadrons that the Star Destroyer carries, but this time the Rebels will have some support from four fighters and two fighter bomber squadrons, hopefully that should take away the massive advantage the Imperials had in the last battle… could the Rebels get some revenge for their last defeat?
So the table is set and the ships are ready, the Rebel fighters start already deployed, but the Imperial fighters will have to be launched each turn as normal.
This time I have also added a few asteroids to break up the area more giving hazards and some cover.
Turn one sees the Rebels split their forces slightly with the CR90 moving with all the fighters to the left of the centre asteroids and the other two Rebel ships moving around to the right.
The Star Destroyer simply powers forward dropping off some of its fighters getting all its weapons ready to take on the rebel scum!!
Turn two and the fighters on both sides split to get themselves into good positions, the Rebel fighters move left and right covering all the Rebel ships and the bombers get in behind a large asteroid.
The Imperial fighters simply split with the bombers getting in behind an asteroid and the fighters moving to give the Star Destroyer cover as it moves in closer to the Rebel ships.
The Star Destroyer turns in towards the CR90 Corvette and opens up with every weapon system it can bring to bear on to the small Rebel ship, the small ship rocked badly from the impacts, systems all over the ship were shutting down, fire control systems were working hard to keep the fires on board from spreading… the small ship is in trouble, it can’t take punishment like that again.
The big ships PDS hit a squadron of Rebel fighters that were a little too close, almost the whole squadron was destroyed, this is not starting well for the Rebel force, can they do anything against the imperial ship or should they just jump away and live to fight another day…
The other two Rebel ships moved in behind the Star Destroyer and hit the big ship with everything they have, but the defensive systems on the Imperial ship just shrugged off all the hits, it’s shields absorbed everything.
The Rebels did manage to take out one or two of the Imperial fighters with their PDS, they would have been happier if they had taken out more, but every little helps.
Turn three and the Imperial engineers seem well trained, they got the big ships shields back up easily which was not good for the Rebels.
Things didn’t go well for the Imperial bombers this turn as they were destroyed by the CR90’s PDS.
The Imperial fighters were not having a good day either, as they were ripped apart by two Rebel fighter squadrons, the remaining Imperial fighter squadron did manage to take out a couple of the Rebel bombers though.
The remaining Rebel bombers streaked in to hit the Star Destroyer losing one bomber to the big ships PDS as they moved in to attack, there was a big cheer as they ripped huge holes in the Star Destroyers hull.
The CR90 was not out of this fight just yet, with some great control of its manoeuvring thrusters it weaved its way around the small asteroids and came back around to strip the Star Destroyers shields away from its starboard side, giving an opportunity for the other Rebel ships to hurt the big ship this turn.
The first Rebel ship to see the opportunity moved in to try and hurt the Imperial ship was the Hammerhead… and it hit the big ship hard doing heavy damage to its weapons targeting systems, but those well-trained Imperial engineers again saved the day and managed to bring online their backup systems so averting a real problem.
The Star Destroyers Captain ignored the damage reports coming in to his station and ordered his ship to move away from the Rebels and fire at the Nebulon frigate that was still chasing him, he also ordered a squadron of bombers to attack it as well.
The laser fire from the big ship ripped away the small ships forward shields but did no damage but then the bombers flew in and almost ripped the small ship apart!!! One of the bombers was taken out by the ships PDS as it flew in to attack but the remaining two were not messing about, they hit the small ship hard.
But the little Rebel ship kept pushing the attack and moved in behind the big ship again, it knew it wasn’t going to survive another attack from the Star Destroyer but the crew were not going to quit, they fired every weapon they could bring to bear on the rear of the big ship, but all they managed to do was strip away the rear shields…
Turn four and the CR90’s engineers manged to get the fires under control but could not get any of its shields back up, they may regret that.
The engineers on the star Destroyer were having no problems at all, they managed to get all their shields up giving the big ship full protection again.
Two Imperial bombers flew in to attack the badly damaged Nebulon frigate, the small ships PDS managed to take down one of them, but the remaining bomber took his time and hit its target.
The Nebulon frigate spun off totally dead and out of this fight… the remaining squadron of Rebel bombers saw this and wanted some payback, they swooped in on the Star Destroyer only to lose two bombers to the big ships PDS, the remaining bomber hit the big ship hard getting a little satisfaction.
That satisfaction didn’t last long though as a crazy dog fight began as fighters from both sides flew around each other trying to kill the enemy bombers and fighters, when it finished no bombers remained in the fight!!
The Imperial Star Destroyer still had one bomber squadron remaining and was getting ready to launch…
Turn five saw another mad fight between the fighters from both sides, when it finished the last squadron of the Imperial bombers were destroyed, the Rebel fighters had done their job, but not before the last Imperial bomber hit the CR90 hard causing explosions on board destroying its rear weapons ( I am not sure how this ship is surviving!! )
Turn six and the Imperial engineers must be exhausted as they failed to get the shields back on the big ships port side, could this be the break the Rebels have been looking for? Could they take advantage of this?
The big Star Destroyer tried to move away form the chasing Rebel ships, the Captain knew that with his ships shields down on one side that the Rebels would target that side with everything they had so he tried to get the large asteroids between his ship and theirs to try and reduce the chance of the Rebel ships hitting him, but he must have used up the last of his luck as the small ships managed to get through to hit him.
Both Rebel ships fired on the Star Destroyer but only the CR90 managed to damage the big ship, all of the Hammerhead’s shots missed!!!
Well that was an opportunity missed… the Captain of the Hammerhead will be making sure that his weapons teams get extra training if they get out of this fight in one piece.
Turn seven and the Rebels curse as they see all the shields are now back up on the Star destroyer.
Both Rebel ships use their PDS to take out the last Imperial fighter squadron but one of them survives and flies over and destroys the last Rebel fighter!!
The CR90 Corvette moves in behind the star Destroyer again and hit the rear of the ship with everything it has, even though the small ship has taken huge amounts of damage it is still giving its all to fight the Imperial ship… and that is that, the small ship manages to strip away all the shields in the rear arc and then puts two Dual Turbo Laser hits into the engines and is satisfied to see the huge ship explode!!! REVENGE!
Wow that was really really close and lots of fun, the CR90 took a ton of damage but still kept in the fight and although the Rebels had lost all their fighters and bombers and of course the Nebulon frigate they will still take this as a victory over the Imperial fleet.
The Star Wars add-on rules really seem to be working well, giving the rebels some fighters and bombers did make it a much fairer fight, I only gave them 100 points of fighters compared to the 140 points the Imperial ship carries, but I think it made it more exciting… also the Rebels always seem to have less fighters in a battle in the films!
I still think that I still need to work on the points for the ships a little as they still do not feel right, I will try it with the Rebel ships reduced so that I could either get in one more small ship against the Star Cruiser or a few fighters / bombers keeping the total points roughly the same on both sides.
I think that todays fight felt about right, it was going to be a hard fight against the Star Destroyer but it felt possible for the Rebels to beat it ( although it could have gone either way during the battle )
Well I still need to playtest more and maybe even print out one or two more ships, some smaller ones for the Imperial fleet and maybe a bigger ship for the rebel fleet.
If you want to find out more about the Star Wars add-on or even the stars & Lasers rules then come on over to the Little Wargaming worlds discord server, you can also chat about your games of stars & Lasers or any of my other games, the link is on the Community tab on this site.
