I had a great game Monday at the club, it was my opponents second game of Stars & Lasers so I wanted to just do a simple meeting engagement as he was going to bring along some of his small ships to see how they worked in the game.
He was given loads of small Silent Death fighters, I believe the plastic ships from EM4 Miniatures ( I have loads of them as well ) and a few others, these would be good for Corvettes or maybe even Frigates so he was looking at putting a big force on the table made up of small ships… if you see what I mean!
But he was in a bit of a rush to get to the club and left them all at home!!! So on to plan “B” I got my ships out and let him use mine.
My opponents ships were – 680 points
1 x Heavy Cruiser
1 x Light Cruiser
2 x Frigate
4 x Corvettes
And mine were – 675 points
1 x Fighter Carrier with 3 x Fighters and 3 x Fighter Bombers
1 x Light Cruiser
1 x Destroyer
1 x Frigate
So, two very different forces, and I was already at a disadvantage with only 4 activation dice against his 8… was this going to go horribly wrong?
We set up and with my four ships in the centre of my set-up area and my opponents split into two groups, his heavy cruiser leading one and his light cruiser leading the other we started turn one.
Not much happened other than a few long shots and couple of shields went down, and I launched a couple of stands of fighters, and that was that, turn one was over.
Turn two saw two of his corvettes and his heavy cruiser destroy my frigate before I could do much about it, with that gone I moved my other three ships towards the group being led by his light cruiser, keeping as far away from his heavy cruiser as I could, I then dropped off two more groups of fighters.
Turn three and I failed to get any of my shields back up, all three ships failed!! Oh dear I had a bad feeling about this turn…
One stand of fighter bombers flew at a lone corvette keeping out of PDS range of his other ships, the corvettes own PDS took out one of the fighters, but that left the other two and they didn’t mess around they ripped the small ship apart.
Lots of shots peppered my Destroyer but luckily it managed to shrug off them off, so it moved between two enemy ships and fired off both lots of missiles, one got through to a corvette but didn’t do enough damage to worry it, and the other two missiles were destroyed by a frigates PDS… Well that could have gone better.
Even though I never had any shields up for this turn I did more damage to his ships than he did to mine, normally my dice rolling is bad ( I am famous for it!! ) but his dice rolling in this game was very bad and was making my dice rolling look good!
Turn four and one of my fighter bomber stands flew towards his heavy cruiser to try and get off a shot or two, but all three were wiped out by its PDS, seeing that he had no other ships there to help it I flew in a second stand of fighter bombers and managed to only get four hits, oh that could have been so much better, but hey I would surely manage to get a critical hit… no never managed that either.
I managed to get a few more hits on another corvette and was glad to see that spin off into space dead, and I also managed to get several more hits into his light cruiser…
At this point in the game things had really swung around in my favour, I had really hurt his ships for almost no damage on my fighter carrier or my light cruiser, my destroyer was still hanging in there with just a few hull points left, but his ships were hurting, if I could just hold with this luck for another turn I could actually win this.
Turn five and I failed to get the shields back up on my destroyer, so I would be very surprised if that made it through this turn.
My last stand of fighter bombers went in to attack his heavy cruiser, and my luck and his bad dice rolling continued, he only managed to destroy one fighter with his PDS, so could I finally destroy his big ship… well that will be a no then! I only managed three more hits and no critical hits, that thing had a charmed life.
My Destroyer flew back around to get a few shots into his light cruiser before he had a chance to hit it again, and I was very satisfied to see his ship go spinning off a dead hulk.
My destroyer then took its last point of hull damage and died, it was the ship of the game for me.
Lots of shots flew from both sides but again I took no real damage!
Turn six saw the funniest moment of the game where my opponent moved his frigate in to try and finish off my fighter bombers ( and missed ) but he had flown in to a position where his heavy cruiser had no choice but to collide with it… that was the end of the frigate and almost his heavy cruiser as well… I didn’t laugh, honest!
Turn seven saw him fly his remaining three ships as fast as he could away from mine, I put a couple of shots into his shields but that was it game over and a very small victory for me…
The extra activation dice my opponent had at the beginning of the game gave him a real advantage, but I was really lucky and so he just could not take any advantage of it, and as he lost ships and the dice started to even out, the game started to swing my way even more, my fighter bombers did really well and my destroyer just would not die and so soaked up lots of shots for the team!
It was a thoroughly enjoyable game, and I earned a small victory as well, I look forward to facing his ships next time.
