News from the Front #3 – 1200pts Dindrenzi versus Terrans (again)

It’s RAFWA weekend and Ray was doing a cracking job of umpiring the Dystopian Wars tourney, but there’s only some much salt water a man can swim in before he needs a change of scenery, and Ray was hankering to let loose some nuclear weapons!

The scenario and set up was simple, a straight bash-um-up. First person to be tabled or pass-out (Saturday was a loooong day and we were all tired the following day) loses. No battlelog or TAC cards, just a straight in-your-face shoot out.

Ray and I prefer the Dystopian Wars way of setting up terrain, that being each players rolls a D6 per 2′ square and on a 4+ or 5+ we throw down terrain. It’s simple and often results in empty look boards, but we both argue that space is mostly empty. No asteroid belt in real life is what it looks like in the cinemas! In this game ray ended up having 2 islands asteroid fields and a gas cloud for “some” cover. Funnily enough he didn’t need the extra cover… on to the fleet setups, or what I can remember of them:

Terrans –
1 battleship with nuke weapons
2 battlecruisers
3 (bastard!) aegis cruisers
3 cruisers
3 (hard as nails) light cruisers
2 different squadrons of frigates

Dindrenzi –
1 Nausicaa battleship (with 3 harpy escorts)
2 battlecruisers
3 heavy cruisers
3 cruisers
2 squadrons of thraex frigates

Turn 1 was fairly typical, I won the initiative and tried to whittle down some of his light cruiser power. I decided to throw my cruisers against the threat of his battlecruisers hoping I could do enough damage before they got into range of the rest of my fleet. Ray played it fairly obviously going after my cruisers first and doing his best to focus. We had a few critical hits which got the adrenaline flowing, nothing terribly significant though. I was, however, very happy that my battleship actually did something other than spectate this turn. The crew has a habit of doing sod all during my games so the fact they scored a crit’ on Rays battleship was a pleasant surprise!

News from the Front #2 – Firestorm Armada, 1200pts Dindrenzi versus Terrans (again)
The opening round of the battle – Ray moving his tasty looking light cruisers to tempt me.

Turn 2 got interesting with me blinding focusing on Rays tough-to-crack light cruisers and doing little else really. A few points of damage was scored against one or two more of his cruisers but that was my lot. Worryingly, Rays battlecruisers shrugged off their earlier damage because they had damnedable weapon shielding. Wishing they had done more, I waved goodbye to my cruiser squadron. Ray, of course, had some pretty poor rounds of dice rolling punctuated by some good critical hits. He had set himself up nicely for turn 3 when the rest of fleet would be in better range.

News from the Front #2 – Firestorm Armada, 1200pts Dindrenzi versus Terrans (again)
Turn 2 – Having munched on some of Ray’s light cruisers, he now lets loose his battlecruisers

Turn 3 looked terrible for me. His battlecruisers were primed for wiping out my cruisers and my heavy cruisers were down 1/3 strength, which when trying to shots through his (bastard!) aegis cruiser shields was not what I needed. And, returning to form, my battleship did the sum total of bugger all. What the last picture doesn’t show you however is that this turn was highlighted by a fantastic critical hit from my battlecruisers against Rays cruiser squadron. Scoring snake-eyes and blowing up the middle cruisers reactor was a game changer. The explosion took with it another cruiser and damage the last one, and destroyed 2 (I think) (bastard!) aegis cruisers. Little else changed on the table aside from us both losing a few frigate.

News from the Front #2 – Firestorm Armada, 1200pts Dindrenzi versus Terrans (again)
Turn 3(ish) – getting messy, but in a very short amount of time I get lucky and decimate his cruiser force

It was after that, and through blurry eyes, we decided to call time. Working it out on points alone I managed to score a minor victory, which is my 3rd ever win out of 9-odd games! However, I conceded that had the game gone on longer I would probably be waving a white flag from within the expanding debris field that would have been my fleet. Why I hadn’t learned not to focus on his light cruisers but instead go for his (bastard!) aegis cruisers I don’t know. His light cruisers are really cute and great looking which probably draws my attention away from his 18” 3+ shield bubble of “nope”. It was stupid of me but hopefully I’ll have learned next time around! Ray has a very good setup with his fleet. The heavy hitting battlecruisers, the fast tanks of light cruisers, and a shield bubble that would frustrate any opponent to madness is all-in-all quite daunting to face against.

A great game and I look forward to my next one! Maybe next time with more RSN??

 

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