2000pt ACTA noble armada game

I decided to post write ups on some of the games i play so that I can show people that even tho the game is discontinued it is not unplayed.

sorry for picture resolution was using my phone and it does not have best camera. also sorry for any grammatical/spelling errors was typing in a hurry (have tried to edited in a little free time i had).

so we decided to play a game this weekend, we managed to get a table at a local game store and had a bit of time to kill, we rolled point value and ended up with 2000 point game. we then rolled for scenario and got space superiority. we rolled for number of asteroid fields and there strength. here is the set up of the table when all is said and done.
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I played Hawkwood and my opponent played Decados, here are the fleets we chose. random counters where used for the fighters/ bombers.

Hawkwood fleet
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11 fighters 7 stealth bombers

Decados fleet
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all fighters used extra points on marauders on stealth ships.

dreadnaught was on my painting table but we decided to play with it anyway. have been using it to play around with some color blending techniques i have learned from a friend.


so initial setup for the fleets
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i decided to setup in the center in one large task group with parts pointing in two directions.
my opponent decided to set up in to groups, one large ship (slow movement) one small ships (fast attack force).

i won initiative on first turn (re roll for the scout ships) and so began to move towards the center asteroid field which held my scouts.

here is the location of the fleets after the first movement phase.
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the first turn of shooting was almost all focused on killing the raiders and scout ships in the center asteroid field. the hawkwood dreadnaught took a broadside shot with long range guns at enemy carrier managing to bring it to a few points of threshold with a few crits. result of the rest of the shooting phase where as follows. one scout dead one threshold-ed, one raider dead one heavily damaged. all and all not the most eventful shooting phase. end phase saw some fighter launches and failed repair rolls.


second turn hawkwood again has initiative. i take an aggressive move to try to gain control of center asteroid field for the stealth advantage while bringing capital up on both sides hoping to place his dreadnaught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to being shot at since i have range advantage. opponent tries to use his dreadnaught to kill my carrier while avoiding my dreadnaught by using cover. I use full power to engines special order to make sure i can have a firing arc at it no matter where he moves it. once he realizing my plan to take center asteroid field he follows suit sending frigates into the mix while trying to protect his nightwings full of marauders from capital ship fire, realizing the fate of the dreadnaught he gives it a seal bulkheads order to reduce as much damage as possible, since it must weather the long range firepower of my dreadnaughtfor a turn.

end of second movement phase
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this turn of shooting saw the death of my second scout ships so no more re-rolls on initiative rolls, this comes up a lot. i manged to kill a nightwing with focused fire from all my small ship, while my dreadnaught shoots at his with sealed bulkheads doing a nice amount of damage and a crit to crew but nothing game changing. his carrier take the shorter range attack from my dreadnaught and is thresholded. my frigate and destroyer that are in the center asteroid field take heavy damage with frigate gets thresholded destroyer takes a fair amount damage but has some life left on it. stealth bomber do a bit of damage to a frigate from safety of the asteroid field.

end of second shooting phase. in order to make things less confusing we pulled all dead models from bases, since most are burned out wreaks and have no influence on the game.
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without the re-roll i lose the initiative. my opponent decides to try to make me move my dreadnaught first so he can avoid its long range firepower as best a possible. so he first moves are to move two frigates forward right in front of one of my destroyer i take this opportunity for ramming speed with my destroyer (5 ramming vs 2).
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this thresholds a perfectly good frigate but mine takes a few hits itself. i make a run for his corner with a frigate he follows with a destroyer in order to not lose the victory points. i try my best but he manages to get his dreadnaught and most other ships out of the shooting arc of mine but my carrier now has an arc on his dreadnaught so he closes bulkheads again seeing my range advantage.
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a nightwing makes an all power to engine move form the asteroid field in the center to the one behind my dreadnaught so he could try a boarding action next turn. they take an asteroid to the face (fail the check and take 72 points of damage + crits ) exploding in what can be described as the best dice roll against my dreadnaught ever 12 damage with 4 crits. on plus side don't have to worry about boarding action from a bunch of marauders. but shields are now iffy and have a fire on board.

in the shooting phase my dreadnaught finishes off carrier while my carrier does more hull damage to his dreadnaught, after which it takes some return fire from his frigates and take a bit of damage. my break away frigate dies but has managed to pull one of his destroyer out of the game due to distance from main battle. the combine damaged on my heavy carrier and dreadnaught is about the same as that on his dreadnaught. so all in all we are mostly even at this point


again Decados get initiative (i miss my re-rolls). next moment phase saw frigates all stop in asteroid field for the stealth and his destroyer moves towards it trying to get stealth and firing acrs on both my carrier and dreadnaught. his dreadnaught moves into range of my heavy carrier and most everything else is at all stop, cant move, or so far away they don't matter.

center of map
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this turn saw some of the most interesting shooting in the game. his dreadnaught shoots first, light mason canon strips off the shield on one of my destroyer, followed by a heavy mason canon into the destroyer, doing 15 damage 12 hits of crit (devastating +2 is evil) over killing by 23. causing it to explode and kill his by now threshold-ed frigate. he then shots at my second destroyer with light mason canons, stealth causes one to miss the other hits and he does 2 crits 1 to crew and 1 to shield. the destroyer is ~1 from threshold. he then strips shields of my heavy carrier and does some hull damage. my heavy carrier strips his shields in return and does a bit of hull damage to him. he then activates a frigate doing more hull damage to my heavy carrier and strips shield from my dreadnaught, tried to shot at my hurt destroyer but missed thanks to stealth so decided to attack heavy carrier instead with turret big mistake. I now activate my almost dead destroyer i use its side guns on his dreadnaught hit with 6 out of the 7 shots i then mange to get 3 crits all to engines. to top things off i then shot the guided missiles at his dreadnaught and manage to do one more crit to engines. this destroyer aimed true and brought the enemy dreadnaught to a halt by destroying it engines, only to almost instantly die to fire from the enemy destroyer just outside of the asteroid field. my stealth bombers do a bit of final damage to dreadnaught just as to top things off.

end phase his dreadnaught repair roll fails and things escalate for the damaged dreadnaught badly.

picture of destroyer (the one with the red top), captain was posthumously promoted admiral and has a seat at the table in Valhalla in my mind.
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I win back initiative on this turn

what will become the last movement phase sees my dreadnaught move forward while his drifts in space. my dreadnaught gets a firing solution on his, while a little movement from his destroyers and frigates, his last destroyer is just about to re enter the battle after having to hunt down my frigate, but all in all not much actual movement. he see his own defeat in front of his eyes as his crippled dreadnaught limps helplessly along with the guns of two capital ships fixed on it. while i see a tasty dreadnaught that is in desperate need of a little killing. he give the repair special order to his dreadnaught hoping it live this turn and repair the crits so that it can be back in the fight next turn.

movement for this turn
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this shooting phase sees my dreadnaught wipe his off the table i also mange to kill the frigate that was stupid enough to leave the asteroid field (wanted to extra 50 victory points) with the help of heavy carriers main guns. i take a bit of damage on my dreadnaught and carrier from his frigates and destroyer. my opponent calls the game at the end of this turn since he can't see a way to win and time is running out at our gaming location, they close early on sundays.

thanks to the edge control points at the end of every turn game this was a close game victory point wise at this point.


at the end i have a
dreadnaught ~25 damage on it with 2 crits
heavy carrier ~21 damage on it with 3 crits (4 stealth bombers 3 fighters on board ready to launch)

he has
2 full health destroyers
1 frigate ~10 damage on it
1 raider ~2 hit points left

if game was played out hard to say what final result might have been since crits tend to accumulate quickly. but i have huge firepower advantage and points left advantage (~1090 vs 550) so i could run from him.

looking back on game my opponent realized that he misplaced his dreadnaught. mainly by placing it first. this allowed me to shot at it from afar with my much better range with no retaliation. he also thinks he miss used the nightwings a little and should have used them to flank on one side not as part of attack force, they did mange to soak a lot of hits so not too sure about this. he also thinks he played to aggressively for the game type with the number superiority he had, could have tried to get more board control victory points before a real engagement.

I for my part think my heavy carrier was badly positioned at the start, this lead to it not managing to shot first two turns, lots of wasted firepower. i also think for this game type i did not bring enough ships forcing me in to a situation where i have to kill his ships in order to win, and not being able to effectively split my forces into sub groups. but my range advantage did allow me to force him to decide between trying to take center or only holding back and giving up victory points for control until he was a time for a close range engagement which might never come. he chose the more aggressive route.
 
game took less then 5 hours but we played slowly. And at one point we explained the rules to a person who was watching the game, which took a bit of time.
 
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