Wing Commander
Mongoose
We played a 5pt War battle in the store yesterday: Minbari vs ISA. I couldn't resist taking the Excalibur as I seldom get the chance to use it. In the previous edition the Victory class always always got crit bombed out of the game so it would be an interesting test to see how it behaved.
The Minbari took a large selection of hulls with 2 Sharlin holding 1 end of their line. I took the following ships;
1 Victory Class
1 WS Carrier
6 White Stars
6 Blue stars
+4 WS Fighters
(we kinda fluffed round the points a little but basically had 5 War Points each, stepping down from war feels a little clunky)
- I kept a few White Stars and Blue Stars in Hyperspace so that we could try out the Jump Point bomb rules.
Throughout the game we did "create" a few situations simply to trial the new amendments to the rules, trying moves that we didn't necessarily deem the best idea just to see how they would work now.
Firstly; AJP Bombs, I brought through 3 Blue Stars right on top of the Minbari line and didn't make a single AJP roll, the target of 10 makes
it challenging even for the Rangers! I had a White Star try it as well on top of a Sharlin and even he couldn't pull it off. It put my ships in excellent position to take a few clean shots but the Jump Bombs simply never materialised. You need to be fairly lucky to achieve it now (ok, I failed 4 rolls of 5+ but that wasn't a big issue).
Mini Beams; the 4+ is a pain in the butt, especially at the longer ranges that some of them have but the ISA dodge rolls made a bit of a mockery of the vast majority of the Mini beams rolls, especially the Blue Stars who flew straight down the Minbari throats and largely survived fairly intact. Those Blue Stars have serious teeth as well, good at clearing fighters and putting big holes in things; I rolled a 6-5 crit on a Morshin from a Blue Star emerging from a Jump point and almost took it straight out the game.
Beams on a 4+. I can see some lucky players doing well with this but we found that it didn't make a massive difference and we had a few fairly beam heavy hitters on either side. Again though, the dodge rolls here had a strong effect but that hasn't changed from 1st edn.
Stealth; this was 1 area that did change my play style a little. I found myself activating a lot of the smaller ships (e.g. Blue Stars) 1st to try and get that extra +1 for subsequent stealth rolls. Rather than fire the bigger ships first I activated others that were closer to get the stacking bonus. I have to say though that this was where my luck with the Victory deserted me totally, I held it back from firing til I had Scout locks, 8" bonus and a previous lock on no less than 4 vessels and repeated this tactic 3 straight turns in a row. Given that with modifiers I needed only a 2+ on the majority of these ships I split my firepower and weapons yet still only got to fire 3 weapons in 3 turns.... out of 12 possibles I rolled 9 1's! We both had a laugh over that as the Victory played (offensively) very little roll in the game, however defensively:
As I mentioned before, in 1st Edn I found that Armageddon ships got crit-bombed out of the game fairly early on but in 2nd edition the Victory just soaked up firepower like a sponge. Tactically, I placed my White Stars and Blue Stars on the flanks and pressed the big go faster button on the Victory, piledriving it into the centre of the Minbari line with the intention of seeing how much damage it could give and take. The giving part went out the window after 9 rolls of 1 on the stealth
However, the taking it part went on, and on, and on.... By turn 6 it was reduced to 40ish damage and crew but had taken 21 crits!!!! She had 7 minus 2 moves, 4 minus 1's, lost several traits, no engineering, had 5 -1 AD's, etc, etc but was still moving under her own steam and essentially in pretty fair condition despite of taking a total pasting. No more crit bombing!!!! In other words she is now as nails as it gets.
Fighters need to be used very differently, my WS fighters were dying in droves in combat with the Nials and even when they punched through the AF on the Minbari tore them to pieces. I'm going to be playing a few move fighter games as they now play very differently compared to 1st edn. I did find though that even swarms of Nials didn't do that much damage to my White Stars - they are awesome dogfighters but mediocre antiship.
So, we found that in 2nd edition the changes may be subtle but are already forcing us to relearn old tactics and adapt to new ones. However, we both felt that the changes have made the game more enjoyable in every way whilst we can't as yet find anything negative to say about the games we've played to date.
http://idgaming.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1250
There are few pictures of the battle on our forums, and yes last picture was the end of the game and not staged; in true fashion I rolled 4 1's out of 5 stealth rolls for the Blue Stars and also failed with 2 White Stars and totally missed with 2 of the White Stars beam weapons! The last White Star made up for it though and rolled a couple of nasty crits to win the game!
The Minbari took a large selection of hulls with 2 Sharlin holding 1 end of their line. I took the following ships;
1 Victory Class
1 WS Carrier
6 White Stars
6 Blue stars
+4 WS Fighters
(we kinda fluffed round the points a little but basically had 5 War Points each, stepping down from war feels a little clunky)
- I kept a few White Stars and Blue Stars in Hyperspace so that we could try out the Jump Point bomb rules.
Throughout the game we did "create" a few situations simply to trial the new amendments to the rules, trying moves that we didn't necessarily deem the best idea just to see how they would work now.
Firstly; AJP Bombs, I brought through 3 Blue Stars right on top of the Minbari line and didn't make a single AJP roll, the target of 10 makes
it challenging even for the Rangers! I had a White Star try it as well on top of a Sharlin and even he couldn't pull it off. It put my ships in excellent position to take a few clean shots but the Jump Bombs simply never materialised. You need to be fairly lucky to achieve it now (ok, I failed 4 rolls of 5+ but that wasn't a big issue).
Mini Beams; the 4+ is a pain in the butt, especially at the longer ranges that some of them have but the ISA dodge rolls made a bit of a mockery of the vast majority of the Mini beams rolls, especially the Blue Stars who flew straight down the Minbari throats and largely survived fairly intact. Those Blue Stars have serious teeth as well, good at clearing fighters and putting big holes in things; I rolled a 6-5 crit on a Morshin from a Blue Star emerging from a Jump point and almost took it straight out the game.
Beams on a 4+. I can see some lucky players doing well with this but we found that it didn't make a massive difference and we had a few fairly beam heavy hitters on either side. Again though, the dodge rolls here had a strong effect but that hasn't changed from 1st edn.
Stealth; this was 1 area that did change my play style a little. I found myself activating a lot of the smaller ships (e.g. Blue Stars) 1st to try and get that extra +1 for subsequent stealth rolls. Rather than fire the bigger ships first I activated others that were closer to get the stacking bonus. I have to say though that this was where my luck with the Victory deserted me totally, I held it back from firing til I had Scout locks, 8" bonus and a previous lock on no less than 4 vessels and repeated this tactic 3 straight turns in a row. Given that with modifiers I needed only a 2+ on the majority of these ships I split my firepower and weapons yet still only got to fire 3 weapons in 3 turns.... out of 12 possibles I rolled 9 1's! We both had a laugh over that as the Victory played (offensively) very little roll in the game, however defensively:
As I mentioned before, in 1st Edn I found that Armageddon ships got crit-bombed out of the game fairly early on but in 2nd edition the Victory just soaked up firepower like a sponge. Tactically, I placed my White Stars and Blue Stars on the flanks and pressed the big go faster button on the Victory, piledriving it into the centre of the Minbari line with the intention of seeing how much damage it could give and take. The giving part went out the window after 9 rolls of 1 on the stealth
However, the taking it part went on, and on, and on.... By turn 6 it was reduced to 40ish damage and crew but had taken 21 crits!!!! She had 7 minus 2 moves, 4 minus 1's, lost several traits, no engineering, had 5 -1 AD's, etc, etc but was still moving under her own steam and essentially in pretty fair condition despite of taking a total pasting. No more crit bombing!!!! In other words she is now as nails as it gets.Fighters need to be used very differently, my WS fighters were dying in droves in combat with the Nials and even when they punched through the AF on the Minbari tore them to pieces. I'm going to be playing a few move fighter games as they now play very differently compared to 1st edn. I did find though that even swarms of Nials didn't do that much damage to my White Stars - they are awesome dogfighters but mediocre antiship.
So, we found that in 2nd edition the changes may be subtle but are already forcing us to relearn old tactics and adapt to new ones. However, we both felt that the changes have made the game more enjoyable in every way whilst we can't as yet find anything negative to say about the games we've played to date.
http://idgaming.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1250
There are few pictures of the battle on our forums, and yes last picture was the end of the game and not staged; in true fashion I rolled 4 1's out of 5 stealth rolls for the Blue Stars and also failed with 2 White Stars and totally missed with 2 of the White Stars beam weapons! The last White Star made up for it though and rolled a couple of nasty crits to win the game!
