"Sir." Commander Everson looked up from his hooded viewer, his frown speaking volumes, "We're not alone. I have four hostiles inbound."
Captain Holland drummed her fingers on the command chair arm.
"Here's where things get interesting", she said quietly before, louder, "Red Alert. All ships to battle stations."
So here's a quick battle report for our little 500 point game last night. This is mine and Digger's third battle using ACTA: Star Fleet. Probably the first time we actually played the game right. One of the reasons I love playing Digger (apart from the chilli
) is that we take the time to check the rules as we go, and we question and analyse what we're doing to make our games better. As a result, this game took us about 2 hours which seems inordinately long for a 500 point battle, but i'm sure we'll get better.
Digger played Klingons
1 x FD7 - Fast Cruiser -
IKS Swiftsword
1 x D6 - Heavy Cruiser -
IKS Anarchy
2 x E4 - Light Frigate -
IKS Adamant, IKS Ardent
I played Federation
1 x BCJ - Battle Cruiser -
USS Montana
1 x CA - Heavy Cruiser -
USS Farragut
1 x FFG - Frigate -
USS Churchill
Klingon fleet in deployment position - there is some proxying of miniatures here
And the Federation
Turn 1 saw the Federation move cautiously forward by 6" while the Klingon ships dashed ahead at their maximum speeds.
Turn 2 the Federation boosted their shields in anticipation of the drone barrage to come. Sure enough, as the two fleets moved into range both sides lobbed drones at each other. This first engagment was less than decisive as both sides were effective with their defenses, although the
USS Churchill took heavy damage to her shields from some well rolled multihits from the IKS Anarchy.
Turn 3 saw the
USS Montana declare defensive fire to protect the Churchill which was looking particularly vulnerable. Meanwhile the
USS Farragut pressed ahead hoping to bring her photon torpedoes into range. This move allowed the scarily agile FD7 to get into position for an alpha strike against the plucky Federation cruiser.
Farragut took a frightening amount of hits with Digger pretty much reducing her shields to a token level and scoring some internals through natural sixes. When the
Farragut finally fired her photons hoping to take out one of the Klingon frigates, all four missed!
Turn 4 and the Federation closed in with the main element of the Klingon group which had held back. The
USS Farragut was pretty much doomed as the FD7 stayed close. She moved forward as much as possible and decided not to reload, preferring to keep all her other weapons operational. The Federation managed to score some hits against the Klingon units but again the rolls went the Klingons way. The
USS Farragut died in a hail of fire from the FD7 while the other Klingon ships switched to fire at the BCJ.
Turn 5 saw the Federation carry on closing and this time the remaining Klingon ships moved cautiously forward. The
IKS Adamant was finally crippled but held on with one or two hull points remaining. Both sides took damage but all units apart from the
Adamant remained combat capable, some with one or two critical hit effects in place. We called this as the last turn due to time constraints and looking at the victory points, it was a victory to the Klingons with 180 points to 37. If we'd continued, the Federation ships remaining would have been in trouble
Despite losing, I enjoyed the game and was pleased to see that we seemed to be using the rules properly, managing the defensive fire rules properly and using all of the weapons traits etc correctly. I was particularly pleased that I remembered the combined drone systems for the Federation.
We still think the Klingons seem to hold all the cards, with the agile ships and forward shield benefits proving quite decisive in this game. Initiative sinking also proved a boon to the space going bully boys. Still, good fun. next time we'll mix it up a bit and try different fleets, or at least swap fleets.
