A Noble Duel - Tournament Results

[MongooseMatt]

Okay, the dust has settled, and the Noble Houses have sorted their differences (for now). Time for the results!

Player Fleet G1 G2 G3 G4 Sports Total
Andy Don Hawkwood 7 20 13 20 11 71
Paul Eyles Hazat 13 13 7 13 20 66
Alan Buckmaster Hawkwood 13 13 13 13 11 63
Ben Rubery Hazat 3 13 20 7 17 60
Peter Perry Hawkwood 13 7 7 13 20 60
Greg Smith Hawkwood 17 7 13 0 11 48
Richard Carr al Malik 7 7 7 7 17 45
Katrina Hepburn Decados 7 0 0 7 17 31

Congratulations to all, and to the winners, the spoils!

Katrina won the Monkey this time round

 

[Stormrider]

Congrats to everyone, sounds like it was a great day out!

Oh, and I have to come next time. Names aside, that table looks the complete opposite of how I (and others) would have called it.

I can see the Dreadnought army being doomed at 750pts, fair enough. Al Malik with Galliots, I can see that not being effective but still not terrible.

As for Hazat coming 2nd and 4th, no offense to the Hazat players but their opponents must have not had a clue how to face them (stay as far away as possible and cripple everything before it gets close, their guns are pathetic).

I must be sounding like a broken record...

 

[katadder]

dunno, hazat frigates and destroyers are not too bad. its the cruisers and dreadnought that suck a bit

 

[Stormrider]

Hazat frigates are outgunned by every other frigate and are the same cost and fragility, and one of the slowest. Their only plus is the extra troops, which due to being slow and fragile should never get used if you apply firepower effectively.

The destroyers have more firepower put again, not enough compared to other fleets, and slow, and the troop advantage doesn't help as much because they are twice the cost.

I'm giving serious consideration to giving the Hazat an extra 4" speed to all ships as a house rule just to make them competitive. They are a fleet which likes to board, and nearly every other fleet and outrun them and pepper them.

The cruiser and dread are actually where Hazat get good because finally they have some ships that realise they will never catch the enemy and decide to sit back and shoot.

 

[katadder]

how is a hazat frigate outgunned by say hawkwood or li-halan?
they have less precise lasers, but they have multi-hit turret weapons.
so a li-halan for example against another frigate will probably get 4 hits, 3 on the shields, a hazat will get 1 multihit and 2 normal meaning 4 hits, 3 on shields.

 

[Stormrider]

The Li-Halan is just about the only frigate that doesn't damage points outweight the Hazat, but has the additional potential damage from critical hits (between 1 and D6 iirc for each hit) oh, and 4" range and 50% extra speed (who do you think you are boarding Mr Hitler?).

Hawkwood get 4 lasers, of which 3 should hit and have a decent chance of causing criticals, and missiles which ignore shields and get a reroll.

Glad you didn't mention Decados with it's 6 medium blasters (averaging 6 hits).

 

[Da Boss]

At this point I am quite intrigued as to how LBH placed above Greg :shock:

Looking forward to battle reports............

 

[Clanger]

Used the same fleet for all 4 games -

House Hazat

1 Stalker Explorer
3 Scorpion Frgiates
2 Manticore Destroyers
A nice little Marauder on each ship to eat up the points.

Game 1 - Kat's black and pink Decados Fleet. Anikrunta and a Lucretzia loaded with Marauders. - Call to Arms.

Game 2 - LBH's Hawkwwod Fleet. 2 Griffin'S, 3 Hornet's and a Wayfarer with Marauders. - Space Superiority.

Game 3 - Andy's Hawkwood Fleet. 2 Griffin's, 2 Hornet's, Darius and a Wayfarer with Marauders. - Space Superiority.

Game 4 - Richards Al - Malik Fleet. 2 Efreet, 2 Rahimat, Spider and Odyssey. - Call to Arms.

Every game was good fun and enjoyable. Ships went boom on both sides and was fun .

 

[Stormrider]

That's definitely a good balanced fleet selection there Clanger and probably very close to what I would have taken.

I'll try to climb off my band wagon for a bit and ask, what tactics did your opponents use against you? I've tried to make the Hazat work but maybe it's Rick that's scuppering the plans or I'm doing something very wrong. I always find myself outgunned and unable to close range to attempt boarding. Did you opponents move towards you?

On the opposing fleets (this is what I really wanted to see to decide in my own mind which houses are under/over powered), both the Hawkwood look pretty balanced, very similar makeup to your own, seems to be a fairly standard loadout at that point cost. I think I prefer LBH's to Andy's but in the right circumstances Andy's could be much more powerful. Kat's Decados, well, I really don't want to be mean but a dread at that level has no chance. 7 Mantis with 1 marauder each or a mix of Mantis and Tupok'ta would have cleared most armies off the board though (only troubled by Al Malik, hence the Tupok'ta).

The Al Malik is an interesting one though, I assume by Orcle you mean the Odyssey. I'd have probably dropped the 2 Rahimat for more spiders or even a 3rd Efreet, the Al-Malik Galliots really are weak unless they can start very close to anyone other than Hazat (now, if they had the agile trait... lol).

Thanks for posting this up Clanger, it's a huge help to those of us that couldn't make it to see how the scores match the armies. Much appreciated!

 

[lastbesthope]

At this point I am quite intrigued as to how LBH placed above Greg :shock:

Looking forward to battle reports............

To be honest I'm not sure myself.

Joint 4th, and joint sportsman award. All in all a good day. a few points less of damage here or there I could easily have placed in the top 3.

Same fleet in all 4 games
Hawkwood
2 Griffin Destroyers, each with 1 Marauder upgrade
3 Hornet Frigates, each woth 2 Marauder upgrades
1 Wayfarer Explorer

Game 1 vs Richard's Al Malik - 2 Efreet, 2 Rahimat, Spider and Odyssey, Call to Arms, close game, narrow win in my favour

Game 2, Space Superiority vs Clanger's Hazat - 1 Stalker Explorer, 3 Scorpion Frgiates, 2 Manticore Destroyers, A nice little Marauder on each ship to eat up the points.

Benny hill chase round the massive asteroid field and then trading fire, narrow win for Clanger, good use of Slingshots by him in the first turn.

Game 3 vs Alan's Hawkwood, 3 Griffins, 1 hornet, 2 Scouts. Space Superioirty (even though we agreed to reroll it, it came up again, and you can't reroll a reroll ), again very close, down to the last square, narrow win for Alan. this was again on Table 3 just like my second game, with the MASSIVE snaking asteroid field. A couple of damage points less on my frigate and I could have won this by the narrowest of narrow margins.

Game 4, against Kat's Decados, she took her 2nd Dreadnought of the day with a Frigate and some troop upgrades. Thank the gods she rolled Space Superiority. The destruction of 1 Decados Frigate later, if Kat hadn't last gasped a crippled firgate on my side, it'd have been a 17-3 to me not a 13-7 and I'd have been 3rd.

Things I learnt today:

1) Playing Space Scenario, more hulls are better, eh Kat?

2) Hull 5 ships last longer than Hull 4, 1 Griffin can be more useful than 2 Hornets, and last a lot longer

3) When chatting on the train with a fellow tourney player, a passing drunk will mishear "Hawkwood" as "Hawkwind" and give you his sob story of having togo to a Hawkwind concert with his ex.

4) Catching an Explorer with your measuring tape and launching it into the air will give you some authentic battle damage chipped paint, need to touch that up sometime.

Jolly good day all round, best tourney yet, not sucking in all my games helps with that

Looking forward to the next one, but dear god Matthew, for all our sakes, put a cap on the number of Dreadnoughts you're allowed to take or Kat will take half a dozen!!!

LBH

 

[Ben2]

I think that yes, Hawkwood certainly have a better frigate than Hazat.

2 turreted missiles that have range 28, ignore shields and reroll misses combined with 4 light lasers per broadside and 4 additional speed is better than the Hazat 2 blaster dice (multihit 2, burnout), 3 light lasers per broadside but three more troops and 2 more grapple guns.

If the Hazat frigate were speed 12, or armour 5, or upgraded the light lasers to medium lasers, then it would be less clear cut.

There are similar issues with the destroyers, with the Hawkwood destroyer simply being better and faster for the same points.

Four players did turn up with Hawkwood fleets though, and several people had the 2 destroyer, 3 frigate, 1 scout, troop upgrades fleets.

I think at the moment the optimum build for a 750 point tournament is 3 destroyers, 1 frigate, 2 scouts, troop upgrades to take to 750. This was taken by someone who did very well. I think armour 5 makes a huge difference in small games, as does scouting.

In my game against Al-Malik, when I was facing missiles that passed through my shields anyway, I simply put the pedal to the metal and went all ahead full most of the time, breaking my opponents T. He had taken two Galliots (and I obviously murdered those) so didn't have the firepower to repel me as I closed. I just took my licks going in and got in a position to hit ships with both broadsides from my destroyers. Playing speed 12 Hazat made a huge difference and they were able to close range and start beating up enemy ships pretty quickly.

In small point tournaments I would say Galliots are not worth taking, as the 10 troops and significantly reduced firepower in comparison to a frigate (for some fleets, the Hawkwood Galliot loses its missiles but gains 4 troops and 3 points of damage for 20 points, the Hazat galliot gains 1 troop while upgrading three to marauders, 4" of move, 3 points of damage, 3 more lasers for each broadside, but costs 50 points more) in a tournament it can't carry it's own and will get swiftly beaten to death by the only slightly more expensive destroyers).

Like stealthships, I think galliots are more suited to campaigns and some of the scenarios. Getting an opponent on their own means you can capture things, but approaching a wall of battle with either of these is suicide, as Kat found out.

 

[starbreaker]

Playing speed 12 Hazat made a huge difference and they were able to close range and start beating up enemy ships pretty quickly.

I think you've hit on a very important element of playing Hazat well. All Power To Engines is a no-brainer against Al Malik (unless they're fielding something ridiculous like an all-explorer fleet), but Hazat would be well served to use it more regularly against any opponent who's trying to keep the range open. Hazat firepower is overwhelming only if you can get the light blasters firing before you've lost too many hulls, and speed 8 lets the sprinty laser fleets avoid you for too long for that to happen (in most scenarios, anyway).

The actual drawbacks to APTE are small. A -2 to shields for the turn translates to 2 extra points of damage on each target the enemy engages. How many targets does the enemy actually fire at each turn? It increases as point value rises, but it's rarely more than two or three ships taking serious fire - spread fire more thinly than that and you can't do enough damage to alarm a frigate in most cases. That means APTE is normally trading 4-6 extra points of damage over the whole fleet (and no more than 2 points per ship) for a speed increase of 50%. Even one turn of sprinting is likely to get your myopic light guns firing a turn earlier than normal, and two turns certainly will. Compare that to the damage that a longer-ranged enemy will put into over the course of a turn's firing with your lights out of range - the enemy will almost certainly hurt you more there than sprinting will cost you.

Now your enemies can sprint too, and speed 12 fleets are going to gain more of a benefit than you will, both in terms of speed gained and damage taken (since most of your guns can't fire on them to exploit the weakened shields). Look at the setup zones for various scenarios, though. There's generally only 24-36" of space beyond your setup zones. The enemy can only run for a couple of turns before they're hitting a wall or corner, and if you're in hot pursuit, you're going to get one, probably two good volleys into them when they try to slip out past you. Terrain might change that, but terrain also gives you cover on the approach that will help negate long-range sniping. The high speed of a sprinting speed 12 ship actually works against it when it comes to trying to dodge out of corners or through/around terrain - having to move 9" before your first turn is pretty awful in a lot of cases.

Obviously you don't always want to close via APTE. Sprinting into a galliot fleet or a pack of Decados destroyers will ruin your day. But against gun fleets, especially the laser boats that rely on range advantage to kill you, trading shields for speed is a better plan than it looks at first.

Incidentally, the much-maligned Hazat galliot clearly costs as much as it does because of how gross 12 light blasters on a hull moving 18" a turn under APTE can be. At those speeds it isn't hard to get both broadsides firing, or sprint from as far as 34" out to firing range for one deck or the other. That isn't a small threat range at all. They're still fire magnets and hard to keep alive, but they ought to get at least one good pass in before they go. Actually getting a boarding action off is gravy.