[br] ISA vs vorlons, 5 point raid

[tneva82]

Just a quick recounting of 5 point raid against alex3b on vassal. I took ISA(WSC-2, 3xwhite star), he took the vorlons(2 destroyers, transport).

For space terrain we had dust cloud on south-west corner and density 6 asteroid field on north-east corner. I was on the north side. A call to arms scenario. He put vorlon fleet in dust clouds while I went behind asteroids with WSC2 and white star on left and other 2 white stars on right.

Turn 1 was manouvering. He sent destroyer and transport north and other destroyer toward east while I had WSC2 and white star heading toward pair of vorlon ships and 2 other white stars trying to deal with destroyer.

Turn 2: We enter firing range. Before I get even to shoot his destroyer hits WSC2 8 times. 3+ dodge fails spectaculary(5 times?) and with couple of crits(including 6-6) blows my poor battle level choise in a second. Ouh!

Other destroyer caused similary nasty damage to other white star causing -2 and -4 speed crits. Good thing these adaptive armours exists! My shooting btw was self repaired with ease.

Turn 3: Ships continue to manouver. Transport used come about which(albeit without my intention. This game was first time I even heard what the vorlon pulse does) attracted nials. Combined with 2 white stars shooting at it it left transport with some 50 damage or so. Heyhoo!

Less well was crippling of damaged white star(leaving just dodge and jump generator I think. Adaptive armour and flight computer went leaving it also skeleton crewed for good...) with -1AD. There went main beam as well.

Turn 4: Damaged WS starts to move away, I get moment of stupidity and start to concentrate on destroyers(those 8AD beams probably got me worried...). Needless to say that doesn't work while damaged WS is blown as was one of the last 2 white stars with 5 hits past dodge which resulted in 3 crits. Weapons out and 6-4 crit. Boom!

Next turn saw death of last white star as well with another bunch of criticals.

I enjoyed precise beams when my ISA was shredding EA and centauri fleet to bits but receiving them from vorlon fleet was less funny experience

Seems the vorlons got nice benefit from armageddon rules. Fighter vulnerability reduced, fleet is suprisingly manouverable(less required movement before turn and 90 degree turn is nothing to be sniffed at!) and firepower is as usual plain deadly. First time my white stars felt vulnerable.

Good game though.

 

[H]

sounds like a bit of a beating. I recently played a 5 war point game against reaverman, suffering a bit of a hammering myself, the Vorlons are much nastier than they were, definately a fleet to worry about now.

 

[tneva82]

sounds like a bit of a beating.

Whenever destroyer opened up I had one ship crippled or blown apart...

Good thing some fancy dodging kept some of my ships alive longer than they should have kept(8 hits, 1 got through 4+ dodge...Wish I would have rolled thatway for WSC-2 which had most of my firepower...).

I recently played a 5 war point game against reaverman, suffering a bit of a hammering myself, the Vorlons are much nastier than they were, definately a fleet to worry about now.

Amen! Which is something I actually enjoy. I WANT vorlons and shadows to be nasty fleet to face And the one turn I caused heaps of damage to transport gave me hint that they can be beaten.

Of course rolling 3 1's in a row to hit with your improved neutron lasers doesn't help...(of course this could be said to have been balanced by 5 hits from single neutron laser That was awesome).

But real killer was all those crits. He was rolling jolly good amount of crits even for precise(5 hits, 3 crits. Right... :roll: ). And adaptive armour or not when you suffer +4 damage critical hit from DD weapon white star is as good as gone after that.

 

[Burger]

sounds like a bit of a beating. I recently played a 5 war point game against reaverman, suffering a bit of a hammering myself, the Vorlons are much nastier than they were, definately a fleet to worry about now.

He beat my 5pt War ISA fleet too... Vorlons are pretty damn evil now.

 

[Alexb83]

Thanks for posting a summary, Neva - it was a good game all round, or as good as a game can be when Vassal keeps throwing in big crits every round (they do sort of skew the outcome!). 6,6 the first one out, and later on a 4,6 and 6,4 and 6,5 on another unlucky whitestar.

I was actually surprised how tough it seemed to be for the ISA to monopolise, given their speed on WS's, over the Vorlons - I guess those 90 deg turns made it tough. Also, out of about 5 turns, we drew init 4 times, and Tneva lost every reroll.

AP weapons again showed their lack of effectiveness at times - one Destroyer failed spectacularly to cause a single hit against hull 5 one turn (1/8 hit, was dodged). Another time Neva managed to dodge 7/8 hits - but then again the WS2 failed to dodge nearly everything on the first round of firing.

The Transport definately took a beating - from 4 Nials I think it took 14 damage, and from a WS another 30 in one turn. Unfortunately the Destroyers hardly got scraped throughout the game whilst wiping out roughly a ship a turn.

 

[H]

My rolling didn't help me, I had 20 or so dice to throw at a destoryer with 8 damage laft at one point.. I did one damage then it flew out of range, sigh.
I also played poorly, but I doubt I would have done much better really. Reaver knows the narn well, so It's not like i could surprise him.

 

[Alexb83]

Kat threw a very nasty fleet of Narn at my Vorlons on Vassal a small while ago - wiped them out nearly to the last ship (Destroyers, a Light Cruiser and some Transports). He just took lots of Katans - the sheer number of SAP beams and the no. of init sinks really beat the Vorlon lack of ships and range (also hull 6 is a killer given the lack of SAP for Vorlons).

 

[tneva82]

it was a good game all round

Yup. Good game.

and later on a 4,6 and 6,4 and 6,5 on another unlucky whitestar.

Poor plucked chickens

I was actually surprised how tough it seemed to be for the ISA to monopolise, given their speed on WS's, over the Vorlons - I guess those 90 deg turns made it tough.

Definetly. With 1/45 degree turns on ship it's possible to avoid being hit but thanks to your movement ability and that 90 degree turns it was bloody impossible to avoid being hit by atleast one destroyer. Even withotu come about.

Maybe I just need to practise lot more

Also, out of about 5 turns, we drew init 4 times, and Tneva lost every reroll.

Well to be honest you had advantage there so not that unlikely Though constantly rolling 4 or less on reroll(before modifiers) was getting tad annoying

The Transport definately took a beating - from 4 Nials I think it took 14 damage, and from a WS another 30 in one turn.

14 from fighters after adaptive armour(12 AP shots, 8 hit, caused 28 point of damage...Uraaa!). 38 from WS actually. 30 from neutron laser(5 hits needing 3+, 4+, 5+, 6+ and 6+...) and then 8 more from molecular pulsars. And this happened on same turn with fighters.

Too bad couldn't get something to finish that bugger off.

Unfortunately the Destroyers hardly got scraped throughout the game whilst wiping out roughly a ship a turn.

Yup. Those pack one hell of a punch. 8AD SAP DD precise beam is nothing to snif at. Especially when it's not even boresight and is coupled with 1/90 turn hull. Good thing I had 4+ dodge around or I would have had it even worse...

 

[voodoomachine]

Vorlons and Shadows are definitely interesting to play againest.

Did Precise do anything for you? I play Dilgar, and we have no precise weapons, so I don't know how much of a difference that would make againest the Vorlons. However, DD weapons certainly chew them up quickly.

 

[Alexb83]

From memory, Tneva got 1 natural 6 (that's 6 +d6 damage, for which he rolled a 1 as for the rest, just remember it gives you +1 to all your damage dice.

Shadows probably would've felt it more than Vorlons, as most of it was lost in the rounding down from AA

 

[tneva82]

Did Precise do anything for you? I play Dilgar, and we have no precise weapons, so I don't know how much of a difference that would make againest the Vorlons. However, DD weapons certainly chew them up quickly.

For crit hits no. Didn't get more than 1.

Then was the hard to remember advantage of getting extra blip of damage for each hit. Since I was shooting with tripple/double damage weapons that caused nice chunks.

Very nice with improved neutron laser Too bad I lost WSC2 too fast with it's 2AD beam :-(

 

[Davesaint]

What Scenario were you using for setup? How far away from each other did you place at the start of the battle? After all, once you got behind the Vorlon, you should have been able to stay out of his weapon arc.


Dave

 

[Alexb83]

It was call to arms, but we added debris. I won setup and chose to go first, taking the dust cloud. Tneva put himself behind an asteroid field (he really needn't have as it caused him trouble the first turn getting through/around it - lucky it was only density 6).

He never had superiority in nos after the first shot - he managed to pass a Destroyer at one point, but left me too much room and when I did a 90 deg turn, I still had him in forward arc. Only in the last turn did I have ships that couldn't fire (transport ran into dust cloud and out of last WS's range) but still could get 1 destroyer on each ws.

Vorlons are actually harder to outmanouver than you might think (at least transports and destroyers).

 

[tneva82]

It was call to arms, but we added debris. I won setup and chose to go first, taking the dust cloud. Tneva put himself behind an asteroid field (he really needn't have as it caused him trouble the first turn getting through/around it - lucky it was only density 6).

Not big problems though. Could have avoided it by deploying 1" further and I aimed to use it for cover.

He never had superiority in nos after the first shot - he managed to pass a Destroyer at one point, but left me too much room and when I did a 90 deg turn,

Yup. Those 90 degree turns are hard to avoid. Especially on ships that can turn around in smaller spot than WS(7" minimum movement is pretty annoying).

It wasn't helped by Alex3b's clever manouvering. I went behind one ship, another destroyer was easily in position to turn around and aim at my ship...

Add to that numerical equality after 1st shot and never winning initiave after that(or did I?) and I couldn't get much of movement advantage...

Should have gone straight up against that transport and blow it up at any cost to get myself numerical advantage. THEN I might have a shot.

 

[Alexb83]

I guess Vorlons being as slow as they are is helpful in regards to turning - yes, being able to turn 90 after 3.5 or 4 inches is great at catching people unaware, and if you can come about it's even better.

Still, the trick with Vorlons very much seems to be triangle of staggered formations - that way you can always keep each ship covered by another.

I think you won initiative for turn one, when we were all out of range of each other. Every turn after that, we drew on the first roll, and I won on the reroll.

The 5 WS fleet would have fared much better, I think - I know Katadder is trying to pin me down to play that game through. I don't think 5 transports would do particularly well at it. At least there would be equality in initiative sink terms, but from our game it was really clear just how much trouble even a destroyer has killing a whitestar without lucky rolling on crits.

 

[Burger]

from our game it was really clear just how much trouble even a destroyer has killing a whitestar without lucky rolling on crits.

Yeah WS are quite survivable against Vorlons. But, you don't have to roll all that lucky on crits to kill a White Star...

Speed crits are bad. 6 is obviously instant death; no dodge at speed 0. 5 is quite bad but not terminal.
Reactor crits are nasty because of the crew losses. Any of 4-6 with double damage can end a WS's career very early.
All weapon crits basically nullify a White Star. Lose one AD: main weapon gone. Lose 1 firing arc: all weapons gone. The only one which is not too bad it power fluctuations, which has a 50% chance of losing firepower.
Crew criticals, say no more, they decrew WS's easily.
Vitals, all except 1 and 4 are usually instadeath for the WS.

=> Just over half of the criticals can pretty much disable a White Star.

 

[H]

pretty much the same with a Drakh raider. whats that? HOW MANY HITS? um, let me roll for dodges, and then I'll just remove this ship from the board eh?

 

[Burger]

At least -1AD crit doesn't remove a Raider's main weapon... halves it, but doesn't remove it!
And they are Skirmish

 

[H]

Main weapon? you mean our only weapon! and yes, they are indeed raid.

 

[Abraxas]

Just curious: would 5 (vanilla) White Stars have worked better? I mean, the WSC-2 had a less than stellar career in this game... so wouldn't 2 more White Stars have been a better bargin?