[br] Vuldruk vs Decados

[tneva82]

My first game of ACTA: Fading suns. Opponent newbie as well so if one of us does something stupid don't be affraid of saying it I asked him to play the Decados(he's been eyeballing either the hazat or li-halan) as they are the 2nd fleet I bought and wanted to see them in action. I originally planned to use the Decados but after getting idea of ramming squadron of Vuldrok explorers couldn't resist idea of trying it in the field of battle 750 pts battle. Fleets:

Vuldrok:

2xlangskip
2xhadruk
6xmyrkwyrm aka the maniacs

Decados:

Tupok'Ta
nightwing stealth ship
4xMantis class frigate

Here's picture of fleets after deployment:



edit: Oh bit of clarifications since the vassal mod graphs aren't that clear The 6 small ones at top right are the explorers. Then toward left comes destroyer, frigate, destroyer, frigate(should have reversed the left ones). Decados wise the lone ship at right is the stealth ship and middle ship in the line is the Tupok'Ta.

Turn 1:

Vuldruk ships closed in full speed closing blast doors while they were at it. Decados ship moved more cautiously except for stealth ship that entered the dusk cloud. During shooting phase stealth ship fired at nearest explorer but poor rolling on damage table, armour and close blast door meant only single damage was scored. First mantis fired as well causing 4 more damage through it's defendes and killing trooper. Still not cripled though. Second mantis caused one more damage finally crippling the first explorer. Rest of the fleet out of range.

Forgot to take screen capture.

Turn 2:

Vuldruk won the initiave.

Nearest explorer yelled "give me ramming speed!" and headed straight toward the stealth ship. STEALTH THIS IF YOU CAN! Rolling 6 coupled with agile meant that it was automatic crash causing 12 points of damage and weapon critical. Explorer was blown apart in the crash as well.

With almost half dead the stealth ship decided to head toward rest of the fleet rather than face second suicide attack!

Decados maintained their line formation while Vuldruk managed to get close enough to start do some damage. Though on one flank it was frigate that was further away so destroyed would have to clear the shields for frigate to fire solid shots...Not intended! Explorers headed all to the dust cloud. Free stealth thank you very much!

Shooting. First langskip fired turret(port couldn't fire due to close blast door which Vuldruk all maintained) as solid shots clearing the shields. One hit got to hull but bounced off as a bulk hit. That mantis fired up toward the hadruk in the center. As hadruk failed all close blast door saves it suffered 4 damage.

Damaged hadruk tried to shoot at the stealthship but promptly botched the stealth check despite being close. Darn! Second mantis fired at same target but only caused -1 speed critical and one damage, rest being absorbed by CBD.

Lanskip on center then locked on the stupid stealth ship and fired the turret(and I started to wonder was it smart idea to CBD this turn afterall!). Ship suffered reactor critical and was 2 point from being destroyed. Atleast it was cripled!

At left hadruk, having been promoted from shield burner to damage dealer(lol) fired light slug guns at nearest mantis causing 3 points of damage.

Rear mantis fired at langskip but with high hull, armour and CBD fire just bounced off the hull.

In center finally mantis,tupok and cripled stealth ship fired at the langskip but ONLY thing they caused was weapon critical. Attacks just bounced off the high hull, armour 3 and CBD.

Opponent wasn't particulary impressed at his firing at the moment...And I was starting to be VERY happy about closing the blast doors! Especially when langskip fixed the critical at the end phase.

After turn 2:



Turn 3:

Vuldruk won the initiave. Again! So first explorer ordered ramming speed and flew against nearest(the rearmost) mantis. Thanks to the agile bonus ram was a success. 12 damage resulted in reactor critical and one cripled mantis. And to add insult to injury only 4 damage was caused in return...

Second mantis headed away from the squadron of maniacs(as opponent quickly dubbed them). Second explorer repeated the process(and again thanks to agile bonus) destroying both of them in the process.

Yet another mantis tried to escape but the nearest escaping was just barely in range. However this time, much to the relief of the Decados, the ram managed to miss the ship.

Opponent hadn't remembered to move the stealth ship yet so the crippled explorer hit it and took out both of them. So far so good.

At this point I joked what if I simply ram you with my big ships as well. Opponent wasn't too amused at the idea. However I figured that was wasting their potential bit too much. Instead I manouvered into firing position and this time langskips opted to leave close blast door at home.

Shooting. In the center hadruk fired and burned 2 shields out of the nearest mantis. Mantis tried to knock of the explorer that had tried to ram it but only caused 7 damage. Kinda poor rolling there...Return fire from langskip caused 11 damage. Not quite enough to cripple it!

One mantis fired right side weapons at that langkip(1 damage) and turret at the nearly dead explorer which survived thanks to armour. Tough little bugger...

On left hadruk burnt out all shields from nearest mantis which in turn finished off the explorer. This exploded BIG TIME. However this only damaged few Vuldruk ships for damage point or two. Question. I presume shields protect normally from this explosion? This saved Decados ships pretty well. Anyway left side and turret fired at the langskip on their flank causing 5 damage and reactor critical.

That mantis was then finished by the langskip. Eat 7 accurate multi hit 3 shots you shieldless bastard!

Tupok'Ta fired at the hadruk causing bunch of damage cripling it along reactor and weapon criticals. That hadruk is in pretty bad shape!

After turn 3:



Turn 4: Not surprisingly(seeing how game had been going) Vuldruk won it.

I realised I had screwed up slightly. Even with agile benefit explorer had hard time hitting ANYTHING with a ram! I considered boarding instead but in the end realised I was able to JUST hit the leftmost mantis. Damn. Need more room left for these guys! Brought them too close! Rolling above average continued and I caused 15 points of damage and weapon critical. Explorer was knocked out in the process.

Rest of the fleets manouvered around with Vuldruk manouverability starting to pay off. Remaining explorer and uncrippled hadruk closed blast doors.

Shooting. Cripled hadruk fired off against the Tupok'Ta knocking 2 shields out. Cripled mantis fired toward left langskip but particulary poor rolling meant just 1 damage. Second hadruk fired at the Tupok'Ta knocking last 2 shields out. That ship IS tough!

Tupok'Ta fired next. It opted to fire everything at the damaged langskip at left. At first didn't look too good when to hit rolls failed but rolls vs armour were better(everything damaged) and it even caused 2 criticals! Damn! Both were to weapons for added problem...

Unsurprisingly return fire from damaged langskip was less than stellar causing only 2 damage points...Finally mantis blew out the cripled hadruk. Last event this turn was langskip causing 11 damage(but no criticals) to the Tupok'Ta.

After turn 4:



Turn 5 and yes Vuldruk won the initiave, AGAIN!

And as expected explorer headed straight toward Tupok'Ta, hit it(thanks agile!) and together with engine critical took it out within 1 point from being destroyed.

At this point we agreed that was it. With almost dead Tupok'Ta, crippled Mantis and almost crippled Mantis how they could stop untouched hadruk, almost untouched langskip and while damaged still operational uncrippled langskip...

Post-comments:

Obviously I had plenty of luck Apart from turn 1 Vuldruk won EVERY 50-50 initiave rolls...Gave me nicely chance to ram something straight up! Also I succeeded with most of my ram rolls(albeit being agile helped) and crucially every single damage roll was 4+...That caused ungodly amount of damage and critical every time. I was often cripling target with one ram. So thanks to the luck eventhough I think I wasted their potential(d6*3 point of damage that ignores shield and hull? AIM FOR THE BIGGEST SHIP THEY HAVE! Should have headed straight toward Tupok'Ta!) they were wonder weapons. Albeit opponent was bit careless with the stealth ship but I guess he figured I wouldn't try to boarding ship with that many troops. Who's saying anything about boarding...

Those buggers were also surprisingly resilient when they weren't ramming due to armour 2 and CBD 4+ save. Sure only 9 points of damage but without precice weapons them requiring 3 hits to score one damage in average that still means 27 hits(well okay crits help) to blow one up. And since they were so cheap and didn't have guns it was tempting to shoot at the bigger ships.

As for them langskip was night on invulnerable feeling while CBD'ing! Also the sheer speed and manouverability of them was pretty nice. In the end I was able to run circles around the fleet. Nice. Punch wasn't neccessarily THAT big but still okay. 7 AD worth of accurate MH3 ain't too bad.

Albeit this time biggest ship I faced was the Tupok'Ta. If I face bigger ships I definetely need to concentrate Hadrok's more and use the explorers against bigger ships. Ram several against dreadnought and even they worry...

 

[Greg Smith]

Nice report, thanks.

Do you think the explorer's ramming score is a little too good?

 

[mrborges]

Sweet report! That's a heck of a lot of ramming. Can be a great tactic, apparently.
Very cinematic battle.

 

[tneva82]

Nice report, thanks.

Do you think the explorer's ramming score is a little too good?

Well dunno. Can't really comment that much after just one game. Also haven't compared it in effect from strategy of swamp the target with boarding parties.

However one thing I do wonder is that are Kurgan suicide crafts really THAT scary in comparison...For 10 pts less you get ship that albeit is tad more reliable in hitting(accurate+guided) and does 1d6 hits(compared to d6*3). Albeit devastating +1 but frankly the crits were superficial bonus. 2 explorers hitting=average 21 damage and 1 critical. 3 martyr fighters=10.5 hits resulting in tad short of 2 criticals with devasting +1. Nice for criticals but double the damage for explorer...

Though suicide fighters certainly have ease of hitting. Unless I misread they aren't limited to one 45 degree turn before ramming target. That takes bit of pre-planning with explorer least target manage to avoid it(almost failed to find ram target one turn due to forgetting this) and rather than opposed CQ with +1 you have accurate guided AD. More reliable.

Though also the suicide fighters are easier to remove...9 hit points with armour 2 and CBD4+? Oh yeah give me this!

 

[tneva82]

Sweet report! That's a heck of a lot of ramming. Can be a great tactic, apparently.
Very cinematic battle.

Well ability to bypass hull and shield scores for d6*3 damage was pretty hard to resist Though albeit I was forgetting ability to throw 3 troops(one elite) into them. Did consider doing first that and then ram but problems: a) if I lose the captain the ram check will be at -1 b) those explorers are soap bubbles if they use anything else but CBD...So basically board, then opponent needs to basically say "boo" and look angrily and the ship explodes

They sure are one shot weapons. If you fail the ram test you are pretty lucky to survive retaliation as opponent is unlikely to let you survive the attempt.

So seems it's board OR ram and I figured ramming is swiftest and most reliable way to take out ship(there is mind you point for other benefits of boarding. Specifically taking over the vessel and double vp's! However as we were playing annihilation vp's weren't that much of a concern).

 

[Greg Smith]

However one thing I do wonder is that are Kurgan suicide crafts really THAT scary in comparison...For 10 pts less you get ship that albeit is tad more reliable in hitting(accurate+guided) and does 1d6 hits(compared to d6*3). Albeit devastating +1 but frankly the crits were superficial bonus. 2 explorers hitting=average 21 damage and 1 critical. 3 martyr fighters=10.5 hits resulting in tad short of 2 criticals with devasting +1. Nice for criticals but double the damage for explorer...

But if the explorer does do a crit, it is potentially massively better than devastating - it gets a crit score of d6.

 

[Iron Domokun]

Note that the Critical Score of any crits scored by ramming are determined by a die roll. In other words, it's Devastating d6. That's pretty brutal. (Page 19, last paragraph of "Give me ramming speed" Special Action entry.)

 

[tneva82]

However one thing I do wonder is that are Kurgan suicide crafts really THAT scary in comparison...For 10 pts less you get ship that albeit is tad more reliable in hitting(accurate+guided) and does 1d6 hits(compared to d6*3). Albeit devastating +1 but frankly the crits were superficial bonus. 2 explorers hitting=average 21 damage and 1 critical. 3 martyr fighters=10.5 hits resulting in tad short of 2 criticals with devasting +1. Nice for criticals but double the damage for explorer...

But if the explorer does do a crit, it is potentially massively better than devastating - it gets a crit score of d6.

Okay so even less of bonus for the kamikaze fighter...(and something we misplayed here).

Okay so I'm starting to lean over toward either explorer ramming is too good or the suicide fighter is just WIMPY! Especially when you factor in that explorers are lot more durable. For 60 points you get 3 fighters(3 hit points, hull 4, 4+ dodge) or 2 explorers(18 hit points, hull 3, armour 2, CBD 4+ save). The explorers were actually pretty damn resilient while CBD'ing(and when you aren't CBD'ing you are ramming. Expendable assets anyway). Not quite as resilience for fighters for the points...

So only advantage seems to be easier time hitting the target. But with notably wimpier attack and much less resilience.

 

[locarno24]

The Khangard does seem a touch wimpy in comparison - especially since you need Khabir carriers to bring it to the field.

I suppose the argument is that it's actually got a better hull than the Myrkwyrm plus dodge 4+ but that still doesn't make it as tough and it's actually slower. It is supermanouvreable, I guess, but since you don't have to 'guess' where the enemy will be (like you might do with gunfire) it's not really harder to reach the enemy.

To be honest, the Khangard always seemed a bit wimpy but then the Myrkwyrm seems to have turned into a manned torpedo!

Question to anyone with more experience of the Fading Suns background - do Vuldrok ram stuff very often?

 

[MongooseMatt]

A quick note here - in the fial publication, suicide fighters will be cheaper...

 

[tneva82]

A quick note here - in the fial publication, suicide fighters will be cheaper...

Good to hear I'm sure final list is even better than current one.

 

[Da Boss]

A quick note here - in the fial publication, suicide fighters will be cheaper...

I think the concern is more for the Myrkwurm being a pure ram ship - bit like the old Ork ram ships then a boarding vessel.

 

[starbreaker]

A quick note here - in the fial publication, suicide fighters will be cheaper...

I think the concern is more for the Myrkwurm being a pure ram ship - bit like the old Ork ram ships then a boarding vessel.

Cheaper suicide fighters = good. They're underpowered at present.

Myrkwyrm as pure ram ship = maybe, maybe not. Depends on how badly you want/need the VPs from captures, or the fire arc blocking aspect of grappling. The little devils have excellent maneuver capability and can swarm a larger target with ease, and putting 3-4 boatloads of troops on an enemy ship will complicate their lives a lot. You'll still want to cut grapples ASAP and go ram once you've dropped the troops, but getting double VPs for grabbing a frigate or destroyer will help offset the points you'll lose as they die playing demolition derby.

The enemy can shoot them up in the process, sure, but that's fire not hitting your frigates as they work into range to set up for explosive shell volleys supported by destroyers firing standard rounds. Bet you can still get most of your boarding swarm away intact, or at least healthy enough to ram.

Probably need to be toned down to Ram 2 anyway. Little too good at scoring massive crits on Lumbering targets, which already have enough problems and are sensitive to crits.

 

[tneva82]

You'll still want to cut grapples ASAP and go ram once you've dropped the troops, but getting double VPs for grabbing a frigate or destroyer will help offset the points you'll lose as they die playing demolition derby.

Problem with board first, ram second is that unless I misread rules captain HAS to join the boarding and so unless you stay there until boarding is done you suffer -1 for the ramming CQ. Also if you board you aren't using CBD and without that myrkwyrm goes down if somebody says "boo!" to it Though albeit that is fire not going to rest of the fleet but then again if he has frigates etc he should have something that has guns that won't do that much vs vuldrok big ships but takes out non-CBD'ing myrkwyrm without too much of problem.

hull 3, 9 hit points and no shields=if not CBD'ing your dead meat!

Basically I treat them as one shot weapons. After turn they don't CBD I don't expect them to survive. If they do, nice, but most likely they are toast by then.

(oh and another distinct advantage for myrkwyrms. You are going to outsink your opponents big time until myrkswyrm swarm gets reduced a bit)

 

[locarno24]

Question. I presume shields protect normally from this explosion?

So far as I know.

Problem with board first, ram second is that unless I misread rules captain HAS to join the boarding and so unless you stay there until boarding is done you suffer -1 for the ramming CQ.

Potentially even if you do stay; after all, if he gets killed, you've had it.

Glad to hear the Khangard might be going down in cost. They are scary as, but not so much for their current price compared to the damage that can be wrought by the same price of torp bombers.

 

[tneva82]

Potentially even if you do stay; after all, if he gets killed, you've had it.

That too but then again vuldrok chooses which takes it for each damage right? Makes it hard to take them out. But yeh that's also problem.

Though frankly I don't expect boarding myrkwyrm to survive long enough to ram whether captain joins them or not. Without CBD they go down if somebody says "boo!" and looks evilly at them

 

[locarno24]

That too but then again vuldrok chooses which takes it for each damage right? Makes it hard to take them out. But yeh that's also problem.

Under normal circumstances, yes. I can't remember if any of the special troop types allow you to pick your targets.

 

[starbreaker]

Problem with board first, ram second is that unless I misread rules captain HAS to join the boarding and so unless you stay there until boarding is done you suffer -1 for the ramming CQ.

That still leaves you with the Agile bonus, reducing to slightly below even odds on most ships, and at a +1 versus Lumbering ones (which should always be prime ramming targets anyway). Not having the captain on board isn't all that crippling.

Also if you board you aren't using CBD and without that myrkwyrm goes down if somebody says "boo!" to it Though albeit that is fire not going to rest of the fleet but then again if he has frigates etc he should have something that has guns that won't do that much vs vuldrok big ships but takes out non-CBD'ing myrkwyrm without too much of problem.

hull 3, 9 hit points and no shields=if not CBD'ing your dead meat!

Actual numbers don't support that contention. There isn't a published frigate in the game (other than maybe the Vuldrok ones) that reliably one-shots an intact Myrkwyrm, and some fleets would need 2:1 odds to get a kill. Firing 100-200 points of ships at an empty Explorer hull is probably not a great tradeoff anyway unless the target has a very nasty ram (eg on a dread) already set up. Of course, you could be hoist by your own petard - an empty Myrkwyrm is easily captured by a single troop, and that's either extra VP for the enemy or a free initiative sink and suicide ram for them. Boarding is riskier than ramming in more ways than one.

That isn't to say you should always try to board first, but the capability is there if you need or want it. There will be time when maneuver or terrain will make a ram impossible while boarding isn't, after all, and in a close game the capture VPs might be vital.

Basically I treat them as one shot weapons. After turn they don't CBD I don't expect them to survive. If they do, nice, but most likely they are toast by then.

Getting attached to them is a mistake, agreed, but unless the enemy concentrates on them heavily, they're not quite as fragile as you say. And any shots hitting them are shots not hitting your frigates, which means those massive broadsides are more likely to get into range intact.

 

[katadder]

decados and al-malik frigates can reliably cripple them or kill if get good crits even with the armour 2.
hawkwood and li-halan obviously rely on the crits to get the cripple but have more chance.
hazat are worst off for a frigate stopping an explorer as they dont have much in the way of multi-hit or precise but a mix of both. their best option is to board and capture then use it against the vuldrok.

but even saying all that, a frigate is 3 times the cost of a myrkwyrm

 

[locarno24]

Kurgan aren't that bad, either. Being able to use heat blasters to full effect and not worrying about innacurate rockets due to low hull helps a lot. Also, concentrated heat blaster fire has a good chance of causing CQ-reducing criticals.

I guess, either way, that this likely to promote a WWI/WWII-type escort screen to fend these things off. Bombers aren't likely to help much either, and as noted you don't want to be wasting one-shot micro-torps into fundamentally expendable escorts.

Although it is a fair point that a low CQ Myrkwyrm is in fact pretty useless.