Facing Vorlons, advice needed!

[Orphanmaker]

Hello guys!

This weekend me and my friends are meeting to play a little B5 and I am hoping to get some advice on fighting the Vorlons. We are going to play games at 5p Raid level. I will play Minbari and I dont really know how I will approach the concept of facing one of the ancients. I mean, my ships are very fragile and vorlon beams are BRUTAL! But more importantly, my friend likes to bring an ungodly amount of fighters and I dont have any good way to counter that. He can avoid my anti-fighter weapons due to his long range and any Nials I send out to dogfight him will get shot down by his AF.

So my question is this: How do the minbari handle vorlon figher swarms?

I have a pretty big an varied minbari collection, so tips on fleet builds are kind of open if anyone have some ideas.

Also, if anyone have some general advice on tactics for fighting the vorlons with minbari I am very interested to hear them.

Cheers
Orphanmaker

 

[Greg Smith]

Use an ashinta. Loan anti-fighter dice to your fighters in dogfight - so the Vorlons get Anti-fightered right back. Also gang up. He might be able to anti-fighter one of yours, but two or more Nials will kill a Vorlon fighter dead.

General tactics for fighting Vorlons. Try and get out of their arc as much as possible - they only shoot forwards. Shoot at one target as much as possible. A few points here and there will allow the Vorlons to heal.

 

[Burger]

Yep, plenty of Ashintas and Morshins should be a good. Put 4 Nials on support of each Ashinta, and keep them close so you can use Escort. Play defensively, wait for him to come to you, thinking he can rape you with fighters like usual. Lend 2 AF dice to each Nial so if he attacks your capital ships, your Nials will intercept and their AF will fire first - hopefully killing him. You will get VPs for killing his fighters, and your Morshin can try to recover your lost Nials - remember if they are killed by AF they are not dying in a dogfight so you should be on 4+ for recovery.

Fighting Vorlons in general (ie. not fighter swarms), as Greg said, keep out of arc if you can. But a lot of their smaller ships have good turns so it can be hard. Vorlons are a defensive fleet, they have lower firepower than average ships of their PL, so sustained, concentrated firepower is the way to go. Don't rely on stealth too much but don't go for high hull either (since they have all beams). Your fighters will be next to useless except for taking out his, as above. Tigara, Veshatan, Shantavi and Sharkaan would be my weapons of choice.

 

[AdrianH]

This weekend me and my friends are meeting to play a little B5 and I am hoping to get some advice on fighting the Vorlons. We are going to play games at 5p Raid level.

Yep, plenty of Ashintas and Morshins should be a good. Put 4 Nials on support of each Ashinta, and keep them close so you can use Escort.
...
Tigara, Veshatan, Shantavi and Sharkaan would be my weapons of choice.

I don't think the Sharkaan would be a good idea at 5 Raid.

But if it's going to be a fighter-fest then I'd agree with the Morshin, even if it is almost half your FAP's. Whoever wins initiative gets to use his anti-fighter first and the Command +1 may help there, plus you get a chance to respawn any Nials which are destroyed. One of those plus the Ashinta is 3 of your 5, then add in a couple of Tigaras or Teshlans.

In general I'm not convinced that the Sharkaan is preferable to the basic Sharlin. It does a little more base damage but with only 6D, it scores fewer crits. Granted, the Vorlons will repair them a turn later, but a few crits can still inconvenience them for a while, and next turn you get to do it again. The Sharlin also has more Nials, possibly significant if the Vorlon player is throwing lots of fighters at you.

 

[Burger]

Yeah, don't use a Sharkaan in 5pt Raid. "This weekend's battle" and tips for fighting Vorlons in general were separated by paragraphs

If he is really fighter heavy then I would be tempted to take a Morshin and 3 Ashintas. Well actually if he's got 3 Raid FAPs worth (27 Vorlon fighters) or more then I think you're screwed whatever you do - short of taking Narn, Gaim or Shadows!

Sharlin vs Sharkaan, well 6AD TD is 12% extra damage than 8AD DD, yeah you do lose a bit of crit chance. The fighters you lose are a bit irrelevant against Vorlons, you should have a Morshin anyway if you're playing at that level. In general yes I would agree Sharlin is better, but against Vorlons I'd go or Sharkaan, 12% extra damage beats a few crits which would soon be repaired anyway and some fighters that are next to useless offensively.

 

[Greg Smith]

Fighters can be good against smaller Vorlon ships. They need to gang up to overwhelm AAF. You need to be prepared to lose some fighters. Half a dozen Nials against a Vorlon Transport can do quite a bit of damage to it because they will each do one damage when they hit.

 

[Da Boss]

There is also a good chance that at some point you will knock out AAF on one or more Vorlon ships giving you an opportunity to send in the fighters.

5 pt Raid against Volrons I would go:

1-2: Tinashi (Or maybe 2 Tigaras)
3: Tigara
4 Ashinta
5 - Maybe two Torothas - the Molecular Disruptor is very nasty against hull 5 Vorlons and helps with In sink issue

 

[AdrianH]

Another few thoughts:

If either of you has "Powers and Principalities", be sure to look at the optional beam rules. If neither of you has P&P then you can find the same rules in Signs & Portents 64. Of particular significance is the one where rolls of 3+ are hits, rolls of 5+ are hits plus re-rolls for further hits. This takes some of the randomness out of beams while still allowing them to score total misses or big runaways, it just makes such extremes less likely, and means the game is more likely to be decided by tactics and less likely to be decided by who gets the best beam rolls.

Split your mini-beams between multiple targets. Apart from the big Sharlin / Sharkaan and the little turret on the Torotha, most mini-beam batteries are 4-6AD, meaning you're expecting 2-3 hits, which drops down to 1 point damage due to Vorlon adaptive armour. Split it to 1-2 AD per target and you're still only scoring 1 point damage, but you're doing it to multiple ships. (Which will then self-repair it at the end of the turn unless you hit them with something else, but if you aim the whole lot at one ship and still only score 1 point damage then the same will happen anyway. And you might get a lucky critical...)

Half the time the Ashinta will probably only be firing 3AD out of each arc because its job is to provide anti-fighter support to your fighters, meaning it will want to do "Intensify Defensive Firepower".

Vorlons may be able to auto-repair all crits at the end of the next turn but they still suffer the effects for the rest of this turn and all of the next. If he likes sitting at the back of the table doing All Stop and Pivot then any critical which says "No Special Actions" will mess him up. So will most weapons crits, especially the ones which say "No firing out of a random arc" - even if it only lasts one turn, that's one turn when one of your ships isn't taking damage from a big beam.