First Game

[Rick]

A friend of mine popped round today to have a game of ACTA:NA. He'd previously played ACTA: B5 and we both wanted to try the new rules out. I'd only got some decados ships made up so we went with these - 6 each, 2 reaper, 2 lucretzia and 2 mantis each. I found that the game flowed along a bit easier (possibly because we had fewer weapon systems on small ships) even though we were both learning the new rules as we went along. There was also a lot more manouevring than in B5 and it definately has a unique flavour of it's own. We played about 5 turns - I got both of my lucretzia's and 1 mantis shot out from under me, but after having boarded one of his mantis' and taking it intact. He lost his other mantis, a lucretzia and a reaver and had successfully boarded my 2 reavers. Conclusions are that we both enjoyed the new version, boarding actions can really swing a game round dramatically and explorers really need some help from their mates to even scratch another ships paintwork!

Couple of questions came up - is there a maximum number of troops you can have on a ship? I had a mantis with 10 troops on after I'd boarded it and had my original ship destroyed!

Second one is a bit odd - if you declare a special action to board and then fail to board a ship in your ships movement, can you fire your unused grapples at another ship if it moves within 2" during it's movement during the same movement phase? In other words, can you only fire your grapples when you are moving the same ship?

 

[starbreaker]

The first question is one I've been meaning to ask. Seems like there needs to be some kind of cap, in part to prevent people from docking a galliot or two with their dreadnought/cruiser/other big ship on turn one and loading them with troops before going off to act as a ram ship. While maybe legal, it doesn't seem to be the intent of the game.

 

[katadder]

the problem is you are then leaving your galliots open to capture to then be used against you either as ram ships, init sinks etc etc. and if all your eggs are in one basket then the rest of your fleet could be used against you.

 

[starbreaker]

Trade a galliot in exchange for an effectively unboardable capital ship? If you're truly concerned about them being boarded, just move them off the table edge after they're empty - paying 30 victory points to add 10 troops to a dreadnought's already large contingent is a fair bargain considering the big boy ought to be able to earn more than that every turn it fires.

I suspect you're better off keeping it/them on the table as sinks and rams, with a troop or two left on board to prevent cheapshot captures by small ships - making sure not to leave sight of the dreadnought's guns (thereby acting as bait too) or ever pointing them in a direction where they could immediately ram the dread if captured. In fact, parking boarding-vulnerable targets close off the prow of a dread might be a good way to lure a feisty boarder into range to shoot them with a heavy meson cannon, let the dread counterboard, or (if there are enough juicy tagets clustered together) even to ram. Trading the dread's shooting is a horrible shame, but if you're getting a chance at smacking 3-4 small ships for d6x9 damage each in exchange for 3-4d6x2 in return? Your opponent will never repeat that mistake.

Of course, all that assumes no limit on troops, which may be wrong, or at least unintentional.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Trade a galliot in exchange for an effectively unboardable capital ship?

Hardly unboardable - all you need to do to equal that is fly your own capital ship into boarding, escorted by a Galliot. Get escorted by 2 Galliots, and you have the edge (may take a while though).

So no, there are no limits on the number of Troops. _If_ someone comes up with a killer tactic involving an Explorer and 97 Troops, then we may look at revising this but as there are a finite number of Troops on the table anyway, we haven't yet seen a need to.

 

[Stormrider]

Out of interest...

<--- is the friend that dropped by (and boy, it's a long time since I was on these forums... shame on me!)

I agree that the game flowed very nicely and the new critical table is lovely (especially when I hit the same location on the same ship with 3 criticals in 1 turn... poor Rick turned pale... especially after it escalated too :twisted: )

Now to do some more reading and decide which fleet I might favour...

 

[starbreaker]

That "escorting" galliot better be real quick and real careful about how it gets into a grappling position, or all it's going accomplish is giving up 60 points for being wrecked. So far the best tactic I see for dealing with galliots is to hurt them as they close and then finish them off when they grapple, but before they launch boarders. A dread's full volley can manage a one-turn kill a fresh galliot with a little luck or some scout assistance.

The advantage to the dock-and-dump tactic is that it concentrates most/all the troops on a single big, tough target, rather than spread around smaller, more vulnerable ones that can grapple and then be shot to death at point blank range before sending their troops over. That might give the other "escorted" dread a free volley on the "loaded" dread for some hefty extra damage, but if it then finds itself locked in a boarding action without the backup from the destroyed galliot, it's not going to be very happy about life. You might have time to cut the grapples and run before your outnumbered troops all die and the counterattack begins, or you might not.

 

[Rick]

Aye - Stormrider was the opposition, lol! Despite us both making a few mistakes as we were getting used to the rules it was a good game. Mind you we were both a little bit lucky with criticals - in our game we managed to stack 1 type of critical up to about lvl 3 or 4 without any other criticals - although when he got to a lvl 6 without doing criticals to any other system on that ship, I thought it was a bit much, lol!

I agree with Starbreaker - I managed to get one Galliot as it was about to board my ship - you need to keep them at a distance and finish them before they can board.

 

[Stormrider]

Ready for round 2 on Monday Rick?

I think the call is for better use of special orders (they kinda got lost in amongst the 'how does that work again?' and 'were those shields burned or just down?'

Still torn between 2 fleet and not sure which to go for...