Fleet boxes, are regular players buying much more?

[The Legend]

I've just received my Hawkwood fleet boxed set and a Vladimir cruiser. First of all I'd like to say I'm pretty impressed so far. Though some of the moulding tabs on the Hawkwood ships are a pain in the posterior (especially on the frigates and explorers), I am rather impressed.

I was wondering about the amounts that people are using in games. I plan on adding a Maestukulos and an Osprey to my fleet to give it greater fleet support. But was then thinking about more Galliots, Destroyers and light carriers too. However, I did some costing in terms of points and it'll likely come to over 5000 points for what I aim to add to the fleet.

Are games of this size viable? I know that many of the B5 ACTA we played in my local club were around 10 point war per side, sometimes with 3-4 sides and they were great fun, but we rarely finished a game in our allotted time (6 hours).

 

[BFalcon]

I'm not playing, but I was planning to add two more boxes to my first with a dread and a heavy carrier to back them up, but cash isn't allowing right now and I benched the idea when they announced the ACTA: SF...

 

[The Legend]

I've got to admit I was sitting on the fence for a while. When I heard about ACTA: SFB I dropped the idea of Noble Armada altogether until one of my mates bought the core rules. They're pretty good. I like the Shield rules, boarding is handled excellently and the mini's are really nice and quite cheap. I pointed up what you get in the fleet box and all told it's about 1500 points. Which is more than enough for a decent bash. Not bad for £25.00 (or less if you buy from ebay).

Sci-Fi spaceship games are big in my club. We play B5, Full Thrust, Noble Armada now, Star Fleet when it comes out and there has been known for a game or two of Battlefleet Gothic to happen. I'm painting a lot of starships these days. I'm glad though that the core rules for three of these are going to be the same i.e. ACTA.

I'm all for Star Fleet as the Original Series is in my opinion the definitive Trek. Plus those prototype mini's look great.

 

[starbreaker]

You can't play some fleet types with just the starters and a capital ship blister or two. Carrier-heavy or serious boarding fleets require blister packs to support them. While some factions can make good shooter fleets by adding larger ships, most rely on their destroyers for backbone, which means more of them, again in blisters. And of course Hazat can't fill its hanger bays with the starter mix, ever.

Don't look at your collection of ship minis being a single 5000 (or whatever) point fleet. Look at it as being a pool of ships for playing smaller games. The bigger the pool is relative to game size (and I've played up to 2500 comfortably) the more options you have to tailor your fleet to pursue a given route to victory.

 

[Ben2]

There is no reason you can't just start with the fleet box. I've got three factions, and the only one I've added extra stuff to is Hawkwood (dreadnought and 3 more destroyers).

For seriously large fleets buy a dreadnought and a 2nd fleet box. Suddenly you've got two carriers and can do a carrier strike group, or 4 destroyers, or 8 frigates or enough galliots to have a boarding squadron.

If you want a couple more of everything then a 2nd fleet box is pretty logical. You won't use 8 scouts, but you'll probably use 3 or 4 in a big fleet.

A couple of capital ships nicely rounds out your fleet, but a fleet box or two gives you a very solid basis for some pretty decent sized games.

If after playing for a while you want to run a galliot fleet, then don't hesitate to get a blister, but get a feel for how you want to play first.

 

[starbreaker]

Starting out with a fleet box is fine, but I question whether buying two of them (instead of selected blisters) ever works out well for playing bigger (1500+) games. Every starter has some deadwood built in that's nice to experiment with but it becomes a positive drain if you have to field a lot of it for lack of better choices.

All of them except Vuldrok come with 4 fighters, but carrier-heavy fleets won't generally run 50/50 fighter bomber ratios and win. You need the bombers for offense when it's your main strategy, and your (probably) advantage in craft means you can skimp on fighters and count on outnumbering to win dogfights for you. A bomber provides a +1 in support just as well as another fighter, and it can kill ships afterward. Of course, 2 light carriers and 8 bombers isn't "carrier heavy" beyond about 700 points anyway, so you'd be buying blisters anyway to pursue this route. 8 fighters from 2 boxes is probably plenty for anything up to 2000 points, so a second starter isn't terrible for budding carrier admirals.

Then there's the house-specific stuff:

Hawkwood - 4 more frigates, which still won't beat 2 destroyers and 20 points of troops at either shooting or boarding anything like half the time.

Decados - 2 more Raiders? Finding a use for the first 2 is hard enough. Tough fleet to play carrier-heavy, your carrier steers like a pig without being as tough as the Hazat one and meson tubes are harder to use than microtorps.

Hazat - Another carrier, with not enough craft to fill the hangers.

Al Malik - 4 more frigates, just as iffy as Hawkwood's, and your superior dogfighters make 4 more of them even more overkill than everyone else's.

Li Halan - 2 more Raiders, just as junky as Decados, and your frigates are iffy compared to destroyers. Much like Decados, somewhat difficult to justify playing carrier-heavy due to poor craft, but at least your carrier isn't lumbering.

Kurgan - Radically, those 2 extra destroyers are a poor choice compared to the extra frigates, and your Raiders are still pretty awful too. Same argument about the Al Malik uberfighters applies to your interceptors, and your multiroles are even less in need of dogfighter escorts than regular bombers.

Vuldrok - Okay, there's nothing bad in the box, but that's mostly because (under the playtest rules, anyway) they don't have any bad ships. They may suffer more against Kurgan or Church, but right now, they win every game I've seen them proxied in. Having nothing but quality in the starter for the most potent fleet in the game seems like overkill, but sales should be good.

 

[The Legend]

Starting out with a fleet box is fine, but I question whether buying two of them (instead of selected blisters) ever works out well for playing bigger (1500+) games.

Thanks for the advice guys. I'd almost came to the same conclusion myself regarding buying a second fleet box. I haven't had a game yet as I haven't finished painting my fleet, but I really struggle to find a use for the explorers and frigates. In terms of what I want for the fleet, what do you think of the following:

1 blister of Griffin Class Destroyers
1 Maestukulos Class Dreadnought
1 additional Vladimir Cruiser
1 blister of Darius Galliots
1 Osprey Heavy Carrier
1 blister of Malcolm Class Light carriers
4 bomber packs
2 flighter packs
2 stealth fighter packs.

I know this gives me a lot more fighters than I need but I like to have variety.

 

[starbreaker]

I know this gives me a lot more fighters than I need but I like to have variety.

The stealths are really light bombers what with microtorps and all. The regular fighters - if you find yourself playing a big Carrier Duel with Al Malik or Kurgan and their uber-dogfighters, you may be glad to have them, eh? After all, you can outshoot them with the Osprey, but you have to stop them from getting their bombers through while you're doing it. Those +2 dogfight craft are hot stuff for clearing the way, you have to drown them in lesser fighters to prevent that.