Hey. White stars are fun! Shortish battle report

[tneva82]

Got to play game of ACTA again. 5 pts raid. Did pull nasty stunt to my opponent as I was supposed to play centauri but just before game asked wether I could try out white stars instead(sorry!). I can only defend myself that just before game I had watched season 4 episode with lots of white stars goodies.

So it was 5 white stars(and their nials), tournament list version, against pulse Omega, 2 hyperions and chronos. Plain board.

So turn 1 we approach and 4 white stars pounce on chronos. Some inspired beam rolling and 2 crits later ship is as good as scrap metal. Hurah! Good start for the game.

Turn 2(and maybe 3) were bit less active since I had to do some manouvering to get concentrated firing again. Then came Bad Turn.

I lost initiave and one white star ended up in position where he could be boresighted by hyperion. Darn! I decided to take my revenge and sent out second white star. Whoops! Mistake! Second hyperion that boresighted against new target. Then I compounded the error and sent remaining 3 white stars in. 3 WS targeted one hyperion, 2 the other(one couldn't target same target as the other 3 so sent last white star to support on the basis that 1 white star is not going to do much). So far so good.

Except at the start of shooting phase I realised that my white stars could be targeted from 3 arcs in both hyperions and also side weapons of pulse omega. Whoops! This is gonna hurt...

Lots and lots and lots of pulse fire + 2 heavy lasers later I had one wonder white star(dodged 6 out of 6 hits!), one slightly damaged white star, one very badly damaged white star with speed 0 crit middle of EA fleet(ugh) and one decrewed white star. As I commented: "That...hurts!" Return fire caused bit of damage to hyperions.

Remaining 3 white stars sped away(damaged one in hot pursuit of starfuries which were in return pursued by nials. Most nials actually died in the initial dogfighting round but remaining 2 nial flights eventually hunted down remaining starfuries down). This caused slight pause to game as they used their superior speed to come together again and pepper the omega a bit(was hoping for lucky crit to disable those nasty pulses). Then I started to hunt down the hyperions. I also remembered around this time all stop special order(handy order that) and making darned sure I would stay out of 10" range of EA pulses I eventually took out first hyperion, then lost the badly damaged white star and finally took out second hyperion.

2 white stars vs pulse omega. Hah hah! Well not so laughable. I caused the weapons only shoot on 4+ crit and then got arrogant and sent one white star ahead concentrating all firepower(mistake). Second white star couldn't do that(half move would take omega out of weapon arc) and not wishing to expose to side pulses stayed out of pulsar range.

Well white star 1 didn't do any good with pulsars and missed with neutron lasers. Whoops! Frontal pulses then proceeded to fire and nearly knocked white star out(lucky me to survive!) and knocked 1 random arc weapons out. Gee. Weaponless white star. Luckily for me second white star then got 3 hits with laser and 2 crits and omega finally died.

So narrow victory for ISA with 1 practically intact white star and very badly mauled white star left with 3 decrewed white stars floating around. Well. Need to train some more rangers to crew them again :wink:

All in all white stars were rather fun to play. My ability to use their manouverability to my advantage definetly improved as game went by.

Maybe I start ISA fleet in models afterall. Not that much choise either so shouldn't be so darned expensive to collect varied fleet either. If only I could figure out reasonably easy way to paint white stars so that they are reasonably close to what they looked in the show...

One rule question did come up. Before turning you have to move half speed. All stop allows you to move up to half speed. How is turning done in all stop order? To turn you have to move as much as you can under that order(half speed) and thus render order kinda moot or is the half speed for turning concidered to be half of the half speed(ie 1/4 of the original speed)?

Logically I would say you can turn after moving 1/4(all stop would IMO logically make it EASIER to turn since you have less of forward inertia to fight against) but rulewise I'm not sure(nor have rulebook with me. That lies in Finland).

I just avoided the issue by not turning during the game but for future would be nice to know.

 

[Locutus9956]

Nice report! To answer your rules query Im afraid you cannot turn on all stop (unless you move the full half standard speed (in which case you may as well not have done it anyway). The half speed needed is half the ships speed value not the distance it can move that turn.

The only way to turn before that half speed move is to use all stop and pivot, though in this case you cannot fire.

 

[tneva82]

To answer your rules query Im afraid you cannot turn on all stop (unless you move the full half standard speed (in which case you may as well not have done it anyway). The half speed needed is half the ships speed value not the distance it can move that turn.

That's what I thought(and which is why I didn't turn. Did cost me during the game since I had to either not shoot or get within range of pulse weapons once or twice). Bit of illogical but what the heck.

Now how to get 50£ for ISA fleet box...

 

[Locutus9956]

well with white stars its worth noting that given your sheer maneuverability you can fly 13 inches, turn 90 degrees fly another 2 then turn again thus ending up BEHIND your target facing it from the other side.... learning to maneuver whistestars can be tricky but with cafeul turnong you can place yourself most places you want to be (also dont forget you can use come about to make a THIRD 90 degree turn ot make ond of your turns into a 135 degrees!) :twisted:

 

[tneva82]

well with white stars its worth noting that given your sheer maneuverability you can fly 13 inches, turn 90 degrees fly another 2 then turn again thus ending up BEHIND your target facing it from the other side....

Not when 8" will lead you straight PAST the target(ie so that they are actually shooting your back!). That was pretty much the issue that kept coming. I was constantly in danger of overflying the darned hyperions.

 

[Silvereye]

So overfly to an extreme (All Power to Engines!) and take an extra turn or two to line up again. As long as your opponent cannot fire on you once you have overflown them, then you loose nothing by not being able to fire either, and gain a turn or two of self repair.

This only really works in games are not turn restricted.

 

[tneva82]

So overfly to an extreme (All Power to Engines!) and take an extra turn or two to line up again. As long as your opponent cannot fire on you once you have overflown them, then you loose nothing by not being able to fire either, and gain a turn or two of self repair.

Not automatic solution in every case though. Say you are about 7" behind. APTE gives 50% speed increase IIRC so 22". So you end up 15" away. So far so good.

But what happens if you had to move BEFORE that hyperion(I lost annoyingly many initiave rolls and that pulse omega was instant initiave sink to boot since it often just spent turning around slowly anyway). Hyperion moves forward 8" and you are within range again.

Anyway most of the time I could get reasonable target anyway by just staying where I was. Problem came when trying to a) not get within weapon range b) shoot at another target entirely. If I moved and turned hyperion could shoot, if I stopped I could shoot freely at the hyperion in front of me without shooting back but couldn't concentrate fire against damaged hyperion so was firing against 2 different targets.

1AD beams great splitting does not make

But as I said I managed to get around the problem(somewhat). Problem was more of logic issue because I just can't see how all stop would make ship worse in turning.

EDIT: Out of curiosity. Would this use of jump points be possible?

Open jump point in an attempt to cause damage, aimed directly behind enemy fleet. Move in fast away from the enemy ships(so in effect enemy is moving toward direction A and you are moving toward exactly opposite direction) up to 13", turn, move 2", turn and hey presto you would be behind enemy, possible damage from jump point and looking toward them so you could shoot with your neutron laser.

Sounds good in theory though I hear jump point rules have been changed in armageddon so that might change it a bit. But this would give you couple of white stars straight behind the enemy and atleast in this game that was very much where I wanted to be(well except with pulse omega. Those aft pulses were just nasty!).

 

[Silvereye]

In this instance, JP bombing will not be as useful as arriving in the right place. 6AD Triple damage can be very overrated at times. Also you may be a lot better with trying to come in from the flank, as these ships tend to have less, and shorter ranged firepower to the Port and Starboard, rather then the fore and aft boresights.

 

[tneva82]

In this instance, JP bombing will not be as useful as arriving in the right place.

Well right behind back in range for neutron laser does happen to be good place to be in my books And this can be done to get into side just as well as rear(just position jump point toward side and move there). Side, rear. Doesn't really matter for this. Just a matter of positioning jump point right. Then it's matter of moving away and using white stars ability to do 180 degree turn to allow you to shoot at enemy right away.

 

[Silvereye]

Arc matters a lot, I'd rather not have to worry about dodging an aft boresight when I could have avoided it. A lot of ships also have much weaker arcs to either aft or port/starboard. So adjust your entry (or attack runs) as necessary to minimise any return fire coming your way. As you have noted, your speed and turns are the two biggest weapons on a White Star. If you drop a jump point about 20" to the flank of an enemy fleet, you will be able to target them easily when you emerge. Perhaps some will even be able to CAF!

 

[tneva82]

Arc matters a lot, I'd rather not have to worry about dodging an aft boresight when I could have avoided it.

Well if you don't want to go behind then you can just as well use this manouver to get into starboard/port as to aft. Well except you can't be middle of fleet but have to be on flanks but that's unavoidable if you want to be out of enemy weapons and on sides.

If you drop a jump point about 20" to the flank of an enemy fleet, you will be able to target them easily when you emerge. Perhaps some will even be able to CAF!

CAF would be one reason not to do this(but so far haven't been too impressed with molecular pulsars. It's neutron lasers and more precicely the crits from it that has done most of the damage). Otherwise you can move pretty much to same spot as you would have by opening jump point so far. This way you just add jump point bomb to the mix as well.

Second battle report is coming up tomorrow btw. And third battle is on preparation.