I was there with my Drakh and had four fantastic games! All highly tactical, all very close and all great opponents. I took:
4 x Light Cruiser
1 x Heavy Raider
2 x Scout
My first game was Call to Arms against Greg Smith and his EA (1 x Omega, 4 x Olympus, 4 x Hermes). Asteroids split the field in two and I place my forces facing half of his, with two Light Cruisers jumping in behind the other group containing the Omega. The battle was quite bloody but as it was our first game we obviously weren't in tournament mode yet so only fitted in three turns and Greg just pipped me in the victory points stakes. A couple more turns and I probably would have got his Omega but who knows what else would have happened?
7-13
Second game was Call to Arms against Paul Davies's Dilgar (1 x Tikrit, 1 x Omelos, 1 x Ochlavita, 2 x Jashakar, 1 x Targrath, 1 x Thorun wing). We set up fairly opposite each other and again two of my Light Cruisers jumped in behind him (taking out a Jashakar in the jump points). The Omelos quickly died and the Tikrit got blasted by the ships behind it, leaving it severely weakened. The Ochlavita was next and the Targrath legged it as he saw a losing cause. I finished off the battle quite cleanly although we both laughed when his last fighter finally hunted down a Light Cruiser and needing a critical to do any damage at all (because of the GEG), blew away the remaining crew!
17-3
Third game was Space Superiority against Mark Davies's Vorlons (2 x Destroyer, 1 x Transport). I set up a great distance away to give my jumping in ships time to arrive first and by turn three the battle was set with the Transport destroyed and a Destroyer lightly damaged against a Light Cruiser and a Heavy Raider destroyed with a Scout heavily damaged. Fortunately by now I had the positional advantage by having the two Destroyers facing each other and me being behind only one of them, I restricted Mark's fire. I lost one more Light Cruiser before taking down one Destroyer and we both realised little more could be done.
13-7 (p.s. I should have gotten 17 here as we forgot to count the points for Space Superiority and I easily could claim more territory!)
Fourth and final game was Space Superiority against Jason Ford's Dilgar (4 x Targrath, 1 x Omelos, 2 x Jashakar). We had an asteroid field split us and I sent my forces to the right to take out one of his scouts whilst he sent the rest of his forces around the rocks to come get me. I jumped in (as usual) behind him and took out a Targrath early. The retribution came swiftly as his Targraths took out the weapons on on Light Cruiser and the following turn opted not to finish it off (allowing it to jump into hyperspace) but killed the other Light Cruiser and Heavy Raider. The two jumping in Light Cruisers took down one more Targrath before they disappeared round the rocks again in what felt like the chase from Wrath of Khan! Next turn I got just enough movement in to face off against the two Targraths before they would have escaped and come around to face me later on. The first shot (aided by scout sensors) virtually killed the closer Targrath and taking a gamble I split the fire with the other one. I just killed the closer one and fortunately took out the far one (that was already damaged from another Targrath exploding). A big win points wise but very close.
20-0
Overall I did OK on the quiz (joint 3rd) and picked up maximum sportsmanship points to come second overall. Not bad after losing my first game. One thing I realised after was that if I'd have remembered the Space Superiority points from game 3 and still won game 4 as convincigly, I'd have won the whole tourney by one point! Gutted!
Congratulations to all who took part. There was a good spread of fleets over the tables with the only noticable skew being towards Centauri on the top tables (four of the top ten fleets were all Centauri and all containing a couple or more Prefects). I like the Drakh fleet very much as its speed and hitting power are very flexible and allow a variety of tactics. Of course, if you pin them down, they die pretty quickly, even the Light Cruisers. Thank you Matthew and everyone responsible for making the day so enjoyable and I hope to be back soon
p.s. Cheers LBH for "oh, I thought you were older!" priceless
