Playtest Game - Shadows vs Narn 5 pt Battle

Da Boss

Mongoose
HI just played Greg (as just been rewatching various eps from the series - seemed appropriate forces!)

report:

I took, 1 Shadow Ship, 1 Stalker, 4 Scouts

Greg took 1 Raid Lvl Narn Staton (1 beam, 1 Command Module and Hardened I think), 1 Gquonth, 2 Varnic, 2 Thentis, 4 Sho'Kov and a K'Toc?

Terrain was limited - one asteroid field in the centre in front of Narn deployment zone(lovely lovely space rocks) and one off to one side near
my deployment zone.

Narn lost Initiative and set up first - Station in centre and formed a line behind it with the War level cruisers at one end and the two Varnics at the other.

Shadows set up at the front of their deployment zone - using the asteroid to screen them as much as possibel form the 36" range turret station laser.

The Narn fleet cruised forward on CBD - the Varnic squadron moved early as Greg thought I was unlikely to charge in - which is what I did with the Shadow ship 8) - screening itself from the Station and the War level ship with the asteroids. Molecular slicer cuts into one of the two Varnics - and inflicts 4 hits including a 6,6 hit critical - I waited for the ship to fall apart but the new Narn resiliance meant it was not even crippled! (yet :) )

Next turn I kept much of my fleet behind or near the asteroids and engaged half of the Narn fleet. I misplaced my stalker and it was out of range. One Varnic dided to another good Slicer hit but the Narna ships hit back - cutting half the damage from the Shadow ship and stripping it of all of its advanced traits and leaving it realing (but not pinned)

Turn 3 I retreated, luring the narn fleet forwards and away from the two hard hitters, despite losing iniative the Shadow Ship survived, battered and bleeding and destroyed the non CBD Varnic. Narn fighters mobbed a Scout (many coming from the station with its fleet carrier). I breathed a sigh of relief as the Shadows Ship regained its shields and began to regnerate again.

Turn 4 I again pulled back - (the idea being to drag them behind the asteroid and slice them up) - and the plan began to be fulfilled as narn ships began to be destroyed and my ships regenerated and maneuvered. The war level ship and station were stuck behind the asteroids, helpless to intervene in the battle.

Turn 5 and more Narn skirmish level ships fell - although several Scouts were now badly hurt - the Shadow Ships itself now nearer its full strength.

Turns 6 and 7 saw the Narn Scouts and several Sho'kovs destroyed for the loss of a Scout leaving A Shadow Ship, a Stalker and 3 Scouts against the GQuonth and the station and we called it.

Thoughts:

Greg did not abuse the Station rule but it was still a massive assistance to the Narn - fleet carrier and Scout (virtually invulnerable) plus a turreted beam at 36" range made me nervous. I hate to think what a player with a battle level station could have built (on either side). These need a major revisitation otherwise a really cool concept will be quickly banned by everyone in most things :cry:

Beams - I recorded my beam rolls with both ships - and also what they would have been with Burgers system:

Shadow Ship hits, 4, 7, 3, 13, 13, 3, (43 hits total) (if burgers system the dice rolled would have meant: 6, 6, 4 ,3 6 , 5 ) (30 hits total)

Stalker hits 2, 5, 2, 7, 6, (22 hits) (If BBS the dice rolled would have meant 2, 5 ,4, 4, 4) (21 Hits)

Terrain was (as usual) vital to the Shadows as once I lured Greg out and behind the asteroids - it was only a matter of time before I prevailed. If the SHaodw Ship had fallen on turns 2 or 3 maybe different but the damage dealing potential - even with lucky crits ( to match my initial ones on the Var'nic) taking out shields and self repair the Narn could not dish out enough hurt.

The new Narn CBD rule was impressive - keeping ships alive when they would have been normally slaughtered - I do worry a little bit about ships with out damage mutipliers being able to hurt Narn ships and Narn sniper ships. Its very powerful on ShoKovs - epsecially if used as IN sinks - playing non bore sight fleets not a major worry but trying to kill them (even if you can see them) would be a nightmare for BS fleets like the EA.

Stalker -well the 4AD was welcome but as it was only fired at once and its stealth beaten its new incarnation was not tested much.

Shadow fighters - 2 of them against about 14 Frazis (with Fleet Carrier) meant very one sided - I rolled a one for the first one as an interceptor :roll: and the other lasted a turn (due to shields) against 3 Frazis before being slaughtered.
 
I am surprised at the addition of a G'Quanth in the fleet, I like it's weapons loadout of course, but it is still a long way from being a Bin'Tak or a G'Vrahn :-)

Obviously the close in firepower is better, but it's less surviveable :-)

Seems your tactics outdid greg, loosing his liong range support to chase you down, obviously with your self repair he had to try and keep on hammering.

I'm thinking 2 G'Lans instead of a the G'Quanth, but of course the range being 18 could have ruined it's chances of a super mag gun hit!
 
I chose the G'Quonth for its slow loading e-mine. An automatic stealth-reducer against the Shadow scouts.

I could have chosen the G'Vrahn, and against Shadows it would be a better choice, but really I wanted to see if the changes to the Narn fleet could make a ship that wasn't always an ideal choice into something that worked. Answer - probably not.
 
to be fair if it had not been for the Asteroid field the battle would have likely been different as the Cruiser and the l/r beam of the station would have been more useful.

the new Narn CBD is good but just makes good ships better and bad ships OK - it will make no difference to ship choice as it effects all Narn ships................
 
Narn's major weakness is crits, none of their defences help against them, the new CBD doesn't help against them either...
 
yes and no - I sliced a Varnic with a 6,6 crit from a Shadow ship (triple Damage) it took less than 20 damage from the whole beam hit incuding crit and lost its jump engine (tragic). The damage itself is hardly a problem and the only real crits that would have hurt most of the ships I was facing were -AD, adrift or weapons crits. the odd - to speed sometimes makes them more agile.

Narn (usually) have no fancy stuff to take out - they suffer from having rubbish range on their guns - except BS / emines.

If the new Narn CBD is designed to give the whole Narn fleet a boost - success - if its designed to help the G'quan and its varients - nope - cos you made the alternatives better as well!
 
I think the problem though with the Narn CBD is you can end up with big Narn ships that will still be alive but have 7-8 -AD crits and No DC vitals hit and probably some good speed crits if not adrift. So they will still be alive but they will be adrift with 0AD on beams and Emines and all they will have left is 8" secondaries with a few AD each. Not the most ideal situation to be in.

I've seen it happen to ships in 2nd ed. Granted most of the problems could be corrected if Vitals were repairable or at the very least the No DC vital was just for a couple turns or something.
 
Remember that All Hands on Deck, if you can still do it, is extremely powerful, allowing Repair Checks at +2 on every critical on the boat from the previous turn; even better, it's an automatic special action that deserves to be used far ore often than it is.
 
All hands on deck doesn't matter if you get the No DC vital hit though, I can't even count how many times I have gotten a nasty crit followed up by a No DC in the same or following turn.

I know that All Hands on Deck was changed to give bigger ships a chance but until the permanent No DC checks is gone big ships are going to be Crit vulnerable.
 
Back
Top