Second edition beam weapons.

[BADGERCLAW]

Me and my friend had just played our first second edition game.

Since we did not have all of the time, we decided on for battle points.

Myself playing ISA Tara’Lin-class, whitestar gunship, and two whitestar 2.

My friend played earth crusade, Warlocked, Marathon-class Advanced Cruiser, and 4 Hermes-class Transport.

In the first turn his warlock with Heavy Particle Cannon all 6 shot annihilated my whitestar gunship.
before my whitestar gunship bit the dust to put some hurt on his Marathon Along with my 2 whitestar's. the Marathon was close to crippled.
Both my whitestar's and gunship initial shots only hit the Marathon once they've repeated a couple of times.

My Tara’Lin-class focused all 4 of its Neutron Laser onto the warlock I believe hitting it somewhere close to 12 times crippling in the first turn.

Which kind of ended our game. I think we played for about a half an hour it took longer to set up than it was to play.

I think from now on will be playing a lot larger games. Probably somewhere in around 10 war points.

Has anybody else had the same type of game, and now playing a lot larger battles?

how larger are you going now?

These beam weapons are brutal now. Thank god I'm playing ISA if I play the race who didn't have bean weapons I'd be pretty scared.


BC

 

[BADGERCLAW]

Everyone except for the warlock,and Tara’Lin-class had issued a special order to Close Blast Doors and Activate Defence Grid.

Which only helped a little bit.

BC

 

[Locutus9956]

Thems the breaks sometimes Im afraid. But seriously even 12 beam hits should be far from game over for a Warlock unless your opponent was also lucky on his crits.

And to be honest the problem Id say wasnt the size of the game but the size of the SHIPS. If your playing a smallish game, using up a large chunk of your fleet on an expensive toy like a Warlock is very risky. Yes its big and scary but as your friend found out a lucky salvoe can basically end your fleet. If that Warlock had been 2 Omegas or another marathon and 2 Hyperions would it have gone the same way? If you most of fleet points into one ship, then in all honesty your asking for it (especially against an opponent with big guns like Minbari or ISA).

The thing with beams is that yes, sometimes they WILL go nova and sccore a big hit like that, but just as often theyll fizzle and score 1 or 2 hits. Beams can be scary but try getting hit by the full weapons load of a Vree Xill and then say races without beams are screwed

 

[Lone Gunman]

Or stand on the wrong end of the Dilgar dreadnoughts, 20 AD AP&Triple Damage will overwhelm you intereceptors and then you are in a real world of pain.

 

[Court Jester]

When you say the Tara-Lin fired all 4 Neutron Lasers do you mean all 4 dice from one arc or did you literally fire all 4 of the listed NL's from each arc, because that is not possible...

 

[H]

well, our 5 war point game lasted about 4 hours I guess, however the Game of the same size between minbari and Dilgar probably took about 90 mins. thats just the way it goes somethimes. the number rather than the size of ships is often the key thing, we had some 40ish ships on the table, the other game has somewhat less.

 

[David Anla Shok']

Game length and size varies with our group. This weekend the game was 4 war points per player (5 players), two weeks ago it was 10 Armageddon points per side. As for the new beam rules, sometimes they seem unbalanced (two dice turning into 14 hits) and other times the dice gawds relieve themselves on you (eight dice turning into one hit). Kind of makes the game exciting. Always remember to sacrifice a bucket of chicken to Joboo ;>
Regards,

 

[BADGERCLAW]

Court Jester Posted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 4:58 pm Post subject:

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"When you say the Tara-Lin fired all 4 Neutron Lasers do you mean all 4 dice from one arc or did you literally fire all 4 of the listed NL's from each arc, because that is not possible..."

it was just one arc. that all.

I'm not downing the new rules I like them it give us more reson to play big battle's we can play with all of our ships and still get the a game in 2 hours.
that is cool! here come my victory or 2.

4 beam truns into 12 hit or so ouch.

I was just wondering if other did't realisd how naste the beam weapons are now, but afther playing one or two games they noice.
"oooh that nice!"


Locutus9956 Posted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 8:20 am Post subject:

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Thems the breaks sometimes Im afraid. But seriously even 12 beam hits should be far from game over for a Warlock unless your opponent was also lucky on his crits.

there was 2 crits both in the 6's one to 4 the other to the 6.
my roll where good.

 

[Spideredd]

I love the fact that a small ship can rip some of the large ships apart, or not.
It keeps you on your toes, but in general, I find the smaller the ship, the more spectacular the results, and the larger the ship, the more disapointing.

 

[Arch Lector Petrovski]

I love the fact that a small ship can rip some of the large ships apart, or not.
It keeps you on your toes, but in general, I find the smaller the ship, the more spectacular the results, and the larger the ship, the more disapointing.

You could simply be expecting too much from the big ships. Me and my brother had a battle level convoy duty game the other day, he was Shadows and I was Psi-Corps. In the dying turns my Shadow-Omega and his young Shadow ship exchanged blows from their respective molecular slicer beams (my omega already having been crippled by the thing). He fluffed his attack role and I scored no less than 15 hits from a 6AD weapon, 6 of which were crits. The Shadow vessel went from full health to dust in the blink of an eye.

Oh, and in terms of game length we've had a skirmish level mission last two turns (blockade-runner and he had a speed 14 ship) and a 5 point Armageddon level mission that lasted nearly half a day (and still ended in a draw).

 

[Spideredd]

I love the fact that a small ship can rip some of the large ships apart, or not.
It keeps you on your toes, but in general, I find the smaller the ship, the more spectacular the results, and the larger the ship, the more disapointing.

You could simply be expecting too much from the big ships.

Doubt it.
I have yet to hit with my cruiser, but my fast destroyers, now those are real ship killers, even my friends Victory is frightened of them.

 

[Estalies]

i was playing 4 chronos cruisers, not hermes.

The only reason my Marathon survived the first turn was for the close all blast doors special action. The Warlock survived the game but was beat to death.

I am getting SO sick of having my 12 beam hits turn into 4 hits from whitestar dodges, and my damage turned into 3 points from adaptive armor and close all blast doors. Cursed white stars!

Badgerclaw needs a new fleet! ISA is getting on my nerves.

 

[Arch Lector Petrovski]

The ISA are an awkward opponent, but not an insurmountable one. As with every game you need to tailor your tactics to fit the fleets and ships that are brought to the table. Since they don't possess interceptors there isn't a need to concentrate on beams maybe a nice heavy pulse battery will do the trick, or a powerful heavy/flash missile salvo assissted by re-rolls from a scout. Maximising the potential hits through utilising the scout rule and using multiple damage weapons should put you in good stead for facing them.

If all else fails use the Narn and e-mine him until he joins Valen. His dodge won't count for much then.

 

[meglos]

you got 12 hits! iv played 3 2nd ed games and i think iv had 2 ship's hit just over average.
1st game i had an omega fire 12 shots(2 turns) at a firehawk it hit 3 times,and the 8 whitestars i had managed to hit around 4 hits all game,yet my friends sunhawk hit 13 time's in one go.

the last game on saturday i finally managed to break stealth on an oracle with a lakara, 6 beam shots 6 misses. :roll:

 

[Arch Lector Petrovski]

I had a similar thing in a recent battle. My brothers young Shadow ship fluffed the attack role on its molecular slicer, so my Shadow-Omega took his opportunity and scored no less than 15 hits with its own molecular slicer. In comparison however my Apollo succeed in only one role throughout all 5 or 6 turns, after missing all its attacks and failing all its stealth rolls it finally passed a single 'come about' roll; then the game finished.

 

[inq101]

Had a Drakh heavy raider scoring 22 hits with it`s beam attack. NOT FUN!

 

[Arch Lector Petrovski]

I'll bet it was for the Drakh player. :lol:

 

[meglos]

22 hits ,thats were all my 4+'s have been going. :lol:

 

[Silvereye]

You're not the only one. It seems my Mag Gun dice have infected my rolling for anything with the Beam trait now.

Primus, 3 turns of firing, 2 hits....
And no doubt Earth Force are wishing my Sharlins were on The Line. <Cries and waves hand in air cursing>
Still, the Vree look like a nice fleet....