The narn are AWSOME!

[Orphanmaker]

Hello people!

Last weekend my gaming group got together fo a day of acta and for the first time I decided to play the narns. I have read so many posts whining about how bad they are (well, especially the g´quan) so I prepered myself for a good trashing at the hands of the other players.

We played 5p War and my fleet looked something like this:

G´wran
Bin´tak
2 g´quans
2 var´nics
2 dag´kar
2 scouts
2 raidships w EM (cant remember the name, dont have the book here)

My first battle was against centauri. It was a bloodbath. I sat back and sniped at him as he advanced and as soon as he was in E-mine range I unleashed a barrage of 3x dam mines that crippled his one big pack of vorchans and took a LOT of damage of his primus. A second Primus did however manage to jump in from hyperspace in the middle of my fireline escorted by two Maximus. In one round he fired everything in every arc but the narn resiliance won throu. In the next round the primus was unsupported and fell to combined fire from the Narn fleet.
He had a lot more ships but he never recovered from loosing his fast assult element so early and the Narn mopped upp the battle quickly.

The second game was even more brutal. I faced a Minbari slugger-fleet supported by two Sharkaans. This fleet proved to be a terrible build for battling Narn snipers. The short range of his weapons and the terrain of the battlefield resulted in that most of his ships never got to fire a single shot. There was a few asteroidfields that created a narrow corridor he had to pass, massing his ships togheter. The following e-mine bombardment saw his ships taking heavy damage and one did actualy explode, damaging his other ships even more. His carrier was destroyed in turn 1 by combined beams from the narn fleet (with all fighters still inside) and the rest of the game saw the Frazis running from target to target, bombing unopposed. (oh well, adv.anitfighter is a bitch but his rolls where terrible)
The Sharkaans did blow up a few ships but they could not destroy more than 1-2 ships per turn, and by the end of turn 2 most of the rest of his fleet was gone, leaving me free to concentrate on the Sharkaans.

So to everyone that says the Narn ar bad I say "hell no, they kick ass!"

Cheers
Orphan

 

[H]

the Narn have excelent warships, skirmish ships, and solid raid choices. They are not "poor" by any stretch of the imagination, and most people accept that if you can field either the warships or a good number of Skirmish ships in a balanced fleet you have a good chance. Their issue is merely that the G'Quan is a bit sucky, BUT it can be good if you are able to use it to exploit an anemy weakness.
I'd say, shockingly, that against the Centauri, IF you can bring a G'Vrahn and a Bin'Tak to the party you can "kinda" snipe a bit, and with so many e-mines on show, you can take out the marauding packs if he's daft enough to leave them clustered together.
I have destroyed A neroon and 2 Sharlins in a battle without loosing a ship merely through the rather overpowering use of Advanced e-mines, then regular ones as they tried to close. it IS possible, but some races are more than capeable of weathering the storm.

 

[Burger]

Agree with hiff, the Narn have great ships at every level. People complain about the G'Quan because it is weak, and it is one of the most iconic ships from the show, so they would like to use it more often.

But, your opponents seem to have made lots of mistakes! Putting a load of Vorchans close together when facing triple-damage e-mines is suicidal. Why didn't his second Primus jump in behind you, meaning your return firepower would be severely reduced? I've yet to see a successful Minbari "slugger fleet". Massing his ships together to get through a corridor in asteroid fields, again suicidal when facing triple damage e-mines (why not go through the asteroid field, giving even his Troligans a 5+ stealth score?). Why were all his fighters still inside his Morshin when it blew up, he can start with 4 on the table and launch all the rest on turn 1? Why was his Morshin even in your beam range in turn 1, especially with so many asteroid fields to hide behind? And even with poor AF rolls he should have mopped up the Frazis using his web of death.

So yes, the Narns are a good fleet... but, I would put your overwhelming victories down to opponents bad tactics (and your good ones, of course!) rather than the strength of your fleet.

 

[locarno24]

Good victories!

Narn are always good fun to use, and I'm always hesitant to ascribe a ship as 'too weak' - things may be less devastating in one situation, but there are always exceptions. Hell, I've managed to win with raiders now and again*. The Narns are a respectable force, especially post-Powers & Principalities; the Redundancy rule is a major edge, helping their heavy mob actually get some mileage out of their massive damage scores.

Besides, if you enjoy it, who cares?


As noted, you've got two opponents you're very suited to fighting. The Centauri are a classic opponent:

Narns have the edge in range thanks to their heavy lasers, but the Centauri have packs of lighter ships that can evade boresight weapons with annoying efficiency.

Centauri are much scarier close in once the rapid-firing ion cannons open up, but it's a lot harder than people glibly suggest to stay within ion cannon range without drifting within range of the Narn's secondary weapons - and a phalanx of cruiser-weight Narn ships, each capable of throwing ten or more pulse and ion shots in every direction, is a deathtrap for lightly armoured LCVs.

Narns have one of the cheapest, most overgunned assault fighters out there, but punching though a screen of the cheapest, most efficient interceptors means not many will make it. In addition, both fleets have superb fighter-clearance ships; the G'Karith (for clearing fighter screens offensively) and the Maximus (for neutralising fighter attacks defensively)

The make-or-break point in such a match tends to be the energy mine salvo; so much of the Centauri fleet's combat power is in its lighter gunships that it's rare not to see a decent sized flock of them - after the first turn or two of fire they will be on the flanks or rear of the enemy and the Narn will have difficulty stopping them other than by mobbing them with fighters. The massive salvo of area-effect templates can dismember them and leave them with only their battlecruisers to face their Narn counterparts. It sounds like either (a) you got lucky or (b) your opponent bunched up his hunting packs rather too close - a rematch is likely to be very interesting....


As to the Minbari, you've got one of the best fleets for taking them on; Minbari sacrificing the range advantage is never a good idea against brick outhouses like Narn capital ships. Equally, the big edge of the Sharkaan - it's massive advanced laser - struggles to do enough damage to a fleet not wasting mass on useless interceptors instead of raw structural strength. And once again, excellent use of terrain - bunching up in front of narns, especially with badly armoured mid-priority ships with close-range guns, is asking for horrific nuclear death. Stealth, you say?

Nuclear detonations. Precision is a relative term.




* The last one, if you're interested, was a carrier clash against Minbari. I'll thank you not to ask what the dogfighting exchange rate was.

 

[Orphanmaker]

Agree with hiff, the Narn have great ships at every level. People complain about the G'Quan because it is weak, and it is one of the most iconic ships from the show, so they would like to use it more often.

But, your opponents seem to have made lots of mistakes! Putting a load of Vorchans close together when facing triple-damage e-mines is suicidal. Why didn't his second Primus jump in behind you, meaning your return firepower would be severely reduced? I've yet to see a successful Minbari "slugger fleet". Massing his ships together to get through a corridor in asteroid fields, again suicidal when facing triple damage e-mines (why not go through the asteroid field, giving even his Troligans a 5+ stealth score?). Why were all his fighters still inside his Morshin when it blew up, he can start with 4 on the table and launch all the rest on turn 1? Why was his Morshin even in your beam range in turn 1, especially with so many asteroid fields to hide behind? And even with poor AF rolls he should have mopped up the Frazis using his web of death.

So yes, the Narns are a good fleet... but, I would put your overwhelming victories down to opponents bad tactics (and your good ones, of course!) rather than the strength of your fleet.

Thanx for the analasys. You are, of course, right. My opponents did make a few mistakes in deployment and fleet selection. However this was because we played with the same fleet against every opponent. The slugger-minbari for example made a mess out of the other two fleets he faced (Brakiri, Hyperbombing Troligan and Tinashis in his rear, and Gaim, by skillful use of WoD). The Centauri player lost to the Minbari later but regained some honour by soundly trashing Vorlon fleet.

 

[Da Boss]

Agree with hiff, the Narn have great ships at every level. People complain about the G'Quan because it is weak, and it is one of the most iconic ships from the show, so they would like to use it more often.

But, your opponents seem to have made lots of mistakes! Putting a load of Vorchans close together when facing triple-damage e-mines is suicidal. Why didn't his second Primus jump in behind you, meaning your return firepower would be severely reduced? I've yet to see a successful Minbari "slugger fleet". Massing his ships together to get through a corridor in asteroid fields, again suicidal when facing triple damage e-mines (why not go through the asteroid field, giving even his Troligans a 5+ stealth score?).

can't help but agree with wise words already stated.

If your allowing hyperspace, at 5pt war would have expected a Liati to jump into the rear of the Narn fleet with a Vorchan and maybe a Maxmius - happy days maybe Adira to square of against the two Narn big boys and draw fire - but its a bit risky

Would probably have gone for (in a straight low terrain fight

Adira,
Primus (squadroned with Adira) - flanking, Elutarin, Vorchan(or Demos) x2
Liati, Balvarin, Elutarin
Primus (squadroned with Adira) Elutarin, Maximus, Vorchan/Demos

Squadroned the Elutarin together,used the Liati, Maximus and Vorchans/Demos to jump out of hyperscpae into the rear of the Narn fleet.

Centauri should fire first - Iniaitive at +6 vs at most +3, advance firing on CBD until the attack squadron arrive out of hyperspace.

if known was plenty of terrain would have more ships instead of the Adira

the Narn , being former slaves are obviously inferior but the strength of the stolen Centauri technology shows through in the majority of their ships. The G'Quon is weak compared to vessels of its class - in a similar way to the Fireraptor for the Drazi. Especially in smaller games when its the biggest ship - I am quite happy to take a Centauri, Vorlon, Minbari, EA, League battle level ship in a Raid game - but the Narn one is not int ehir class - IMO (from having played against them lots of times)

the P+P standard revesions the narn ships are sightly more survivable.

but in the end the main thing is that it sounds like you all had good fun - which is kinda the point 8)

 

[Tolwyn]

The Rongothand Rothan could need some upgrades. IMO the beams from the Thentus and Ka'Toc + Tan are a bit unpreditable, but are fine so far.

 

[H]

you can always use my Rothan varient from my ships of the ISa supplement
it's reasonably useable.

 

[AdrianH]

We played 5p War and my fleet looked something like this:

G´wran
Bin´tak
2 g´quans
2 var´nics
2 dag´kar
2 scouts
2 raidships w EM (cant remember the name, dont have the book here)

The raid ships with energy mines are probably the G'Karith, whose 8D basic mines won't do much to capital ships but will knock out any fighter within blast radius and can fire every turn. If it had the Escort trait it would be the ultimate anti-fighter ship. It's also a great way to annoy Minbari by helping break stealth.

The Rongothand Rothan could need some upgrades. IMO the beams from the Thentus and Ka'Toc + Tan are a bit unpreditable, but are fine so far.

Rongoth: a total of 14D twin-linked in the front arc, the same as a Nova's broadside; and 5 troops in case it finds itself near something which didn't move quickly enough. Not bad for a Skirmish level ship.

1D and 2D beams are always unpredictable and the Narn aren't the only ones with them!