Woo Hoo - First Game Played

Lincolnlog

Mongoose
Finally got to play my first game, 1010 points per side, Klingon Versus Federation. 3 players per side and it was everyones first game. Several of the players did not have copies of the rules, we used quick start cards to assist everyone.

Federation Line Up:

Tom:
BCG Kirov
FFD Reynolds
FF Churchill

Mike:
CA Constitution
DDM Robert E. Lee

Jeff:
CA Yorktown
DDM Thurmost III

Klingon Line up:

Bob(me):
C7 Plague
E4 Adamant
E4 Determined

Matt:
D7C Dawnslayer
F6 Bakurian

Dave:
D7 Devastator
F5W Axe Killer

Scenario was a in your face training game, played on a 4' X 6' table, deployment zones were centered on the long edges of the table, centered, 24" long, 12" deep (24" between the two deployment zones). Klingons won the deployment roll and the turn one initiative. The Fed's set up in the Northern deployment zone, Klinons in the Southern. Jeff set the Yorktown and Thurmost III in the Southwest corner, Tom (Fed Fleet Commander) held back center the Kirov and both the FF's, Mike deployed the Constitiution with the R E Lee in the Southeast corner of the Fed deployment zone but facing the Southeast corner of the table.

Bob set up the C7 and both E4's in the Northwest corner, Matt set the D7C and the F6 up on the north center edge, and Dave set the D7 and F5W up on the northwest edge of the Klingon deployment zone.

In the first turn, Tom held back the Kirov and both Fed FF's, Jeff held back the CA (Yorktown), but moved up the DDM (Thurmost), Mike moved His CA & DDM in a sweep around to the east eventually pointing his ships South-Southwest with the DDM (Robert E. Lee in front). Matt and Dave moved to confront the Robert E Lee, and I moved to Confront the Thurmost III. By the end of turn one, the Robert E. Lee was just short of being crippled, and the Thurmost had leaky shields. There was minimal damage to all other ships on the board.

In the second turn, Kirov having fired her Photons at extreme range in Turn One became a prime target. The D7C, D7, F6, and F5W and both E4's raced in and attempted to deliver the coup d' grace. The C7 attempted to distract the lightly damaged Thurmost III and the Yorktown (the only Fed ship that didn't fire it's Photons in the first turn). Kirov was reduced to within one point of being crippled (and had SA reload weapons so would survive to fire Photons in turn 3). Robert E Lee was finished off by those wonderful rear firing Klingon Phasers (no explosion).

In Turn 3 the F6, F5W went in to deliver the final blow to the Kirov. All other ships crossed over the Kirov in west ward sweep to attack Yorktown. The E4's both manuvered to within 1 1/2". In this turn the C7 was crippled, but had turned to face Constitution, and was facing west, the Connie was facing north, the C7 was only slightly forward of the center of the stand. With no photons, could only bring 4 Phaser-1s and a drone to bear. The drone was shot down, but the C7 lost it's ADD rolling a 1. Not enough fire power to dispatch the C7, but the C7 was in critical shape. Yorktown defended herself gallantly, but was also destroyed (no explosion).

With 3 fairly good ships lost, no command bonus left, and with the Klingons not having lost a singler ship yet, the Federation elected to withdraw.

In the end, the Federation commanders didn't support each other. When the Feds fired drones they fired at a different ship with each firing ship (the Klings were easily able to handle the Fed Drones). The Feds fired their Photons too early, and at too great a distance. When the Kirov hung back on the first turn, it may have payed to Overload the photons on that ship.

The Klingons on the other hand over whelmed a single Federation ship with drones each turn which ensured hits.

There were some errors made in play. We forgot about using Tractor Beams for drone defense.

It was a great game, everyone loved it! We are already working on a date for February and we play the same game and switch sides.
 
Saladins: I have stated several versions, DDM, DDL, DDE, DD... I have the file in ship cards as unofficial until Mongoose stats the ship, then I will simply adjust my ship card with the official stats.

The problem I'm running into, is I have all these old mini's, and want to use them. Okay, so can't use them in tourney, but as Jean is fond of saying, no one is going to bust into my basement and rip the ship card out of my hand. :wink:

By the way the F6 and F5W were also home stats. As well as the FF and the FFD. The book provides the FFG stats.

Also, let me say, I don't believe point imbalance caused the Feds the game. It was pure tactics. But you learn more from mistakes than you do from success, so the next battle will not doubt be more difficult. We intend to play this same game, switching sides next time we meet.
 
I have a draft scenario that requires the use of the Federation destoryer, so I made these ship-specific rules for it:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Saladin-class destroyer uses the same saucer and weapons as the heavy cruiser but lacks the aft hull and has only one engine, thus it has half the energy available to run the same amount of weapons. [...] This ship cannot fire more that two AD of Photons if it moved more than six inches that turn or used HET; it may fire all four if it voluntarily moved six inches or less (i.e., not due to Power Drain). Additionally, if it uses Overload action, it cannot move at all (it may turn in place, however).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I left out the home-grown stats in the above quote, but just about anyone can calculate them the same way I did. Do note that the base DD and the DDL Plasma Destroyer would have those restristions, but the DDG drone destroyer would not.
 
Garth,

The DDM only has two Photons, I also placed and energy use restriction on the DD. I did not on the DDL due to refit that included AWR. I don't know it's all personal interpretation until Matt comes up with something official. I just didn't want to wit to use my old DD mini's. The DDM on conversion also has more hull than the DD, DDG, DDE or DDL.

Bob
 
Sounds like good fun - I do recommend that you try terrain - really makes the game and gives alot more options and tactical opportunities :)

:)
 
Totenkopf said:
Bob, your thoughts on any weaknesses you noticed in Klingon ships/fleet?

Tot,

It was such a one sided victory, makes it difficult to analyze Klingon weaknesses. The Federation Fleet Commander had the same level of undersatnding of the rules I had. I had one other on my side with about an equal understanding (we were the three that have the rulebook), the others were working off the Quick Start cards which also had the SA and the critical charts on the reverse side.

I think my advantage was in having mad ship cards and constantly updating them was very familiar with the ships strengths and weaknesses.

Okay, so--Klingons are really manuverable, even the C7 which is not Agile turns 4. The E4 are agile and also turn 3. And then there is the forward Klingon shield rule (yike will have to keep that in mind when fighting Klingons). I would say the largest weakness of the Klingons is they have a large number of rearward firing weapons. However, even that can work in your favor. Once we had crippled Kirov, and the fleet turned across Kirov to the west to attack Yorktown, the agile Federation Frigates came in on the rear of some of our ships. Those Klingon rear firing weapons gave as good as they got.

Heavy weapons are a weakness. The disruptors at only Multihit 2 are weak, but better chance to hit and don't have to reload. I would have to play more games before I could call this a weakness. Phaser-2s very difficult to get in Kill Zone.
 
This game is made much easier to play with the support from fellow players.

The quick start card came from AdmiralGraffSpee
Ship Chart format from Stumonster
Cheat Sheet, with Criticals and SA, traits and much more from Limey Dragon

Lots of rules help from Mongoose and fellow players, and the play testers. Big thanks to Scoutdad.
 
Totenkopf said:
Bob, your thoughts on any weaknesses you noticed in Klingon ships/fleet?

I'll chip in here too...

While Klingons have some strong advantages, they most certainly have weaknesses. The Disruptors are a good weapon _when_ averaged out per turn. However, even when overloaded, they are not really capable of the single-turn knock-out blow Romulans and Federation players will become used to.

Klingon ships also have noticeably less damage than Federation ships and, crucially, less shields. Yes, they get the double boost up front, but their problems arise when they start to try boosting them. A Federation player will take rolling two dice for extra shields on most of his ships for granted, but a Klingon player is looking at just one dice for the D6 and D7 - think if you roll a 1! It is almost not worth a Klingon player boosting shields. Almost.

It gets worse at higher levels as just when the Klingon player starts using ships capable of two dice boosting, the Federation will have a big grin as his battlecruiser rolls three dice (the Kirov is a real power house of a ship).

The trick to fighting Klingons (and Romulans, actually), is to keep them off balance and make them react to you, not the other way around.
 
Matthew,

Interesting observations. In this game, the Federation lost every initiative roll. That really hurt them. But the Fed fleet commander, for movement and fire spread out their opportunities, where on the Klingon side, we moved and fired in an order that made sense tactically. On the third turn all three of my ships moved and fired last. The C7 was beat up and only had to contedt with the stray Fed CA. All the other ships were bunched up in a fur ball.

Also, interestingly, all the ships that were destroyed, none blew up. Yorktown had a +3 on the destoyed chart, but the die roll was 3 for an adjusted 6. Which was really great for my two E4's and Matt's D7C that were either in stand to stand contact or not far from it. The D7C also had no shields left. So if Yorktown had exploded it may have crippled or even taken the D7C with it.

By the way, the D7C rolled for shields and rolled a 1, so I agree, that 18 shields with only 1 die allowed can hurt. I saw one of the federation CA's roll 2 die and got an 11.

In this game, when the Kirov hung back on the first turn, I would have overloaded the Photons, and then moved in close on Turn 2. By the way, seems like Photons should have received a bonus to hit at point blank range. In the other SFU games photons are extremely accurate at 0-1 hexes.

Bob
 
photons getting a boost to hit at short ranges seems like it might be too powerful.

Keep in mind what happens when you DO hit....with a '6'. It's ugly and sad for the ship on the recieving end. Overload that puppy and roll a 6 and you could potentially take a ship effectively out of the fight.

I really like what Matt says about making the klingon react to you. It's completely what I've been doing with my Gorn when going up against Klingons....and it's worked like a charm twice.

Essentially, I point my lumbering ships at their least maneuverable ship (typically the C7 which never stays on the shelf...with good reason) and let them swarm around me attempting to save it/do damage....then the destroyers move last with heavy plasma shots into side/rear sheild arcs as the Klingons attempt to evade boresight shots from my cruisers while pointing forward sheilds at THEM. Sure they've got lots of phasers, but it doesnt take much plasma damage on a klingon from side/rear arcs to turn their ships into burning hulks of molten slag

That's the best defense other races have against klingon maneuverability. Funny thing, wrecked ships arent very maneuverable! :twisted:

One REALLY nice thing I've noticed about disrupters. If you think about it, they're TWICE as likely to get internal sheild bypassing hits than photons.

I noticed it in my last game against the Klingons. One of my cruisers was finally reduced to 0 shields...but he was only a point or two away from being crippled already. My opponent had been rolling that many '6's with the multiple phaser/disrupter fire that was coming in. With so many gun's shooting, Klingons may not have fabulous sheilds, but with all those dice rolling...neither do you...even with 30 sheilds and reinforced.
 
Yeah, that's why I'm not necessarily a fan of the C7, especially with it's increased cost now...I'll be running a C8 in some of my fleets because Matt said to play with, and I'll see that it's worth the 345.
My C8 based fleet would probably look like this:
C8 - 345
FD7 - 195
FD7 - 195
D5 - 165
F5 - 100
 
For my money I think that the D6 is probably the best cruiser.

The key points for most of your cruisers combat wise is pretty much the same across the board.

Agile
4 disrupters
2 Drone Racks

The D6 does this for the cheapest expenditure of points. More points gets you things like "improved phaser" arcs and maybe another phaser somewhere. Maybe some extra sheilds/hull and possibly a Command +1 rating.

To all that it's like "so what"?

More disrupters
More Drones
retain "Agile"
Solid.

Want to be good with klingons, bring moar D6's. Every 1000 pt fleet should start with 3 of them if you ask me....maybe adding more.

6x D-6
1x F-5

Thats a fine 1000pt fleet indeed if you ask me.
 
deadshane said:
For my money I think that the D6 is probably the best cruiser.

.

Back when the D7 could get 9 AD of phasers on the forward centerline I would have dissagreed... now that it's only, what, 5? I might agree... but I gotta try out the D5 some more first.
 
Neither of these fleets were optimal. But the players didn't get to choose either. This game was intended to learn the rules, allowing up to 8 players to push ships. Had 2 people that didn't show, so 2 players ended up pushing 3 ships each.

The fleets were evenly matched. You can't win if you ignore your heavy weapons.
 
deadshane said:
photons getting a boost to hit at short ranges seems like it might be too powerful.

Keep in mind what happens when you DO hit....with a '6'. It's ugly and sad for the ship on the recieving end. Overload that puppy and roll a 6 and you could potentially take a ship effectively out of the fight.

That is the whole point of them :)
 
deadshane said:
6x D-6
1x F-5

Thats a fine 1000pt fleet indeed if you ask me.

That is a fearsome fleet.

Fortunately for Federation players, Klingons are like magpies - they like shiney things and so usually spoil a perfectly nice fleet by putting expensive stuff in :)
 
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