Alpha Strike: A Quick-Playing Tactical Miniatures Game

[ANS Kamas P81]

Agreed. Besides, it's not like QS/BF is the section of StratOps you should be paying the most attention to... O:-)

IO is going to have its very own Weirdo chapter isn't it.

[Atlas3060]

IO is going to have its very own Weirdo chapter isn't it.

Followed by a chapter labeled

"Fine here's your (Censored) Succession Wars sized game rules."  Which I'll take as a chapter for folks like me who have been screaming for decent rules since ISiF.

[Alexander Knight]

? I think it's actually very strong:It can inflict a lot of damage (12 at Short, 11 at Medium). This seems to be a true war machine. o_o

Actually no.  The Athena XR can do one of two things each turn.
1.)  Make a single attack using a 6/5/0 damage profile
2.) Make an attack with a 4/4/0 damage profile and an attack with a 2/2/0 profile.

[Alexander Knight]

Just want to be sure... AS-7D has damage block of 5/5/1 with LRM 1/1/1, AC 2/2/0 and IF 1 in AS right? So all I have to do is add the special damage values into the damage block on the QS card and I'm good?

Actually, the AS7-D has a 5/5/2 damage profile.  The LRM special rounds normally, base damage rounds up.  So 12 is 1 LRM damage, but 2 normal damage.

[Weirdo]

Interesting how the rounding works, making it slightly more powerful when splitting fire.

Is this Athena allowed to fire both turrets at a target in the front arc, or it it required to make a standard attack in such a circumstance?

[nckestrel]

Interesting how the rounding works, making it slightly more powerful when splitting fire.

Is this Athena allowed to fire both turrets at a target in the front arc, or it it required to make a standard attack in such a circumstance?

The turrets are listed as 360 field of fire.

[Weirdo]

So...the only reason to use the Athena's standard attack is if you want to break a tough aero unit's damage threshold?

[Narann]

It's also the thing I don't understand. Is there any true advantage to use the 6/5/0 damage instead of two 360deg attacks or 4/4/0 and 2/2/0?

[Weirdo]

When shooting aero units, larger damage clumps are usually better, so you can more easily beat the damage threshold and score crits. That 2pt turret can certainly threshold most fighters, and the 4pt one can probably crit almost all of them(and several shuttles), but if you can get a 6-pt smack into someone, you can start looking at thresholding DropShips.

[Alexander Knight]

It's also the thing I don't understand. Is there any true advantage to use the 6/5/0 damage instead of two 360deg attacks or 4/4/0 and 2/2/0?

Well, making two attacks you can miss with one...

[nckestrel]

If it's got 5 structure left, go ahead and kill it rather than two chances at wounding it?

[Scotty]

When shooting aero units, larger damage clumps are usually better, so you can more easily beat the damage threshold and score crits. That 2pt turret can certainly threshold most fighters, and the 4pt one can probably crit almost all of them(and several shuttles), but if you can get a 6-pt smack into someone, you can start looking at thresholding DropShips.

Does it strike any one else as odd that this is exactly the opposite way Aero works in the regular game, where any amount of damage is preferable and volume of small hits will take down any fighter?

[nckestrel]

Does it strike any one else as odd that this is exactly the opposite way Aero works in the regular game, where any amount of damage is preferable and volume of small hits will take down any fighter?

Fighters in Alpha Strike almost all have a threshold of 1.  It's the dropships that will have a higher threshold and therefore need more damage.  Against the fighters, the multiple turrets is a bonus.  Against dropships, you want to clump so that you get enough to beat their threshold.
The Athena XR could do either.

[MadCapellan]

Does it strike any one else as odd that this is exactly the opposite way Aero works in the regular game, where any amount of damage is preferable and volume of small hits will take down any fighter?

Since AlphaStrike units have no individual locations and there's no real way to "crit-seek", these sorts of alterations via abstraction are inevitable.

[wantec]

Since AlphaStrike units have no individual locations and there's no real way to "crit-seek", these sorts of alterations via abstraction are inevitable.

Well if it has a lot of structure, you can "crit-seek" in the sense of trying to get multiple rolls on the critical hits table.

[George_Labour]

Large amounts of damage are great for certain kills or putting the hurt on slow but well armored units. Things like Dire Wolves and Atlases tend to die rather quick once you can toss a couple of five and six point hits on them.

Conversely if you can pull off multiple shots on high defense ground units then it's usually advantageous to do so. Due to the way defense works it's not unusual for light units to have a +6 to hit even at close range but they usually tend to have 2-5 points of combined damage  before they're gone for good.

It's also useful to do multiple shots on aero units as all fighters take a crit when they take two more more pointss of damage. I've lost more fighters to rolls of 2 and 12 than I have to anything else.

FInally it's worth noting that the campaign rules in the core book make no distinction over whether a unit was destroyed by losing it's last point of structure or hit so hard that it has several points worth of 'overkill' beyond what it needed to die. So there's no disadvantage to blasting a unit with six points when it only takes one. BUt if you have two attacks you could choose to off an almost dead unit, and then turn your attentions to another.

Though really this isn't a huge issue as there are only a handful of units with two turrets who would end up getting the capacity to make that many attacks.

[theothersarah]

Well if it has a lot of structure, you can "crit-seek" in the sense of trying to get multiple rolls on the critical hits table.

Yeah, when I played Alpha Strike on the weekend I was choosing my attack declarations to maximize the number of crits - big hits first to get rid of the armour and smaller hits when the target is opened up. It didn't always work due to random chance, but when it did it worked well. The Alpha Strike critical hit table is nasty.

[Fletch]

In order: No, and N/A.

Alpha Strike/Quick Strike and Battleforce may share a lot of rules in common, but they are still two distinct games. Alpha Strike is focused at the same individual level as Total War, but sheds a lot of detail in favor of fast gameplay. Battleforce has the same level of detail as Alpha Strike(more in certain cases, less in others), and uses that reduced detail level to focus on much larger games than Total War does.

Now as to wether or not any future SO reprints will omit the Quickstrike section....that's a very good question, one that might not even be answerable even by Herb until he decides that a reprint is needed, and gets such a project going.

Thanks, just trying to get my head around how all this works and what fits where.  I have to be able to explain it to teenagers   ;)

[clansittingducks]

Played a company on company match against Clansittingducks today. The only reason it took more than two hours was because we had to look up everything as we wanted to tryout as many things as we could. A few lessons learned; don't DFA an Assassin, don't get into melee with an Archer with a Spider, don't jump a Wolverine into close range with an Atlas and a Thunderbolt and always, always watch your back arc  O:-)

The game was fast and brutal with a small canyon that became a scrap yard for half a company being the peak of the violent clash.

Much fun was had  O0

It was quite scrum when our command lances slammed into each other. Knowing now that the AS7-D does more damage than what we had, I think that fight would have ended differently... or at least with more bodies scattered around that canyon.

For the most part I am happy to see 3025 tech loadouts really hold their own. Hopefully another game will be had this friday

[Alexander Knight]

1,492 designs remaining.

And let's see....I've already given a battle armor and a tank.  What's next?
Oh!  How about some foot soldiers?  Introducing the Comstar/WoB Motorized (Laser) Level I!

Name:                    Motorized Level I (Laser) (x2)
Type:                     CI
Size:                       1
Move:                     6"m
Armor:                    3
Structure:               1
Damage:                 1/1/0
Point Value:            1
Specials:                 AM,CAR4

Yes, the (x2) in the name means you get 2 units for the point value listed.

[Weirdo]

As in two sub-platoons, each using these published stats?

[Alexander Knight]

As in two sub-platoons, each using these published stats?

That is correct, sir!

[Pa Weasley]

1,492 designs remaining.

[notworthy] You're a beast sir.

[glitterboy2098]

guess that is one way to handle the low BV of infantry. it also makes me wonder how many platoons of basic Foot with Rifles you can get for a single point. i've been considering grabbing some of the GHQ Combat commands as a way of cheaply representing planetary militia.

[Alexander Knight]

guess that is one way to handle the low BV of infantry.

Actually, it's because the BV is for the entire 36-monkey platoon, but you can only deploy 18 of the banana-munchers in one unit.

[Weirdo]

Looking forward to the Marian platoons. O0

[glitterboy2098]

Actually, it's because the BV is for the entire 36-monkey platoon, but you can only deploy 18 of the banana-munchers in one unit.

why the 18 limit?

[SCC]

why the 18 limit?

There's not a limit of 18, rather one of 30 and as C* uses 36 man platoons they get chopped in half, the Marians as they use 100-man platoons have them chopped into quarters

[Weirdo]

What SCC said. Any platoon with more than 30 men in total must be split into sub-platoons of equal size. So the C*/WoB 36-man platoons become two 18-man subplatoons. The sub-platoons are treated exactly like regular infantry platoons, to the point that the only thing keeping sub-platoons together is their name, and the fact that TROs and record sheets tend to provide BV values for the platoon as a whole. There's no requirement that the subs operate together.

[theothersarah]

Are there going to be converted stats for generic 28-man rifle/laser/etc. infantry?