On Saturday, Aug 26, our group got together for a mega-space-battle refight of the Allied coalition's attempt to take back the Titan yards from the Word of Blake. I used a mashup of Total Warfare and Alpha Strike rules, then boiled the AS stats down by another factor of 3 to make things manageable. I took to calling the rules Strategic Aero-Strike. Each large craft was represented one-to-one, while each fighter mini represented either a squadron of 6 ships or a partial Star of 6 or 4 for the Clans.
The Fleets:
Jade Falcons
Wolves
Snow Ravens
Ghost Bears
DCMS and LAAF
Word of Blake manned fleet
WoB drone fleet. They also had a Drake SDS control ship, which was a 3D printed mini, not present for picture day.
The coalition was tasked with capturing or destroying several yard facilities, with captured objectives worth double points. Most of the allies had shuttles of Elementals or spec ops troops that could capture the facilities, if they could get to them. The Word of Blake scored points for crippling or destroying allied capital ships, receiving 10x the destroyed ship's size rating. Their drone fighters could be recycled as long as their launch facilities were still operable. The Drake and Naga control ships each granted 1 better skill to the drones as long as they were still alive.
The coalition's 2 naval Stars at the start.
The combined allied fleets quickly move into attack position. We used dice to mark the heading and velocity of each ship/squadron.
WoBSs Manchester and Deathblow began the game docked at the yards.
They move out, joined by the Dante class Narbonne. Warwick Station is in the background.
A Dragon's Breath missile platform floats next to a mining facility, that was also one of 2 launch bays for drone fighters. The WoBs had 2 live Dragon's Breaths and one red herring that was just a plain old factory. These were their only real counter to the monstrous Leviathan II class Great Bear. Despite their
supposed lack of knowledge about the battle, the allies targeted these and blew away 2 of them on turn 1. The platforms still got their shots off, but all missed, and the Great Bear marauded unmolested for the rest of the game.
The Narbonne was the next target. She took a withering amount of fire and was quickly destroyed.
Furball. The Word struck back, targeting the Falcons and the Snow Raven carriers, which had not yet launched their fighters. Bothe the White Aerie and Corvidae would suffer massive damage, including several ram attack by the drones, but both would survive the turn, allowing Corvidae to launch her fighters.
White Aerie and Manchester are lost. Corvidae would suffer major critical damage and lose her ability to maneuver. She was out of control and drifting throughout the rest of the game.
Desperate gambit. Going into the final turn, the WoBs were way ahead on points, having destroyed or crippled the White Aerie, Corvidae, and Blue Quest, while the allies had only managed to blow up a small radar station worth only 10 points. The allies kicked it into gear and plowed toward the objectives, intent to destroy them now that capture was out of the question. They managed to wipe out all but one objective, and the Jade Aerie got her shuttle away and into assault position before she, too was destroyed. The Word had dealt heavy damage to several other ships, particularly the Whirlwind class Drake, which was 13 points from destruction. Had they been able to finish her off, they would have pulled out a draw. The fell just short, however, and the allies won the day by a mere 20 points.
It was a tough game. The ships proved much more resilient than I expected from their stats. The allies wiped out the WoB capital ships, but had real problems dealing with the swarms of drones that just kept coming. The Word had no answer to the Ghost Bear ships once the nuke surprise failed, and didn't even bother with them. The Ghost Bear and Wolf ships survived the battle completely unscathed. The mish-mash of rules really worked well and played fast, despite the amount of stuff on the board. I would really love to see Catalyst do something similar in the official rules.
