Federation Commander

[kiloton]

My son and I had a good time Friday night with the latest playtest. This was the first battle using Kzintis and the variable speed plots. Both seemed to work quite well. The Kzintis were deemed to have pulled out a victory although we were unable to play the game to completion due to time. Play testing results in a lot of discussion that, while needed for development, slows the game down.

Massed drones scaled better than I had even hoped and performed their essential functions. En masse, they can severely wound a target but are not overwhelming to game play and forced maneuver out of both fleets. They worked just about perfectly.

The Klingons armed standard disrupters turn one thinking we would not reach overload range but the Kzintis overloaded and charged as fast as possible. The Klingons did not delay and came right in despite not having armed overloads giving the Kzintis a favorable turn one exchange.

The Klingons smartly tried to take out the two Kzinti frigates to lower Kzinti drone potential on future turns and did destroy one while wounding the other. The Kzintis in return severely damaged two Klingon D7s. The following turn, the Klingons put some distance between the fleets to clean up the massed drones from turn one. The Kzintis turned around and finished off one D7 when it's rear shield was dropped by drones and phaser fire from range sealed the deal. There was some other inconsequential fire exchanged at range.

Once the Klingons and Kzintis finished their turns, the fleets clashed again with the Kzintis destroying the C7 and the Klingons severely wounding one of the Kzinti medium cruisers. Another favorable exchange for the Kzinti.

All in all, a really fun game. That first turn put the Klingins behind the eight ball and the Kzintis made a few mistakes to crack the door open a little. Ultimately, the damage done in the first turn proved decisive with the Klingon's reduction in firepower for future exchanges.

Thank you again to Bob for preparing, organizing, and running the game. I am going to run the next one so Bob actually gets to play this time!
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Ken

[kiloton]

If anyone is local to St. Louis and wants to join in on the playetsting, we are trying to schedule a date in October to continue. We will post here when that will be. The playetst will occur in St. Charles, MO at The Fantasy Shop on West Clay Road off of I-70.

It is a really fun game and I highly recommend it!

More to come soon...
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Ken

[kiloton]

It looks like our next playing will be Friday 25 October. We are still determining what the scenario will be. We may mix things up or replay a previous matchup switching players around to see if we think the balance is on the right track. It has been noted that the Klingons have lost more than the Feds and Kzintis but we have had a pretty small sample size so far, too.

If you are local to St. Louis and want to join us, let us know here. We would very much like to get more people playing. So if you love the SFU, used to play SFB, wish you had more time to play SFB/FedCom, or just like space combat gaming, come join us!

There will also be a scenario run at Command Con in St. Louis on 10 November. I need to check before posting a link to the convention website but you can find it via Google using "Command Con" and "Big Muddy Historical Gaming Alliance"
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Ken

[lincolnlog]

Looks like the Oct 25th game will get bumped to possibly Nov 1st. We're confirming we have a place before we ask about availabilty.

[kiloton]

We will be playing our next game of Task Force Commander at The Fantasy Shop in St. Charles, MO on Friday 1 November. If you are interested in playing and/or in the area and want to check it out, give us a shout here and we can hook you up. There are at least 5 of us committed to being there. The more the merrier!
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Ken