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After- Action report: K-C7 vs. L-BCH
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Kang
Fleet Captain


Joined: 23 Sep 2007
Posts: 1976
Location: Devon, UK

PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:10 pm    Post subject: After- Action report: K-C7 vs. L-BCH Reply with quote

For this battle we played a straight duel of my Klingon C7 heavy battlecruiser vs. my son Dave's Lyran Hellcat heavy battlecruiser.

Turn 1

I selected Speed 24; I figured it would come as a surprise to him as most games we have played have had cautious, tentative initial approach. I wanted to trade oblique alpha strikes, where I had a slight firepower advantage, and then belt him with hit-and-run raids on his ESGs - ditto on the advantage stakes.

So anyway we approached and I set up a great oblique at range 4 on Impulse 8 - with my #6 shield facing his #1 - but rolled terrible dice. All my overloads missed and my phasers were rubbish too. He connected with all his overloads and phasers were average. Result: one burnthrough on his ship with one box left on his #1 shield -so no H&R raids - , nineteen internals on mine.

View at the end of Turn 1:

http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/09.jpg
http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/10.jpg
http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/11.jpg
http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/12.jpg

Sent him a wave of four drones to make him use power on his ESGs, or more accurately to make him use ESG power so he'd have to use power to top them up.

Turn 2 we both selected Speed 24 as he wanted to get an ESG ram on my ship. I was aiming to get in behind him and HET onto his rear shields, but I drew the short straw the close-in guessing game and ended up with the ships back-to-back and me getting ESG'd with 60 points from the ESGs and a further 25 or so from phasers. Once again my dice were bad and did only one internal. Really not my night at all - game over.

Lessons: 1) Buy new dice with weights in; 2) Don't get close to ESGs at all - one mistake in the knife fight can be fatal; 3) Buy new dice with all 1's on them; 4) The drones are a good idea but you need to live long enough to reap the benefits of the ESG power usage.

Please don't get me wrong; I'm not really blaming my dice. But as in all chance elements, a run of bad luck can swing things pretty severely and this was one of those occasions, I thought.

View at game end:

http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/13.jpg
http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/14.jpg

Once again, all comments welcome!
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djdood
Commodore


Joined: 01 Feb 2007
Posts: 3412
Location: Seattle, WA

PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ouch. Rough start to the game for you. It's always really tough to recover from a deficit.

I'm no expert on Klink tactics (and I don't have the disruptor chart handy), but could you have gotten the same results further out in the same range-bracket on that first oblique? A little more distance might've spared your C-7 some of the agony dished out by they Lyran.

I ask as I am trying to break out of my "all Feds" mold and star playing more games using Klingons and Kzinits (I'll try to get my head around plasma tactics later).

Again, I'm really digging what you and your son are doing with those homemade minis. That C-7 is really neat! Do you use cardstock paper, or sheet styrene plastic?
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Mike
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Joined: 07 May 2007
Posts: 1675
Location: South Carolina

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 3:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd really like to know how you make those homemade minis, too.
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Kang
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Joined: 23 Sep 2007
Posts: 1976
Location: Devon, UK

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 6:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

djdood wrote:
Ouch. Rough start to the game for you. It's always really tough to recover from a deficit.

Yeah, that was the problem, especially such a large deficit. The two ships are pretty well matched, in fact they're almost too similar....

djdood wrote:
I'm no expert on Klink tactics (and I don't have the disruptor chart handy), but could you have gotten the same results further out in the same range-bracket on that first oblique? A little more distance might've spared your C-7 some of the agony dished out by they Lyran.

Well the problem is that the L-BCH is more or less equivalent to the C7 in terms of firepower, and it too has disruptors and P-1's; the thing was I was trying to eke out a slight firepower advantage [one more P-1 and the H&R raids]. In that sense the range was less important than the angle, which allowed me to bring my waist P-1's to bear. The range was the result of the positioning - which was perfect.

djdood wrote:
I ask as I am trying to break out of my "all Feds" mold and star playing more games using Klingons and Kzinits (I'll try to get my head around plasma tactics later).

Fair enough. One step at a time!

djdood wrote:
Again, I'm really digging what you and your son are doing with those homemade minis. That C-7 is really neat! Do you use cardstock paper, or sheet styrene plastic?

Thanks! I'll let him know [but he reads these forums anyway] Make the most of it, though, he's going back to his own house on Sunday! <explains why the sudden rash of Kang battle reports>. See below for the constructions details....
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Kang
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Joined: 23 Sep 2007
Posts: 1976
Location: Devon, UK

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 6:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mike wrote:
I'd really like to know how you make those homemade minis, too.

They're made of polystyrene sheet layered/carved as necessary - he has several thicknesses of it available, and decides on a per-model basis whether to carve or layer. Add in a bit of body filler putty and he's away.

The freighter hull was made from a piece of spare sprue from a plastic model kit. Paints were Revell/Humbrol/Airix enamels applied with a steady hand Smile
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pinecone
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Joined: 03 May 2008
Posts: 1862
Location: Earth

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 12:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I used to play star wars miniatures and always got bad roles. My opponent would Always get exceedingly good roles. But now in FC, thing have turned around. My oppnoent Always gets bad roles and I Always get good roles. So don't expect your roles to be bad for too long. luck can change.
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Davec_24
Commander


Joined: 16 Jul 2008
Posts: 596
Location: England

PostPosted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi all, I'm Kang's son - thought I'd register even though I have no internet access at home (d'oh!), and say a bit about how I make the minis. They are indeed made of polystyrene sheet (that is to say "plastic card", not expanded plastic like roof tiles) and sprue left over from model kits. The thinner round-section pieces (such as warp engines on a Fed and suchlike) are made by stretching the sprue over a candle to make it thinner. I don't think I've used any putty on the models yet, but I would if I had to, to get rounded shapes etc.; I'd be tempted to use epoxy putty to make ISC ships, though I haven't tried modelling these yet. Rounded shapes can be achieved by carving and sanding sandwiches of polystyrene card, but this is painstaking. I did a Cuirassier frigate like this and it took a fair while, but the end result was nice all the same.

I use 20-thou' sheet for the stands and bases (the latter of course are cut to the approximate size of the large counters so that they fit nnicely into the large hexes) and varying thicknesses of plastic sheet for the starships themselves, and glue the models together with ordinary poly cement. D7 type hulls (including C7s) I make by cutting out the basic shape from 30-thou' plastic card (I made a template for this, since I was planning on a few D6/D7 hulls and some KRs too!) and then cut and glue the wings and engines at the appropriate angles. I then add separate pieces for the shuttle bay/impulse housing, underside of the head, and the bridge/fire control unit (or whatever it is) on the top of the head.
Some of the thicker hulls (like lyrans, Kzintis, Hydrans) I make from 50 or 60-thou' card (otherwise a sandwich of thinner card glued together) and carve the appropriate angles into them, then glue on engines and wing-mounts and what-not once the main hull is done. I then glue these to the stands before painting them.

Painting them is the hard part in a way, especially when it comes to the Feds, as they just don't look right without the pennant numbers on the suacers! Painting was done with enamel paints (Humbrol and Revell in my case, but I'm sure others would work, and probably acrylic paints would work too although in my experience these tend to rub off models more easily than enamels) applied by hand using variuous brush-sizes from 000 to 3.

Obviously this all takes time and practice, and some of my earlier models aren't up to much, but that's how it goes. Luckily, these models only cost a few pence each for the materials...
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pinecone
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Joined: 03 May 2008
Posts: 1862
Location: Earth

PostPosted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 5:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Do you make enough to replace all the counters? Or do you make them as needed?
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Davec_24
Commander


Joined: 16 Jul 2008
Posts: 596
Location: England

PostPosted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 1:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've mostly made one model per type of hull (for example I have made only one Hydran medium cruiser hull to portray either the Tartar or the Mongol; there are subtle differences in the weapons rig on the ship's nose, but at a scale of about 1:11000 or something near that, they look pretty similar to each-other), and in some cases I have made a couple of models for each ship type, for example I have a couple of Federation CAs/CCs and D7s/D6s.
I tend to fight single-ship actions or small squadron actions rather than fleet actions, so this works well for me, though if I anticipated playing a larger action, I'd knock up some more models to go with it, or if the worst came to the worst, I'd just use counters instead of models.
I only replace the ships themselves with models, and retain counters for drones, shuttles, plasmas, etc. This is for a couple of reasons; firstly, these items are often easier to handle in counter-form than in model form, so that you can stack them and also place them on the bases of the ships if they are in the same hex as the starship. Also they would be fiddly to make and (more importantly) fragile to play with. The other factor is that, at the scale I make my models, a stinger fighter or a shuttlecraft would be well under 1mm in length, not to mention how small a drone would be!
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djdood
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Joined: 01 Feb 2007
Posts: 3412
Location: Seattle, WA

PostPosted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Those really are quite cool and show a lot of ingenuity.

If you are so inclined, it would be great if you could post some pictures of your creations in the minis section (I'd love to see your Feds, for example).
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Davec_24
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Joined: 16 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Right, I've stuck some pics in a post in the minis section. Post is called "Home-Made Minis". Enjoy Smile
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bobrunnicles
Lieutenant SG


Joined: 26 Jun 2008
Posts: 148
Location: Delray Beach, FL

PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great report and great minis, guys! Davec, I would think (once you have some sealer on the styrene, anyway) that you could use acrylics, which are cheap, plentiful and most importantly easy to clean with water - you just have to make sure once you've painted the mini, give it a coat of varnish. That should protect the paint job. I've been painting minis with acrylics (Full Thrust, Warhammer, 40K etc) for years and I wouldn't use anything other than acrylics at this point. They're just so much easier to deal with.
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Savedfromwhat
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Joined: 23 Aug 2007
Posts: 657

PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bob, why does it seem no one uses enamel paint (which is what i have been using and it seems to be okay, I get clumps with my acrylics)

Sorry to hijack...
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djdood
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Joined: 01 Feb 2007
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Location: Seattle, WA

PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm an enamel basecoat guy.
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Kang
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Joined: 23 Sep 2007
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Location: Devon, UK

PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 6:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

...........and I don't have the time. I just let Davec do them and then play with his minis Twisted Evil
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