Storeylf Vs Targ campaign

[storeylf]

Hope you get your campaign, they are so much better than one off games. Whilst we play reasonably frequently (once a week) I don't think we play particularly fast.

Be prepared for some on the fly discussion about niggly details. Whilst we stick pretty rigidly to the FC rules, the campaign rules started fairly vague and have evolved in various ways as we have been playing.

The obvious thing to get cleared up at the start of any battle is disengagment edges and how the map may or may not float, as pulling ships out of fights is pretty critical in a campaign.

We are starting to think about our next campaign, currently Andro vs LDR and the local Orions is looking likely. Probably have to modify our system slightly to make it feel more like an andro invasion. We are going to take a break from this campaign this week, and play a practise game with those forces to get a feel for how they perform in larger battles (~800 pts). Orions will suit Jack - they always have a good excuse for being less than enthusiastic about fighting too hard and losing ships.

I don't think I can handle playing a Fed ship again for at least a year after the current campaign ends

[storeylf]

With the campaign almost over with the Feds just a touch off victory we had decided to call an end to it. It has largely been a playtest of the basic system and we are going to move on to another campaign.

We have been discussing the issues faced by the klingons, and whilst the lack of cooperation by 2 players is an issue, that is just part of the fun each session. The other major issue game wise is that the klingons just can't compete on a map with boundaries very well when facing Feds. They get in 1 or 2 long range volleys (which may be against EM) and then get caught and eat large numbers of photon overloads and Ph1s. So we have decided to make the 'meeting engagmenent' battles a floating map by default (that may become location if location terrain is played on it), that will mean we have scenarios covering all map types so each side will have to fight acroos a range of maps - fixed, location and floating. So each side in any campaign will have good and bad environments.

The last battle was the meeting engagment between a Fed DN and CA vs a Klink C8, D6 and E4. I didn't really think enough about this, and messed up my first turn. The klinks fired at the back end of turn 1 at about range 15 then turned off. At the start of turn 2 I closed to range 12. I had a good number of drones coming at me and was lacking in power to keep up with th klinks through out the turn (I really wanted to be at range 12 at end of turn 1), I fired everthing at the back of the D6, that took down his rear shield and did some internals. The C8 then Het'd and closed along with the E4. The klinks lacked the power to close and fire much, but at the end of the turn the E4 closed and tractored the CA which allowed 10 drones to hit and vaporise it. The DN then disengaged. We have had to introduce an extra rule for disengagement on a floating map, as it is other wise often impossible and can just result in a non-ending game.

Overall we have enjoyed the campaign. The games have been far better than meaningless one off games, and they have forced us to think about things like disengaging rather than a few extra internals that you might score sacrificing a doomed ship etc. The system has produced a good variety of matchups and scenarios with with fairly interesting choices being thrown up - how much do I want to kill enemy ships or go for campaign objectives, is it worth the cost of this ship etc.

We've changed a few things along the way, and I'm now typing up the rules for the next camppaign based on this. Our next campign sees me and Jack face of aginst Targ. Targ will be taking an ISC battle group trying to enforce peace against a Kzinti Duke (me) who is determined to not be 'pacified'. Helping the Kzinti are some local Orions (Jack) who are finding ISC peace keeping has affected the bottom line badly so have agreed to help the kzinti (probably for a price!). The campaign will be basically the same system as we have just used, but this time using any ships as it is a late period setup with the ISC.