Klingon Civil War OP1

The first of the Klingon Civil War OP events, Attack on Gowron sees two fleets face off trying to assassinate each others' Gowron.

Klingon ships gain a -2 points cost bonus for this OP event, and Gowron himself is free so we all expected to find many Klingon ships... We were not dissapointed!

My list for the event is as follows:

I.K.S. Maht-H'A [28]
- Kruge 7 (Captain) [4]
- - Klag [1]
- Jennifer Sisko [4]
- Nanclus [6]
Ship Total: 43 SP (41)

Klingon Starship (Vor'cha Class) [26]
- Kurn 5 (Captain) [3]
- Deanna Troi [4]
Ship Total: 33 SP (31)

Klingon Starship (Vor'cha Class) [26]
- Chang 7 (Captain) [4]
- Gowron (Admiral) [3]
- Rom [3]
Ship Total: 36 SP (31)

1st Wave Attack Fighters [24]
- Flanking Attack [3]
Ship Total: 27 SP

Fleet Total: 139 SP (130 with the minus points for using Klingon ships/cards)


Round 1 vs Klingons!

5 Klingon ships, fleet I believe was pure:

 Quick shot of my fleet before we start:

 Round 1: Movement, everyone who can cloak does so...

 Round 2: Both fleets converge and I use Nanclus' ability to make his "Chang's Bird of Prey" (carrying his Gowron) to roll no defence dice this turn, in addition, he bumps one of his own ships with the Bird of Prey giving it no actions for the turn.

 After a brutal exchange of fire, the Bird of Prey is destroyed and each of the remaining ships on both sides take damage.  The surviving ships from the first volley set their manouver dials ready for the next round:

  A few good calls puts the majority of my ships behind my opponents' fleet and one of his Vor'cha cruisers falls to concentrated fire.  I take some hits in return from rear arc weapons on the K'Tinga's (maybe D7's... not entirely sure)...

 The next round of movement sees the chase begin... After moving behind the opposing fleet, this had left me in an excellent position:

 Another turn goes by and I'm starting to gain ground as my opponent runs out of game space.  I manage to finish off one of the K'Tinga's this turn...

 I give up on chasing the last K'Tinga and turn in towards the Vor'cha.  Using Troi's ability I disable the Captain, causing the ship to decloak - both of my Vor'cha's open fire and destroy their target:

 Time is called and the remaining K'Tinga remains safely outside my reach...

 A nice win to start off the day... Quick picture of the victorious fleet:

So, a 115-0 win and after a pretty successful game I was looking forward to the next game.

The view from my force, a Negh'var, 2x Vor'cha's and a Bird of Prey:

 This game was brutal.  First round of firing and I made a few errors, notably using Nanclus to give the Negh'Var an extra attack dice but as my opponent moved after me he just reactivated Gowron... epic fail on my part.  The Negh'Var and one of the Vor'cha's managed to kill my ship carrying Gowron.  In return, I destroyed the Negh'Var... we each lost a Vor'cha and ended up with only two ships each remaining...

 This was now a very tight game.  In hindsight, I made an epic mistake here.

 As you can see, my opponent chose wisely.  I did not.  My Vor'cha took a hammering this turn, and I only managed to damage the Bird of Prey, not quite enough to destroy it...

 I corrected my mistake from earlier but by now I was in a precarious position, my Hideki's had taken a bit of a bettering and I was unable to finish off any of my opponent's ships.  I lost my last Vor'cha and I was now clearly on the ropes...

 Dials set, time to see what I could do...

 Point blank range, I lost another couple of tokens but did manage to finish off the Bird of Prey:

 Next turn I managed to get behind my opponent's Vor'cha and started whittling away at it:

 The next turn placed us again at point blank range, one token left and it was all down to the last couple of rolls, my opponent fired first:

 A loss 140-110 but a fantastic game, one of the closest I've had and literally down to the last roll of the dice!

Last game of the day was against a mixed fleet carrying a million and four mines!  I hate mines.  Really hate mines...

 So, the one thing I had to do was make sure that at least one of my opponent's ships died.  A lot:

 In fairness, the Somraw had done its job by this point and I was staring cloaked mines and nuclear mines in the face but I had some small satisfaction of eliminating it:

 Dials set...

 One ship lost to mines, one ship heavily damaged and the others running away...

 Not a good position to be in at all...

 Chang's Vor'cha was not going out without a fight however.  He successfully survived a full round of attacks:

 Then managed to turn around and attack himself.  Unfortunately surviving two rounds was outside the realms of possibility:

 Now, my turn to run:

 No hope, no chance for victory here...

 The Hideki's finally fell...

All in all I made a few basic errors early on and it doomed me from the moment the first mine token went down.  A loss, 140-33.

Overall, 4th place and a very hard-fought series of games.  Thoroughly enjoyed the day and yet again, an excellent set of opponents.

Until next time fellow gamers!

Empire vs Rebels - Try-outs!

A slight change of pace today - an X-Wing game!

With the X-Wing season coming up and the Star Trek one coming to a possible end, I thought I'd give a couple of lists a run through.

List 1: Imperial:


Black Squadron Pilot + Push the limit
Black Squadron Pilot + Push the limit
Black Squadron Pilot + Push the limit
"Duchess" + Swarm Leader, Adaptive Ailerons, Lightweight Frame
"Zeta Ace" + Push the limit

The aim here is to keep the Black Squadron Pilots in close to the opposing force, using Zeta Ace to jump around a bit and Duchess to cause havoc on the flanks.  If taken at the right time, Push the limit can be used to buff not only the TIE's offensive power with focus tokens but also evade tokens to buff Duchess with Swarm Leader.

List 2: Rebel:

Blue Squadron Pilot + Fire-control system, Mangler cannon, Proton Torpedos x2
Blue Squadron Pilot + Fire-control system, Mangler cannon, Proton Torpedos x2
Garven Dreis + R5-K6, Integrated Astromech

Wanted to try out a torpedo based list, in theory Dreis could pass off his focus token to one of the B-Wings each turn to give them a highly effective torpedo attack - purely a just for fun list this one.

Anyway, onto the play-through!

A quick shot of the two forces:

Initial setup:

Turn 1, movement only, no ships in range of each other:

Turn 2, both forces move into attack range:

A close view of the action:

Duchess begins the attack by using Swarm Leader and attacking "Blue 7", dealing 3 damage.
Zeta and Dreis both fail to cause any damage on their attacks, but TIE-31 scores 2 hits on Dreis at point blank range.
TIE-33 manages to score a critical hit on the now unshielded Dreis causing  "Structural Damage".
"Blue 7" is unable to find its mark when attacking TIE-31, but "Blue 8" causes critical damage on TIE-33, destroying it.

Round 2 ends looking like this:

Round 3 movement:

Some excellent manouvering by Duchess (thanks to the Adaptive Ailerons) places her at range 1 behind Dreis:

After using a focus action, Duchess attacks:

Doing just enough damage to finish off Dreis, leaving the Blue Squadron members all alone.  TIE-31 manages to knock off a single shield from "Blue 8".  With no other ships in arc, the round was over.

Round 4 movement:

Zeta and TIE-31 both manage to score hits on "Blue 8", taking off two shields in total.  "Blue 8" manages to get off a Proton Torpedo shot against TIE-31, unfortunately TIE-31 rolls an exceptional set of defence dice:

Round 5 movement:

First up to fire is Duchess, again at range 1 and using a focus token and Swarm Leader to gain an extra attack die:

5 hits on "Blue 7" is enough to finish it off, then Zeta manages to knock a single shield off "Blue 8".  "Blue 8" returns fire on Zeta but is unable to score a hit.

Round 6 movement:

TIE-31 scores 2 hits on "Blue 8" eliminating the remaining shield and causing 1 hull damage.  TIE-53 attacks at point blank range, scoring 3 hits and destroying the last member of the Rebel force.

So, an interesting game.  The TIE-Striker's Ailerons and high skill allowed it to stay out of arc for the majority of the game, and the only time it got caught in arc it managed to eliminate the B-Wing before it could fire. 

The B-Wings' Proton Torpedo and Mangler Cannon upgrades were completely ineffective, admittedly through an excellent defence roll by one of the TIE's but as soon as they closed into attack range the TIE's just stayed too close to them to be able to get to the correct range.  In retrospect the points could have been better spent elsewhere, maybe on another X-Wing instead.

A few other shots of the game:

"Blue 8" faces off against TIE 31:

 Duchess prepares to attack "Blue 7":

 "Blue 8" finally succumbs to a co-ordinated attack from TIE-31 and TIE-53:

The surviving Imperial forces:

So, next round will be the Empire vs another amended Rebel list!