From: Flak Magnet <flakmagnet@t...>
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 13:10:02 -0400
Subject: [GZG] Batrep for 28 July 2006
Since this was our first game in a really long time we kept the fleets small. Scenario: 500 point fleets chosen from the fleetbooks. No custom ships were allowed. With the agreement of the other players, Jeff used the playtest beta-rule for the UN Ships. We split up into teams using dice to determine who was on which side. Teams were Brian (Kra'vak) and Jeff (UN) vs. Patrick (ESU?) and I (NSL). Then we rolled a scatter die to determine which point around the tables edge each fleet would come on from. Patrick and I were on the East (short) edge, Brian on the South (long) edge and Jeff was on the West edge. In the center of the table was a planet about 2" across. Arrayed around the planet in a ring about 10-12" across were a bunch of Asteroids (lava-rocks). Each turn, before orders were written the asteroids drifted at random around the table moving 1d6" in a random direction. The scenario was that two opposed alliances (teams) were there to check out the anomolous drifting of the asteroids just in case it was some advanced alien (I joked Goa'uld) technology based on the planet that was causing it. I don't remember a play-by-play, but we'd rolled randomly to be moving between 1-3 times our slowest ships thrust rating for initial velocity. Patrick was coming in "hot" and spend much of the game trying to avoid hitting the rocks and jockeying for a shot at them. They seemed to get in his way constantly! Brian and I faced off first as Jeff was isolated from Patrick and I by the planet and rocks. His K-guns knocked off some armor and damaged the hull, but since I was playing NSL I could take a lot of punishment per ship class. Brian wound up blasting a Destroyer to dust before he fell. For my part, I closed on him and the beam batteries raked his ship harshly since the Kra'vak don't use shields. He used his gravitic drives to move away from me and tried to put the rocks between he and I as Jeff advanced. I continued sniping at him through gaps in the rocks and just as Jeff brought his UN Grasers to bear Brian's last ship was destroyed due to fire from my ships and Patrick's. Jeff's ship (yeah, it had an escort...) blasted my remaining ship to dust before I could put enough hurt on it to make a difference for Patrick. The end of the game was a duel between Patrick's almost entirely intact fleet and Jeff's slightly damaged ship (which was, admittedly, most of his fleet). Due to very effective maneuvering on Jeff's part, Patrick found himself out of position at least once to return Jeff's withering Graser fire and Jeff eventually found himself the sole, proud owner of an asteroid-chucking planet of doom! The consensus was that using the pre-designed ships from the Fleet book, combined with the quirky drifting asteroids really made for a fun game. Much better than the Paper-Rock-Scissors problems concerning fighters that our prior games had degenerated into. Pictures Patrick took are here: