Trying new things

Well, my group finally got around to trying out Full Thrust and Dirtside II
last weekend, and I just wanted to share my feelings on the games.

First of all (enter gratuitous sucking up mode), I still can’t believe how
simple and intuitive the various FMA systems are. Seriously, I think Jon has
actually hit on how wargames are *supposed* to be.

Weve been playing Stargrunt II now for about a year. We’ve had rules for FT
and DS laying around, we just haven’t had the gumption to go about playing
them.

First off, we had a full-on Full Thrust engagement of
about 1,700 points. Force A was using Star Trek micromachines while Force B
was using a mixture of Full Thrust ships and AoG’s Babylon 5 ships.

We pointed out our ships separately with Force A trying to be faithful to the
Star Trek ideas while Force B was put together pell mell from the core rules.
For our first game, we stayed strictly with the Full Thrust basic and advanced
rules. We’ll add on More Thrust and Fleet Book as we go.

Force A had six cruisers and a battleship while Force B fielded a dreadnought,
a battleship, two cruisers and a frigate.

Once the engagement got under way, we all made a few errors in judging
movement, some grievous, others humorous. It’s not nice when your frigate
misjudges things and ends up with his back to three Klingon cruisers.

The outcome of the battle was a close victory for Force B. Force A lost every
ship while Force B had the battleship (on it’s last row of hull boxes) and the
dreadnought (with it’s last row plus three boxes left) left in the aftermath.

It could have been much worse for Force B had things gone a little better for
Force A and the dice. Three Klingon cruisers closed on the battleship and
fired torpedoes within 12 inches, yet all missed. Then their beams managed to
do a combined three points of damage. But, that’s the way the winds of war
blow sometimes.

Our DS game was much smaller, with each side taking two platoons of tank
destroyers and two platoons of tanks. While each side suffered the collapse of
a flank, nifty maneuvering allowed Force B to take a victory.

Overall, I thought DS did an excellent job of simulating the difference
between tank destroyers and tanks, and with a quick read of the rules, I think
it will do just as good a job at simulating other aspects
of large-scale ground battles. I can’t wait to design
my own force.

Plus, very few things beat drawing a BOOM chit... at
least when gaming :-)