Welcome to the second installment of my reporting on the Firestorm Armada campaign I have been running for myself and a friend of mine. This battle actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but I’m a bit behind on my blogging! If you haven’t looked at the first post in this series, you might find it helpful to check it out.

This post chronicles the first half of Campaign Turn 1. I won the strategic initiative, and so it was up to me to make the first move. I struck out at the Savo system, which you can see on the map below. This was the next nearest system to my home base, and seemed like a natural step. I ended up rolling for a large Battle-sized game, which we would play at 800 points each. As for the mission, we would be playing the Recover Resources mission, which we modified by putting a planet in place of the central debris filed. Our ships would be able to attempt to recover resources from it as normal when we were within 4″ of the world. We both agreed that this would represent both sides trying to evacuate our operatives from the planet!Here is how our fleets looked at set-up:

As the game progressed, the bulk of our fleets began to concentrate in the center of the table, which became packed with ships of all types:

Result:

In the end, the Directorate pulled out a convincing win, 20 points to my measly 8 on the Victory Track. The battle was pretty bloody; I had only a cruiser and a weakened frigate squadron left, while Terry was down to his two battleships and a handful of frigates.

Aftermath:

Having failed to gain control of the Savo system, my forces were forced to fall back to base and lick their wounds. Both of us had taken a heavy pounding that far exceeded our local repair capacity, so there wound up being a fair amount of withdrawing squadrons for repair and replenishment. As a result, our next game will most certainly be smaller, as we just don’t have the forces for another fight of this scale! I’m thinking that we might also need to modify our fighting styles somewhat, since it is apparent we will not be able to fight to the death every single game and still have a useable force afterwards. And finally, both of use were trying some new ships and tactics out. Terry was attempting to maximize his boarding potential by using Biohazard ammo and targeted strikes against defenses, but as it turned out he did not get a single boarding assault off. On my part, I was trying out my Destroyers and Carrier. The Carrier was destroyed before this wings could even land a single blow, to my disappointment. The Destroyers fared a little better, but I never did get the nuclear blast on a squadron of frigates that I was gunning for. Looks like it will be back to the drawing board for both of us!

EPILOGUE

The bridge of the Terran cruiser San Francisco was blanketed in quiet tension. Once again, Task Force 22 had taken a heavy blow at the hands of the Directorate, and the San Fran was trying to work her way to the edge of the engagement area so she could make her escape. “Time to the jump point?” requested Commander Jenks, the ship’s captain. “We are about 10 minutes out, sir” the Navigator replied. Jenks nodded and turned back to his tactical display. The San Fran was working her way through one of the debris fields blanketing the area, trying to shake the Directorate destroyer that was shadowing her movements.  “I’m continuing to hold contact on a possible enemy ship, bearing 342 mark 064” reported the crewman at the scanner console. “Looks like we didn’t quite escape notice afterall” stated Jenks. “How soon  will we clear this debris field?” he asked. “We will be breaking free in about 5 minutes, sir” replied the Navigator. “Alright! Stand by on the port weapons batteries, and arm the torpedo tubes. As soon as we clear the sensor hash caused by this debris, fire at will at that contact!”

The Directorate Destroyer was doing its best to run the last Terran cruiser in the area to the ground. The debris field was playing havoc with the highly automated sensor systems on the Directorate ship. All that indicated the Terran’s presence was the odd ion emission that stood out only slightly from the clutter caused by all the space junk in question. Suddenly, a solid contact loomed out of the debris on the ship’s port quarter. Alarm klaxons wailed as the automatic threat detection systems began to react, but it was already too late. The port side of the Terran cruiser erupted in noiseless light as laser and plasma based primary weapons lanced out at the destroyer. Hot on the heals of this fire, an impressive salvo of torpedoes streamed in. In a matter of moments, all that was left of the Directorate ship was a cloud of debris that was already fading into the flotsam surrounding it. The handful of survivors could do nothing but watch as the Terran cruiser that murdered their ship folded out of the system to safety…