Especially when you do a lot of demo games you tend to play the same scenarios over and over again.
So a friend from my club (Travespielertreffen e.V.) and I decided to spice it up a little. We both built a 1300 point fleet, made a list of all available scenarios and let the dice gods decide which we were going to play.
It instantly felt a lot more realistic because tailor fitted fleets for every engagement are a luxury an admiral probably doesn’t have.
In this case it got even better, we rolled “
Erupting Battlefronts” (Scenario 3) a scenario we left out because we didn’t have space stations at the time.
The Fluff text reads as follows:
“
What seemed like a Recon skirmish was in reality the prelude to a fleet sized engagement, with the foe making a play for key sectors on the surface. Capture and hold them quickly; your reinforcements are en-route, but so are the enemy’s…”
So what happens?
The Approach type (one of the main features of the scenarios) is
Rapid Reaction. This approach type has the feel of a chance encounter that turns into a full-fledged battle. In turn one you may activate one battlegroup of your choice. This battlegroup comes onto the battlefield and encounters an enemy battlegroup – then all hell breaks loose as frantic calls for assistance are issued system wide and every ship in range rushes for the battlefield. Which ship arrives first is not under your control.
Turn two you throw a D6 for every remaining battlegroup. On a 4+ it joins the fray. On turn three it is a 2+ and turn four all remaining battlegroups come on.
Sounds like a lot of luck is needed – but this is actually a lot of fun – and since you regularly start without your entire fleet on the table, you are kind of used to it.
But the cinematic approach is just the beginning:
1st. there is a planetary ring (red tape) dividing the board. Just picture the Saturn rings.
A ring of debris in high orbit that reduces scan range and damages your ships if you fly through. You may duck under it with an altitude change into low orbit. A battleship would probably charge through to avoid low orbit – but especially frigates might end up as an addition to the debris field that makes up the planetary ring.
2nd The ground combat part mostly takes place in the middle or on the enemy’s side of the board.
In victory points: You get 1 VP for every sector you destroy on your side of the table. The space stations / towns in the middle and on the enemy’s side count normal (critical locations+normal scoring)
That means – you can destroy clusters in your part of the map to stop the enemy from scoring and get some minor points. But the real points you get by landing your troops on the enemy’s side of the battlefield – preprogrammed carnage.
So how did it go?The game felt very balanced. We both had the worst fleets possible for this scenario – so we were both screwed.
His idea was to field a lot of long range ships with scan and electronic warfare support that would pick my fleet apart at long range. This was effectively countered by the orbital ring that hid my approaching ships from his attempts at scanning.
My plan was to bum-rush him with a large number of small ships with an immense hitting power. Pretty much glass cannons, or giant weapons transported by ships made of papermaché and tar.
The backbone of the fleet were a carrier and a battleship. This fleet gives the enemy a difficult choice. He either deals with the small ships and ignores the big boys until it (hopefully) is too late. Or he deals with the giant monster and has a lot of piranhas tear his fleet apart.
Well so much for the plan – sadly the orbital ring countered that plan. The small ships were unable to fly through the ring and had to duck under the ring.
In Dropfleet you can change only one orbital layer per turn and directly behind the ring they slammed into the enemy fleet. No time to climb a layer. Shooting into a different layer makes it more difficult to hit and in combination with the electronic warfare the enemy deployed – all small ships needed sixes to hit and were a
lot less effective. Especially since they didn’t have any staying power.
The final outcome:
My fleet employed 12 hunter killers (a huge number) – these are corvettes that attack in atmosphere and deal with other corvettes or kill the enemy’s landing crafts.
In addition I had a lot more landing assets.
That many more points sunk into the ground /atmospheric assault meant that I would most certainly loose the battle in orbit, but destroy most of his landing assets and win the ground offensive.
This worked out rather well, although the PHR atmospheric vessels proved many times how much damage they were able to shrug off and keep going. I hate their armor…
We were only able to play until turn four (not enough time). Until then most of his landing craft and corvettes were destroyed and I had a comfortable lead in points.
Sadly my hunter killers did nowhere as much damage as I hoped for. Lucky for me I had a very professional ground command that rushed for the orbital defense guns in the sectors and on the stations and joined the fray as early as possible. This was something the enemy didn’t expect. Without the withering fire from the ground the atmospheric battle might have ended in a stalemate or even a loss.
On the other hand the last two turns would probably have seen the obliteration of my fleet – I didn’t even try to attack his battleship after my first attack didn’t even scratch it’s impenetrable armor.
His second battlegroup with most of his main damage dealers was also mostly intact. An insured destruction of my fleet – but then again he would have needed to deal with all my troops on the ground to stop me from scoring. Not that easy without orbital bombardment and landing troops left. That means a lot of his shots would have to be directed on the ground
All in all an
awesome game with many cinematic moments – something I love about Dropfleet and Dropzone.
Regards
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