Author Topic: Firefight!  (Read 2143 times)

Landlubber

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Firefight!
« on: June 21, 2016, 01:27:28 am »
Quickdraw and I were finally able to meet up and play the new Firefight scenario for Halo: Fleet Battles this evening. Our original plan was to take an entire Sunday and plunk down all the battlegroups we could both muster, which would have been on the order of about 4300 points per side (I had 19 battlegroups built for that event!). Alas, Real Life kept getting in the way, so tonight we played a pared-down version at about 2000 points per side. As usual, I played the UNSC (under Lord Hood), and he played the Covenant (I can't remember which Fleet Master he chose).

Our original plan called for fielding the Punic and CAS as the respective flagships, but time and points constraints kept those two behemoths off the table in this game (we wanted to field as many battlegroups as possible, and those two ships eat up a lot of points). So I nominated a supported Epoch as my flagship, and he nominated a supported ORS as his. We played on a 4x6' table; here was the initial deployment:



For those not familiar with the Firefight scenario: each player nominates a flagship, and has a specific zone where they can be deployed. All other battlegroups are held in reserve. At the start of each turn, you roll a Halo die for each battlegroup to see if they can come on the board; then, you roll a Halo die to determine on which board edge they deploy; and finally, you roll a Halo die to see if/how many Vulnerable markers each element gains upon deployment. It's a little convoluted, but you get the hang of it pretty quick. What it means, however, is that the edges of the battlefield become separate little engagement zones, and you have the potential for initial deployments that look like this:





Yeah. The Epoch was the first UNSC element to get killed. Thankfully, this is not Dystopian Wars, and I didn't have to do command checks across the entire fleet when it happened.

Because we didn't have two massive elements in the middle of the board, the center of the battlefield  remained mostly clear. The action was all occurring around the edges, where battlegroups were getting thrashed almost as soon as they deployed.





In the end, the Covenant carried the day, destroying 30 BR's worth of UNSC ships, to include the flagship. The UNSC destroyed 20 BR's worth of Covenant ships, and was not able to put a scratch on the ORS (although two Pelicans boarded the Covenant flagship in turn 1, and were both still aboard at the end of the game!). We both had one battlegroup that did not deploy. Here are some of my and Quickdraw's observations about the scenario, in no particular order:

1. The close proximity of the battlegroups meant bomber wings could sometimes get to a target immediately upon deployment.

2. The Vulnerable tokens made even medium-sized ships susceptible to severe damage from bomber wings (I think we were averaging 2 Vulnerable tokens per element upon deployment).

3. Due to the rules for the scenario not prohibiting this action, there was a lot of "tailgating"; i.e., new battlegroups would deploy squarely in the rear arc of enemy battlegroups which had deployed a turn earlier on the same board edge. We had several one-sided engagements that looked like this:



This also contributed to the middle of the board staying relatively empty, as battlegroups were slaughtered by fresh waves deploying behind them.

4. I played Lord Hood hoping to get some use out of his "Engage in Strength" order, but then quickly realized that a) I might not have two standard battlegroups functioning at the same time, and b) they might be too far apart to really make a difference. I never did end up using that order.

5. The close proximity of the deployments meant the UNSC took a LOT of Firepower 5 plasma shots from the Covenant.

6. Again due to the close proximity, there were more boarding actions than we usually have to deal with, although for some reason we didn't have any spectacular results.

Overall, we both liked the scenario, but think that we'll likely enact some house rules next time to make the battlegroups survive a bit longer. Quickdraw suggested the idea of rolling a D6 for a specific sector of a deployment edge once the edge has been determined, so that battlegroups might not deploy directly behind groups that deployed earlier on the same table edge.

If the goal was to create a swirling, chaotic engagement, then this scenario was spot-on. We both found ourselves running back and forth around the board, carrying tape measures and stat cards so we wouldn't have to make multiple trips! We both definitely would like to try this scenario again.

Quickdraw, if I've left anything out, please chime in.

As always, thanks for reading!

« Last Edit: June 21, 2016, 01:43:50 am by Landlubber »
"Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six."--Commander Adama

markymark1970

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Re: Firefight!
« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2016, 05:15:58 pm »
Sounds very cool and interesting. 

To add more variety, you could have a specific random mission assigned to each incoming battle group (like move immediately to a certain sector of the map or move directly to the largest enemy battle group or flagship), which may cause some battle groups not to fully engage those enemies nearby (requiring them to be elsewhere, regardless of the juicy target rich environment they have been placed into).  You could also make the sector that ships come into a bit bigger, increasing the distance that unit may be from each other.  Ships coming in have a reduced "to hit" roll on ships already present (and maybe it works vice versa).   This could represent scanners needing to balance (and not having 100% clarity) due to the magneto-flux and space-time continuum distortions caused by the antimatter/dark matter drive emissions of the arriving vessels.  Or is this the purpose of the vulnerable markers?

Is it obvious that I have no idea what the fluff is behind the Halo story?

Landlubber

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Re: Firefight!
« Reply #2 on: June 21, 2016, 07:07:29 pm »
Those are good ideas--I especially like the concept of battlegroups having missions. That could be random, or players could choose from a list of sub-objectives before the game and assign secret missions to each battlegroup.

Quickdraw's sector idea would potentially separate the battlegroups by a pretty long ways. On a 4x6' board, if a battlegroup deployed on the long edge, it could potentially be 48" away from other battlegroups that deployed in the previous wave. Something we might try next time.

The Vulnerable markers affect an element's ability to defend itself. Hull damage affects offensive firepower; you take off one hit for every hull damage marker the element has. No element can ever have more than two damage markers, because when you break the third damage rating the element is destroyed. Vulnerable markers have the same effect, but against defensive systems: point defense, defense arrays, etc.

I can give you the Halo 101 briefing anytime!
"Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six."--Commander Adama

Quickdraw

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Re: Firefight!
« Reply #3 on: June 22, 2016, 09:56:57 am »
That's a pretty good overview of the game. By the way, this selection of pictures is really good. I like that you've focused on specific engagements up close to illustrate points in the game. Instead of a "this is the board on turn 2, and this is the board on turn 3" Just something I noticed when I was reading.

Anyways...
The scenario is a really good one. It represents a larger engagement converging onto one area of space really well. I like it so much that I want to rewrite it for Dystopian Wars.
Some points on the game...
I think it's notable to point out that Landlubber and I both forgot about the sector control secondary objective. At the end of each turn you calculate control of sectors and award additional victory points. This could have caused us to avoid some of the tailgating, but it's definitely still a secondary objective, so who knows.
Also, both of us had one battlegroup that did not make it to the table. I think this is important as a fresh battlegroup could have helped Landlubber stay afloat near the end and maybe dent my ORS at range. While mine was significant as it was 1/6th of my total battlegroups, representing a decent portion of my fleet.
Some ideas on the scenario...
Like I said, this is a great scenario. It really makes you react to changing conditions which is sometimes hard in a line em up and shoot deployment.
The tailgating, while not a strict problem, got old. I think the immediate solution will be to randomize the sector. After we try that if it still isn't enough we can add an additional layer.
Another thing that Landlubber mentioned is how empty the center of the board was. This could change with the more widespread sector deployment as battlegroups have to travel farther to engage. It could also be different/better when using the massive ships in the center during a larger game. They will likely pound each other and battlegroups will need to rush in to help more. They are more survivable which will mean the center is an important area longer.

Landlubber

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Re: Firefight!
« Reply #4 on: June 22, 2016, 09:37:05 pm »
A few more more thoughts...

No battlegroups deployed on my edge of the board. So there was an entire 6-foot space where nothing came on. Part of the reason we had so much tailgating is because battlegroups kept entering on the same board edges.

Yes, sector control. Given the lack of deployment on my edge of the table, at least two sectors on that side never had any ships in them (except for the half-turn that my flagship was running from the CCS deathswarm). I agree with Quickdraw, had we been playing with sector control in mind, we might have seen the battlegroups spread out more.

Also--and I just thought about this today--we completely forgot that an element's damage track is reduced by -1 for EACH Vulnerable marker it has. Since nearly every element deployed onto the board with at least one Vulnerable marker, this could have changed the score a bit. For example: an undamaged UNSC Marathon cruiser (unsupported) has a damage track of 6-6-3. With one Vulnerable marker, that damage track becomes 5-5-2. With TWO Vulnerable markers, it becomes 4-4-1, which is not much better than a UNSC Paris frigate element. The Vulnerable markers can be repaired in the End Phase of each turn (by rolling a 1 or 2 on a Halo die), but there were some elements that carried Vulnerable markers for the entire game.
"Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six."--Commander Adama