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!
