Wanted to post an after-action report on the Halo: Fleet Battles game I ran at Tacticon 2016 this past weekend.
The scenario I ran was a slightly modified version of the Ambush scenario in the rulebook. A UNSC battlegroup was detailed to destroy an abandoned UNSC research station to prevent the materials from falling into the enemy's hands. The Covenant was able to hack the local UNSC battlenet and therefore knew the UNSC was coming to the station, so they prepared an ambush.
I had two people signed up to play, one of whom was Zorper, but my second player dropped out at the last minute so Zorper and I played, with him taking the Covenant. The game started with all the UNSC ships on the board, and all but two Covenant battlegroups deployed. I had Zorper roll for his reserve deployment and keep it secret.
Everything was going fine until this happened at the end of turn 2:
Covenant troops boarded the element, dropped 4 countdown timers, and safely extracted back to their parent ship. In the end phase, the UNSC bungled defusing the bombs and added two more, resulting in the dreaded Critical Core Breach. which eliminated the entire battlegroup and damaged part of another. Little did we know that was just the tip of the iceberg...
On the other side of the board, my Cerberus specialist battlegroup (one element of two
Marathon cruisers) was leading a charmed life, hacking and slashing its way through the Covenant ranks. Then the Covenant reinforcements showed up: a Penitent specialist battlegroup (paired RCS battlecruisers) and a Solemn Vow battlegroup (one supported CCS battlecruiser and one supported ORS heavy cruiser). A LOT of shooting and boarding ensued, with the first casualty being the UNSC flagship!
The Cerberus battlegroup closed to within rock-throwing range of the Covenant flagship. Meanwhile, more boarding actions resulted in more Critical Core Breaches, and space was littered with burning hulks of both Covenant and UNSC warships...
The Cerberus managed to pass through the Covenant line just before a missile salvo finished off the ORS. In its death throes, the ORS suffered a Critical Core Breach that pretty much wiped out the Covenant ships on that side of the battlefield.
In the end, a solitary reinforced
Orion and a badly-positioned Orthrus specialist battlegroup were left to deal with the two remaining Covenant battlegroups--which, after the ORS's explosion, consisted only of the two specialist battlegroups. After the
Orion was eliminated by the Penitent battlegroup and the Solemn Vow battlegroup destroyed one of the
Epoch carriers, the last UNSC ship spooled up its engines and went into slipspace.
This was the last day of the con and we didn't have anyone waiting to use our table, so Zorper and I decided to fight it out to the bitter end. The UNSC Cerberus was definitely the hero of the battle for the UNSC--it survived many times when it shouldn't have, and really punched the Covenant left flank hard. However, even more deadly was the Covenant Solemn Vow battlegroup, which was putting out a murderous 26 dice per Plasma Lance shot. Oddly, things started going much better for the Covenant after the flagship ORS was destroyed...maybe the Prophet of Truth was on that ship, clouding the Elites' vision?
It was a good game. The boarding actions were many and fierce, and we saw more Critical Core Breaches than I think I've ever seen in one game. Makes life interesting.
Thanks for reading!
