My most memorable battle this year took place in Dropfleet too.
I always wondered about historical battles in which generals/ admirals fed their troops into the mincer when the writing on the wall suggested a stalemate at best.
Well, at least my troops were only imaginary.
We (Scourge vs. PHR) played a game of
power grab in which you start at opposing corners in a column approach (battlegroups of your choice arrive over three turns).
The objective is to take five cities that lie diagonal to the advancing forces. For your information: Two cities have power plants that give you double victory points or zero for the entire city if the plant is destroyed. (nice scenario by the way)
You stack your battlegroup cards in the order you want your forces to arrive, an interesting mindgame. I expected my opponent to put a heavy group on the table and one large group with Strike Carriers (which deploy landing ships) to conquer a corner city early on.
I would deploy one very large hunter killer group to take them out and give me a head start – if he actually goes for a corner city I would send in reinforcements and roll up his flank.
And what do you know – he did exactly that.
A rather large group with PHR strike cruisers went to the corner city on my right flank and that’s where my hunter killers went.
Let’s just say it didn’t go as planned.
The shooting started spectacular with an incredible number of hits, but when the smoke cleared his ships survived nearly intact.
He of course realized the danger he was in and sent in all of his corvettes to protect the landings and deal with the hunter killers. So I sent in the rest of my hunter killers to destroy his corvettes and gain atmospheric superiority. He sent in a troopship with heavy support and I sent in my largest battlegroup.
In the end even the heavies turned their bows to the ensuing slaughter and did their part.
It was very cinematic and the killing was completely balanced – it really felt like a mincer in which you fed your troops… Kind of disturbing.
There really was no way to break this vicious circle because you couldn’t disengage without losing all the troops already present and that plus the loss of the flank would have broken our backs… So we sent in wave after wave of our soldiers.
Fun fact. Most of the rest of the map was pretty much deserted apart from a couple of units who actually decided the game,
The slaughter was a stalemate, but I lost due to the fact that I underestimated the firepower into atmosphere of a light PHR cruiser. The death of millions was completely pointless – it was all decided by one round of shooting by a light cruiser against two strike carriers.
