So I met my friend Ken this evening for a little DW, and we decided to play an all-aerial game. We each fielded a Sky Fortress, a large flyer, a squadron of medium flyers, and two squadrons of tiny flyers (1 fighter squadron & 1 dive bomber squadron for me, 2 fighter squadrons for him).
On paper, FSA flyers are pretty delicate compared to the CoA flyers. All of his ships had shield generators, and none of my FSA flyers carry generators of any type. Plus, FSA flyers have a lot of rocket AD, but this is usually largely wasted on Covenant ships due to having to get through AA fire AND shields.
A brief synopsis on how it went down:
Turn 1 saw some jockeying for position-- FSA medium, large, and massive flyers have decent broadsides in RB1 & 2, so I was trying to line up some long-range rocket shots while setting up some broadside opportunities in Turn 2. Lucky rocket AD on my part, and bad AA and shield dice on Ken's part saw his Daedelus large flyer take a fusion leak crit, and my Valley-class large flyer took a nav lock crit. Most of the other ships got out of Turn 1 unscathed.
Turn 2 saw both large flyers go down in flames, one right after the other. The Valley fell prey to his medium flyers, and I cannot remember which of my ships took down the Daedelus. He took some light damage to his medium flyers, and I did as well.
Turn 3 was the kicker. I got initiative and realized that 1), I had almost 20 AP on my Lee scout ships; 2), I could easily get within boarding range of his perfectly healthy sky fortress; and 3), none of his ships were close enough to harass my Lee's if I failed the boarding assault. Well, no guts, no air medal, as the saying goes, so a-boarding we went. My 18 AP easily overpowered his marines, and I took his sky fortress as a prize.
Turns 4, 5, and 6 saw him kill off one of my Lee's, and knock 4 HP off my sky fortress. He still had all 4 of his medium flyers left, although I whittled their HP down somewhat.
FSA won the day on points--most coming from the prized sky fortress. I will admit up front that my AA gunners definitely ate their Wheaties this morning. Ken had some bad dice rolls at a few critical junctures. But I will say that his medium flyers were almost impossible to damage.
A few observations on playing an all-air game:
1. Nothing blocks line of sight, which works both ways (we didn't have any terrain on the board).
2. Don't forget your defensive AA. Every target is an aerial vehicle; if it rolls up on you in RB1 to give you a full broadside, you get defensive AA first. This messed up attack plans for both of us.
3. Tiny flyers aren't as scary against other flyers. Can't use torpedo bombers, and dive bombers hit medium-class and above only on 5's, not 3's. We did allow fighters to conduct AA attacks against any aerial vehicles on the board--couldn't find anything in the rule book saying that you can't use tiny flyer fighters that way. This was new for me, as I had only ever used them against other tiny flyer formations. For the FSA, I had 10 AD of AA for a squadron of fighters. Not too shabby.
Looking forward to hearing about any other all-air engagements. Thanks for reading!
