Been wanting to run one of these for awhile, but just haven't gotten around to it.
Starting lineups:
That's right--the Prussians were running TWO
Imperiums. Definitely had my work cut out for me. I brought three squadrons of fighters--2 from local air support, and one supplied by the
Savannah, which deployed already launched. My opponent had two fighter squadrons deployed, and two waiting on his flight decks.
FSA had initiative in turn one, and we were off to the races. The
Savannah caused a magazine explosion on one of the
Geier bombers; due to his bombers being fairly tightly packed together, this caused a lot of damage to the flyers around the destroyed bomber.
The explosion caused one hp damage to one of the
Imperiums, one hp damage on another of the
Geiers, and an engine failure crit on another. The
Valley picked one hp off another bomber with rockets.
I also started running my two robot squadrons up either side of the board--
Freedoms on the right,
John Henrys on the left. Both are surprisingly fast, and I had a pincer movement in mind for later in the game.
FSA took initiative in Turn 2, and the middle of the board quickly became a hot engagement zone, with aircraft falling from the sky left and right.
As you can see, the fighters and small flyers really mixed it up in between the two large rock formations. The
Valley took a few pretty hard hits in this turn as well. On the far right side of the board, the
Freedoms finally came in range of one of the sky fortresses:
The FSA took initiative in Turn 3, but it didn't help. The Prussian
Pflicht squadron moved in, causing a weapons damage crit on the
Savannah and prizing the
Valley.
The
Imperiums were now in range of the
Savannah, and starting picking away at the armor:
Luckily the
John Henrys were now able to range the
Imperiums, and were able to pick off one hp. The
Savannah was also able to derelict one of the
Pflichts, while the
Freedom small flying robots caused a weapons damage crit on the second
Imperium.
The Prussians finally gained initiative in Turn 4, and were able to finally take the
Savannah down. The killing blow, oddly enough, came from a
Geier bomber that actually bombed the
Savannah. The critical hit caused the massive airship to teleport off the board--and all this happened just after I had landed two partial fighter squadrons on board, so that they could regroup!
The flying robot squadrons each picked a sky fortress and continued to hammer away, picking off hull points but not causing any critical hits.
In the final turn, the
John Henrys finally killed the sky fortress carrying the Prussian commodore, and that was pretty much the end of the game.
Final fleet dispositions:
After much carnage on both sides, the FSA carried the day, 552 points destroyed/captured to 460 points destroyed/captured. It was a hard-fought battle on both sides, with both commodores being killed.
We were playing with a house rule that if any of the blimps (on either side) gained two raging fire tokens, the airship would suffer a magazine explosion. Didn't get to use this rule, but it definitely made the pucker factor go up when any ship got a raging fire marker. We also decided that, next time we play, we will allow fighter squadrons to re-form in midair, instead of having to land remnants of a few squadrons so they can re-form. We had a combined total of seven fighter squadrons on the board, which was pretty interesting.
It was a fun game, and Josh was a fun opponent as always. Thanks for reading this battle report!
