Asteroids!

We wanted a quick and easy game to setup this week, so it was time to get out some Full Thrust miniatures. It was also I think my first outing of my new battlemap from Deepcut Studios, as well as my 3D Asteroid terrain (made with real rocks!).

My plan was for something a bit more gamy. With a planet in the middle of the board, asteroid fields were distributed randomly around the table. At the end of each turn, we would roll to see where each asteroid field moved to. A D12 for direction, and a D6 for distance. The normal laws of gravity and motion were looking the other way this week. We were still using vectored movement for the ships though.

If an asteroid field moved over a ship, or a ship moved through an asteroid field, then the ship would take 1D6 damage. Not massive, but it encouraged keeping out of the way of the rocks.

I was playing the ESU, and I took two heavy cruisers and two light cruisers. The heavy cruisers had a large battery of class 3 beams, but a thrust of only 2. The light cruisers had thrust 6, but only had class 1 beams and some submunition packs.

The NSL went for a similar fleet composition, with two heavy cruisers and two heavy destroyers. Both classes of ship had only thrust 2. The destroyers had a big battery of class 2 beams, and the cruisers had class 2 beams and pulse torpedoes. My NSL heavy destroyers are really just mobile gun platforms, and I have considered improving their thrust ratings.

We planned for a 6 turn game. Each kill would give one point, and at the end of the game you would score 1 point for each surviving ship on the table. Since it would be possible to lose a ship either through crashing into the planet, going through asteroids or going off the table, it would be possible for your opponent to lose points without you gaining a ‘kill’ point.

As it turned out, with the large table (240cm by 120cm) and slow acceleration of the NSL, it took about 5 turns before we got within range of each other. Because of this, we extended the game to 9 turns. Since I was winning by turn 6, this turned out worse for me. If we do this scenario again, we’d probably start both fleets closer to the centre.

The first few turns of the game was mostly movement, and went quickly. As it turned out, the NSL lucked out with the asteroid movement, since a way was cleared for them into the middle of the table pretty quickly. They were also not really accelerating, leaving it to the ESU to bring the attack to them.

The ESU were not so lucky, and had to try to dodge asteroids. Since an asteroid could move 6″ in any direction, this was hard to do. I tried to split the fleet, to prevent the NSL from hiding behind the planet, but ended up bringing both heavy cruisers round the same side since the asteroids were too dense on one side.

On turn five, one of the heavy destroyers finally came within range of the class 3 beam batteries of one of the ESU’s heavy cruisers. Rolling 3D for damage, and got 4 hits, which wasn’t bad. At the end of this turn, the asteroids moved and it was bad for the ESU, with two asteroid fields moving into my ships’ movement vector.

Turn 6 and there was nothing I could do to dodge. Both my heavy cruisers took some damage against their armour. Then, we were properly in range of the enemy.

The NSL opened up with class 2 beams and pulse torpedoes, but failed to do much damage. Both my heavy cruisers targeted one of the heavy destroyers though (with one managing an impressive 13pts of damage on 14D6), and the NSL took their first ship loss of the game. If the game had ended here, then the victory would have gone to the ESU.

But we had another three turns.

Now we were into close combat (close enough to start using point defence weapons against each other), and the asteroids were mostly out of the way. One of my light cruisers was too far around the planet to have line of sight, but it was going to be a bad day for my 2nd heavy cruiser. As it happen, it survived, but it lost bridge, life support and it’s reactor was threatening to explode.

The second NSL heavy destroyer was blown to pieces, and the ESU light cruiser took pulse torpedoes and beam damage and also exploded.

And then we were past each other. The NSL spun around to give fire on the ESU as they drifted off towards the far table edge. The heavy cruiser managed to fix its power systems, but was still without a functioning bridge so couldn’t slow down or return fire.

A few parting shots from the NSL finished her off.

Then we were out of range, and it was the end of the game. We had both lost two ships, and both destroyed two ships so it ended up being a draw.

It was a fun game, with the random movement of the asteroids adding an interesting dynamic to the game. Maybe they should have done more damage. Their biggest effect was making it hard for the ESU to keep the engagement at a medium to long range, where their heavy cruisers had the advantage. But it did mean the result was a close game, which made it more interesting.