Righto It’s the morning after the epic clash the night before; I’m listening to Club 80’s CD and bouncing around on my chair to the classic sounds of A-HA, Wham and Tiffany!
Anyway here’s a report on last nights game of boats against Scotty’s Human fleet, which consisted of Flagship, Battleship, 2 groups of 4 Frigates, 3 Destroyers and 3 Cruisers with 2 Transport ships. I used all I had which is a Flagship, Battleship, 3 Destroyers, 2 groups of 3 Frigates and 3Cruisers with Assault Cruiser.
At this point I’d like to make a few observations; firstly Scott should be banned from rolling dice forever, secondly my dice were worse than abysmal and the cards I drew refused to be much help either, Graham who was observing can happily back me up on the dice facts. I wont bother talking about initiative in my later ramblings as all you need to know is I won initiative turn one and Scott won the rest of the time, apart from the very end when it was all over anyway. The abilities granted by our Flagships was +1 Initiative for me and Scott got +2 attack dice when boarding. Oh and finally the Victor writes the history!
So we set up with a bit of scenery scattered which did nothing in the game and bar split the board into 3 uneven sections; two narrow flanks and a large centre. I set up with frigates on the flanks, Cruisers left of centre, then destroyers, flagship, battleship and remaining Frigates on my right. Scott had his Frigates opposite mine, Flagship opposite mine with his Destroyers facing my Battleship Cruisers opposite my Destroyers and Battleship facing my Cruisers. The wind was blowing across the width of the board affecting nobody!
Turn one Scott plays a wind card and once again it’s in my bloomin face, the sea snails behind us are already honking their horns at being held up. Despite the lack of speed my force surges forward an average of 3”, mighty fast I know, guns open up and when all the smoke has cleared Scott is looking bewildered as one of his Destroyers have taken a single point of damage. He proceeds to zip all over the place and puts a point of damage on a cruiser. The next turn rears it’s ugly head and Scott moves forward and opens up and I’m suddenly putting tokens down next to my ships all over the place, my lack of speed is still apparent but it’s ok cos I’ve got a wind card to play next turn! My Cruisers move up on Scott’s and unleash, the first one scoring a hit on the wounded one, another 15 shots on the next target see’s 2 hit home, it’s beginning to feel like one of those nights and we’ve only just started. Scott earns himself a kick in the nuts with his next move of a long range shot from his destroyers on my Battleship, I’ve a healthy DR of 6 and he has 3 shots, up comes a 5 and double 6 followed by another 6 and a 4 followed by another 5, yep 9 hits from 3 bloomin dice. So my ships now on fire and taking a crap load of damage, it activates and they try to put out the fire, obviously used petrol instead of water and take more damage. It takes its revenge and shreds a destroyer. The Flagship does likewise. Well the wind card doesn’t get used as I use my turn card to put out the fire on my Battleship, Scott wins priority and sinks a bunch of my ships, my right hand frigates had moved up on their counter parts, sunk one with a ram and injured 2 others, they responded by sinking the lot in one go. More damage appeared amongst my fleet and I’m running out of tokens, Scott attepts to be cheeky with his Destroyer again and moves up to broadside the Battleship and frontal shot the flagship, he fails at both and my Flagship cruises over it, the crew wondering what all the crushed wood is in the water. My left hand frigates surge into Scott’s, one ramming and the other two opening up, they both fail at life and get themselves sunk by return fire, the one that rammed fails to sink it’s opponent and then fluffs the boarding action but so does Scott. It then gets counter rammed by another Frigate, survives and proceeds to butcher both its opposing crews, before finally being sunk by the remaining two ships of the squad. After taking a beating by shooting my Cruisers finally get into range of Scott’s and open up with some close range shooting and a bit of boarding after a couple of phases Scott’s squad is sunk and I’m left with a single Cruiser and my Assault Cruiser, both then get sunk by Scott’s revenging Battleship and Frigates, yep Scott’s Frigates appear with 4 shots and score 8 hits. His Battleship had previously been rammed by both my remaining Destroyers, after it had sunk one, well the previous sentence probably explains how well that action went.
Hmmm it's not looking good time for some inspiration!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS4giqtbRBMMy Battleship veers to the left runs over a Frigate and heads towards Scott’s version as my Flagship goes for its counterpart and scores some damage from shooting. I say a bit as I scored one point of damage, that’s 6 hits with 24 dice.
At this stage there isn’t a lot left on the table Scott had his Battleship just my left of centre with his last two Frigates on my left flank and his Flagship on my right flank trying to head round a Island. This is the start of the end agme and here's something rather appropriate and just plain cool!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt_ro2aerQgHis Flagship moves and opens up on mine and does a point of damage, mine responds by closing the gap and opening up with an extra four dice, Scott plays a card which requires 5’s to hit so I oblige and cause a critical and making it dead in the water unless he can repair it next turn. I cant His Battleship opens up on mine but fails to do anything memorable and mine pounces, both fail at life in the ramming stakes so it’s down to combat, Scott wipes all but one of my crew out but it’s to no avail as his entire crew and some spare blokes my Orc’s found are butchered and his Battleship has gone. His The next turn comes around and this is when I start winning initiative, my Flagship surges into Scotts and rips it to shreds in a pleasant boarding action, the rest of the game lasted three turns as Scott attempts to sink my Battleship with his last two Frigates before it eats them. He failed.
Time for a musical interlude!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz7ifClpT4g&feature=relatedSomehow and I’m not sure how I won, I’m not sure how but I’ll put it down to tactical genius. A few post game observations are that I had a Wind change card in my hand every single turn, at the start when I needed it I had more urgent cards to play to stop fires and repair damage and then towards the end all our ships were facing out f the wind so it didn’t matter, I actually threw two wind cards away in consecutive turns only to pick up another one!
Whinging and moaning at your dice can actually cause them to buck their ideas up. My dice were really truly awful when it came to shooting while all Scott had to do was nominate a target and he’d score a critical no matter how many dice he wanted to roll, the amount of sixes was obscene and then backed up to a 4+ on the re-roll. In the end game though my boarding dice got their acts together and the sixes came to play.
My other observation is that Humans are very, very nasty; they come with a myriad of special rules and are good at everything, not average but good. Their guns are better than mine and when I get into them I’m facing similar troop numbers, backed up by Scott’s silly dice it’s one hell of a tough opponent, probably only a tactical genius could beat them!
Edit: Thats one wall of text so i split it with pictures of a handsome devil (ME) and his not so handsome opponent.
For now I shall be a proud and mentally impaired player who apparently shares the same intelligence level of that of a chimp. Now if you would excuse me I have pressing matters to attend to, I have found a stick and I am going to poke a banana.
