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After defending central Italy, Mark and I moved over to Star Fleet Battles to get in a Y164 scenario, “Foxes in the Henhouse”. While it’s in Captain’s Log, it’s generally the scenario to show off the light monitor from R11. The Romulans are raiding a Gorn planet, and trying to knock out bits of infrastructure while the Gorn navy runs interference. The idea is the Romulans can send boarding parties down to the surface and get points for being there 33+ impulses to destroy something. The Gorns can send BPs after them (but there’s supposed to be a large number of potential targets, so they can’t go down ahead of the Romulans, they’ll just go somewhere else) to prevent this, and they get points if the Romulans abandon a BP on the surface. (Note that if the Gorns kill the BP in combat after they complete their mission, the Romulans get the points, and don’t have to pick them up….)

But… it’s also a Modified Victory Points scenario, and there’s enough ships to generate sufficient VPs to not need to worry about the planet so much. Once that was realized, attention reverted back to defeating enemy ships.

The Romulans have a WE, BH, and two SN-As. With WS-III, I came in at high speed (for first-gen Romulans). Mark had the Gorns with the LMN (speed 4), and two FFs, going speed 18. I cloaked out (the Snipes paying off of battery), and he kept a bare handful of lock ons thanks to range. The FFs turned off partway through the turn, and one of the Snipes turned to follow them. Turn 2, the Snipes slowed to 8 and started recharging batteries, and the WE slowed to 5 to power an enveloping R. As of the start of the turn, the LMN was still headed for her, and 10 hexes away. The slowdowns shook some of the sensor locks, and on impulse 2, the BH (at range 5) started decloaking. On 4, the LMN launched two plasma-Gs, with an F launching the next impulse.

On impulse 7, the BH was fully decloaked and launched her two plasmas, which prompted a wild weasel launch. The BH turned off and start cloaking, but the plasmas caught up on impulse 9, and did 26 internals through the #5 shield, taking out two warp, half the weapons and almost the entire impulse deck. The wild weasel exploded from two real Gs hitting it on 12, and two impulses later the WE started decloaking. By the time that was finished, the explosion period had ended, and the enveloping R was launched at range 7. It impacted on impulse 26 for 89 damage after the LMN’s phasers were finished with it. This didn’t penetrate, but put every shield below half strength.

Right after that, Snipe #1 started decloaking.

That finished and the Snipe launched on impulse 32. The Gorns sped up for turn 3, while the BH went down to speed 6 (and started repairing impulse), and the Snipes went down to speeds 4 and 2. The plasma torpedo hit on impulse 6 for 5 damage thanks to the LMNs phasers and batteries having a chance to cycle. The FFs finally got back into the main fight as everyone was fading out again, and plasma bolts missed while phasers did seven damage to the WE’s #1. The main difference on turn 4 was the FFs dropped to speed 15. One of the FFs overran the BH for nine damage to the #4. The other one eventually got a shot at the down #5, but only did a point of damage. The first one had also retained lockon to a Snipe and fired the torpedo at it, and thankfully the fire adjustment table (for being cloaked) reduced it to 10 damage on the #3.

Towards the end of the turn the WE decloaked again, and on impulse 4 of turn 5 she launched a regular plasma-R at FF #1, who emergency deceled and launched a wild weasel. The weasel was caught in the FF’s hex, causing 7 collateral damage to her. On impulse 22, Snipe #2 started decloaking, but faded back out after a couple impulses when the other frigate turned in towards her. In the middle of next turn, the FFs had roughly traded positions, and FF #1 overran the Snipe, doing three damage (after bad fire adjustment rolls) to the #1. The LMN overran the other Snipe at the end of the turn, doing… four damage after disastrously bad ph-3 rolls and fire adjustment.

Snipe #2 decloaked on impulse 4 of turn 7; the closest target, FF #2 immediately E deceled. The Snipe fired phasers for a couple points of damage, launched the torpedo to blow up the shuttle, and cloaked out again. However, FF #2 was sitting still, and the other Romulan ships were closing in. The LMN retained lock-on and launched a plasma-F at her. The BH decloaked on 27, the F hit on 29 for 8 damage, and the BH was clear to launch her torpedo on 32.

Mark figured it was targeted on FF #2, which would have sprinted away, but was under acceleration limits. The torpedo was actually on the LMN, which E deceled and launched a weasel as it approached. Meanwhile, the WE was right behind the frigate and decloaked, launching the R on impulse 9; it impacted on 11 for 31 internals, leaving her with 5 warp and little else.

Afterword

That actually ended up being the last real action of the scenario. Somewhat uniquely, it is limited to ten turns, without requiring anyone to disengage. It just stops at that point.

Mark looked at getting a final pass at me in, but I’d finally put my ships back in supporting range of each other, so he did not commit to it. I was ready for a final run myself, but at my speeds couldn’t force the issue, and the Gorns were outside the range I cared to use plasma torpedoes in.

Both the BH and FF #2 were crippled, awarding 50% points for them. Amazingly, no other ships took internals, though some shields were getting very shot up. I did successfully get three missions off on the planet. So that’s 15 VP + 22.5 VP for the FF. Mark gets 42.5 for the BH. (Actually, he should get another 16 for 4xT-bombs I took, but I don’t know Mark’s purchases.) That’s 37.5 to 42.5, or a Marginal Gorn Victory. Given about another turn or so, I probably would have forced internals on the LMN, which would turn that around; I needed a little more aggression.

The Light Monitor would be more accurately named the Early Monitor. By the description, this is the original monitor design, developed in Y130, while the more familiar version is a later (Y140), bigger version of the same idea. Certainly, it’s a good concept, though I have some quibbles. Notably, there’s no ‘early’ weapon listings for it, and the Gorns get swivel mounted plasma-Fs on the engines. Strictly speaking, swivel mounts shouldn’t exist on a cheap unit in Y130. But, not really worth worrying over either. On the positive side, it’s nicely bulky enough to not be hopeless defending a system against light forces.

This is my first time using a Snipe. It was a very eye-opening experience. I can’t think of any other move cost 1/4 ships (possibly the Federation Corvette, but I don’t have the official release of that), and at a total of 9 power, everything hurts. Three batteries help it out once, but I was struggling just to get fractions of points back into batteries. They seem to be a fire-and-forget weapon. Fire the G once, and forget about the ship. The eventual Snipe-B gets two more power, which should be an embarrassingly big help. Power was bad enough that I actually dropped a charging plasma torpedo at one point (to go speed 12), and then started the arming cycle all over again when there was a little power again.

Something that startled both of us was realizing that all the early Romulan ships are turn mode D. A 1/4 MC, nimble, ship with turn mode D. They still get to move last thanks to being nimble, but it just feels very odd.

As for tactics… Mine were not bad. Certainly, the one-two of lure out the wild weasel with the BH and then slam the LMN with the WE worked. The easy antidote to that is to have more than wild weasel ready to go at a time, but there’s only four shuttles on the LMN, so that invites losing them too fast. It certainly isn’t going to outrun plasmas. It does have four each LS/RS ph-3s, and keeping the FFs nearby would have helped a lot (possibly at the cost of a FF…). My initial spit up certainly wasn’t the best as a Snipe went a couple turns trying to find a position from which it could decloak and launch, and not get killed in the process.

Neither of us are used to multiple plasma-ship tactics. I leaned on the cloaking device, and Mark should have tried for more overruns.