Rindis.com

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

[See Part 1.]

Patch and I did the second scenario of the UL2 mini-campaign this Tuesday.

I knew, going in, that this was going to be bad. It wasn’t until I started looking at the DG again for repairs that I realized how bad.

The idea is that there are three Klingon ships available to counter the two-ship Hydran raid that assaulted their BATS. The raiding ships head their separate ways, trying to lose their pursuers, and the Klingons also split up. In the campaign structure, each Hydran ship goes through two follow-up scenarios, “The Pursuit” and “The Ambush” against either a D7 and F5 or a single D6.

In my case, only the Dragoon survived, so all three Klingon ships were present. As there is no time to visit a base, the only repairs allowed are the standard Continuous Damage Repair set, which on a cruiser is four boxes, and pulling out spare shuttles, which gave the DG its full complement of shuttles and a second fighter (there had been one recovered during the first scenario). And all shields are repaired, which was good, since the DG only had two left in decent shape.

I had already repaired one Warp box during the previous scenario, and so selected two more Center Warp and one of the hellbores for the rest of the CDC.

Because of the unbalancing caused by the newer base rules, I also did a round of Emergency Damage Repair as if I had done it on turn 0. There were only three labs left, so I eliminated the top ‘4’ box on the DamCon track for chances to repair another C Warp, Ph #3 (FA+L) and another hellbore.

All three repairs succeeded, giving me 27 power (19 warp), two phasers and three hellbores. I had 10 turns to disengage by separation from all Klingon ships, which meant finding some way of slowing them down significantly.

The best I could manage was speed 14, arming all three hellbores and holding a suicide shuttle. The Klingons start 10-11 hexes behind the DG, and all went speed 22, putting up 1 ECM and one 1 ECCM.

I ran straight for a few impulses, and the D7 and F5 (which start on either side of the DG) started sideslipping in, and so I turned to the left, to bring the what I had to bear on the D7.

We both opened up at range three on impulse 11. The Klingons launched drones, and I launched the suicide shuttle. The D7 fired the five bearing phasers (mostly 5s and 6s), and hit with 3 disruptors, to do 7 internals through the #5. The DG fired both hellbores on that side, but one missed (again!) to seriously dent the weak #4 without actually bringing it down.

Impulse 11; too expensive, and no meaningful result.

I turned off after that, but I couldn’t afford internals at all and lost 6 power, and the one bearing phaser in that exchange. I could have set up a longer range pass, but wanted the hellbores in the 15 damage bracket… not that it did me much good.

Patch took a couple of phaser shots to kill the shuttle before he reached it, and the D7 managed to get back onto the #5 shield to do another 3 internals (a ‘6’ at range 3…) to knock out another power.

I then turned the other way to get the #5 away from him, and fire the third hellbore at the F5. I hadn’t counted on the #3-5 shields being equal, so even with a hit, it didn’t do much. I launched the two fighters at this point, since they had a chance of living until they could fire as long as he concentrated on the ship.

He managed to pick off one of the fighters while all the disruptors on the D6 and F5 fired on the DG with two hits at range 1 (!!) The D6 then tractored the DG and then fired bearing phasers, which rolled only slightly better and the disruptors to put 15 internals through the #4 shield. The F5 followed up several impulses later with the RX phasers for another 12.

At that point, I was down to four power, a FA ph-2 that had never been hit (never bore on anything…), a probe launcher I didn’t have the power to arm, and two shuttles. We called it at the end of the turn for a Klingon Substantive Victory.

In the more ‘normal’ form (D7 & F5 vs a DG with about six internals) it should be a challenging scenario. The hellbores will punch through the weak rear shields fairly easily, so some lucky hits can definitely give the DG a real breather. Though its top speed is 28 (only 27 warp), so getting away from speedy Klingons is a problem.

We’re going back to our usual ASL next, but hopefully we’ll be playing SFB a little more regularly next year.