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Well, after a long gap, we finally had another face-to-face SFB session yesterday. We’re up to Y143, which is when the Federation and Klingons introduce their command cruisers, so this was intended to show them off. The general idea was to have a CC, along with it’s normal CA version soandcould see the differences between the two classes. On the other hand, the two races I’m current playing don’t really work out for that. The Kzintis don’t have their CC yet, and Hydran BPV ranges are so far off from other races, that I ended up with a Ranger cruiser, and a Lancer destroyer.

Y143

In our continuing exploration of terrain types, we agreed to use an asteroid field. In the interest of simplicity, I pulled out the map that came with S1. This may have been a mistake, as that is more of an asteroid belt, than a full map field. Considering there were three of us, a two-sided belt wasn’t the best thing, and the bulk of the fighting happened on one side of it. But we all did maneuver through it, and we have a working knowledge of the rules now, which will be a definite help. (Of course, we’re getting down to some of the really dangerous environments for what we haven’t used in Basic Set now….)

After the first couple turns of maneuvering, I ended up somewhat in the middle. The Feds did a moderate range volley, crashing the #5 on the RN and doing a few internals, and then they did an HET. I swaped back and forth on targets a couple of times thanks to these antics, and I let my fighters (13 of them from my two ships) loose their ship cover. The Klingons promptly killed almost all the fighters while only taking a few hits on two front shields. It certainly showed off what the D7Cs ADD racks can do….

Unfortunately, I was also out of position for a quick return to the asteroid belt, so I ended up tangling with the Klingons some more on the next turn as the Feds stayed away and reloaded. The Ranger got a steady stream of shots through the down shield while the Lancer got crippled from a nice volley. Meanwhile, I got through a shield on the D7C, and started doing some serious damage back.

I finally reached the edge of the asteroids around when the Feds came back and pumped five overloaded photon torpedos into the D7. Or tried to. The Federation Lottery decreed that only one hit. The phaser-1 barrage still caused some good damage. However, with the two or three hits, he should have gotten the D7 could very well have been dead in space. The Klingons fired back as they went by, and got some decent hits on the CA. Meanwhile, I sniped at moderate range whenever a down shield presented itself.

After that, it was obvious that both the Hydrans and Klingons were going to have to leave in the face of the still nearly-intact Federation ships. But, he who laughed last did not last loudest, as the Feds hadn’t really done enough to pick up any victory points. So, the Klingons win, with two battered, but decent ships, and the Hydrans barely edge out second for the amount of damage they did do.

The next face-to-face meeting is to be a big three-sided historical Lyran civil war scenario. Time to read up on ESG interactions!

And as an aside note, last night,and I went to a friend’s to finally see the Narnia movie! Wow! A very good job all around, and it’s very nice to see this continuing trend in Hollywood of, you know, actually trying to tell the same story as the book?