Galleys and Galleons in spaaaaace! Catch the pigeon

Yeah it’s the follow up to my previous Trek post so I won’t stretch your patience, feel free to click away now to something that’s more your bag. Man.

I started to write a blow by blow account of the catch the pigeon mission but realised early on that an account showing what’s possible with the rules is probably more interesting than the ins and outs of each die roll.

The game modelled an encounter between two vessels, one from the Romulan Star Empire (boo hiss) and one from the United Federation of Planets (yay for the good guys). Both ships are on different randomly generated missions and both are broadly comparable in capability. The Romulan ship is a Carrion class cruiser the IRW Varak and the Federation vessel is the Constitution class USS Eisenhower. The Ike is a bit faster than the Varak but the Varak is a bit easier to manoeuvre. Although they are both of a similar size they have differing load outs and specific capabilities.

The Varak is on patrol looking for Federation vessels near the neutral zone and has standing orders to scan any Federation vessels they encounter for new technology. 

The Eisenhower has been chasing a stolen shuttle with a Romulan agent who has some top secret plans on board. The shuttle has been damaged during its escape but has just managed to limp into an asteroid field on the border of the neutral zone. 

To win the Romulan player must obtain four elements of intelligence information from the Federation vessel but for extra points can deny the Eisenhower the ability to complete its own mission. The Eisenhower needs to catch the spy and recover the shuttle while potentially frustrating the Romulan’s objective.

The game lasted an hour and took about 13 turns. 

Anywhoo… here’s what happened.

The game area. Eisenhower on the right, Varak on the left and the shuttle (a teeny tiny counter) in the centre of the asteroid field.

 

The Romulan player procured the maximum number of capability enhancing burn cards while the federation player spent more on vessel load out. The cards are purchased but drawn randomly. He ended up with a pretty good haul as it turned out. 

The Eisenhower paid for a burn card and drew this « mutiny » card but more on this later. Neither vessel comes onto the board with its shields up and the Federation also suffers from faction specific characteristics that limit their early game options. They may never fire first, they may not raise shields unless confronted with one of five hostile actions and worse they automatically lose ten victory points if they don’t attempt to hail at least one possible adversary before the fireworks start. It’s tough being the galactic good guys. 

The Romulan player decides to screw around with the Federation player rather than prioritise his own mission. Having won the initiative but being slower than the Eisenhower he plays his extra speed burn card and gains another hex towards the shuttlecraft. Maybe he can scoop it up and get it off board, denying the Eisenhower any chance of completing its mission?  Each side rolls dice to generate up to 3 action points. Action points are spent to perform…errr…actions, unsurprisingly. The more complex the action the more expensive it is. There are never enough action points to go around, and a lot of the game is spent agonising over what to do with the number of points you’ve actually got, rather than what you’d like or need to do.

No shooting has occurred up to this point and the Captain of the Eisenhower decides to hail the Romulan ship in order to avoid losing ten of his potential victory points. It costs him a precious action and it doesn’t go well. In a dice off the Romulan Captain beats the Federation captain, gaining valuable intelligence that’s unwittingly revealed in the exchange. This counts as one of the four levels of intel he needs to obtain to complete his mission. The only plus side to the encounter for the Eisenhower is that the Romulan’s aggressive rhetoric presents an obvious threat, allowing them to raise their shields.

The Varak swings around and only has to enter the shuttlecraft’s hex to scoop it up, but the Eisenhower threads it’s way between the asteroids and attempts to drag it out of the Varak’s path with a tractor beam. Yeah, when I say tractor beam I mean a wooden barbecue skewer painted light blue. Lol. The asteroids move randomly each turn by the way, and bumping into one is not recommended. 

Somewhere around this point the Romulan player found he didn’t have enough action points to use his sensors to scan the Eisenhower for further intel, but he did have enough points to try hailing the Federation vessel and taunting them a bit. Another die roll off between the two captains saw the Romulan win again and gain a further level of intel from the exchange. The Ike’s captain should learn to keep his big yap shut! Players are only allowed two hailing exchanges between opposing vessels.

With the Federation vessel about to drag the shuttle out of the way the Varak’s captain plays his second burn card which is a « secret weapon ». I’ve not specified what the weapon actually is but its effects bypass all of the usual defence options and badly damage four of the Eisenhower’s critical systems.

The Romulan specifies which systems are to be marked as damaged. He chooses the bridge, weapons and targeting, the hanger bay and the shield generators. Ouch. If any of these areas are hit again they are destroyed and may not be repaired in game. Since they are only damaged they can’t be used for now but they can be repaired - which of course costs precious action points. The loss of shields puts the Eisenhower at a serious disadvantage in combat, while the damage to the bridge and targeting prevents the further functioning of the tractor beam. With that said, even if the tractor beam was working the shuttle couldn’t be brought into the now badly damaged hanger bay.

The gloves are finally off and the Eisenhower is now cleared to fight back, except, with the damage it’s just received it’s not able to. The captain decides his first priority is to get the shields back on line and spends two of his three action points getting them working again. 

One of the oddities in my rules is that movement, once a ship is under way, costs no action points, but changing its heading does (though different types of vessel have limitations on how many heading changes they can make in a turn). It’s a bit like skating on ice. You keep whizzing along unless you make an effort to change your velocity or vector. The Eisenhower swings wide around the Varak’s stern as further hurried repairs are undertaken and the weapon systems come back on line.

The Romulan player launches a boarding party by using his « surprise » burn card. Despite the card  increasing the combat potential of the Romulan marines the Eisenhower’s security red shirts quickly despatch them before any damage can be wrought. If boarding parties manage to get a foothold they remain onboard their target and can attack every time the parent vessel activates.

Suspecting that the Varak will pick up the shuttle, the Eisenhower tries to cut off their escape route as engineers manage to fix the bridge systems by shining a salt shaker with a blinking light on over a bunch of fluorescent tubes. With bridge and weapon systems now fully functional they can engage the enemy at last. 

The Varak does indeed scoop up the shuttlecraft and uses its remaining action points to launch a salvo of plasma torpedos from its aft mounted torpedo bay. The salvo moves two hexes straight away but after this their seeker heads will move them towards the nearest target. They remain in game for three turns before they expire or explode and no further torpedos may be launched from the parent vessel while they remain in play. The Eisenhower is equipped with a comprehensive electronic counter measures system (ECM) and could attempt to steer the torpedoes in a different direction but it’s costly in action points and not guaranteed to be successful. 

Rather than pay for a costly and possibly ineffective attempt to override the Romulan torpedoes, the Eisenhower uses another of its attributes, namely it’s point defence short range gattling phasers. 50% of the passing enemy ordnance is destroyed as the Federation ship launches its own photon torpedoes in a counter strike. 

With the photon torpedos closing in fast the Varak uses all it’s action points to cloak. The model is replaced by three question mark counters. From here on in the Romulan player can choose to reappear in a hex containing one of these counters each of which moves as though it were the ship itself. The cloaking ship breaks the target lock of the Eisenhowers torpedoes which will now continue in a straight line off the board. Meanwhile back at the ranch the remaining 50% of the Romulan’s Plasma torpedoes circle round and close in on the tail of the Eisenhower.

Whammo! The remaining plasma torpedo strikes the Ike’s aft shields. On the bridge everyone lurches from one side to another and sparks erupt from consoles, lol. The question marks denoting the Varak’s potential location begin to spread out. 

Blast weapon combat is dealt with differently to beam weapon exchanges, in that there is a much greater chance of serious hull damage. The Eisenhower suffers damage to its engines and one of the white dice used to roll for action points is changed to red - denoting hull damage as well. If you use a red dice to roll for action points and you don’t roll high enough, a whole new range of bad things happen - so there’s a risk v reward thing going on from here on in. If a vessel gets three red dice it is crippled. Hull damage can be repaired in game like system damage, but not fully. There will always be one red dice in play.

The Varak sneaks past the Eisenhower heading for its own board edge. If it can just get in a scan with its sensors it can complete its four levels of intel collection and get the hell out of Dodge. Unfortunately cloaking a ship costs a lot of action points and remaining cloaked costs almost as much. Unable to roll up enough action points the cloak drops and the Varak model is put back on the board in place of one of the question mark counters. In the turn that a vessel de cloaks it has no shields. The Eisenhower launches a second photon torpedo strike from its aft launchers.  

The photon torpedoes strike home, killing and injuring a significant proportion of the crew, causing major hull damage (red dice) and damaging the comms system. 

Which was when the Federation player dropped his single burn card. It can only be used on a vessel with hull damage so there’d been no chance of playing it till now. With only a few un injured crew remaining and major hull damage the Romulan captain rolls for mutiny and fails with three dice - causing the remaining crew to surrender. 

So the Eisenhower takes control of the Varak, seizing the shuttle craft and spy that’d been previously taken on board her. With 50 points for completing their mission, extra points for the damage caused to the Varak and no deductions for failing to communicate prior to hostilities it’s a very convincing (if not very lucky) last minute win for the good guys. Huzzah. 

This was my third proper battle with the rules and they worked splendidly, if I do say so myself. It’s gratifying to bring something to a conclusion that’s been gestating for so long. I’ve a couple more models to paint up and a campaign to organise but otherwise I can consider this an itch well and truly scratched.

If you’ve stuck with the post this far I admire your fortitude! Rest assured you’ve made an old man very happy, which is hopefully reward enough in this crazy mixed up world. 

Toodleooh.