Prelude to the RETURN OF THE OVERSEERS (A Firestorm Armada battle report)

Part I - the Fleets!

The 3rd Battle Shoal - Commander Shoa'khan of the Battleship Neroona leading

Having focused mainly on the Directorate for the last six months it was both fun/refreshing and a bit frustrating to bring out my Aquans. The rust was heavy on the ships and their Captain :P but, as the game progressed, I felt more and more confident in my maneuvers. Since this was our first "pre-video" bat rep we kept the fleets at a reasonable size and the mission pretty basic. I also varied up my standard 800 point list to use a bit more of the things that "people on the net" always say work for them but rarely do enough for me (mostly System's Sniper).

Here is what I would face:

Klarg's villainous scum:

A reasonably tough list - the one glaring weakness being the sack of meat...erm..."efficient Directorate BB".

Part II - Deployment

I won the deployment roll and immediately forced Klarg1 (Peter) to place first. His first "deployment" was to place his frigate squadron in reserve. I countered by placing my frigates behind the moon.  He then placed his Destroyers in the center of the board and I followed up with my destroyers directly across from them.

It's an interesting point of having stealthed/cloaked units like that in that they can be readily placed in open space with little fear of first turn harassment. That makes them an excellent "null deployment" in that they can go into an obvious fire lane and not have to worry about much initial fire and that can allow you to bait out more important deployments from your opponent.  Since Peter had more deployments than me it didn't give too much more control but it did buy me some time to properly counter with my remaining forces.

Peter's next deployment was his Drones which forced me to commit to an important deployment - either the BB or the cruisers. Since the Cruisers were the fastest forces in my fleet I deployed them behind the asteroid field on my far right flank. I figured if he countered with a strong opposite side deployment (which he did) they'd be able to make it back to the action the fastest. In retrospect, given how hard Aquan cruisers are to snipe at range, it might have been better to just deploy them dead center. I didn't want to do this initially as I didn't think that sending them straight at the Directorate Destroyers was the best use of their points (they're more expensive) and I didn't want to leave them too exposed as the Directorate do have some long ranged hard hitting power with their beams.

Next Peter placed his BB beside the asteroids (to help cut off early sniping from my cruisers).  My final deployment was the Neroona behind the moon (my Battleship is giant fire magnet that rarely makes it past turn 3). Lastly, Peter positioned his heavies at the side of his BB (creating a 'wall of PD' that my bombers would have to pass to hit anything).

Part III - The Game

Turn 1 - The long dark night

Turn one was mostly just jockeying for position. I won initiative but opted to make the Directorate go first. First turn shooting was a combination of "what's in Line of Sight" more than distinct targeting. It's a hard life being a frigate captain in the FSA universe. I swear the ones that get promoted are the ones that live past 1-2 battles. The only real viable targets for things like cyber-warfare and torpedoes are usually frigates and this game was the same with the opening salvoes of ARTs and torps going at the Aquan and Directorate frigates. The ARTs proved very annoying as they crippled the engines of one my Barracuda which forced me to half move the squadron or risk going out of coherency and being torn apart by follow up torpedo attacks.

The cruisers used ET and managed to punch a point past the Judgement's shield.  The Judgement has a harsh life - with the heavies and destroyers having cloak AND stealth systems (in the case of the DDs) and the frigates hiding behind out of LoS it literally was the easiest target. It gives up a huge chunk of BL points and is relatively easy to kill.

Other shooting saw the Destroyers exchange fire with his coming out on top by actually hitting for a point.

Turn 2 - the Fleets engage.

Turn 2 was a pretty crucial turn and would determine much of the outcome of the game.  I played System's Sniper hoping to be able to punch a hole in the Directorate BB's engines and forced it to stay in LoS for the rests of my fleet. That worked as I managed a good engine hit from my BB and was able to pull 5 more damage on the ship from a combined hammering of the cruisers, BB and destroyers. The Judgement was nearly killed in a single turn from my fleet. I took a fair amount of damage back seeing some frigates pop, my BB take a good crit (crew) and the cruisers get sniped but with most of the damage spread across my fleet I was fairly intact. Line of sight on a tight board like this with small fleets can make it either very easy to concentrate fire or very hard. Turn two worked out easy for me (sniped engines) and harder for Peter.

Turn 3 - The Wrath of the Neroona

The Directorate BB fixed their engines (curses) but the ship itself was past the point of me particularly worrying about it. It had basically become victory points (BL) waiting to be scooped up. At this point it was time to 'wade into' the enemy fleet and start hammering multiple targets. It's what the Aquans do. 

As an aside, I realized that by doing this that I was basically sacrificing the Neroona.  I did it for two reasons: for one, I was almost guaranteed to take out an equal amount of BL in his BB and another it would buy time for the rest of my fleet to reposition itself. Also, by encouraging his fleet to trap themselves into a tight cluster of terrain I'd have a sea of targets for my Aquan mines. 

I played Evasive Maneuvers this turn in order to get a good bombing run into his BB.  Knowing that the Directorate heavy cruisers bring a whopping 15 PD I figured I needed that Aquan boost or my poor wings would be sandblasted in a hail of defensive fire. In turn Peter played "Firewall Breach" shutting down the poseidons engines (half move, no turns) leaving me unable to slither away.

The Directorate won initiative and waddled forward with their BB and plinked the Poseidon for a point while laying down a mine to discourage my cruisers from running around the moon. The last act of defiance from their BB was to board and kill an Aquan frigate.  For my fist activation I choose the Neroona sending its bombers against the Judgement and only losing one their number to incoming PD (I saved two hits through evasion). Even with the engine crit my side guns were able to target on a heavy cruiser hammering it and scoring a lucky crit with Energy transfer and getting a security hit (!) which would buy me a turn from being boarded to death. In turn the Directorate heavies blasted away at my BB scoring a crew crit (boo! hiss...) and shaving more HP off the ship.

On another note the Directorate frigates showed up from reserves this turn and Peter oddly (to me) placed them on my left flank.  I expected him to try and shunt them behind or beside my Chironex as they're the best attackers to get past my Difficult Target. Especially considering that he had won initiative as, even though I had laid mines behind my cruisers, they could have easily gotten a RB2 rear shot finishing one off or even just placed them inside close range on my destroyers to hammer them. But by putting them near my BB they mostly made buzzing noises like gnats trying to sting a bear's back.

The last action of the turn saw me send the last remaining frigate as a sacrifice to clear the Directorate mine to give my cruisers access to swing around the moon.  With a stroke of luck the mine went off and only managed a point of damage to it.

It seems that my early deployment mistakes might not (yet) cost me the game...

Turn 4 - In space no one can hear you scream.

The game gods giveth and taketh away...

I bought back Evasive Maneuvers this turn hoping to make one last run to hammer the Directorate before their special forces came in to sweep me away.

Having won initiative I immediately activated the Poseidon (which had failed to repair its engines) and sent the bombers into his heavy cruisers. 13 PD dice later the bombers were torn to shreds (even with EM) and barely managed to scrape a point of damage on one.  The last act of my BB was to drop a mine where the heavies would have to go next turn if they wanted to try and board me.

Next, the Directorate heavies activated and moved into range sending their devastating payload of marines into my BB only to....

FAIL TO ROLL ABOVE NINE HITS???!!! While Peter was able to take off another HP and turn off my shields he was not able to kill her in one blow. That would cost him significant follow up firepower for the rest of the turn.  I was in shock. On the ond hand I was happy to survive (for now) on the other rolling that poorly is kind of disheartening to see - even for an opponent.

The rest of the turn saw the Aquan cruisers march forward (free of the danger of the enemy mine) and wade into the Directorate frigates and...umm...

Scratch their paint. I fired in every direction but the reduction in dice for RB1 for Aquans was significant enough that, even rerolling ones, I managed to only take out two small ships with the entire squadron and plink another point of damage. 

The last activations of the turn saw the Aquan destroyers scramble to get into position (and manage to plink out a Directorate frigate) while the Directorate sacrificed a frigate to take out the Poseidon's mine before the entire heavy cruiser squad would be forced to move through it (I still managed a point of damage on the lead ship).  Lastly, the Directorate's Destroyers finished off the Neroona with 13 dice of beam love.

The game was now tied on the battle log...

Turn 5 - GAME OVER MAN!

As we had been taking pictures during and after each turn the game had taken longer than normal. We were getting close to closing time for the store so we decided that this would be the last turn of the game. As such it was time to grab as many Battle Log points as I could as quickly as I could. My cruisers did their best to wade in an sweep away the last of his frigates but I somehow managed to only plink points of damage and failed to completely wipe out either squadrons (...they task me...).

After exchanging barrages of fire Peter managed to finish off my last frigate (scoring the BL for the squadron) and hammered into my Destroyers with his heavies in RB1. The resulting fire was frightening showing the weakness of DDs once you're in their myopic range. He nailed one DD for 3 damage taking out its engines and hammered another for 2 more killing all its crew. But neither blow was enough to gain any significant battle log.

The result? A draw though strictly speaking the Directorate were winning at that point. While my Chironex squad was relatively fresh his heavies were only moderately damaged and his destroyers were almost pristine. My own destroyers were flaming wrecks. The question is could I have managed on turn 6 to kill his heavies and prevent my destroyers from being blown up? The answer I suspect is no given the 6 HP of each Directorate and the floating debris that my DDs were.

Part IV - AAR (thoughts from the front)

Overall a very fun game and good practice for our theoretical goal of starting up voice over and (eventual) video battle reports. The game was close in the end with a lot of back and forth action. It was fun to take my Aquans out for a spin again and nice to see how they'd fare against a well constructed list that could give them fits.

I made mistakes but they were the kind from which I could learn so I consider it a bonus. I actually wish we had filmed/photo'd our next mirror match game as the results from that were far more (tactically) interesting as it was an objective based mission where I got to face off against my own Aquan force (tweaked) with my Directorate (tweaked) force.

Comments, counter thoughts and suggestions are welcome. I encourage anyone reading this to see it from Peter's perspective by looking at his Blog <here> as I think it's interesting to see how we both viewed the fight.