DFC: After Action Report. 1500pts PHR vs Scourge

Djinn made for a horrifying alpha strike!

I had a truly excellent game with my buddy Steve on Thursday evening. We met down at the Hamilton MIGS (Military Interests Gaming Society) clubhouse where they have a whole ton of terrain and tables for various scales of wargames.

We played 1500pts a side which is the largest I've played yet and fought a Take and Hold scenario. Scourge is one of my favourite factions to play against. Not only do they have an excellent background, but their playstyle is something that I enjoy very much playing against. The fact that they are supremely fast, built for up-close engagement, and typically are on the opposite end of the tactical spectrum from PHR makes for a very enjoyable battle.

Echoes respond to the right flank threat.

Steve had decided to perform an early game alpha strike by running his 4 strong Djinn frigate squad right up the right flank table overtop of the medium sized city I was positioning 2 Medea towards. It was a devastingly effective tactic and one that I hadn't expected at all, he managed to take them out in a single volley.

What's more is the display of power was such that I would ignore them at my peril; I had to do
something about them.

Since we were playing a scenario that had a Column approach type, it meant that in the early game I had to commit a sizeable degree of my fleet towards dealing with the Djinn problem lest I expose my right flank and encourage him to start harrying more important assets in my fleet.

Thus, I responded with my 4 strong Echoes, an Orpheus troopship as well as my Scipio battlecruiser with Calypso ECM frigate in tow.

Admiral in the Scipio watches enemy right flank attack crumble.

I had some extreme concerns that if I didn't deal with them very quickly that I would end up sacrificing the left side of the battlefield and potentially giving Steve control of 3 of the cities on that side that we were fighting over.

Meanwhile I ran my Pandora frigates up the left side flank in hopes that I could respond to his own troopship as well as the bulk of his fleet that seemed to be deploying on that side. I hid behind a dense debris field to mask my approach, though he did manage to send some bombers on me in the early game.

I got lucky however, I managed to get a full volley of VERY effective burnthrough laser fire onto his troopship and destroy it in one action. This of course painted a HUGE target on their heads as a good portion of Steve's fleet started to focus fire on taking out that threat.

Meanwhile, I did manage to take the right most city with 2 Medeas even though they were getting

Pandoras focus on taking out the Chimera.

pummeled by bombardment fire from Steve's Charybdis frigates. I wasn't overly concerned about the ground game; Steve had taken 4 Gargoyles and a Chimera troopship which I had already taken out. Conversely I had 2 Orpheus troopships and 6 Medeas. That being said, Steve had some seriously concerning firepower in his heavy cruisers and Hydra fleet carriers, so I had to be careful about the orbital game, lest I end up getting destroyed before I was able to get to turn 4 for scoring.

By turn 4 it looked as if I had the game pretty handily. I believe the score was somewhere around 21 for the PHR to 11 for the Scourge.

However, in the bottom end of the game Steve's fleet was able to get into its optimal range and started just wreaking havoc on my fleet. My Scipio battlecruiser and Orpheus troopship were destroyed quite quickly even though my Calypsos were star performers. There is only so much that the Calypsos can protect against. By turn 6 the deadpile on both sides was quite heavy, though I think that Steve had a

Scipio and Shenlong trade blows, much to the Scipio's demise.

considerable advantage in the end. I was able to hold onto the objectives in the end though and by my count the score was 36 for the PHR to 21 for the Scourge. Not a bad victory, though certainly a pyrrhic victory what with all the dead cyborgs floating in space. :)

A great game!

The three things that I learned out of this game about the PHR fleet were:

• Calpysos are worth their weight in gold. If you have a heavy investment in any particular assets, definitely find the 37pts to field one to protect them. I had 2, one with the Scipio and another with my 2 Bellerophons. They were absolutely worth the points.
  
• Pandoras: Fielded in 4s they are expensive, yes, costing 200pts for the squad. But good god, they have an absolutely devastating alpha strike.
  
• Scipio: I see its value now. Having a launch capacity of 4 along with 12 light calibre broadsides, it can field a decent degree of threat. In my opinion though, the real advantage of the Scipio is it's speed. Having 10" movement a turn allows for a tremendous increase in possible threat range for my bombers. While I LOVE the Bellerophons, having a movement of 7" means that they are typically relegated to backfield firing and don't have a great capability of repositioning. The Scipio's movement can address both of these issues.

Iku-Turso DZC First Scenario: Battle Report

I'm not great at doing after action reports but this one was a super fun game to play! James and I have been meaning to get together for weeks now to start our Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander campaign and we thought that we would start it off simply with an 800pt scenario for Dropzone Commander.

The idea is that the winner would gain some small advantage in the Dropfleet game that came after this initial kick off!

The battlefield setup. Buildings in the middle and forests
surrounding.

Overall, I was pretty happy with how I played, it really came down to list building in my opinion. My opponent rightly took 3 squadrons of infantry whereas I only took 2 of the Immortals, which are kind of known for withering under fire, or more accurately under falling masonry.

The PHR Force

Pretty quickly on I determined that James' Shaltari were going to occupy and possibly be able to search for one of the scientists long before I would even be able to respond, and I was outnumbered by way of troops. As luck would have it the rampaging Bullhorn ended up knocking out half of the building that James was occupying with an objective so I figured it was a good move to just blow that building up and force James' Shaltari to bunch up and focus on 2 objectives. After all, there was no way I was going to outmaneuver him and it let me, for the most part, ignore the Bullhorn on my right flank and focus on the task at hand.

The Shaltari Force

Unfortunately, it turned out that I did end up blowing up the building that had the PHR scientist in it but in the end I suppose that the scientist would just get resurrected back at base in a new body ala Cylon style.

I was quite happy with my anti-tank stopping power, I did manage to take out his Gharial, however

The Bullhorn enters the field

not before it totally cleared out my Immortal squad in a single blow!

In retrospect I wouldn't have relied so heavily on anti-tank stopping power, traded in my Helios for walk on Phobos instead and cashed in the Janus for another squad of infantry. Live and learn.

I'm a bit more confident at my skills in Dropfleet Commander, I seem to have a knack for naval based wargames, so I'm hoping that I can tie things up in the second game. Either way though, I'm very much looking forward to playing our next mission!

Gharial and Hera get into a pistol fight

Thoughts About Designing Fleets

Medea doing what they do best.

I've been thinking a great deal about designing fleets lately for Dropfleet Commander.

What with the Adepticon tournament coming up soon, I've been working hard to get my fleet painted in time. It's a bit of a challenge, life is hectic right now so getting dedicated hours to paint is always an exercise in extreme scheduling.

That being said, I was at the halway point for my 1250pt fleet which featured a very sweet looking Heracles battleship as my centrepiece model. As beautiful as the Heracles is though, I initially had a pretty hard time justifying the 285pt expenditure in my fleet. The folks on the Hawk forums did manage to convince me to give it a try though and I centred my list around it.

I managed to get a game in yesterday against a Shaltari opponent and I've got to say, I was incredibly underwhelmed by the Heracles' performance.

I started off the game with everything in my favour, to the point where my opponent had all but given up, but I'll admit, I completely shit the bed in the last half and in the end the score was somewhere around 44 for my opponent to 8 for myself.

The list was solid, my critical errors were that I ignored his Diamond class battleship, which waltzed

How to Shit the Bed: The Naval Edition.

right through the centreline of my fleet and gutted everything in its path, including my Heracles.

However, the Heracles' whopping 12" signature radius coupled with the Bloom characteristic on its famed Dark Matter Cannon meant that I was projecting an absolutely eye-blisteringly bright signature at 18"! With Shaltari on the board, that meant that they were firing at the battleship from up to 30" without factoring in movement! As awesome as 22 hull points seem, they wilted under the focused fire of the Shaltari fleet and in the end I felt that, even though my positioning was pretty terrible, the utility behind the Heracles left something to be desired.

The Medea and my Echos have continued to be star performers and while my troopships and Bellerophons did become casualties of war against the Diamond, I have seen what they can do under normal circumstances and have recognized that they are key performers.

So after much though, I have decided to double down on my original list philosophy which is to overwhelm the ground game and present a strong presence in prow mounted Burn Through Lasers.

When their carrier and battleship are sitting above your
hometown, things have gone wrong.

I took out my battleship and have added in 2 more Orpheus; they're SO good with 12 Light Cal broadsides on the port and starboard sides and a BTL on the front. I also had points enough to add an additional Medea.

In all honesty, I do debate whether 4 troopships with 6 Medea is overkill and have wondered if I shouldn't take out a troopship and Medea to find the points to add a 3rd Bella and a Calypso, but I'll stick with this list for now and see how we fair.

Here is what that list looks like now:

--------------------------------------
Task Force B - 1239pts
PHR - 8 launch assets

SR20 Vanguard battlegroup (360pts)
1 x Bellerophon - 180pts - H
1 x Bellerophon - 180pts - H

SR7 Line battlegroup (213pts)
1 x Ganymede - 135pts - M
2 x Medea - 78pts - L

SR7 Line battlegroup (208pts)
1 x Orpheus - 130pts - M
2 x Medea - 78pts - L

SR7 Line battlegroup (190pts)
1 x Orpheus - 130pts - M
2 x Echo - 60pts - L

SR7 Pathfinder battlegroup (190pts)
2 x Echo - 60pts - L
1 x Orpheus - 130pts - M

SR2 Pathfinder battlegroup (78pts)
2 x Medea - 78pts - L
------------- dflist.com -------------

I do have to say though, while I was at the halfway point for painting my fleet, with the additional ships now I have not a small amount of painting to get through now with a half a Bella and his brother, 2 more Orpheus, 4 Echos and a Medea to complete.

Not to mention that I need to look at what my Dropzone Commander army will look like for the ground game tournament... There is some comfort in that I have just a bit shy of 7 weeks before the tournament to get everything done in time.

So long as I keep a decent pace, I should get everything done, so long as I don't get ambitious and put too much to paint on my DZC list...

A Njord/Odin wrecking ball could be fun... <looks at unpainted pile of minis...> Hmmmm...

Video Battlereport: Kingdom of Britannia vs The League of Italian States

Geoff and I got together last evening to have an 850pt throw down with his Britannians versus my Italians. We both had some pretty interesting lists. Geoff decided to try the War Rotor, which unfortunately died due to a lucky magazine explosion, but scared the hell out of me the entire game. He also had other favourites such as the Vanguard subs (I still love em), Attackers, Tribals and some Agincourts.

I took a double carrier fleet, 2 packs of Scutum frigates and a Gladius cruiser squadron. This resulted in 18 torpedo boats running around the board and 22 tiny flyer tokens!

The Italians are definitely interesting. Our game only lasted 2 turns due to the lucky double magazine explosion but it definitely gave us a feel for the newer fleets. We had a chance to take a look at the upcoming Aussie rules and all I can say is DAMN! Geoff is pretty excited too, I imagine we'll be seeing some folks from 'down under' on the table in short order.

Monday Night Fight: Empire of the Blazing Sun vs. Russians 600pt Throw Down

Sweet. We had a great turnout at our weekly Monday Night Fights. Normally it's just Brad and I but tonight we had both of us, our friends Kurtis, Greg and Alem show up as well. Brad and Kurtis started off the evening with a 600pt per side battle and then we all played 5 different forces in a battle royale of Covenant, British and Russians teaming up against the Empire and the Prussians.

This battle report covers the first of those two battles.