{"id":256,"date":"2016-10-29T21:07:51","date_gmt":"2016-10-29T21:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/houseofgamingcouk.wpcomstaging.com\/?p=256"},"modified":"2016-10-29T21:07:51","modified_gmt":"2016-10-29T21:07:51","slug":"dropfleet-commander-first-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/2016\/10\/29\/dropfleet-commander-first-run\/","title":{"rendered":"Dropfleet Commander – First Run"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Jimmy took possession of his Kickstarter package a couple of days ago.\u00a0 Scott has had his notification and picks his up on Monday, and I’m still waiting to be told when mine is coming.
\nJimmy handed me the Scourge portion of his Starter yesterday and we set about assembling our starter fleets ready for a trial run today.
\nWe had overlooked the inclusion of the starter scenario, so we set up a modified version of Scenario 1 with only 2 clusters and no Debris.
\n\"img_5178\"
\nOur forces were the Starter packs, but for those that haven’t got a hold of the game yet we fielded as follows:<\/p>\n

Scourge : 3 Battlegroups<\/strong><\/h2>\n

BG1 : Wyvern Cruiser\u00a0(close combat specialist)
\nBG2 : Shenlock Heavy Cruiser (all rounder Heavy Cruiser with Stealth capabilities), 2 x Gargoyle Strike Carriers (troop carriers)
\nBG3 : Ifrit Cruiser (Ship to Ship vessel with Burnthrough Weapon), 2 x Harpy Frigates (All round small ships)
\n\"img_5174\"<\/p>\n

UCM : 3 Battlegroups<\/strong><\/h2>\n

BG1 : Moscow Heavy Cruiser (well armed all rounder), 2 x New Orleans Strike Carriers (Troops Carriers)
\nBG2 : Berlin Cruiser (Ship to Ship with Burnthrough Laser), 2\u00a0x Toulon Frigates (All round Gunships)
\nBG3 : Seattle Cruiser (All rounder with launchable Fighters and Bombers)<\/p>\n

Turn\u00a01<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Turn 1 saw 2 Battlegroups move onto the table for each side, all in Silent Running.
\n\"IMG_5181.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Turn 2<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jimmy Activated first, moving up his Berlin and going Weapons Free with his Toulons, managing to do no damage whatsoever.\u00a0 I countered with my\u00a0Shenlong, which fired upon his frigates inflicting 2 damage on 1 of them, and dropped my Gargoyles into the atmosphere ready to drop troops.
\nJimmy then moved up his Seattle, firing on my Wyvern and launching Bombers.\u00a0 After the firing had stopped, he had inflicted 4 points of\u00a0Damage.
\n
\nMy Wyvern responded, moving up to point blank and unleashing my Occulus Beams and Plasma Tempest.\u00a0 Through my good rolling and Jimmy’s failure to roll virtually any saves, the Seattle ended up with 2 HP left.\u00a0 I rolled on the Critical chart – a 5 then a 6 – the Ship took another 3 pts of damage and exploded, inflicting 2 pts of radtiation damage in revenge.\u00a0 My Wyvern crawled out of the encounter with 4HP left.
\n\"img_5186\"
\nWrapping up, I dropped 2 Infantry onto the Cluster on the right.<\/p>\n

Turn 3<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jimmy started the turn, winning the initiative with a roll-off to activate his Moscow and Toulons.\u00a0 The Toulons piled into my Ifrit, bringing it down to 3 pts of damage, and the Moscow engaged my Shenlong Weapons Free, doing a moderate amount of damage.
\nMy Ifrit and Harpys responded, the Harpys firing into the 2 Toulons and destroying them both.\u00a0 The Ifrit fired at the Moscow with it’s single beam mode Burnthrough weapon, and inflicted 3 damage.
\n\"img_5187\"
\nThe Wyvern\u00a0activated, destroying one of the Strike Carriers.\u00a0 Jimmy’s Berlin responded, destroying my Wyvern, whilst the surviving Strike Carrier prepared to drop troops.
\n
\nThe turn ended with both side’s carriers dropping\u00a0ground groups onto their respective clusters.<\/p>\n

Turn 4<\/strong><\/h2>\n

With Jimmy owning the left side of the table and me owning the right, we jostled ship positions and scored, grabbing a VPs each.<\/p>\n

Turn 5 and 6<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Due to the UCM’s early losses, at this point it was a foregone conclusion.\u00a0 The scourge swept across the board, taking down the Berlin and dropping armoured groups onto the left Cluster.\u00a0 The ground fight was over quickly as the 2 Scourge armour units overpowered the 1 infantry and 1 Armour UCM units.
\n\"img_5193\"
\nThe game ended\u00a08 VPs to 3, with Jimmy’s chronically bad rolling handing me the game on a platter.<\/p>\n

Thoughts on the game<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Although it turned very 1 sided quite quickly due to some really dodgy dice rolling, we both enjoyed the game and went away thinking about fleet compositions and tactics.\u00a0 The Order choices and movement restrictions really bite home when you get close in, and Close Action combat is extremely fierce.
\nWe definitely did a few things wrong, but by the end of the game we had a good feel for the general rules.
\nThe size of the demo table (2ft x 3ft) belies the scope of the whole game in my opinion, and we are really looking forward to moving to larger fleets and full scenarios.
\nThe models are absolutely gorgeous, it has to be said, and are incredibly simple to assemble.\u00a0 That said, I did find some items on the Scourge sprues to be damaged, and some of the wing tips cracked as I was de-spruing them.
\nThe ship bases, whilst a good idea in theory, are far too fiddly to use in game, especially when you end up with a lot of ships near each other (and this will always happen at some point).\u00a0 We are already investigating alternate solutions.
\nOverall, the game gets a big thumbs up from us, and we will be playing plenty of games in the near future.
\nNow where’s my Kickstarter….
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Jimmy took possession of his Kickstarter package a couple of days ago.\u00a0 Scott has had his notification and picks his up on Monday, and I’m still waiting to be told when mine is coming. Jimmy handed me the Scourge portion of his Starter yesterday and we set about assembling our starter fleets ready for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-battle-reports-2","category-dropfleet-commander"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houseofgaming.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}