Battle Report: Battlefleet Gothic on Vassal

Greetings!

Today I will be discussing a battle I played over Vassal, with my good man Ruckdog as the punching bag du jour.

I first met Ruckdog (one of the many Andrew's in attendance) at Adepticon during the BFG tournament, an event I strive to play every year because it's quite possibly my favorite game of all time. He's a pretty cool guy, and invited me to check out his forums called Man Battlestations, a site all about warship gaming. Pretty cool stuff!

Anyway, he's been running a BFG campaign, and while it has been a slow start, we've gotten the ball rolling and I actually recorded one of our games! Introducing the fleets:

Imperial Navy (Ruckdog's)
Exorcist Class Grand Cruiser Guardian
Dominator Class Cruiser Audacious
Lunar Class Cruiser Valiant
Lunar Class Cruiser Bellerophon
6 Sword Class Frigates 302nd Escort Squadron

Chaos (Me!)
Styx Class Heavy Cruiser Hateful Death
Devastation Class Cruiser Bearer of the Word
Devastation Class Cruiser Hellbringer
Slaughter Class Cruiser Torture
Slaughter Class Cruiser Hellblade

We played a Fleet Engagement, Deployment B. Here's how we deployed:

A few scattered gas clouds and a chunky asteroid field gave us some terrain to play around. I lost the roll for first turn, so it was on to him!

Turn 1: Imperial Navy

It was the start of the engagement, and already the Chaos fleet was approaching the rear quarter of the Imperials! Determined not to let that come to pass, the 302nd passed Come to New Heading and swiftly came about. The rest of the fleet kept to minimum speed, turning slowly to face. The first shot of the game was a snap shot Nova Cannon shell from the Audacious, which missed as such a long range.

Turn 1: Chaos

The Tyrant Kol Sarat (my fleet commander) ordered the squadron of Slaughters to swing about quickly, and they easily passed their Come to New Heading check (Ld 10 due to subplot, wooo!). All of the carriers dumped a lot of assault boats and bombers into the void, and that was pretty much my turn.

Here's what the board looked like at the end of turn 1:

Some more maneuvering will be in order!

Turn 2: Imperial Navy

You'll have to ignore those zigzaggy lines; at this point we had a connection issue, resulting in doubling and trebling ships and dice and everything else; needless to say we had some fixing to do. But once we did, it was on to the battle again! The cruisers completed their turns, rang out with another Nova Cannon shot (that missed again, seriously this is the most amount of shots I've let him had in a game and they're getting flummoxed with the generosity =P ). Two fighters took down two assault boats.

Turn 2: Chaos

Those red tokens were simply marking copy ships that he could see (but not me), so just ignore those...

The carrier squadron rearmed and refueled their squadrons, ready to send them into the void again later. In the meantime the Slaughter squadron went All Ahead Full and rolled a mighty 10 on five dice...le sigh. Still, 40cm is nothing to scoff at! The assault boats swept into the Audacious, causing a few swiftly repaired critical hits, while the bombers waited for the other cruisers to run them over.

Turn 3: Imperial Navy

The Imperials closed ranks, attempting to use their armored prows as a shield and their hulls as a knife to cut apart the Chaos fleet. The downside is that their firepower could not be brought to bear just yet. A nearly point blank Nova Cannon shot misses yet again!

Turn 3: Chaos

The leader of the Slaughter squadron grinned ferociously as he counted down the range. The Audacious would be at the extreme edge of his effective range, but that still meant it could be done...they Locked On. The carriers put up a small fighter screen to protect mainly against torpedoes, while also putting assault boats and bombers back into space.

Combined, the Slaughters put out an impressive FP28 and 4 lances; needless to say, the Audacious was rocked on its keel and suffered heavily.

Turn 4: Imperial Navy

(neglected to take a picture)

The crippled Audacious disengaged, and the rest of the squadron closed to torpedo range. The 302nd unleashed a fusillade into the Torture, scoring a few hits. More importantly, my turrets were wholly ineffective, resulting in multiple torpedo strikes on both the Torture and Hellblade. The Torture was crippled and the Hellblade's bridge was smashed away, leaving the second in command in charge. The Chaos bombers were swept away, but the assault boats completed their attack run and caused some critical hits to the Bellerophon. These were swiftly repaired.

Turn 4: Chaos

The captain of the Torture, no longer sporting a toothy grin, ordered his ship to disengage, vowing revenge on the cowards who struck from afar. The rest of the fleet continued about, with just a few lance shots streaking through the void to strike the Bellerophon, causing minor damage. Seeing the futility of bomber runs, the carriers simply launched all assault boats, hoping to silence the enemy guns through hit and run attacks than by outright destroying them.

Turn 5: Imperial

Seeing a lone ship vs a squadron of ships, the Imperials turned to pounce on the Hellblade. Luckily it was up to the task and shrugged off the shots that came its way. In a serious of miscommunications, the Lunar squadron did not reload their torpedoes; this would prove to be most unfortunate. Still, they fired their broadsides at the Hellbringer, scoring a couple hits.

Turn 5: Chaos

Seeing the perfect lineup unfolding before his eyes, Kol Sarat ordered all ships to turn to starboard and set their guns; they'd all be "crossing the T" now, and it's time to be effective! Without Lock On orders though, all I managed to do is bang a few shields. More importantly, he succeeded at Brace for Impact! with both squadrons, severely limiting their effectiveness next turn. At such close range, the assault boats from the carriers were launching and returning immediately, many swift sorties one after another. The Bellerophon was targeted heavily, resulting in all the guns being taken out (2-4 times with some of them!) and multiple engine damages. With the sustained casualties, repairs were not so forthcoming.

Turn 6: Imperial Navy

Reluctantly the Bellerophon disengaged, leaving the Valiant to cause more damage to the enemy. In a repeat of the previous turn, the patter of light return fire was swept aside by the void shields of the Chaos ships.

Turn 6: Chaos

Crossing the T once more, the carriers put some heavy duty broadsides into the poor Valiant, and combined with the assault boats brought it down quite a bit in hit points. Poorly maneuvered (they are without a bridge, after all), the Hellblade only scored a single frigate to its name.

After this, the Imperial Navy disengaged as a whole, leaving the Delphi system to the clutches of Kol Sarat! (243 VP to 42 VP, Chaos favor)



I think in this game we both deployed correctly. He has been subject to my use of squadroned firepower the last couple games, so he wanted to give it a try himself. I think if he had kept the Audacious by itself, it could have made better use of the Nova Cannon, allowing the Lunars to range ahead and distract, though they'd be lacking the heavy broadsides of the Dominator. I think the only maneuvering foibles would have been the too-early turns later in the game, allowing me to cross the T multiple times and rake him across the prow. Perhaps venturing further forward to get into my rear would have worked better, because my superior speed got the better of his turns.

Either way, another fun game! I was nervous every time he said "firing the Nova Cannon" and I chose not to BFI. Any one of those times it could have scored a nasty hit, but the dice were not behaving last night. On to the next!