Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Wolf 359

Capt's log Stardate -Holy crap that is a lot of wreckage

The Battle of Wolf 359, for those fans of the series this Two parter was a whale of a story. Picard captured and assimilated by the borg into Locutus. Riker in charge of the Enterprise with orders to destroy the cube with Picard on it,  a nail biter to be sure. And still to this day sits at the top or near the top of any Favorite Episode list.

When the Ent D arrives at Wolf 359 they find the fleet already dead basically. Debris everywhere and just a few ships left flying.

This battle is what the Collective OP 2 scenario was about. The Borg Cube Token sits unmoving 8 inches from the far edge of the play field and in the center. Around it before the game begins the players place 6 debris tokens. The debris tokens work as an obstacle for the player, meaning it gives the target an extra defense die and if you fly thru it you can take damage. If the Borg Cube Token(BTC) fires at a ship and is blocked by debris the ship takes no damage that turn, and the debris is destroyed and the debris token removed from play.

The objective is to put damage on the BCT, You recieved one damage token for each hit and crit, also as a bonus the first crit of a given turn gave you two hits and if ALL the ships in your fleet attacked in a given turn you recieved a bonus token for each ship that damaged the cube.

In all three rounds I used this to shield as many ships as I could for one turn.

The players both deployed on the side away from the BCT in a range one deployment zone. In each round I had there was not even any trying to interfere with the other player. I know there were some games that did have that but I did not get a chance to talk to any of those players about how their games went.

Now these round descriptions will be fairly short as its really just shooting at the BCT, getting shot at by the BCT , rinse repeat. So here is the highlight reel.

First round I was with a Romulan player whose blind booster pull was the Jem Hadar attack ship. We had both more or less set up apart from each other an other than trying not bump into each other pretty much just shot at the BCT. I moved out my fleet and had two ships shot at by the BCT, The Maquis and Worf's Vor'cha. The raider was screened by debris and Worf managed to evade. In this game I did not loose any ships by our time limit game end. I put 70 damage on the BCT which was enough for a win. And got a better feel for what manuevers were needed to keep all of my ships firing. The 180 degree arc of the Koronak proved its worth as I was able to hold the BCT in the firing arc with no trouble. The 90 degree arcs on my other three ships proved more challenging. My 70 damage pts were enough to give me the win but not enough to give me the bonus battle point. In order to gain the bonus you had to have at least 20 more damage tokens on the BCT than your opponent at the end of the game.

Second round was with a highly tuned federation fleet who had pulled the B'moth klingon D7. Again this game I managed to use the debris to screen the maquis raider. meanwhile my vor'chas cloaks kept them safe. The Koronak I tried to get out of the 4 closest ships to the BCT. This game had almost twice as many turns as the round 1 which had started a bit late. This game manuevering was bit trickier and several times I had to move a ship out of its firing arc or slam into the cube.

We did have some semi exciting moment when the Voyager slammed into Worf's Vor'cha as they both tried to pass around the back side of the cube.  Even though we were not shooting at each other loosing your actions for a turn could really impact your damage rate and survivability.

Late in the game a combination of bumping and my defense dice going cold cost me both vor'chas. Loosing the cloak close into the BCT was not a good idea. :)

This round ended with me putting 75 damage onto the BCT. Unforunately my opponent racked up 95 pts and got the win and the bonus battle point.

Third round was with a one ship plus booster fleet. One fully loaded Bioship Alpha who had pulled the Yeager as his booster. This game went similarly to the second one. First turn I screened two ships with debris and he screened one. The other pieces of debris were never a factor. And again much like in the second game my defense dice went cold late in the game, and again both Vor'chas flamed out quickly leaving me with the Maquis raider sitting literally right in front of the cube. He went down soon after. This game ended with me having racked up 72 damage and my opponent finished with 85.

What made the differnce however was the bioship capt had used Counter Attack as his elite talent. So he was essentually getting two shots at the BCT a turn if he took damage. And rolling 7 attack dice that put up quite a bit of extra damage. A good play by my opponent. Until the last bit I was leading the game thru out. He got two turns of me being destroyed to fire at the BCT and it turned the tide in his favor.

Being a co-op type scenario this was vastly different from the previous OPs I have played in and I found the change to be both challenging and enjoyable.

the final Collective OP is the Battle of Sector 001 and this time the BCT really fights back. Should be fun.

Until next time may you never be one of the four closest ships to the BCT

And be sure to check out all the fun over at The Blaugust Initiative

shadoe42.

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