Friday 23 February 2018

5150 Campaign – S2e – Reconnaissance Mission



The Y Wing, Old Sarge and The Addict are still In Sight and continue to dogfight.
Still sharp as a tack, Old Sarge acts first. He attempts a High Energy Yo-Yo but doesn’t quite get it right and he moves forward 1 cycle and turns 1 aspect to port instead. This is just enough for him to get his ship to bear. Out of range of his rail guns he flips the firing button to missiles and lets loose with a Fire and Forget missile. The missile speeds towards its target. The Y Wing pilot throws his fighter bomber around to try to avoid the projectile. The missile doesn’t impact against the ship but detonates near by causing damage to the Hull and pushing the machine one cycle to aspect 5 and turning it to port by one aspect. 
The Addict also attempts a High Energy Yo-Yo but also fails to pull off the manoeuvre and moves forward two cycles and turns one aspect to port, which luckily brings his craft to again bear on the enemy. Also out of gun range he fires a Fire and Forget missile at his opponent. The Y Wing pilot attempts evasive manoeuvres, avoiding a direct impact by the missile but getting caught in its blast again. The manoeuvres throw his craft 1 cycle to aspect 2 and rotates it to aspect 4 but the blast is deadly. It again breeches the hull. The small craft cannot with stand this sustained damaged and it explodes, killing the pilot. Scratch one more bogie. 
The Addicts attack movement has brought the remaining Y Wing In Sight. It attempts a Dead Man’s Turn to try to get The Addict into his gun sight. The pilot pulls off the manoeuvre and moves 1 cycle forward and comes to a dead stop as he rotates his craft directly toward The Addict. He fires his two long range laser cannon burst but doesn’t hit his target. 
Colgar6 gets onto the ham to Hinton. “Don’t use your missiles till you get past The Addict. His Comms Link is damaged and your missile will probably target him. Stay on my wing and let’s engage this scum in a close range dog fight.”
The pair move in unison two cycles forward, a small turn of one aspect turn to port and two more cycles forward. The Y Wing is nicely caught in In Sight range of the two Vipers. 
Hinton is the first to act. He barrel rolls and in doing so moves forward 2 cycles, turns to starboard 1 aspect and then side slips one cycle to his port. It puts him into a great firing position on his opponent and takes him out of his enemy’s arc of fire. Figuring that he’s at no risk of hitting The Addict, he releases both a Fire and Forget Missile and 15 rounds of Rail Gun ammo at his opponent. Three rail guns are on target but the heavy shield of the Y Wing stops two of them. The third crashes into the Hull of the ship. The Y Wing pilot pulls the stick to the left and right to jink his fighter bomber around to avoid missile but with nil velocity the fighter barely moves and is struck by the deadly missile. The Guns and the Engine are damaged by the warhead.  
The Y Wing pilot is the next to act but with no guns or velocity he can’t do anything. Fear creeps upon his face as he watches Colgar6 approach for the kill.
Colgar6 rubs off speed, barrel rolling and side slipping moving forward 2 cycles and side slipping 1 cycle to the starboard. He thumbs the firing button releasing 15 Rail Gun rounds and a Fire and Forget Missile at the enemy. Two Rail Gun rounds are deflected by the fighter bombers heavy shields but the missile passes straight through and detonates. A catastrophic explosion ripples though the stricken Y Wing as its air frame can no longer take damage.

Apollo and Da Gobbo increase their velocity to 5 cycles and move straight ahead towards the remaining X Wings.
Jackie maintains his composure, despite losing Achilles, “Maintain your course and speed. Launch the next wave of Vipers and the Raptors” The fleet moves ahead 1 cycle but a disappointing message comes from one of his control room crew.
“Admiral, the Chief is reporting that the they’ve had a slight delay bringing the Raptors on line. They’ll launch in a cycle.”
Stoically Jackie retains his composure and doesn’t react to the disappointing news.

He orders the fleet to fire as they bear. Ajax, Warspite and Exeter are now in range of the Hishen destroyer Formidable with all six of their Beam Batteries. Intense high capacity laser beams speed towards the enemy destroyer and two rounds find their mark and crash into the ship. Formidable’s air frame holds but her shields are damaged and her bridge is smashed.

One of the Hishen X Wings is in torpedo range. It waits for the target lock signal and releases the deadly missile towards Ajax.
Ajax’s Capitan shouts for his crew to Brace for Impact as he turns the ship to meet the oncoming threat and accelerates to 2 cycles. “Fire all anti aircraft batteries at the torpedo.” Ten high velocity anti aircraft rounds shoot towards the missile but only one hits the torpedo and it fails to stop it. The torpedo slams home, damaging the Ajax’s Plasma Battery.


11 comments:

  1. Tense stuff - especially after that Y wing's 'deadmans turn' and I thought I was the dead man!
    There's certainly "a lot going on" in this encounter, and as well as greatly enjoying the actual batrep, I'll be really interested to hear your views on the rules and how they play if you're doing any sort of review afterwards :-)

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    1. Well done - you get to paint a Y wing on the nose of your craft, if you make it back. Good luck. :-)

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    2. I thought you might have had it too. But luck was with you on that occasion and he missed you completely. Nice because the air frame of your Viper is getting pretty damaged.

      The game has turned out pretty well hasn't it. Lots of action going on it just the right places. I'm enjoying it.

      Steady on Vagabond, my painting isn't that good.

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    1. You rushed in and grabbed a great kill. A little fighter on your nose too.

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  3. I'm thoroughly enjoying this! As Greg said, there is a lot going on. I am very impressed by your graphics and notes you've added to your pictures.

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    1. Thanks Bryan. Whilst waiting for the models to turn up I had a bit of time to think about how the represent the hurley burley of space combat in the blog. Most things have worked out ok. There are somethings that I can improve upon (eg the level of contrast between the ships and the background is having an impact on the picture etc) but I'll work that out as I get along.

      I'm glad through it's making it a lot clearer to you guys what is going on. That is one key objective that I've managed to achieve.

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  4. Hi DEW I agree with Bryan, the detailed photos and notes on them mean we can follow this very easily and it's proving a great read. Without them it would be difficult to follow and confusing.
    The graphics make it more entertaining.
    I think you had a lucky break when the Y wings had to break off the attack on the big ships and mix it with superior numbers of fighters.
    It looks like the next activation roll is critical if you get it the the 3 X wings are probably dead, if they get it with two torpedo's still to fire, Ajax is going to get damaged again. Unless of course they have to break off and dogfight with the vipers.
    Really enjoyed this and waiting for the next one.

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    1. Glad you're enjoying it. Yeah the graphics add a bit don't they. Even for me they help me to visualise the combat. With the static nature of photo's I cheat a bit (eg the missile and the explosion in the same photo) but that's an ok compromise.

      Re the Y Wing's breaking off. Yep I'm starting to get the tactics more now. When you get to engagement / In Sight range they are forced to react. I didn't really appreciate this at first but now I can see a definite role for escorting fighters and how they need to be used to support bombers.

      The next activation will be critical. The X Wings are pretty deadly opponents and whilst I haven't written anything about it yet the darker grey one is a bit more deadly than the rest so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. The battle isn't over yet.

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  5. Another find batrep. I can only echo the others comments. Keep up the good work it looks great and the image are informative.

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    1. Thanks Simon. I'm away from the donger at the moment where I've got the game all set up and I've had to go to another site for a couple of days but towards the middle of next week I'll be back into it.

      I'm looking forward to the next couple of turns. We haven't really seen how three X Wings working together will work yet. Might give the Vipers a bit of a run for their money.

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