The dusty newt

I played my first 24 point Fleet sized game of Orions The rules can be found here for free! . I had played a smaller game of 12 points already but this was going to be alot bigger as my force rocked in with a Capitol ship, a battle ship, a cruiser and 4 fighter squadrons. The cube in the centre represents blocking terrain but also the player with the most units within 3" of it come the end of the game would earn an additional 6 Victory Points (House rule) Otherwise victory points would be attained for enemy units destroyed, more expensive units earning more victorypoints.

My opponent needs a disclaimer, she was very under the weather with a slight fever and also had what she described as "The worst game of dice rolls in my whole life!". Her fleet consisted of 3 battleships, 2 cruisers and 2 figher squadrons.

I began by moving my squadrons up the left side of the board then she moved hers towards the centre.

3 of my 4 squadrons.

Plucky cruiser (very startrek voyager looking) opens fire to get things going.

In the cruiser phase I used my warpdrive to quickly move my cruiser near to the space station and fire my deckguns at the enemy squadrons but missed. The enemy cruisers then took cover in a nebula. Next my battleship moved up to the right behind an asteroid field to back up one of my squadrons and took fire with its plasma cannon at one of the cruisers doing 1 point of damage to it.

The brave crew of the battleship 'dead-dwarf' fire at the enemy fleet half destroying one enemy ship

Enemy fleets Battleship fires at my cruiser to the left of the spacestation but misses, then another of their Battleships shoots at my Battleship with their rail fun but it only just avoids damaging me thanks to the cover of the asteroid field.

The Capitol ship immeditately showed its worth as half the entire cost of my fleet by putting a point of damage on the enemy flagship with its deckguns (what i decided to call the green battleship i targeted throughout the game) and exploding a squadron of y-wing esque fighters with its cannons.Then it launched a mine in the proximity of the cruiser to give it protection from ramming enemies or squadrons engaging it (squadrons only have a 6 inch range and mines set off at 3)

TURN 2: (I should have gone first again in each phase but mistakenly instructed my opponent to do so)

The enemies squadrons moved to the nebula on the left side of the board and then 3 of my squadrons moved to intercept them 2 of my squadrons engaged but failed to take out the enemy then my 3rd squdron successfully took out the enemy squadrons (must be starbuck in one of those vipers!?)

Gundam squad enters the nebula, gets on the 6 of the enemy y-wings but totally wiffs.

No such nonsense for the viper squdron as Starbuck gets to frying some toasters/something equally cool sounding that makes more sense.

I forgot to move the squadron of fighters shown here near the asteroids, the enemy cruisers then both fired at them and missed.

I used the warp drive to move my cruiser around the spacestation clockwise coming up behind an enemy cruiser (which gives me a bonus to damage inflicted) and did a point of damage.

The enemy battleship (primed in black) in the nebula fires at my cruiser but misses.

The black primed battleship in this image fires at my capitol ship and its missile cluster attack at the squadrons nearby but misses everything.

My battleship blows up the damged cruiser infront of it then the other cruiser nearby in the nebula with a missile attack and does a point of damage to the enemy flagship with its plasma cannon attack (what a sterling crew!!!)

My capitol ship unloads all of its weapon batteries,deck guns, canons, missiles and totally punsihes the enemy flagship doing 3 points of damage!! It then launches a mine at it (tokens are mines) daring it to come closer next turn.

TURN 3:

My squadrons totally swarmed an enemy battleship getting on its tail and blasting it but although their marksmanship was perfect none of them manged to damage the much larger spacecraft. Then my cruiser failed to hit the enemy flagship then warped to safety.

My battleship fires at the enemy flagship but its shields upgrade saves it from damage at the hands of the railgun fire. The flagship takes the opportunity to get extra defence by joining its sister vessel in the nebula which was unloading fire on my fleet but still failing to damage it (Who is manning these spaceships?? Stormtroopers??)

The 3rd enemy battlehsip although under duress from my fighters manages to fire and hit my capitol ship but the shot is shrugged off by the behemoth. The Capitol ship tries to repeat its previous success shooting its deckguns, railgun and c anon at the enemy flagship but all failed to hit home or do damage, The capitol ship then fired its missiles at the enemy battleship that previously shot at it but again fails to do damage then pooped out another mine for larks.

TURN 4:

All my fighter squadrons tailing the enemies smaller battleship continue to harrass it, but do even worse then previously not even hitting home with most of their fire.

Next my cruiser narrowly failed to blow up the enemy flagship but then my battleship succeeded where the cruiser failed by unleashing a hail of missiles that penetrate it and set off a chain of explosions and venting the crew into space that were not burned alive ..mwuahaha. The same missile cluster also does a point of damage to the far less damaged battleship next to it within the nebula

It responds by leaving the nebula to get behind my cruiser doing one point of damage to it then warping back into the nebula. My Capitol ship then rams the enemy battleship on the other side of the board , both take a point of damage in the collision but then the capitol unleashed its cannon fire doing a further point of damage, A worthy attempt but not enough to destroy the vessel!

RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS:

So my opponent was ill and kept forgetting to use half of her special rules or components, also I feel this led her to kind of make bad choices as she was tired. She had a component that forced re-rolls which would have been a game changer as it was not just her rolling terribly that affected the game but I conversely rolled the best dice I ever have in any tabletop outing hahahah. For my part I think a capitol ship is a must have in a 24 point game as although they are 12 points its only going to die if the enemy focuses on killing it and it alone. I went very offensive with my loadouts which gave me awesome firepower whereas my opponent leaned heavily on defensive components which was a poor decision (when you are rolling bad rolling fewer dice just compounds lack of hurt you can put on people). I love squadrons but the were pretty useless against anything bigger than a cruiser but that is nice and thematic. I won 18Vps against my opponents 0vps. I killed a battleship (6VPs) 2 cruisers (4Vps) 2 squadrons (2Vps) and won the objective of securing the spacestation (6Vps). My opponent didn't focus her fire on any ships but shot at what was closest or giving her the most stress whereas I focused my smaller ships on attacking her smaller ships and everything else on taking down one battleship at a time, which for all my great rolling only killed one battleship but I severly damaged the other 2. This game has no scenarios yet but as you can see is very solid and allows for scenarios to be put in with ease as we did. You could just as easily make a scenario more complex than this such as, there is a fleet of civillian ships (or one V.I.P ship) that has firepower and needs protecting. Or a simple breakthrough mission of a mission where each fleet perhaps has a refuleing fleet that they need to protect whilst trying to destroy the enemies fuel ships.

So I'm using free rules for space battles which are fantastic and can be found at https://onepagerules.wordpress.com/portfolio/orions-gate/ I'm using miniatures from the wonderful ground zero games full thrust range

So here is my painted minis so far 2 squadrons and a battleship, I painted the battle ship like the enemy space ships from the nintendo video game "starfox zero".

The mecha suits are clearly gundam looking but I painted them like the tsugomori mecha or "guard" from the manga "knights of sidonia" this colour scheme almost perfectly matches the smaller fighter craft to their right so that is a bonus. I have another squadron of each to paint up.

I painted these fighters to look like the vipers from the original battlestar galatica, before my time but I kinda prefer it.

Here is my terrain so far the space station is blocking terrain and the three flat pieces are nebulas and an asteroid field that represent area terrain.

I turned my game mat upside down so that it was black, I may even speckle it with white paint to get that startrek space look. The game itself is alot of fun, quick to play and allows for a huge number of customization when list building and yet is highly tactical too as it rewards clever maneuvering as attacks from behind deal more damage and the firing arc is limited aswell; also the larger ships have limited maneuverability and so forward planning is essential.

Here is how I made the terrain, I used foam board cube I made then printed off a deathstar flat image and cut and glued it to the 5 visible sides of the cube. I did much the same with the area terrain.