Last night we did a Klingon/Romulan Armada game at the FLGS.  We played the Trap scenario from the Starmada AE rulebook, with 2x 1120 point Klingon squadrons as attackers and 2x 800 point Federation and Gorn squadrons as defenders.

The two Klingon Squadrons were:
A:  C7 Heavy battlecruiser, D5 cruiser, F5W War Destroyer, and F5 Frigate
B:  D7 battlecruiser, FD7 fast battlecruiser, D5 cruiser, 2x E4 Frigate

The defending squadrons were:
A:  Federation Heavy Cruiser, Destroyer (Saladin class - a conversion I did from the FC ship), DDG (Drone armed Saladin), and a Frigate.
B:  Gorn Heavy Battlecruiser, Medium cruiser, and destroyer

The battlefield had a size 2 planet in the center as well as a couple of moons.  The Gorns and Feds deployed on opposite sides of the planet at low speed so they could turn easily to challenge the attackers.  One Klingon squadron deployed to each set up area, with Squadron A concentrated against the Federation ships and Klingon squadron B spread out to assist against the Federation and also keep the Gorns honest.  The Gorn launched a full spread of seeking plasma torps.

The set-up of the Trap scenario puts the forces at close range to begin the game, so the action was fast and furious from the beginning.  The Gorn squadron turned to face the nearby Klingons, who moved in at medium speed.  The Gorn DD got to within 5 hexes of the D7 and was destroyed.  The other Gorn ships were largely unscathed while the opposing Klingons took damage to both the D7 and FD7. On the other end of the table, the Fed DDG sailed out alone toward the D5 and F5 while the three remaining ships charged straight in at the C7 and F5W.  The F5W was plastered by the Saladin-class DD and destroyed.  However, the Saladin was also destroyed by the Klingons and the Federation CA had her weapons complement nearly gutted.  Both sides launched a full spread of drones.  At this point the battle was pretty even, with the two destroyed Fed/Gorn ships compensated by the double VP award to the defenders for the destroyed F5W.

On turn 2 the Gorn HBC declared Emergency Thrust and pulled around to drag out the Klingon drone salvo while the Plasmas recharged.  The Medium cruiser turned in just as the FD7 was cutting in front to chase the HBC.  That left the FD7 within easy range of the CM's plasma torp spread, which pulled down the facing shield and inflicted some decent damage.  The range 4 Phaser strike from the CM against the Fast crusier's downed shield finished her off.  The CM took a little drone damage, but nothing too severe.  The D7 was targeted by the a huge mass of plasma torpedoes from the DD and HBC, so pushed the engines to Emergency War Power and gained a whopping 5 points of emergency thrust allowing her to easily U turn and outpace the torpedoes.  On the other end of the table the F5 and DDG ended head on at short range and after a few volleys of drones, destroyed each other in direct dire.  The C7 took a little additional damage, but the toothless Federation CA was unable to do much and was obliterated.  The Federation Frigate was pummeled but still intact (barely).  At this point the Federation/Gorn fleet had accumulated enough VP to win.

Among the 4 players in this game, I had played 2 games previously (plus a couple of solo learning efforts) and one other player had played once before, so there were lots of tactical decisions that would surely be dissected harshly back at the academy.  E.g. the Federation players never overloaded their photons, even though they would be at point blanks range and likely to take significant damage and lose them.  Still, everyone was able to grasp the basics of the game and enjoyed themselves fully, so I'm calling it a win.

I think that in the future if playing the Trap scenario I might change the attacker set up areas from the long edges of the map to the short edges.  That might push the initial engagement ranges out a little and allow for a tad of maneuver before the point blank firing begins.  I also think that perhaps the defender should score 1.5x VP instead of 2x VP as listed.  The attacker has only 1.4x as much force overall, so 2x VP seems like a pretty severe penalty.  In our game I felt that the Federation/Gorn fleet was getting beaten, but we won because tof the 2x modifier.  The Fed fleet at that point was mostly gone with only a single damaged frigate remaining.  the Klingons had lost one cruiser and 2 destroyers, but still had the heavy battlecruiser, 3 cruisers, and 2 frigates in the fight.

Finally, for this game we played using my alternate rules for plasma torps (torps are all speed 9, Acc 4+, DAM 2, and diminish in Size each turn that they remain on the table, bolts are 4+ ACC instead of 3+).  I also allowed them to place the seeking torps on the table in the shooting phase since the launchers are susceptible to damage (unlike drone racks).  Obviously I like this version better as it makes the seeking version of the weapon effective, which fits in with my view of the Star Fleet universe.

The other thing we did was allow any weapon with the anti-fighter trait to choose to fire defensively against incoming seekers as drone racks can do.  Any weapon fired in this manner were obviously unavailable for later fire.  This didn't appear to dramatically change to course of the game, but gave the players some defense against a drone launched from close range.  A large swarm of drones at one target easily overwhelmed the defense, but it did provide some relief from single nuisance drones.  It may not be something that you'd want to include as a general capability without assessing it's effect on CRAT, but for this specific setting the number of such weapons on the average ship is low enough that it doesn't really make a significant change to the ship's combat capability.

Looking forward to our next Armada game

Brian