Hey all,

OK, I'm sure most of you arent really interested in AARs, but for those of us still new to the game, it might be fun to swap stories and impressions. So with that in mind, here is a brief recounting of my group's first 'real' battle.

We played a 1500 point 2v2 battle using two homegrown races...a bug race (Hive Collective) and a feline race (Mrrshan Dominion...for those who remember MOO2... ).

The Hive use weapons like Acid Globules and Seeker Limpets (continuing damage) and Stinger Beams (close range, repeating). Their ships tend to have odd firing arcs and their larger vessels have Organic Hulls. Their main ship in a fleet is the Hive Mother, a Spawn Ship with 10 Squadrons of Spawn Fighters (basic). A few cruisers and a Stinger DD rounded out the contingent.

For the Mrrshan, their ships tend to be smaller and faster than those of the other races. Predatory instincts and high accuracy weapons means that they rarely miss (all weapons 3+ and may re-roll to-hit dice). Their weapons arent especially hard hitting, although at close range, their Raker Beam can be unpleasant (3 RoF and may re-roll to-hits). For this battle, they brought a Light Carrier (6 Squadrons of fast Claw Fighters), and array of smaller craft as escorts (4 FFs, 2 DDs and 2 CLs). The Mrrshan tend to have shorter ranged weapons, but they carry a lot and can land in the middle of a enemy formation and cause havoc.

The two fleets met over a nearby planet both were seeking to annex. The early game saw both fleets massing their squadrons and moving to engage while using Fighters to screen their movements. When they were generally within long weapon range, both side's Fighters rushed to engage the enemy starships largely ignoring their counter-part Fighters (we were enamoured of the Fighters halving shields and we werent using Dogfight rules, although we will be from now on). 60 Hive Fighters tore up a Mrrshan Light Cruiser, a FF and damaged a few other ships while the 36 Claws inflicted fair damage on the lead elements of the Hive fleet. At this point we were thinking that Fighter might be a little over the top...they get to fire first, are guaranteed to get their attack off unless hit by opposing Fighter, they halve the shields, and they would absorb a lot of firepower before going down.

And then the starships got their turn to fire...At short range, the Raker Beams and opposing Stinger Beams cuts swathes through the Fighters. Since the main fleet units werent really in effective range of each other at this point, nearly all weapons went to scraping off Fighters. By the end of the first real engagement turn, about half of the Swarm Fighters were down and maybe a third of the Mrrshan Fighters had died (the cats holding the edge here due to their unerring accuracy, even vs small targets like Fighters). Then the Hive, sensing that they probably did not have enough light weapons to completely remove the Fighter threat retargeted their own Fighters on them with telling effect.

Long range sparring then too place between the fleets as each side's surviving Fighters fled the close range destruction sleeting from the  escorting vessels.  The Hive Seeking Parasites began to accrue on opposing Mrsshan vessels and were slowing digesting them. The Mrrshan were replying in kind, but the initial Swarm Fighter attack had removed a number of their heavy weapons and had dragged their fleet out of optimum formation.

As the range closed (with the Hive primarly reversing to try and hold the range), casualties mounted (and parasites accrued...). Exploding ships began to cloud the area between the two combatants and a battle of maneuver ensued. In the end, it became apparent to the Mrrshan commanders that they simply didnt have the firepower remaining to take out the main Hive Swarm Ship which was slowing eating them alive with parasites. Their remaining vessels headed for Hyper or scattered away from the battle leaving the Hive to claim the planet below.

OK, some thoughts about the game after our battle.

1) Everyone really enjoyed the game. We had a number of players who just learned the game and it was very easy to teach and keep moving. Even with 96 Fighters in in the game, it moved fairly quickly and wasnt subject to long periods of down-time. The Fighter Initiative rules work well and provide a sort of suspense to that phase of the game.

2) Fighters can cause hideous amounts of damage to even well protected ships, but their attrition rate is very high against proper escorts. Our game saw nearly 45 fighters dying in a single turn (on both sides). Luckily both sides had some sort of rapid fire capability, but woe to a fleet that neglects to bring something like that along....

3) Some of our players didnt care much for the Reverse movement option. It felt kinda cheesy just backing up and holding the range like that. With a faster fleet and a preponderance of LR weaponry and systems (like the LRS), it could be extremely annoying. Our jury is still out on this one with the Hive players feeling they wouldnt have had a chance without it there to hold the range out. Obviously the cat players feel otherwise...

4) Its completely amazing how the game allows for such flavor differences between weapon types:

Seeking Parasites: Range 15, 4+ 1/2/2 Doubled Range Mods and Continuous Damage...it felt perfect for the weapon envisioned and the continued damage rolls each turn evoked joy and amusement on one side and groans on the other... ..."and now we get to roll to see the limpets eating your ships"!!!

Raker Beam: Range 3, 3+ 3/1/1 Can re-roll To-Hit, made for an effective weapon to land in the midst of the enemy and cause mayhem. A few mounts of these to either side and rear and it really felt like a feline way to fight. Fighters did NOT like these things at close range!

Spine Launcher: Range 12, 4+ 2/1/2 Variable RoF, Can re-roll Pen...each turn leads to a potential storm of enemy shards flying at your fleet.

All of the above lead to much amusement by all the players as both sides felt 'into' their respective races. I had spent the time to make each race feel somewhat unique and had written up a few paragraph blurbs about the respective design philosophies. Its amazing how much better that was than just having generic Beam or Torpedo and whatnot.

Anyways, all in the all everyone who played had a good time. There is a lot of luck factor involved with the dice (especially Pen rolls for high Dam weapons), but the upside is that you are generally rolling so MANY dice over the course of the battle that the luck has good chance of evening out. This is far superior to many other systems I've played (and I include some home-grown stuff in there...), where a single turn of good rolling can effectively end the entire battle. By the end, everyone was commenting on the system and how much they had enjoyed it. I believe everyone is looking forward to playing it again.

Thanks for reading my drivel! Feel free to post question, poke fun, or generally comment on how the newbs are playing the game!