Fleet File Vol 11 Review + Battle of Astarte Scenario

 Fleet File Vol 11

This ship set came out in 2019 after a long gap of years between releases as volume 10 came out in 2011.

Likely this is because of the renewed interest in the series due to the release of "Die Neue These" the year before; this is of course only speculation and I have no information on this apart from a letter included in Volume 10 which I will mention in a later post.


Ostmark: the flagship of the Lippstadt fleet during the Imperial civil war. The main ship design is fairly standard and follows the traditional design of imperial flagships (I.E. just a big version of a standard battleship).  It is interesting in the fact that it also comes with two shield ships on the sides which give it a completely different profile. Viewed from the side the whole set looks just like one huge ship instead of three separate ones.


 

Berlin: The ships is basically a sister ship to the Ostmark, the only differences are in the interior (from the included booklet it was more luxurious and ostentatious) and the shield ships that have a more aggressive design. Personally the shield ships in this version look much nicer. Unfortunately during assembly of this model the pins that are inserted at the bottom of the model (and top of the black stands) snapped. The production is inconsistent as each Fleet File volume was produced in different years so some of them have parts that fit seamlessly while some are too loose or too tight requiring some (in some cases a lot of)  manual filing and scraping of plastic bits.


 

Wilhelmina: The prototypical imperial old style flagship, the only notable detail of this model is the imperial crest which looks like a robed woman with a scepter in her hand standing inside a crown..  It was the ship of Admiral Mückenberger  and is named after his mother.


Masasoite: The flagship of Admiral Attemborough, its design is somewhat similar to the Hyperion and precedes the design of the Ajax class flagships which are more common during the series.



Other ships in the set include 4 generic Free Planet battleships as well as the Goldnebaum and Lohengramm versions of the generic imperial fast battleship.


Overall this set is quite nice as the imperial ships with the shield ships are quite different than everything else and are quite needed to recreate battles from the imperial civil war. Also including 6 generic ships helps a lot to fill in the ranks of each fleet.


Battle Of Astarte

I've been planning how to recreate this famous battle from the first episode of the OVA. The purpose will be to test the revised rules.

Below this description are some of the unit and commander lists with details on the stats of each of them. I have tried to keep the ships fairly similar to limit the need to go reference the values for each one too much during play. The stats are only different when the ship is different enough to require them, 20 extra  guns on a  flagship won't make a difference but the experimental design and coating of the Brunhild is enough for it to have a higher resistance to losing morale rolls.

As for the battle itself the initial setup starts just before the Lohengramm fleet engages the 4th fleet. For the first 2 turns the other FPA fleets will be off map as they were still maneuvering to encircle the Imperial fleet. Their arrival area is shown in the map below. 


 

The 6th fleet would arrive at the end of turn 2 and the 2nd fleet at the end of turn 4. At the beginning of the game the FPA player will be given the choice the same choice that the Alliance fleet commander Paetta had: join up with the 2nd fleet or continue the initial plan and try and get to the 4th fleet as fast as possible but separately. If the player decides to join up then both fleets will arrive at the end of turn 3 at the opposite end of the map as the initial position of the 4th fleet.

Given that the victory condition for this battle is how many units are defeated by the end of turn 6 this choice will provide an interesting decision space for the FPA in deciding or not to sacrifice the 4th fleet as it will give a lot of points to the Imperial player (maybe too many to win the game in the remaining turns).

The Alliance mustered 40,000 ships  while the empire only had 20,00, translated to the game it could be:

Alliance:

4th Fleet: 4 Battleships, 1 carrier, 3 cruisers, Leonidas

6th Fleet: 5 Battleships, 4 Cruisers, Pergamonn

2nd Fleet: 7 Battleships, 1 Carrier, 3 Cruisers, Pergamonn

 

Empire

7 Battleships, 3 Fast Battleships, 3 Carriers, 4 Cruisers, Brunhild









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