First Playtest - Battle Report

 

As mentioned in my last post I've been preparing to do a quick playtest game to see if the base mechanics made sense.

To do this I had to finish writing some basic rules for fighters and how to resolve hits on ships as well as rules on how to build battle groups.

The rules I'm currently working with are somewhat rough and have spelling and formatting errors so I will not link them just yet.

I did spend some time making a mockup of the front page as a distraction from all the rule thinking.

I also had to choose a battle for my playtest and I chose the Battle of Lugen between the Black Lancers and the 10th Fleet. This battle is smaller than many of the more famous ones and it involves just one fleet from either side.

Lastly I made some assets and set up the whole thing in tabletop simulator.

The Game

This is the setup for the game, the FPA has three battlegroups of 2 ships while the empire has 2 battlegroups with one of them having 3 ships.

The Empire's fleet has several fast battleships and its groups have more hit points and better firepower.

The FPA instead has more groups, hopefully allowing for more flexibility at the expense of being easier to take hit cards.

The empire player opted to only include two of each activation card in their deck as they don't really want to move much, just widen their lines. The FPA player instead included all the cards as they need to move as fast as possible to the other side of the board.

Before the first imperial reshuffle not much happened, the Empire player moved his ships to form a thin line to block the enemy ships while the FPA player started moving the Bang-Goo battle group forward to pressure the flank.

The first shooting round is shown in the picture below, with the blue lines showing the fleet movements up until this point.

The shooting did not do much apart from hitting the shields, the Bang-Goo group suffered the most losing all of their shields, if another shooting round happens before they manage to recharge their shields, they could start taking some significant damage.

After a reshuffle by both sides the center FPA group pushed hard for the gap that the empire ships opened up when trying to guard against the push on the flank by the FPA flagship group. 

Another round of firing came up and the Bang-Goo group was hammered by 3 more hits. Having lost a full row of hit points the FPA player will have to add a HIT card to their deck. When a hit draw card is drawn that player skips their turn. Additionally drawing too many hit card in a row will lose the game for that player.

The third round of shooting came quickly after without either side having the chance to refresh their shields. The empire's side had some time though to deploy their fighters. 

Fighters in this game are represented by circular tokens. They last until the fighter card has been drawn 2 more times after the initial deploy. Their role is to aid ships in short range combat by reducing the target number to hit an enemy ship in the hex they are occupying. Fighters can fight each other for control of spaces.

The third round of shooting went much better for the FPA as they managed to score a total of 7 hits on Empire group B forcing it to add 2 HIT cards to their deck. The Empire flagship group had a flank position on the FPA battleship group B and managed to score 2 hits but since that group still had full shields the damage was negligible.

The Empire player after this recharged its shields and hard to reshuffle. For the reshuffle he chose to remove a B card and add an A card as he wants to take the Flagship group and wheel it towards the center to support its damaged flank so he wants to activate it more frequently.

He then managed to wheel his Flagship group to flank the center FPA group which was hoping would have some time to maneuver before the next shooting phase.

The empire player also had time to launch his fighters and managed to push back the fighters from the Empire Flagship group.

The shooting round was devastating for the Empire as it completely lost is Battle Group B while only inflicting a couple of hits on the FPA center.

Once a battle group has no HP the player rolls for each individual ship to see if it is destroys or surrenders or if it will need to regain cohesion. In this case the Empire player rolled badly and all of the ships were destroyed or surrendered.

The only chance now for the Empire player is to inflict as much damage as he can and hope that the FPA draws 3 hit cards in a row.

It did not take long for the next shooting round to arrive but the FPA player was able to bring their cruisers to the rear of the Empire's last remaining group. Luckily cruisers don't have much firepower and only managed to score one hit.

4 more hits were taken from the front battleship group but the empire managed to score 6 hits in retaliation. For this group one ship was destroyed while the other is disorganized and will need several turns before being able to return to action.

Shortly after this there was another inconsequential shooting phase and then the Empire player drew 2 HIT cards in a row which  loses him the game. 

This was a very humiliating defeat for Admiral Bittenfeld as he was forced to retreat after losing half of his forces.  The empire forces were also heavily damaged so they will not be able to provide much support in the following battle at Amlitzer. 

Amlitzer will prove to be a slightly tougher battle for Reinhard as the Black Lancers have taken significant casualties. This might make Bittenfeld less likely to charge ahead aggressively and get himself in a precarious position (or it might not given his personality, he might think he has to do something daring to regain the trust of his commander).

Game notes

Overall the game played out in a satisfactory way. The card draw mechanics were interesting and provided a challenging uncertainty as to when certain phases would happen. 

The amount of damage at close range is a lot but I'm still not sure if it's too much.

The game played out in about 2 hours which seems an adequate amount for a small battle.

One thing which is probably lacking is more player agency and interesting decisions. I am thinking of adding more options that can be executed when a Group Activation card is drawn, maybe introducing orders (static effects on the group that can be changed with a skill check).

Also adding more unique ships and commanders in the future will make the decision space more varied and interesting.

I'm hoping to have a PDF  of the basic rules by the new year that people can browse through.