Star-Fighter! Wounded Eagle and Headhunting

Wounded Eagle

“Come on, come on! Get that bird flying!”

“Calm down, Gold 5. The repair bots are working as fast as they can. You yelling at them doesn’t make them work any faster. Besides, the baddies don’t even know we’re here...”

A recon ship full of important intelligence has been damaged in a previous fight and is being repaired when enemy forces spot them and their escorts.

Size-4 players, but easily scalable.

Set Up-6’ x 4’ table. The Recon vessel is placed 2’ in from the escorting players’ short table edge. The attacking players start at 

their short table edge.

Players take turns placing four 4“ x 6” asteroid fields anywhere at least 12“ from any table edge or miniature.

Special Rules

Recon Ship: The reconnaissance ship has a damaged drive, but is otherwise functional. It cannot move on its own until the drive is repaired.  It counts as a Medium fighter and has 5 Damage points as well as 2 turrets, each with 2 Lasers. It has Heavy shields.

At the end of Turn 6 roll a 10-sided-die. If the total is 6 or more, the engine is repaired and the recon ship may engage its FTL (Faster 

Than Light) drive and escape.  If a 6 or more isn’t rolled roll at the end of the following turn, adding a +1 to the roll. Keep rolling at the end of each turn adding an additional +1 until a 6 or more is rolled.

Victory- The escorting side receives 3 Renown Points if the recon ship survives and 1 RP for each enemy fighter destroyed.

The attacking side receives 3 Renown Points if the recon ship is destroyed and 1 RP for each enemy fighter destroyed.

Blue use the wildcard to make sure they close in quickly.  They also use Boost!

Wonky Blue three gets a shot in and gets damage on a Red.  

Behind three, Blue two closes in and puts the Red out of action.  They work as a pair these two!

Bt Blue one is off Glory hunting.  He gets close to the Wounded Eagle Recce bird and piuts it out of action permanently.

Same shhot different angle, game over!  10 RP to Blue

Headhunting

“Remember, all we need is their flight leader.  Don’t get caught up in dogfights with other ships.”

Enemy forces have decided the flight leader of the other side is just too dangerous. They have placed a bounty on his head.

Size-4 players, but easily scalable. 

2 Players represent the team with one of their leaders having a bounty. The other players are the bounty hunters.

Set Up-6’ x 4’ table. The side with the bounty sets up first anywhere on the table no closer than 12” from any table edge. The bounty 

hunters start at any table edge, as long as they are outside 12” of the enemy.

Special Rules

The Hunted- One player should designate their flight leader as the one being hunted. All players should be aware of which starfighter 

it is. 

Victory- The bounty hunters get 10 RPs for destroying the flight leader with the bounty.

The hunted players get 1 RP for each enemy ship destroyed plus 5 RPs for the Hunted Pilot surviving.

To scale this up, you’ll need to keep the ratio of hunter to hunted the same, and may need to add another bounty.

Blue pull the same trick.  They use the wildcard to deploy and move close.  The disincltive "wonk" of Blue three is quite evident here.  Annoying that I couldn't` get the damn thing straight.  It may need repair back on the carrier but its record is so good that I don`t want to anger the dice gods!

This time Red, or Ramjet's Reds come on and mirror Blue.  Ramjet One has the Bounty

Blue Leader goes Glory hunting again, alone!  He puts Red Three out of action.  he may well be up for "SAce" if he keeps this up.

Again Blue two and three work as a pair, taking on Ramjet, who is at the edge of the formation

Really odd this, a circle appears as Blue and Red chase each other around, constrained by the 45 degree turns.  

Blue use Boost to clear and turn, miraculously I managed to get them back into a formation.  Blue Two gets his shot at Ramjet and puts him out of action.  Game over.

Starfighter! A quick review.

I blame "Blue Leader McGurk," although "Blue Two" ALeC was probably even more guilty.  Listening to the Blue Leader describe his games with "Starfighters!" and wondering about incorporating squadron first into his games started me down this slippery path.  

I started playing Fistful of Lead last year, a game I really rate for its innovative activation system, and one that works well as a solo.  I followed these dubious Gentlemens' assurances that "Starfighters!", an adaptation of those rules, was worth a look.  "Really enjoyable" was the phrase that stuck.  Well for £4.44 that seems worth a go.

I've never had much enthusiasm for space warfare, except for a brief fixation on Traveller back in the day.  Movement involving vectors seemed interesting if cumbersome, yawn, but the space combat rules were also a little cumbersome for me.  

Sci Fi settings are also something of an issue.  Being more than a little reluctant to rehash Star Wars, or anything else Hollywood inspired, I would need to come up with my own background, and that could be a huge unwieldy project.  Once I read through the starfighters rules I was quite keen to give them a go, so I started considering another route. 

 

The Sci Fi author Jack Campbell, a former US Navy "ship driver" points out the similarities between sea warfare and space, in terms of movement of mass, logistics and combat.  Well, one thing I do know a lot about is WW2 Naval.  A mini campaign loosely based on "carrier" warfare would resonate far better for me than making up alien races or rebel alliances.  

With that as it's basic premise the setting is quite deliberately a little vague on detail.  

Background

The Carrier "Glorious" has been involved in heavy fighting and is withdrawing back to base at Gibraltar Station with her escorts.  She is down to her last six "Gladiator" fighters, her engines require maintenance and overall, and she has battle damage sustained from an enemy battle cruiser attack in operation Alphabet.

Somewhere out there are the enemy, specifically the converted carrier "Aquila" carrying it's own "Falco" class starfighters.  Aquila is paired with the elderly battleship Cesare, and constitutes a real threat to Glorious' mission to reach her base.

The mini campaign will run through the scenarios in order, keeping track of resources and available pilots.  The Master Chief on Glorious must keep his starfighters flying, perhaps by cannibalising wrecks, as well as manage dwindling munitions.

The Aquila's fighters will be randomly generated to comprise a threat.

I have worked out more than just this basic campaign outline but since my main  focus here are the rules themselves I will expand on this for game two.

The build

It would be nice to buy off the shelf models, but I'm in Cyprus and that is unrealistic.  In any event I really like the idea of building my own ships from pieces of scrap.  Glorious' Gladiator fighters may owe their name to a WW2 Naval Aircraft but I really want to build my own squadron of personalised models.

I started with bamboo skewers.  Easy to work, de-laminating on the grain and thick enough to look correct in the (roughly) 1:600 scale I want.

Making the basic shape.  Artists card and bamboo roughly put together.

Getting there

The idea is for two flights of three starfighters, one in blue livery one in red, to denote my two flights. 

Flight stands use the core of an earbud mounted on a coin for the base, with a pin mounted on the model.  Its a prototype...

I have no plans to build the Glorious or her escorts, never say never I suppose.  The larger ships are offstage, and the starfighters here to gain the glory.

Terrain.

Initially I'm looking at a few pieces of polystyrene bashed about and painted in fifty shades of grey as asteroids.  That's really about all.  It's not a big project and it's not going to overtake my storage.

Scenarios

There are six scenarios in the rules.  These will form the "campaign" for Glorious return to her base, escalating from smaller to larger actions, with a much bigger battle as the climactic conclusion.  I will run through them in order, adding scratch built ships as I complete them.

1. Escort
2. Wounded Eagle
3. Headhunting
4. Attack Run
5. Attack on the shadow base
6. The last battle.

Rules review.

A reasonably priced pdf, with key features of commonality from the "parent" rules. The use of Star Wars micro machines in the illustrative pictures leaves me a little cold, frankly they look too big to me, but the rules themselves are straight forward and easy to grasp.

I liked the "design your own starfighter" idea, allowing me to make my Star Gladiator ships unique, and the character campaign element that assigns personalities to my pilots looks tailor made for solo games.

The best way to test a set of rules however is to get the toys down and roll some dice.

Scenario One

Escort

“Blue 3 to Blue Leader, could that old transport move any slower? This sector is crawling with the Enemy. We’re gonna get caught out here babysitting” 

One side has been tasked with escorting an unarmed supply transport back to the Carrier Group.  They must reach the other side of the playing area before the reach the designated Jump Point. 

Unfortunately, this part of space is full of unfriendly types. 

Size- 4 players, but easily scalable. 

Set Up- 6’  x 4’  table. 

Players start with their forces along the short side of the table playing lengthwise. 

Special Rules

The transport:  Transports. move up to 8” at the end of the turn.  This means they have the ability to Evade but means it will take 9 turns to cross the battlefield. Transports count as Heavy Fighters with 9 Damage Points and Heavy Shields but no weapons. 

Victory-  If the transport moves off the far end of the table it has reached the Jump Point and escapes. The escorting side receives  3 Renown and d6 supply Points if the transport ship escapes and 1 RP  for each enemy fighter destroyed. 

The attacking side receives  3 Renown Points if the transport ship is destroyed and 1 RP  for each enemy fighter destroyed. 

The game

Blue Flight come on table, 30 points.  The freighter they are escorting sticks close to Blue 2.

Blue three wins its first dogfight.  I had huge trouble building this model.  It just would not stick.  As a result its a bit wonky.  I took that to mean that it gets the "unreliable" rating with its engines likely to go offline during a game.  No sign of that here though.

Red 2 has its pilot gain shock as the dogfight ends and the ships are moved 2" apart.

Blue 2 gets a shot in and hits on that 5.

But I struggled to manoeuvre properly.  Turning up to 45 degrees at the start of the move means its difficult to sweep around.  

Blue Leader and the Transport slip past the Reds, who had to turn in pursuit,  Blue 2 is lost to enemy fire.

Wonky Blue 3 gets a hit in on an already damaged Red and kills it.

But with the Reds distracted Blue get the Freighter off table and win.

3 Renown and 4 supply Points for Blue, plus 1 RP  the enemy fighter destroyed.

2 Renown points for Red

A fast and fun game. I really need to sort out movement and have a plan rather than just reacting.  A few more games needed before I`m sold, but it was easy to play and the cards gave a run of luck to first one side then the other.  I used a smaller tabletop and centimetres rather than inches, but it played just as well.

Getting there...