DARKSTAR CAMPAIGN UPDATE: DUCHESS ANNABEL’S WAR IS OVER

Hello, OTT / Beasts of War. It’s time for another battle report for a Darkstar game run between myself as Rasmus earlier in December.  With the holidays behind us and a new year underway, these weekend web games are off and running again, so if you’re ever interested, PM me with an e-mail address to which I can sent a web conference link.

Also the Darkstar rule book and first wave warships are now published and available for play.

Download Here

We also have another game scheduled for Sunday, where Damon tries out his new Trafalgar class heavy cruiser against the rival Leopold class, a rail gun beast sailing under the flag of the Imperial Prussian Kriegsmarine.

But for  now, let’s get started with the battle report.

Rasmus reached out to me and said he’d like to take a swing at Darkstar, specifically the high-tech Japanese.  Some Japanese warships are decidedly low-tech (modeled on the World War II Imperial Japanese Navy, a curious blend of visionary technology and doctrine and hidebound traditionalism), but for the battle I set him up with a Taiho (Great Phoenix) class light cruiser and a Takashiro class destroyer (high-tech destroyer not included in the first wave warships).

In fact, these ships were so high-tech (enhanced engines, greater thrust, +2 targeting systems), that I was able to afford not only a light cruiser and destroyer of my own (Holy Russian Empire, Kutusov class and Sovnya class, respectively), but also a small Novgorod class frigate.

Thus we wound up with a modest 135 point game.  Just enough for fun and to let a new player get his feet wet in the Darkstar system.

So here we see the approaches.  Two United Nations orbital platforms are in dispute around this roughly Mars-sized planet(6700 km, 37 hexes in diameter).  Russians are coming up from the south pole / night side, Japanese are coming down from the north pole / day side.

While the Russians aren’t exactly low tech (all their ships are “Standard” engine class for their ship type), the Japanese are higher-tech.  Both the light cruiser Nagara and destroyer Arashi are “next-gen” engines, with +2 targeting / CIC systems, and enhanced thrust for their class (which will also give Rasmus a bonus on initiative).  The balance is, as usual with Russian forcesm numbers.  More “generic” tech  makes my ships less expensive, which means I can afford that extra frigate.  Also, my ships have more guns than his.  Not as accurate or as long ranged, but more of them.

At a range of just under 2000 kilometers, the two fleets open fire.  As predicted (due to higher thrust and thus more agile ships), Rasmus’ Japanese largely won initiative, forcing me to go first.  So I set a very high approach velocity, decelerating just enough to make a port turn just before hitting those asteroids (hopefully using them as at least some kind of cover).  The Japanese, for their part, are carefully using the range brackets to their advantage, staying at 11 hexes away (thus putting us at the 11-15 range bracket) so my guns are far less accurate than his.

Both sides launch torpedoes and scouts, and we are off and running!

It seems as if my Russians and Rasmus’ Japanese were a little too keen to come to grips with each other.  While I still kept decelerating as fast as I could (not easy when you enter the board at 48 kilometers per second), the Japanese have spent more of their thrust in turns, and thus are also going too fast.

Then again, with the Russians pushing toward them so aggressively (it’s to my advantage to close the range as quickly as possible, where Japanese technology matters less and my numbers matter more), Rasmus’ best play is not to slow down and back off, but keep going fast as zoom past my Russians.

It’s a risky maneuver, he’s heading straight toward some asteroids and his engines / fantail  are now exposed to my plasma projectors, rail guns, EPCs, and swarm of P-500 “Plamya” (Flame) torpedoes . . .

The first huge blows land, and first blood is drawn!  The Russian P-500 warheads streak in, shot down in droves by accurate Japanese mass driver fire.  There are also three Japanese Ki-202 “Hien” (Flying Swallow) scouts, who manage to shoot down a few more incoming torpedoes.

But out of 22 warheads, 7 have survived to hit the Nagara’s shields.  Four get through, and sure enough, the Russians catch a break with the hit locations on the Nagara’s stern.  Two torpedoes smash through the armor and into the engines, two more explode through these same engines and into the reactors.  EPC fire is next from the aft batteries of the Lazarev, as well as plasma projectors and rail guns from the destroyer Kortik and the little frigate Volkhov.

It’s too much for the Nagara.  Seven boxes of critical structure have now been hit, and the d6 roll to cripple a light cruiser is 10+, minus the number of critical structure boxes struck.  10 – 7 = 3, so I have to roll a 3+.  I beat the roll during Resolution Phase, leaving the Nagara crippled and adrift . . .

. . . at least until she hits that asteroid field.  Hopefully the crew had enough time to abandon ship.  But the Nagara herself is gone, blown completely apart in a hail of asteroid impacts.

In the same turn, however, the Japanese torpedo spread is heading for the tiny frigate Volkhov.  These are some of the deadliest torpedoes in Darkstar, V Ki-45 “Toryu” (Dragon Slayer), and the Volkhov was already damaged somewhat in the battlegroups’ initial approach and flyby.  The little frigate is positive blown inside out, but technically is only “crippled” and could conceivably be recovered and eventually repaired, depending on how this battle turns out and how lucky she is on the Warship Recovery Table.

Meanwhile, Japanese gunfire tears into the starboard quarter of the Lazarev.  There aren’t very many Japanese guns, and they aren’t even particularly strong, but they are accurate as hell as hit with a very long reach.  Rasmus also gets lucky with lit locations, soon decompressing and destroying the Lazarev’s aft hangar.  These are “core” structure boxes, and with three of them hit, Lazarev has a (3 x 15% = 45%) chance of being forced to break off.  Sure enough, I fail the roll, and the Lazarev must now flee the table.

Basically, the cruiser took sufficient personnel losses and failed a “morale check.”

So now we’re down to just a destroyer each.  That didn’t take long.  The exception is that while the Lazarev is forced to flee, while she’s doing this she can continue to fire guns and torpedoes.  So I might be able to squeak out a win here.

But the nimble Arashi hits the brakes, decelerating enough to execute a couple fish-hook turns and stay behind the asteroids, using them as cover while the Lazarev is forced to flee the table and some of her own torpedoes might land a lucky hit on the remaining Russian destroyer Kortik.

The deathmatch between the Kortik and Arashi gets underway on Turns 4 and 5.  The Japanese destroyer is faster and more accurate, but the Russian ship has more, punchier guns and heavier shielding, she’s just tougher and meaner.  There’s no way Rasmus is going to beat me here with guns, but he just might do it with torpedoes.  Good thing those Sovnya class destroyers have lots of mass drivers for anti-torpedo defense . . .