Aquans First Flight

For Brian's birthday, Ryan, Jay, Dan and I got him a bunch of painted Aquan ships, some painted terrain, a piece of cloth to cover the table, and the cards for FSA. Last night Brian and I got in the first game where he played his ships. We decided for a small game - 550 points - so he could play his entire fleet. Since I was attacking and chose a location he wasn't owning, we had to increase the point level by 50 to let him take his full fleet.

I had my basic box (battleship, three cruisers, six frigates) with three escorts and an Interceptor helping along. He had the basic box configuration.

We rolled up a Cruiser Clash. It's a basic fight with the added mix of escape pods being launched from medium and large ships as they're blown up, and of capturing them granting extra victory points. The map was set up with two small planets, a large asteroid field, and a meteor passing along the map between the asteroid field and the orange planet. Any ship it collided with was destroyed.




He started off by moving most of his ships into the cover in the middle of the map while the oncoming meteor forced my ships to move up past the half-way line or risk being destroyed. A very solid strategy on his part.



Unfortunately, some days dice are with you and some days they're not. His shots bounced ineffectively off my ships while I was able to come through and destroy things I had no right to hit. My frigates on one flank took some shots at his, destroying one, and then decided to throw their four dice into an asteroid field-protected Cruiser. Not only did they hit, they scored a critical hit, catching the ship on fire.



On the opposite side, my battleship, escorts and second squad of Frigates joined around the blue planet and prepared to make a strike against his battleship before it reached the safety of the asteroid field. Awesome dice rolls on my part scored a double-crit with my battleship which took out his engines, and my escorts finished off the group of frigates he had protecting that flank.




Unfortunately, this is where my camera ran out of batteries, so I don't have any more of the mission in film. The frigates that were with me on that flank came around and shot at Brian's battleship again, also scoring another critical hit, putting his damage to 6 on the ship. He shunted it, not wanting to lose the ship, and I brought my battleship around to finish off his burning cruiser. At this point, I had lost a single frigate and he had lost his battleship, a cruiser, and four frigates. We called it there.

With repairs, most of the destroyed ships were brought back. Neither of our fleets were hit too hard by the raid, so we both decided to try for something other than reinforcements. Brian went for a refit on his ship and got Improved Astrogation Charts on his battleship, which allows it to shunt immediately after being given the order. I went for a Special Tactics card and rolled the necessary 5+, and picked Targeting Sensors. Soon my battleship will be blasting through planets and asteroid fields! Huzzah!