The mission was that each of us could put our ships within 16" of our back edge. Then, as ships and squadrons were destroyed, they could replenish the field on the following turn, provided we had the ships available on our register.
Dan hit the table with his Sorylians, using a battleship, two groups of four cruisers, and four groups of four frigates. I came in with two battleships and five escorts, two groups of three cruisers, and three groups of three frigates.
Dan deployed first, putting his ships as close to the 16" deployment line as possible, trying to take my long ranged guns out of the game as fast as he could. Seeing his strategy, I deployed as far back as possible.
From the first movement, he crashed the my front lines, closing into Band 2 as fast as he could. On the right flank, I pushed forward with both groups of cruisers against his cruisers and battleship. A lucky shot from one of my cruisers rolled a critical, and then double-ones on one of his cruisers, destroying a second, already wounded one, and damaging the rest of his squadrons there.
His retaliation was swift, though. Two groups of frigates came around the side and blew up one of my cruisers and started closing in on another. Soon thereafter, they tried to board my cruiser. The fighting was fierce and when all was done, the two groups had fought each other to a stalemate. The ship was left listing with no crew, but no assaulters were left to take it.
On the other side of the field, my two battleships, escorts, and frigates were facing off against a few groups of frigates and a group of cruisers waiting for an opportunity to launch an assault. His frigates came in and did damage to my battleships, but their effectiveness was soon cut down by my escorts.
By the end of the first turn, the battle was in absolute chaos. Our lines had met and ships were being removed wholesale.
The battle stretched on with Dan gaining the upper hand early, destroying nearly twice as many full squadrons as I was able to do of his. His battleship was damaged and couldn't turn, but another of mine had already taken six points of damage. As I destroyed the last of one of his groups of cruisers, he came on the table with another one, charging straght towards one of my battleships.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, my cruisers pulled alongside his battleship and attempted to board him. He had already launched his assault boats to try to take down another ship, but had failed. Two turns of fighting and I captured the Sorylin battleship!
Not to be outdone, his cruisers attempted to board my battleship. After shooting down a bunch of his pods with my point defense and having the advantage over his attackers, I felt confident. I killed five of his assaulters, but he managed to score a hit on every die he rolled, slaughtering the entire Dindrenzi crew.
Both captured battleships shunted off the table the next turn, as did my second battleship which had taken 6 of its 10 damage, only managing to heal one of it from a repair card.
The battle wound into its final phases. My reinforcements in came in the form of two battleships, three cruisers and three frigates while he brought in four frigates and four cruisers. I took the opportunity to even up the kill points a little, destroying the last pieces of several squadrons. The battleships rolled through and blasted several Sorylian ships trying to turn away from the field to give worse shots.
In the end, between the two fleets, there were 39 destroyed frigates, 21 destroyed cruisers, 2 lost escorts and 2 lost battleships. I had destroyed more ships of Dan's, but he had destroyed more full squadrons of mine. In the end, what pushed him into the victory was the battleship I had shunted away. A massively bloody battle which left both of our fleets wrecked. We both opted for reinforcements with all of our appeals and made them all, building back up 600 points for both of us. That left us each with a net loss of about 400 points for the battle.
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