Wednesday 25 April 2018

BFG: assault on Eln

I've been playing quite a lot of Mass Effect games these last months, and so I was feeling like switching to a sci fi game, for land battles I'm already in a campaign of 40k 8th, lacking naval games I decided to begin a BFG bash with my father. The battles will take place in the Golgotha subsector, the Imperials won the roll off and picked the best planet, the forgeworld Demios, as their base; the orks deployed at the other end of the map.
 The Imperial Navy invaded the nearby system of Eln to launch a planetary assault against the planet
 The human vessels sped ahead towards their goal, keeping the transports behind
 Two ork roks adopt a blocking position
 While the hulk and the rest of the fleet strain to get out of the tricky position where the imperial player has placed them: you roll a dice before the battle 1-3 the enemy deploys a defender's ship
 The dictator keeps back, blasting away with the nova cannon
 Oneshooting a defence monitor
 The foremost rock crumbles under torpedo and bomber strikes
 However a transport is also destroyed
 Squadron valkyrie is totalled by ork fightas
 Another rok dies to bombers
 This hapless asteroid recieved first a torpedo salvo
 And was the finished off by a bombing run
 The imperial bombers sow terror among the ork fleet
 Destroying yet another "ship"
 The battleship Sebastian Thor moves ponderously through the weckrage of the enemy fleet
Launched from the hulk, a bomber wave bravely attacks a dominator cruiser, but thanks to brace for impact she survives the onslaught
With all the roks gone, the ork admiral decides to disengage giving up the system to the imperials
I've also cooked up this using the "Smotherman formula" to serve as my flagship in the campaign

Wednesday 18 April 2018

The Saintes 1782

 The final battle of the minicampaign is the Saintes, both fleets are sailing on opposite course from each other, the british have the edge in number and weight of ships, with no less than four three deckers. Admiral de Grasse has just ben issued with a fresh first rate, le Bretagne, to replace the captured Ville de Paris in a previous game.
 Both sides begin within gun range
 The french have some extra punch in their van

 De Grasse aboard Bretagne


  The british van under admiral Drake aboard HMS Barfleur
 Admiral Rodney leds the british fleet from HMS Formidable, with the 90 gun HMS Namur ahead
 The french start by extending their line
 And opening a deadly fire
 A french group has detached from the main force, and is pounced upon by the brits in the van
 Formidable crosses the T of the enemy line
 The jack tars try to cut the enmy line trough a gap in the center
 Formidable pounds the enemy with her triple batteries
 Getting into close quarters, the british fleet attempts a risky move
 In the british van the ships become embroiled in a fast paced engagement
 Formidable and Namur move down the enmy line sanwitching the ships there
 The heading french man o' war is the first to strike
 Then the one astern
 Another ship of the line surrenders to point blank barrages
 As does another one, under the fire of three opponents
 The Barfleur rakes a poor 74, reducing her to matchwood
 Not everything goes the britons way, a mauled ship burns out, the fire reaches the powder store while the crew jumps for dear life into the water
 Another brit has had enough
 And yet another
 In the last turn, another french strikes beset by three enemies
 The battle ends after roughly half an hour of real time combat
 The outcome: six french lost for four english, quite a balanced result 24-16, and the closest game in quite a while to grace the pages of this blog
The final episode of the engagement is down to the burning british ship, blowing to kindom come
The press is quick to capitalize on any victory no matter how small. After such a string of defeats the british colonies in the caribbean are more than safe, remaining crown posessions despite the defeats further up north in the revolutionary war.