It's on the way! Defend Earth! Destroy Earth!

Any thoughts on the scenario, which side you might take, how to accomplish these goals? Month 3 should have been pretty good practice for this, actually. At least, good practice for working with a giant planet in the middle of the map.

For attacking the planet, it seems like a swarm of ships would be best. Four cheap ships should be able to get four hits on it in the first turn from range three, without retaliation. Though that will give defenders a good chance to move up and mine the planet.

I'm thinking I'll run Romulan this time, since I have more options with them now and I'm a fan. Maybe I'll pick up a Praetus...

You can't mine too close to the planet though. the PD tokens are considered 'enemy ships' by both players. Cloaked mines cannot be placed within range 2 of an enemy ship.

How much 'free' zone you get to shoot from without getting shot at in return by the PDs will depend greatly on the exact size of the planet, the PD tokens and the Starfleet HQ token.

If Earth is the same size as the last 2 planet tokens, HQ the size of the Admiral's Commendation token and the PDs the same size as the OWPs from month 2; and there is no indication that any of those are true, then you've only got about a quarter inch of space that is just outside your start zone to work with. Plan your movements and placement before hand and be sure the board is measured and tokens placed meticulously!

If anyone sees the OP kit, please please please measure the diameter of all the map element tokens and post them here!

Ooh, great catch! I'll have to keep that in mind when I go.

I guess you will have to draw all the way to the HQ token, and not just the planet, which kind of kills my swarm idea.

This plan wont work either. The HQ token is in the center of the planet, and the turrets are around the outside edge. If you get within range 3 of the token to attack it, you are already in range of the turrets (at least one or two of them).

What makes this event a little more "interesting" is how you earn points if you essentially ignore the scenario.

It may make sense to go after the opposing team and just try and take out the ships, which gets you 10 bonus points.

Granted, committing to the planet could earn you 35 extra points - which is a lot. Should, as always, be interesting.

The only 'problem' I see with the swarm plan is the Apnex is eliminated as it has only 1 attack die and you subtract 1 from your attack. The Praetus will be firing 1 die.

Swarm might be effective especially with any of the "add 1 attack die" captains we have.

I still have another op3 so I've not really looked at planning this, and I want to do the video for Kobashi Maru hopefully soon. We pretty much figure any Klingon build will wipe the floor with the fed build at this point.

I need to look over the rules again, it doesn't say if the weapons platforms fire back if the HQ is destroyed, I'd assume not.

Here's my initial build. I'm still missing the TOS Enterprise, so I have to make do with the crew options (I'll probably pick one up the day of):

Enterprise D
Sisko
Engage

Defiant
Picard
Quantum Torps
Cloaking device

Miranda
Terrell

Oh, and Command Tokens. My first use of a Resource. Any suggestion on the best use of these is appreciated. Or perhaps I should swap them out for mines or something? I wanted to put Kyle on the Miranda, to try and keep it alive a bit longer, but don't have the points.

100 on the dot. I'll do my best to keep Defiant and the Miranda in tight formation, with the Enterprise close by but free to move and fire at will. I'll be defending the planet, but hoping to do so in a fast, aggressive fashion.

I'll be interested in watching cloaked fleets attempting to take the planet. If you charge in and cut loose on the HQ, you're giving up your cloaked advantage.

Well, since the Admiral's Orders favor a two-ship build for this event, and I've yet to play one (but did grab a Defiant, so I can run a 2-ship Federation fleet), I'm thinking I'll try that, just to see how it goes.

For a fleet, I'm thinking:

USS Enterprise-D - 49 SP
Jean-Luc Picard
Attack Pattern Omega
Data
Geordi La'Forge
Photon Torpedos

USS Defiant - 54 SP
Benjamin Sisko
Attack Pattern Delta
Miles O'Brien
Worf
Quantum Torpedos
Antimatter Mines
Cloaking Device

United Force - 0 SP
Strike Force - 5 SP

108 SP total

Seems like Strike Force will make acquiring a target lock a bit easier for the Defiant, so it can make the most of its torpedoes and still perform another action. Picard can hang back a bit and perform long-range torpedo barrages, while the Defiant's cloak and maneuverability make it ideal for rapid assaults on enemy ships, plus it can zoom in and drop mines on someone if need be, or use them herd ships into closer range of the orbital weapon platforms, if my opponent is attacking the planet.

Cool. I'm not sure if we're using the Admiral's Orders yet or not. Hmm.

My favorite maneuver with the Defiant so far has been to charge in, strafing, acquire target lock, fly straight past them, and then hit them from behind with the quantum torpedoes from your rear arc. It's a lot of fun and pretty easy to pull off, at least against non-cloaked opponents.

EDIT Holy crap, looking at the United Force Order, I don't know why you wouldn't play it. 10 extra points for free? For what I'm already doing? I need to find out if we can use these.

Oops, didn't post my second Admiral's Orders card! 0 SP, but I edited above just for completeness's sake.

Found out we're not using them until January. Looking forward to them, though!

I dont see the point in going after the HQ.

You can only do one damage per attack. And after taking 6 hits you can finally kill it with a 7th attack. That's kind of a lot!
If you attack the HQ your opponent is blasting away at you AND the platforms ONLY
attack ships that attacked the HQ that round.
So now your getting attacked by the platforms and your opponent.

Finally read the rules it looks like BOTH players (not just the winning player) gets +10 points as long as neither player has any objective tokens. (For example if both players ignore the scenario)

I just don't get this one.
I prefer the scenarios like month 3 where you are free to fly and attack without worrying about mines or defense platforms firing back.

Agreed that it sounds like pretty rough going, if you try to attack Starfleet HQ, but I think that's why the potential rewards are so much higher than leaving it alone. If I manage to take it out, it's 35 fleet points.

A really dodgy, cloaked fleet might have decent odds - no sense gathering too many attack dice since you only need to score 1 hit per attack, so you may as well pack in as much defense as possible. Of course then there's the enemy fleet, too, so maybe one ship that is more if a tank to fight back?

After looking at this one a little more closely, it will be hard to go after the HQ and your opponent, but it could be done. If you fly a fleet up and attack at range three, your ships will have 2 dice flying back at them each, but you will most likely have taken four HQ or 20 bonus points. Now your opponent has to try and track you down and fight you off. Interesting scenario to say the least.

Played my OP 4 yesterday. There's no way I'll remember all of what my opponents had, but I'll try to include all the relevant bits.



My squadron:

Enterprise D
Sisko
Engage

Defiant
Picard
Quantum Torps
Cloaking device

Miranda
Terrell

Command Tokens - Free Target Lock, +1 attack, +1 evade, re-roll attack, re-roll evade

Round 1 vs: Feds!
Enterprise
Excelsior
Reliant

I know he had Pike in there, but for the life of me I can't recall the other captains. I know he was faction-pure. Probably a Picard. I think a generic on the Reliant.

We jousted at each other, and in the first pass both my Enterprise and his Excelsior were pretty crippled, and his Enterprise badly damaged. My Enterprise and his Excelsior both died the next turn. He went running around the planet, shoring up his Enterprise's shields with Scotty, but I came about with my little ships and gave chase. I caught up to his Reliant and finished him, and then eventually the Enterprise as well. A sound victory.

Round 2: vs mixed
Kraxon w/Engage
Koranak w/Engage
Enterprise D

I know he had Dukat in there somewhere. I think one of the Cardi ships was the generic, but I can't remember. This opponent had actually brought a 3 D'deridex fleet loaded with cloaked mines, but prior to the tournament start I warned him he wouldn't be able to get much use out of the mines, so he took the first round bye to rebuild his fleet.

This was a joust I knew I'd lose, with all that firepower and the big firing arcs, so I took us on a merry chase around the planet. I kept in tight formation as we swung around the planet, but his fleet gradually strung itself thin, the Cardassians simply not able to keep up with his own Enterprise. Once Enterprise was sufficiently far in front of his own escorts, I split the Defiant a bit and simply demolished the Enterprise with Quantum Torpedoes (though he did get a nice crit through my cloak, structural damage that had me worried for a bit until I got a chance to repair it because I forgot about the Defiant's crit-cancel). The Defiant quickly caught back up with my Miranda for the defensive boost as his lead Cardassian finally joined the battle. I got extremely lucky as his dice went cold for the one big attack he managed to get. Picard capitalized on the opportunity and blew Dukat out of the sky. My opponent conceded at that point as my Enterprise was starting to pound on the remaining Cardassian's tail.

I felt a little bad in that last round, as I'm sure it was frustrating to fly against, but it would have been crazy not to take advantage of my slightly better maneuverability and the planet to blunt his attack. Even with Engage, those Cardassian ships had trouble getting around. It reminded me a lot of how I played HeroClix, splitting up the opponent's team and using the terrain to cover my approach. It was a lot of fun.

MVP of the day was definitely Picard in the Defiant. Being able to re-enable the Quantum Torpedoes, then lock and fire in the same round is absolutely brutal and demoralizing, and having an extra target lock in my command bar was handy on turns on wanted to, say, cloak or go to battlestations or evade. He doesn't mind at all if you get on his tail.

I wasn't totally sold on Engage, at least not on the Enterprise. It just has such a limited range of green maneuvers.

My dice were also pretty hot all day. It was a nice combination.

So, fun day. I have a feeling this won't work again next time, though. Looking forward to breaking out the Sutherland! I also finally picked up a ToS Enterprise while I was there.

No one attacked the planet at all. I don't know if those results will be typical. But the planet was definitely a big factor in the second game, simply for cover. An open space field probably would have doomed me that game, I think.

Speaking of the Sutherland, mine came with two secondary torpedo launcher cards? Probably a mistake, but I don't think I'm missing anything, so I guess I just got lucky.