Starmada: It is full of Stars.... and madas?

The most excellent Stewart of the blog A Terrible Loss of Lead and Wealth, came round this weekend for a game of TNG era Starmada.  He brought his lovely 1/7000 ships, the mat and the rules, all I provided was lunch and a venue (as well as an escape from relatives...).

As it was just the two of us Stew looked up a scenario from the rulebook, and we set out some fleets.  I ended up with the noble Klingons, and Stew took the cowardly and weak Federation. As usual we got caught up in the game and I failed to take as many pictures as I should have, but here are some. 

Now, fortunately for the noble Klingons, they have ambushed, er gloriously engaged in battle with only HALF the Federation fleet, the other half to arrive later as a rescue.  The Federation fleet started with a Galaxy Class, and two Excelsiors. Klingons has two Vor'Cha class cruisers, a Vor'Cha with a torpedo module, a D7 analog, a warbird, and the Tsanenn, a heavy command cruiser. 

Close range disruptor practice on the appropriately named "Fearless"

This next picture shows what happens when two wings of your fleet cross on the location of a weaker opponent's ship.  Starmada utilizes written orders for movement, so usually we would futilely drift past each other, or end up with the business end of the ship facing away from the action, but a couple of times it all came together nicely.  This is also a nice closeup of the ships.  Look how pretty they are! 

After the unfortunate end of the Fearless the other half of the Federation fleet entered the board, and an Ambassador, as Akira, and a Defiant class ship warped in to join the fun.  The Akira has a whole mess of torpedo tubes and a pretty healthy phaser array so it was rather worrying.  The Defiant class is a slippery little thing with too many guns, but fortunately it spent most of the game moving past targets, or pointing those guns away from my ships! 

Two Vor'Cha ships uselessly pointing away from the Endeavor

Since the Tsanenn's guns all face forward, the Hardrov is in for a bad day

Keeping your ship squadrons intact when one or more of them take engine hits is complicated, particularly as they drift further apart and make several turns. The two Vor'Cha class cruisers on the bottom right of the picture were supposed to be staying together, but it was not working very well by this point. 

By the end, the Federation had to retreat, and the Klingons got to celebrate their victory with some bloodwine.  Another lovely game with Stew and all of that has prompted some more interest in getting through the TNG/DS9 era Cardassians I started last year, and I printed off a few more Galors of various sub-types, a small group of Netels (an obsolete destroyer), and a pair of Keldons.  I also struggled my way through the Starmada ship calculator, which is really not that bad, once you realize that not every ship can do it all.  So hopefully another game in the near-ish future with a new fleet!