Store Event: Battle for Wolf 359!

Event at The Dragon's Den

This was a really fun and innovative event that was developed and fine tuned by staff and players. A Play version of  Wolf 359 involving 10 players and one Borg cube. For those of you who are not familiar with this battle you can read about it Here. Some rules where bent for ships to participate allowing Dominion ships to aid in the fight. But things got kind of silly with 5 Captain Jean Luc Picards on the table Ranging from the Cardassian Kraxon to the Actual Enterprise-D (I was Running The Valdore With Picard...) So in the future side events it will be set up so that everyone will need to take a different captain in the spirit of reality and innovation, taking captains that can help others Rather than one that allows your ship to run to highest efficiency. This I believe will do a good job of keeping things fresh. On to the event!

The initial Fleet Deployment.

   

I know the Borg "cube" is naught little more than a square but that should change by the next Borg event!

The defending Fleet Consisted of the following ships in the top picture from left to right:
I.R.W. Valdore
U.S.S Enterprise-D
I.K.S. Maht'Ha
5th Wing Patrol Ship
Cardassain Battle Cruiser Kraxon
Breen Battle Cruiser Gor Portas
Cardassain Battle Cruiser Kraxon
I.K.S Kronos One
U.S.S. Defiant
Cardassain Battle Cruiser Kraxon

From this point onward only one named ship of each class will be allowed to be entered in these events as well since clearly there are too many kraxons on the board!

BATTLE REPORT!

      As you can plainly see by the damage the Cube took early on, there is some fine tuning to be done to strengthen The Cube, this is merely round 2 or 3 of actual combat. The hull points left on the Borg Cube are dismally low from its starting 40 Shield and 40 Hull. Some abilities people used where IMPRESSIVELY well taken but will likely be modified so that a Borg Cube can't be devastated like that again. There where of coarse some issues with allies bumping into one another. With 10 ships it is difficult to coordinate every movement. Most where smart enough to break away from the rest of the fleet but some people insisted on crawling on top of one another (for example the Valdore's fondness for the Maht'ha.)

      With battle in progress we noticed we where doing between 20-30 Damage per round on the Cube overwhelming it's ability to regenerate its shields. The Cube did hang in for a good while however and nearly reached it's objective. What really caused the bulk of the damage was the 5th Wing's  ingenious deployment of the Klingon tech upgrade "Projected Stasis Field".

Tactical Spotlight

Action: If your ship is not cloaked,
disable all of your remaining shields
and discard this Upgrade to target a ship
at range 1-2. That ship must disable all
of its remaining shields and cannot
attack this round. your ship rolls 2 less
attack dice this round.


(This Card can be obtained by purchasing an
 I.K.S. Garoth)





A maneuver the Borg will not soon forget I assure you. With that card the Borg Cube's hull points where dropped from 40 to 11 in one round of fire! The Cube spent the duration of the match on the defensive and did not have the opportunity to do much in the way of damage. However it did manage take down two ships before it was decimated.

A moment of silence for those who fell in battle... We pay our respects to the brave Dominion 5th Wing Patrol Ship who laid down it's life to allow the fleet to inflict heavy damage ultimately becoming debis in the wake. And to the I.K.S. Maht'Ha who dealt out a devastating 8 point assault on the Cube making it a target as well. You both died so that the rest may live. We salute you.

You will notice ships sitting on top of the cube. This is because it was decided by unanimous vote that we live in a three dimensional universe therefore you are either above or below the Borg Cube. that way we
didn't have a ton of ships scrambling to get out of the way of a massive cube or a massive cube mowing over a bunch of ships. Makes sense right?





Ship in the Spotlight

 Cardassian Battle Cruiser Kraxon

This Ship proved to be a wonderful support ship as it has the ability to absorb damage for it's fellows, giving ships with a greater attack the chance to fire again. It is literally a flying brick however... as was put by the Captain of the Kronos One.
This little ship can only take banking or "soft turn" movements normally. All hard turns are stressful movements. This makes it abnormally hard to maneuver back into firing range without losing your actions. However it is for now the only Dominion Ship with a 180° firing arc, and only one of three ships which currently have a standard 180° firing arc. A good ship to take with you if you have the points to take it for its support ability, not to mention it does have 4 standard attacks, on par with highest shields and 4 hull. 





All in all a fun Experience. In Star Trek fashion it brought insight, comradery, tactical thought, and enjoyment for all involved. The Borg will be back, and with the gathered information they will be a much larger threat. The Races of the Alpha Quadrant will have to be ready to fight or be prepared to face oblivion. Keep your eyes out for more articles, The next installment will be a "How To" module for the game so that anyone interested can read up on how to play! Let the Dragon's Den be your source for fun and games!

Here are more pictures from the event.

The mighty Captain of the Kronos One.

Heavy assault on the Cube.

the Cube is surrounded not that it matters to the Borg.

Our Borg "Queen" (John) taking off shield points from a brutal assault!

The Borg Cube making a break for the Planet it wishes to assimilate.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! NO! It's a FLYING BRICK! Silly Kraxon trying to turn.

Eye level shot of the action because you know... it's at eye level.

The final moments of battle. The Valdore Dropped the shields and the Kronos One delivered the final blow!

The 10 Captains (names added later)

Travis Hodges 2013 
In association with Dragon's Den Gaming
Short Pump, VA

Star Trek V.S. Star Wars!

This is purely an Introduction to the blogging I will Hopefully be doing directly for the Dragon's Den
Game store in Short Pump, VA! This is the First truly awesome event I was able to be apart of and got going on November 15, 2013. It was going to start out as a simple 4 way one ship battle at 50 points per person. 3 Star Trek players and 1 X-wing Player lead to a 5th player then a 6th and it turned in to a 3 on 3 Star Wars V.S. Star Trek battle! When it began the planning turned to 75 Points a player which made things more... Interesting. There was a great deal of discussion amongst allies about Stratagem as they selected there ships, upgrades, starting positions, and me ad not yet started thovements. Before we knew it, it had been over an hour and we had not yet started the actual game yet! But finally everything was planned and the game was set into motion!

                                 (Star Wars <--------------------------------------> Star Trek)

 Star Trek's Team!
- U.S.S. Enterprise (Center)
- I.R.W. Valdore (Bottom)
- I.K.S. Neg'Vhar (Left)
- I.K.S Gr'oth (top)

U.S.S- United Star Ship
I.R.W.- Imperial Romulan Warbird
I.K.S.- Imperial Klingon Ship

Star Wars Team!
- Rebel X-wing Luke Skywalker (near back left)
- 3 Imperial Tie Fighters (front left, middle front and back)
- Rebel HWK 290 "The Moldy Crow" (back left)
- Imperial Lambda Class Shuttle (right)
- Imperial Slave one Boba Fett (far Right)

The battle was slow going  at first with the distance being so great between the ships but it lead to a lot Strategics amongst the teams what with a rather daunting obstacle in the center of the map.

Notice the oval shaped obstacle in the picture that is an unstable worm hole any ship coming within
Range 1 attack of it had to roll an attack die, should it land on a critical hit it would deal 1 damage to
hull regardless of shields. as you can see once the distance was cleared battle was heated.

There are some balance issues within the game most of which where easily resolved examples being...
The Star Trek ships generally have a higher number of attack dice (red) and while cloaked (select ships...) have a lot more agility dice (green) but while uncloaked those ships could hardly defend against the brutal assaults the Star Wars ships could unleash and the same was generally true in  there
direction as well, The Star Trek ships have more attack dice but the Star Wars ships typically have more defense die in general. The increased number of ships the Star wars players could take at 75 points helped them a lot too where it is easy to spend 75 points on a ship for the Trek players you could easily take 2 or 3 ships for The Star Wars players. (I grant the fact the Slave One can eat 75 points relatively easily.)  The only other issues that arose from the play of these two games together
where simple rule clashes which came down to 3rd party mediation and in the event where one rule  gave an advantage to one team and not the other, it was decided the more beneficial rule would take president over the other. So there where rules from X-wing that where used over Attack wing rules and vice versa.

First blood was drawn by the Star Trek team! that Lambda class shuttle had to go! With the Pilot and upgrade set up, it was making target locks rapidly and giving them to it's team mates which is very useful for team Star Wars and scary for team Star Trek. There was focused fire upon it and it was brought down! Shortly after the I.R.W. Valdore (My ship...) was obliterated by the Slave One, after it's rather lengthy stray from the battle.

First move for team Star Trek

First move for team Star Wars

In this corner Star Trek!

And in this Corner! Star Wars! 

 The Senario

Two battles in two Galaxies... A worm hole opens and The skirmish between the Rebel Alliance and The Imperial Army are spirited away though a sudden worm hole and are dumped into unfamiliar stars... Suddenly on sensors and screens more weapons fire is apparent! Four wholly unfamiliar ships
are seen firing amongst themselves. Hostilities cease and the two groups begin to examine one another... All of a sudden enemy is now ally for self preservation. the newly opened worm hole is throwing off  violent radiation, both sides decide it is best to avoid getting too close to this strange churning anomaly, but there are new enemies to be destroyed and with some clever maneuvering it might just be possible.

... We can finish Destroying each other AFTER we have dealt with this unknown threat.


I will update this more as I receive more pictures from the other players there where camera phones snapping mad pics so there will be lots more!