Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

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I played a game of Star Fleet Battles this weekend: Federation CA vs Klingon D7 (no refits) on a floating map. I played the Klingon.

The first turn I pulled in at about range 14 and fired my disrupters. 3 hit and I maybe did 5 points of shield damage after blowing through the reinforcement.

The second turn I did it again. Strangely, the Fed ship was not firing any weapons.

The third turn I got ready to try it again. The Fed seemed to have dropped reinforcement and invested in speed this time. I couldn’t manage to get a shot at him without heading into range 8 territory. I didn’t want to waste the energy I had in my disrupters, so I pulled on in and fired away. I didn’t do a whole lot of damage, but the shield had a good solid dent in it.

One impulse later, the Fed turns towards me and unloads. All four overloaded photons hit. Over fifty points of damage came through my shields. I was toast.

This was a disaster, but better than the games I played of this when I was a kid. Back then we’d overload weapons and move to range 1 on the first turn to unload. This time around I actually managed to pull off two turns of “saber dancing.” I of course should have given the Fed wider berth– so what if I waste a bit of energy and miss a chance to fire disruptors! Don’t close range unless you’ve stacked everything in your favor. If things don’t turn out the way you want, turn away and try something else! The next game will be much better, I’m sure….

I would like to be good enough that I could force the Fed player to eject his overloaded photons and switch to standard loads– or even proximities. If that were possible, the Klingon could whittle his opponent away for a few turns and tally up a sizeable advantage. If the Klingon can close to overload range while the Fed isn’t overloading– or better yet, while he’s reloading– so much the better!