Worthy prey - Star Trek Attack Wing Battle Report

Worthy prey - Star Trek Attack Wing Battle Report

The Hirogen have arrived in Star trek attack wing all the way from the Delta quadrant, the nomadic hunters of the galaxy. Hailing from the Voyager series they were a short term reoccurring enemy, but a very aggressive and deadly foe.

The Mission - Worthy Prey

This mission pits two ships against each other at 50SP's (SP = ship points) each, one being the hunted the other the hunter. For this mission the Hirogen in the Alpha Hunter will be the hunter and i have chosen to use another ship I haven't been able to use yet. The hunted, this will be Chang's bird of prey.

The Worthy Prey mission came as part of the Alpha hunter expansion pack. 

Three objective markers are placed anywhere on the play area as asteroids (These will count as obstacles). The hunted player sets up first anywhere on the battlefield. Then the hunters are placed anywhere in the play area but not within 1-3 of the hunted ship. 
Every time the hunter attacks the hunted ship, the hunter player gets a mission token on their ship card, this will determine if the prey is worthy or not.

The Forces

Hirogen

Alpha Hunter

Captain- Karr
Elite Upgrade- Stalking Mode
Elite Upgrade-Full Reverse
Weapons Upgrade- Subnucleonic Beam
System Upgrade-Monotanium Armor Plating
System Upgrade- Sensor Network

Karr

Klingon

Chang's bird of prey

Captain- Chang

Elite upgrade- Once more unto the breach

Weapons upgrade- Photon Torpedoes x2

System upgrade- Prototype cloaking device

Crew upgrade- Kerla

Set Up

The Klingon General Chang has entered the asteroid field to elude his hunters, but Karr in his Alpha hunter will stop at nothing. Karr will have his prey but will General Chang be worthy. The two ships enter the asteroid field but only one will leave.

General Chang sets up behind an asteroid awaiting the hunters.

The Alpha hunter spots the Klingon ship within the asteroid field.

Turn 1

General Chang takes a sharp  turn to face the Alpha hunter, then enables its cloaking device.

The alpha hunter flies true to confront the Bird of prey head on,

The Alpha Hunter engages its Stalking Mode.

The first exchanges of fire. 

The Hirogen ship fires through the Klingon's cloaking device causing a hit on the Bird of prey, only the hard work from the crew member Kerla stopped it becoming double.

The return fire from the decloaking Klingons took down three of the four shields on the Alpha hunter. General Chang gave the order for the Bird of prey to raise its shields.

A mission token is placed on the Hirogen ship card.

Turn 2

The bird of prey accelerates forward to get some distance from the hunter.  The Monotanium Armor Plating fails to stop the target lock from the Bird of prey.

With stalking mode enabled the targeted ship loses two off its captain skill leaving Chang on captain skill four.

Karr chases after the Bird of prey, making a come about maneuver. 

The alpha hunter has its prey in its sights and lets loose its weapons.

The Hirogen assault takes down all of the ships shields.

Another mission token gets placed on the Hirogen ship card.

General Chang Barks the order to let loose a volley of photon torpedoes, using up its target lock. "BaH!"

 Karr in the Alpha hunter growled in anger as the photon torpedoes took down his last shield, hit the hull and critically damaged his weapons.

Turn 3

The Klingon Bird of Prey preforms evasive maneuvers as it turns gently away from its pursuers. Without any active shields it is unable to activate its cloaking device.

With only one hit point left Karr target locks General Chang's ship. 

Prey within its sights, to the hunt.

 "I shall take great pleasure in tracking them down - and making the kill."

The Alpha hunter fires its Subnucleonic Beam

The Prey escapes the attack.  

The Klingon crew get irritable with no targets in its firing arc.

 The third mission token is placed on the alpha hunter ship card.

Turn 4

Chang makes a sharp turn to try and get the Hirogen 

within its targeting systems.

Karr set the ship to battlestations as his prey becomes square within its sights.

The Alpha hunter gets into position for a fatal strike

"You are mine, now and after death! "

General Chang's ship takes four hits and is destroyed.

The final mission token was placed on the  alpha hunter ship card.

Worthy or not?

Now the battle is finished the hunter rolls attack dice equal to the number of mission tokens on the ship card. 
Any rolls of at least one Battlestations, Hit or Critical hit means the prey was worthy.

Yes the prey was deemed worthy.

 A Hirogen victory

my new obsession - Star trek attack wing

My new obsession...

Over the past few months i have been playing Star Trek Attack Wing (STAW). I started because i play X-wing the Star wars version as i am a big SW fan and the fact that STAW uses the same rules system (Flightpath system) was a huge bonus to me, it saved me learning another set of rules. Also with the painting list getting bigger and bigger, pre painted miniature was a very welcome bonus. 

Starter set

Before i started playing this game, i can honestly say that i wasn't a star trek fan. Don't get me wrong i enjoyed the original movies, when i was growing up (Star Trek IV The voyage home was always a favourite) but i didn't watch any of the series in the star trek franchise. It took a friend to persuade me to buy the game, and i'm glad i did.

After getting a few of the expansion ships i started looking for the episodes the ships where featured in to get a bit of context for the ships and crew. The ships come from all corners of the star trek universe from the Klingon D7  I.K.S Gr'oth  ship from the Trouble with tribbles , an original series episode to the U.S.S Equinox from Voyager.

Klingon D7 class I.K.S Gr'oth 

Nova Class U.S.S Equinox

Each of the expansions come with a mission card so you can play a mission that usually has relevance to its involvement in the story. For example the U.S.S Reliant  has the mission card that lets you re fight the battle against Khan in the Mutara Nebula. This is one of the appeals for me, that is to replay all the battles in the original films.

Fleet Building
The massive choice of ships and captain's gives you great flexibility as the captains don't have to stay with the ships that they came with, they can even cross faction. So you can have Jean-luc Picard on a Borg tactical cube can be locutus of borg, or Kirk onboard the Klingon bird of prey with his crew.

Kirk onboard the Klingon bird of prey with his crew in Star trek IV

The upgrades are my favourite part of the fleet building. Each ship as different upgrade slots depending on the class. These vary from crew, tech and weapon upgrades. Some captains have access to elite talents. 

Crew upgrades

Weapon and a tech upgrade 

Compared to X-wing there is a lot more factions you can use if you wanted to play pure non mixed forces.
I prefer to play with pure single faction forces. 

The choices available are

• Federation
• Klingon
• Romulan
• Dominion
• Borg
• Species 8472
• Kazon
• Bajoran
• Ferengi
• Independents
• Mirror universe
• Vulcan

Each ship comes with a card that has a named version of the ship and default stock ship of that class. The named ships tend to have +1 shield and a special rule.

The Miniatures

The miniatures are good and detailed,  but the paint job is what lets everything down. the range as a whole is a bit hit or miss. Some ships look fantastic like the U.S.S Equinox and the U.S.S Excelsior. but others look bland and are in need of a details like the Borg Tactical Cube, i had to add a few patches of bright green and a dark wash to make it look less plastic.
.

Gameplay

The Flightpath system is a very good system but what set this apart from the x-wing game is that the game is more about the crew and upgrade actions. This you have to make a choice of which actions to use, not just out pilot them. So in the end it does capture the feel of a star trek battle, instead of a dogfight which x-wing does very well. Compared to X-wing the ships hit hard but dodge very little and all ships will have shields, helping to reinforce the cruiser type conflict.

The Missions cards in each expansion is a very good idea for refights with different ships, like the Kobayashi Maru mission with the Enterprise-D or the Voyager.

The multiple factions available leads well for Multiplayers games, the starter set promotes it further with three factions included. 

The large variety of crew and cross faction upgrades, makes each battle feel like its own mini episode.

My collection

Federation 

• U.S.S Enterprise - Constitution class
• U.S.S Enterprise Refit - Constitution class
• U.S.S Enterprise- D - Galaxy class
• U.S.S Reliant - Miranda class
• U.S.S Excelsior - Excelsior class
• U.S.S Voyager - Intrepid class
• U.S.S Equinox - Nova class
• U.S.S Enterprise- E - Sovereign class
• U.S.S Enterprise NX-01 - NX-01 class
• U.S.S Stargazer - Constellation class
• U.S.S Pegasus - Oberth class
• U.S.S Prometheus - Prometheus class

U.S.S Voyager - Intrepid class

Klingon

• I.K.S Gr'oth - D7 Class
• I.K.S Kronos one - K'tinga Class
• I.K.S Maht-H'a - Vor'cha Class
• Chang's Bird of prey- Klingon Bird of prey.
• I.K.S. Negh'var - Negh'var Class
• I.K.S. Ning'tao - B'rel Class

I.K.S Kronos one - K'tinga Class

Romulan

• I.R.W. Khazara - D'Deridex Class
• I.R.W. Gal Gath'thong - Romulan bird-of-prey
• R.I.S Apnex - Romulan Science Vessel
• Scimitar - Reman Warbird

I.R.W. Khazara - D'Deridex Class

Borg

• Tactical Cube 138 - Borg Tactical Cube
• Borg Sphere 4270 - Borg Sphere
• Borg Soong - Borg Ship Type 03
• Scout Cube 508 - Borg Scout cube
• Queen Vessel Prime - Borg Octahedron

Tactical Cube 138 - Borg Tactical Cube

Bajoran

• Interceptor 5 - Bajoran Interceptor

Dominion

• Gor Portas - Breen battle cruiser

Gor Portas - Breen battle cruiser

Independant

• Alpha Hunter - Hirogen warship
• Gornarus - Gorn Raider

Alpha Hunter -Hirogen Warship

Mirrior Universe

• I.S.S Defiant - Defiant class
• AssimilationTarget Prime/U.S.S Enterprise-D -Galaxy class
• Regent's Flagship - Negh'var class
• U.S.S. Pasteur - Olympic class
• I.S.S. Enterprise - Constitution class

U.S.S. Pasteur - Olympic Class

And no doubt more will be coming soon

"I'm from Iowa, i only work in outer space." - Kirk

Dark Heresy - Agri Agro

Roleplaying campaign

Cast:

Kar, Feral world Guardsman

Soloman "Cutter" Garvel, Hive world Scum

Krell "Stern" Rabalias, Hive World scum

Zetkin, Void born Psyker

Nihilus Zarkov, Imperial world Arbitrator

Novus Dorn, Imperial world Tech priest

Last weeks XP award:

Kar - 80

Soloman "Cutter" Garvel - 110

Krell "Stern" Rabalias - 80

Zetkin - 110

Nihilus Zarkov - 80

Novus Dorn- 110

Episode Five - Agri Agro

Planet bound

Zetkin strained to control the shuttle into the planets atmosphere

She steered with great effort so that it would land on solid ground. Angling on the surface to land. Without warning from her cockpit runes the other engine caught on fire as she pulled up on to lessen the angle. Novus helped co-pilot the shuttle with his rudimentary knowledge of piloting.

She landed sliding along the wheat fields, leaving a brown scar on the surface, where the craft had hit the ground. The shuttle had only just come to a halt before the crew bailed out getting to a safe distance away from the gently burning shuttle.

On the surface

Outside the slowly smoking crashed shuttle, they looked about at their surroundings, as far as their eyes could see there was a vast expanse of growing wheat fields with dirt roads separating the various fields.

Gathering their salvaged gear they headed off along the dirt path

The party started their journey with the quiet Astropath they travelled along the dirt path, in the distance they spotted a small outpost. As they got closer they couldn’t see anyone about, the main door was ajar. Further inspection shown it had been abandoned, Novus found himself a terminal, and much to his great relief Zarkov came across a half packet of lho sticks. At the other side of the outpost, Kar came across a few farming vehicles, but it was the heavy truck and all terrain Jeep that interested him mostly. Looking in the cockpit he spotted that the keys to the vehicles were in them.

The small outpost looks to have only contained five families.

The Astropath still refused to speak; she gently drank some water softly weeping.

After some searching they found some fuel and filled up canisters.

Novus gathered info on the inhabitants of the outpost; they had fled to the star port about a week ago, when Orks appeared in system. The Talon starport was only three days drive. Soon they filled up the back of the truck with supplies for the journey.

The Journey

The jeep driven by Zarchov in front with the truck driven by Kar following behind.

Cutter and Stern rode in the jeep, while rest travelled in the back of the truck.

Lying not far from the trail, a large piece of debris that had fallen from the sky, on closer inspection it appeared to be solid chunk Ork debris.

Cutter on sentry as others slept, suddenly saw an Ork landing craft fly dangerous close overhead heading in the direction of the Talon spaceport.

As night progressed Zarkov drove in front his lights turned off and wearing the night vision goggles Novus had lent him. Kar following Zarkov’s rear lights in the truck behind. Suddenly he registered movement up ahead, a screeching whistling sound accompanied the object moving fast towards him. With a breakneck turn he drove in to the wheat field on his left not stopping, an explosion shook the ground where he was just moments ago, the truck behind was scattered with mud as the ground in front erupted. Kar swerved the truck to the right avoiding the crater the missile had left behind.

Zarkov reading his auspex, four blips lay up ahead; he drove straight into them and was rewarded with a squeal and a squelching noise.

Ork Patrol

Up ahead a crude Ork ground vehicle could be seen heading in their direction its engine spewing black smoke. Zarkov swiftly drove deep in to the wheat fields. And made a small clearing and waited for the Ork trukk to pass. However it didn’t pass. It stopped at the trail that Zarkov had made into the wheat. The inquisitorial cell hearing the Ork trukk’s engine stop, got out and readied their weapons .Zarkov, Kar and Cutter headed in to the wheat and hid, Zarkov hid behind his scopulus pattern riot shield on the left of the track that he had shaped with the Jeep, he read his auspex noting five blips, coming up the direction of the trail. He could see the Guardsman Kar not far from him evaluating his position. Cutter was on the other side of the trail in the wheat closer to the vehicles, his weapon raised. The rest stayed in the solid cover of the truck.

(Ork boyz x3 Dark heresy creatures anathema p98)

(Squig handler Ork boyz x1 Whip instead of choppa, Dark heresy creatures anathema p98)

(Attack squig x1 Dark heresy creatures anathema p101)

Zarkov hidden in the wheat could see on his auspex that two of the blips had broken off into his direction, he could hear a wet sniffing noise. Cutter and Kar waited until the greenskins where in sight. Soon three Orks turned the corner and came into view.

Cutter opened up with his autogun on full auto in to the nearest one. It roared savagely and ran towards his assailant. Cutter still firing on full auto as the Ork closed the gap between them, he could see that he had hit the beast but it seems not to notice. Soon it was standing before him.

Kar let lose on another Ork, it too closed the gap letting off a poorly aimed shot off at the guardsman. Soon they were engaged in brutal melee combat. Kar dodged the Orks ruthless swings with its cruel choppa. Then pulled out his own blade

 As soon as it one of the blips got uncomfortably near he fired off a shot from his shotgun. Towering above him stood an Ork at his side, carrying a whip, and it fired a shot that penetrated both the arbites riot shield and armour in the leg, he toppled to the ground, the large toothed and now angry squig lunged at him only to bite into the riot shield and the nuzzle of a the arbites veritas pattern shotgun, Zarkov pulled the trigger, the back of the squigs bulbous head exploded out. The squigs handler lashed out at him with his whip keeping the arbiter suppressed

The last unengaged Ork charged towards the rest of the party in the vehicles. Stern jumped up and charged at the Ork. The greenskin struck out at the outlaw smashing him hard Sterns leg bleeding heavily, the outlaw fell back against the jeep.

Kar and Cutter both took down their green foes and ran to help Stern. Novus and Zetkin then joined in on the combat the force of numbers the Ork was overwhelmed.

The Psyker used her abilities and used warp energies to knit Sterns wound back together.

Stern snapped out a large Ork tooth from the one that had injured him

Cutter, Kar and Novus ran to help the beleaguered arbite. It was Kar who had the killing blow against the Ork squig handler, slicing its arm off in a spray of blood.

They all breathed heavy as the last of the Orks life left him.

They could all hear that thee was still some Orks waiting at the trukk.

Stern sneaked up on the Ork trukk through the wheat, he lit his fire bomb and hurled in to the open topped cabin area. With a wash of heat the cabin went on fire, setting the three Ork passengers aflame. The trukk dashed forward and made a skid turn throwing the burning passengers from the trukk. The driver drove back up the track the Ork gunner scanning the area for signs of movement. Stern ran and the Ork gunner let rip with the high velocity weapon. The shots landed all around sterns running feet, lucky to have not been hit. He joined everyone in the vehicles, he got in the jeep and the party headed off as fast as they could.

Escape on the dirt track

Solid slugs from the vehicles big shoota strafed across the Jeep hitting cutter, but absorbed by his carapace armour.

Novus lay flat on the back of the truck, resting his meltagun on the back facing towards the Ork truck. The truck slowed to let the Orks get closer. Novus then fired.

The meltagun hit the left side of the trukk reducing it to molten metal, the Ork driver roared and the Ork gunner fired wildly at the red robed firer of the Melta weapon, the shots bounced off harmlessly off the tech priests newly acquired carapace armour. The Ork trukk slowed. Zarkov put his foot down and drove off with Kar close, leaving the Orks far behind him

+++++++++++++++++++++Transmission end+++++++++++++++++

XP award:

Kar -120

Soloman "Cutter" Garvel - 120

Krell "Stern" Rabalias - 120

Zetkin - 120

Nihilus Zarkov - 120

Novus Dorn- 120