Void Warfare Battle report 2

I had the opportunity to play a test game at my FLGS this week.

Unfortunately, I missed one or two moments where taking a picture of the game would have been useful; we were too much into the game. Still, I've got enough to provide a proper report.

My adversary was one of our local players, although he mostly plays board and card games; which made this a good way to see if someone relatively new to miniature games would be able to grasp the game's mechanics.

We used the v0.2 alpha rules, with 3 Javelins per side. I used the Blue units, he the Red ones.

We had a 6" by 6" square zone in the middle of our 48" by 48" battlefield. There were two large rock fragments (represented by the craters) flanking the zone providing some cover.

The objective in this game was to capture the zone.

This could be done by having one or more units in the zone at the end of a turn while the opponent has no units in the zone to contest it.

Managing to claim the zone for 3 turns would win you the game. Destroying all opposing forces was, of course, also a way to win.

Here's our deployment (my apologies for the green mat, I don't have a good space playing surface yet):

I decide to move two of my units forward reasonably quickly, taking cover behind the far rock. My third unit will swing around the other rock and hopefully catch anything trying to loiter in the central zone.
My opponent decides to go for an agressive strategy; his units will move forward pretty quickly on intersecting trajectories, with one of them poised to get into the zone on turn 2.

Movement for turn 1.
Note that the leftmost Red unit is at risk of overshooting the zone into the rock (the trajectory marker closest to the camera is his); he will have to do some serious maneuvering to avoid it, potentially exposing him.
My own units on the left flank are also going to have to do some serious maneuvering to avoid a crash, which is extra bad because at least one of them will end up in an exposed position to enemy units while doing so.

I forgot to take pictures of the situation during turn 2.
This is where the shooting starts. The middle of my three units opens fire at the enemy unit with a spike marker, which is barely within the 16" detection range. He misses, but the return fire was a lot more effective, dealing 2 points of damage.
I also have the final shot of the turn, where my rightmost unit slightly damaged the enemy on the right in the zone. He was outside detection range until he fired his railgun, which meant activating him last kept him safe.

After movement, my opponent gets two of his units into the zone, scoring his first victory point. His third unit has to maneuver a bit to not hit the rock.
My own units on the left move across the rock, ending up on the other side. One of them has to maneuver heavily to avoid it, making him a target.
My third unit continued his move around the right rock, taking care to remain without spike markers so the enemy couldn´t shoot at him.
They still weren´t in a position to contest the zone at the end of the next turn, which was rather worrying.

Turn 3 shooting. I win initiative this turn and decide to go first.
Stupidly, I decide to shoot with the undamaged unit with 2 spike markers instead of the damaged one, firing missiles at the visible enemy in the zone. That also leaves the unit with 4 spike markers.
On the next shooting activation, the damaged unit is blasted apart by the enemy unit in the bottom left, which can just see it past the rock.
That leaves me with just one unit to shoot with, and two targets; a slightly damaged one in the zone with 2d6 to hit or an undamaged one outside the zone at 3d6. I go for the second target, again dealing light damage.
Return fire is less kind, leaving my right unit on just one HP.

Turn 3 movement.
My left unit maneuvers heavily to get into the zone next turn, as does my opponent's one unit outside the zone.
My other remaining (and severely damaged) unit decides to lie relatively low away from the zone in a firing position.
The undamaged enemy unit in the zone maneuvers slightly to remain in there next turn, floating around calmly.
His buddy is having a lot less fun floating around; he has 3 missiles on his tail and maneuvers hard to try and avoid them. He is partially succesful, but still takes 2 points of damage, which is enough to take him out.
This evens things out for me a bit, although one of my units is more heavily damaged and the other has a ton of Spike Markers from wild maneuvers and firing missiles.

Worse, my opponent has scored his second Victory Point at the end of this turn, which meant he needs just one more.

Turn 4 shooting. The tides turn!
My opponent opens fire first, missing my undamaged unit.
My return fire is less kind, dealing two damage to and destroying the Red unit not in the zone.
Both other shots miss, making this a 2v1 battle now.
Still, if the one remaining Red unit can clear the Blue unit contesting the zone while staying in the zone, the Red side will still win the game.

Turn 3 movement.
My undamaged unit enters the zone to contest it, slowing down heavily to stay in there. The extra spike markers don't really matter since the remaining enemy is rather close.
The Red unit picks up a bit of speed, moving to the center of the zone.
My last unit just keeps on floating back there.

Turn 4.
The one remaining Red unit shoots at the nearby Blue unit with his railgun, hitting but failing to destroy it.
In return, both Blue units fire missiles at the Red target.
He maneuvers 4" to stay in the zone, but this means three of my missiles will roll 2d6 to hit (the ones from the far unit while the other three will roll 3d6.
I manage to get some good rolls and deal 3 damage, spread across 3 different hits.

With the final Red unit destroyed, this battle is a hard-fought victory for the Blue team.

Aftermath

All in all, this was an extremely interesting game. Both of us got really into it.
Afterwards, we had some discussion about what worked and what didn't.

Missiles work in forcing you to maneuver, but their limited killing power when compared to the railgun means you rarely use them.
The railgun carries some risk since it only fires one shot per turn, but each hit has the potential to deal devastating damage. It might need a slight nerf, which would also make the missiles a more viable weapon.

We also agreed that adding some more units would add some more interesting tactical decisions, like leaving one back to provide fire support from a safe distance, but that more than 5 or 6 models per side would probably leave things too confusing with all of those trajectory markers.
Another interesting option is adding a few different unit types, like a squishy "sniper" with better detection ranges and a more powerful weapon and a more tanky close-range fighter with less powerful but more rapid-firing weapons.

He also felt that things were dying rather quickly, but toning down the killing power of the railgun might fix that as well. I might experiment with slightly higher HP values in the future, although I don't want the units feeling extremely tanky.


If you'd like to try this game yourself, the current rules (as of this post) can be found here.
If you have feedback about this game, feel free to comment here or mail me.