Battle Report
Battlefleet Gothic
Admiral Cochrane's Hunt
Turn Eight
|
|
|
|
Turn One Turn Two Turn Three Turn Four Turn Five |
Turn Seven Turn Eight Turn Nine Conclusion |
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The eighth turn started as a repeat of the seventh, with the Courageous once again failing its reload ordnance order. This was particularly depressing for Tim, as he attempts the Courageous each time as it has the highest leadership value of the three carriers. Needless to say, he was not cheerful and spent a while cursing his poor luck and examining the dice very closely.
His Dictators then continued their standard formation, although now resigned to the coming conflict they moved their maximum distance inan effort to bring their weapons to bear. In a similar fashion, the eight wings of bombers that were holding around the vessels were also dispatched towards the Chaos fleet in an attempt to do the maximum damage possible before it arrived.
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
My turn also seemed to mirror the previous one, with Idolator E squadron and F squadron locking on, the Sariel reloading against all odds, although it was finally out of craft for the battle, and the Iblis also locking on. The Agaures, however, failed its command check. The entire fleet then stormed forward in true Chaos fashion, the Astaroth continuing to drift out of formation and towards the edge of the board.
The ships were now in range, and both of the Idolator squadrons targetted the incoming Imperial bomber waves. They managed to destroy one wing, and while the rules state that the entire wave should therefore be destroyed, we were still playing our own, misread version and a single wing disappeared. The five raider vessels then turned their weapons batteries to the Courageous, managing to down a shield. The Agaures also managed to hit the Imperial bombers (I wont forget THAT rule for a while!), while the Iblis turned its lances to the Glorious, again stripping a shield from its defences.
The ordnance phase saw the Infidels launch a torpedo salvo, which just was not able to reach the Dictators, and the Sariel launch fighters for the last time, which intercepted a wave of Imperial bombers and took them out of the game. The remaining bombers then split themselves against squadrons E and F. Squadron F downed one with turret fire and suffered no hits in return, while the Dev took out both wings attacking it and the Cagnazzo managed to destroy one wing and leave the remaining wing so pressurised that it could not score any hits. All that was left was to remove the only possible blast marker.
|
Commander Wilks was visibly strained. He was staring at several displays showing the ship and barking
into the comms unit to the launch crews. The Furious, along with the other ships in the squadron had not
been able to launch defences for too long, and the opportunity was slipping away. The few Starhawk bomber
wings already mobilised grouped quickly, before pulling away from the carriers and towards the closing enemy
fleet. Warning icons dotted the tactical display as the Chaos ships diverted power to their weapons and brought the ships within range. Lances stabbed from the knife-edge prows of the Chaos ships, reducing entire wings of bombers to gas in an instant. The Courageous took a hit from a squadron of smaller ships, the force of the many blasts absorbed by her shields. Where they had been prematurely detonated, super-heated gas clouds expanded slowly, obscurring view and momentarily fooling sensors. The enemy Murder class cruiser fired, and it was connected to the Glorious by a vicious beam from a battery of lances, but again the shields held on this vessel, this time they became visible as the power of the blast was refracted and deflected around the perimeter of the invisible sphere protecting the ship. Suddenly, the sound of sirens rang through the Furious. Looking at the tactical display, Johanson registered the presence of incoming torpedoes, and signalled to the damage crews. At this distance it was impossible to tell if the torpedoes contained explosive heads, or a Chaos boarding party and Johanson was taking no risks. The Starhawk bombers met their targets, dividing at the last instance to attack the highest number of enemy ships. They were met by a flurry of defensive fire and more than half the small craft were vapourised as they closed, the survivors too busy avoiding the devastation to set up effective bombing runs. |
Date: 11/03/2002
Written by: CyberShadow