Short Battle report vs Zelnik

[Eldercat]

Got a game of BFG in over vassal last night vs Zelnik. I was IN vs his Chaos. It was my first game at 1500, and my list was thrown together in like 5 minutes. It looks weird because I just combined my 500 point list and my 1000 point list, and tweaked a little bit.


1 Emperor Class Battleship
     FA with 1 extra Reroll;
1 Mars Class Battlecruiser Prow Nova Cannon
1 Lord Daros (Lunar)  Prow Nova Cannon
1 Minotaur (Lunar)  Prow Nova Cannon
3 Dauntless with Prow Lance Battery
2 Firestorm Class Frigates

He looked at my list and pretty much told me I would really regret taking 3 NC, and he was right.
The map was setup with a large gas cloud in the middle of the table as the only terrain. He won the roll-off and forced me to deploy first, so I split into two groups to move around the gas cloud. Mars and Dauntless squad to one side, rest of capitals to other, with firestorms in the middle to reinforce whichever side he was more heavily deployed to. I honestly deployed too far forward on the board, and would deeply regret this on the second turn.

First turn I light him up with NC 2 out of 3 hit something, my direct hit rolled a 2. 
Every other shot I took either missed or bounced off his shields. I launched bombers. His turn he destroyed my large bomber squad, and focus fired down my Mars getting 7 hits from 8 lance shots with me missing every single brace roll. Launched a large squad of assault boats and moving them right in front of my Emps forced movement. My turn I opened up with 9 lance shots hoping to take out one of his cruisers, he made all but 2 of his brace rolls yay shields down! My small bomber squad from the mars attacked the same ship and managed 1 hit, WOOO DAMAGE! Both remaining NC missed, all other fire missed or bounced off shields, and my emp took 5 hits when it ran into the assault boats. His turn he took the mars to 1 hull point, crippled two dauntlesses, got super lucky and destroyed the firestorms who had tried to screen the emp from the remaining assault boats, and gotten 6 hits on the Emp. I called it at this point, as one flank was just gone and the other flank had no chance against his whole fleet.

[Vaaish]

I think, from what you've written, you should try concentrating fire on ships you've dropped shields on that aren't braced. Other than that I'd suggest you use his dice to roll your brace saves and lance shots.

[Eldercat]

I fired at 2 ships the whole game, my main problem was because I split my forces up into two flanks to go around the gas cloud they were out of range of each other.

But if he hadn't crippled my mars on turn one, it might have gone better for me.

No kidding on rolling with his dice, missing every single brace roll on turn one was ridiculous. The worst thing was he was just rolling average, with LO rerolls.

But in the end the list did not synergize well, I made 2 huge mistakes in deployment, splitting my fleet, and deploying at the front edge of my deployment zone, and trying to use the NC on the lunars meant that I lost out on the lances as they were in a different arc.

If I were to just tweak this list instead of scrap it altogether, I would drop the Lunars for Gothics, and use those points and drop the firestorms for another dauntless to run 2 squads of 2 as flankers, and give assault boats to the Emperor.

[RCgothic]

You can't make brace saves against shield hits, so if he made all but 2 of his brace saves then the result should have been shields down and 2 hits scored against the hull.

Eg, 8 hits, 2 take down shields, 6 may be saved against, 4 saved, 2 hits scored.


Lunars are reasonable ships. The problem with Gothics is they lack damage output. They'll score hits reliably, but even in the best circumstances they'll never score more than 4 hits. A lucky Lunar can manage 7, whilst a Dominator can dish out 10. Most of the time there won't be much difference between them, but the WBs are the ones that can change a game with a single lucky salvo.

[Bryantroy2003]

Thats why they usually pair up with a WB equiped ship or a sqaudron of Swords to take out a wounded Cruiser after the rest of the line punches through. But Gothics by them selves are just distractions other wise.

[Phthisis]

Im interested in what Zelnick's fleet list was.

[horizon]

Thus always either:
Dominator + Gothic (non squadroned)
or
Lunar + Lunar (squadroned).

[Zelnik]

2 murders
1 hades
2 devistations
1 acheron
1 repulsive ld 8 commander, mark of nurgle, fully upgraded.

From my perspective....

When he deployed his mars and light cruisers on the other side of the table, he made his fatal mistake, since he threw 330 delicate points along with a huge comittment of 270 points all together in an easily isolated target. As chaos, I had range and speed to cause some hurt, but only if he took the first round.  To counter the emperor, I deployed my devistations and acherons at a 45 degree angle on the left side of the table, aiming inward, allowing me to use my long range to screw with his lunars and emperor.  The repulsive was in the center, angled to the left at 45 to do the same.

The roll for first turn went to me, so I forced him to take it.  3 nova cannons are scary, but I took the risk and let him shoot without bracing, fortunately, he scattered and knocked shields down that round, allowing me to lock on with the murders and hades on direct approach. 8 locked on lances demolished his mars, removing it as a threat for the rest of the game.  The other side of the table utterly failed their special orders (a trend we both suffered for most of the game). But my repulsive was able to knock down his st 8 bomber flight with its full firepower, while the devistations and acheron began poking at the emperor.  Launched 2 squads of 4 assault boats, one directly in his path.

The next round went poorly for him. His nova cannons missed again, and the locked on lances from the dauntlesses were braced by the hades, only taking 2 points of damage in the end.

The emperor moved onto ordnance and had its prow and port weapons knocked out, the following ordnance phase resulted in the death of the firestorms from a- boats.

My turn came around, the murders locked on, same with the repulsive and acheron, the devs reloaded.

The murders laid waste to his dauntless squadron, and nearly killed the mars, the combined firepower of the other ships smacked his battleship and lunars for good damage.

Since most of his fleet was braced, his next round was going to be insignificant before the slaughter, he called it then.

Good game all around! Great time, and would totally play with him again!