okay, as i got enough pics and somehow am in the mood, a quick summary how it went and what happened, with pics:
the game itself was as stated fleet engagement, chaos vs. SM, and our formation eneded up in the table as setup variant B, putting our fleets abeam of each other. bad start for me, as i play space marines, and he had a long-range standoff lance shooting fleet.
good for me: he sucked massively at rolling leadership, ending up with most being LD 6 or 7... whereas i did pretty good (okay, the space marine LD table helped a bit....
)
he had:
-desolator with cheap commander
-2x devastation
-2x murder with lances
-hades
-repulsive
i had:
-battle barge with master of the fleet
-2x strike cruisers
-2x strike cruisers with BC cannon swap
-3x gladius
-6x hunter (2x3 squadrons)
first round not much happened besides some maneuvering (including some interesting moments, me using the asteroid fields in some gung-ho actions ploughing through them to gain a tactically favourable position), but second turn it got interesting:
ordnance spam does the trick of splitting his fleet up, here he makes a fatal mistake (can you spot it?)
here you go, he split the repulsive from the other ships. the slowest ship in the entire fleet suddenly ended up in the middle of my fleet, with no support and nowhere to run.
outcome was predictable, as he failed his brace for impact tests constantly, i blew it up in a single round, not giving him any chance to disengage.
i also managed to sneak my escorts behind his carriers (later he had to disengage both due to the damages my escorts caused, after also having prevented him for 3 turns straight from launching ordnance), his major problem throughout the game was that with almost half my fleet being escorts and the strike cruisers being very maneuverable too, i constantly outmaneuvered him and was on his tail...
at this point, things turned into a brawl, his problem was that i outmaneuvered him so badly that two murder class cruisers and a hades class did virtually nothing since they were too far away from the action, and by the time they got there, i had disposed of the battleship, and could turn my guns on them....
this was the end of the game, i had blown up the repulsive, the desolator, the hades, and one murder, he had disengaged one murder and the two devastations. i held the field with two wrecks on it (repulsive and hades), and my losses were the squadron of gladius, and one disengaged hunter squadron.
although it being a harsh beating for chaos in the end (unexpectedly, i must say, as he pretty much had the perfect fleet and the perfect setup to beat me up badly, but his bad LD, unfavourable terrain, him having no escorts, and some bad decisions turned it around), we both had a blast, and BFG will be a lasting part of everyday life there from now on, with daily games in the store.
oh boy, i'm so happy with this my flagship thrusts rainbows
