Dropfleet Commander Battle Report Part 3 - The Scenario - where all the careful planning falls apart!

So with both sides set we now needed a scenario, and we picked Scenario 8 at random. Defence Relay - Oh Dear!

This is an attack on an interlinked Defence position, with a lot of potential ground fire PLUS the added complication of a pair of orbiting space stations - heavily armed ones at that. This threw a spanner into the works for me as my main landing group was configured to assault surface targets, NOT orbital ones. Even worse, this scenario uses a "Column" approach, where each player only has two battlegroups available on turn one, with the others arriving on turns 2 & 3. One effect of that staggered entry was that the players need to make a decision about their order of arrival - do you send in the light and fast units to try and grab objectives early or push the heavier units forward first and risk finding your opponent already hunkered down around the objectives?

Here is the table set up ready to go. Again we have not finished our Space Stations so a pair of old Ground Zero Games  stations from their excellent Full Thrust range were dusted off and pressed into service -  in need of a repaint and some new bases I fear. Here is the table laid out and ready for the game to start. I should add the star mat - or rather night city mat is from Deep-Cut Studios and is made from neoprene (mouse-mat) material that rolls up into a carrying tube - very nice and highly recommended.

The Communications clusters (red) are "Critical Locations" which score bonus Victory Points, as are the two stations (blue), but the Military "clusters" (green) have some serious defensive capability. This leaves the players with some interesting choices. Scourge are entering from the left, PHR from the right.

So next time, we actually start rolling dice :-)