Dropfleet Commander Battle Report Part 4 - Opening moves and first Casualties

Our first turn saw the Scourge bring on their Troopship group and a Nickar\Gargoyle Hunter\Killer (HK) group. The Trooper headed straight for the nearest Space Station, the Hunter Killers for the northernmost Communications node. The PHR brought a Frigate group and one of their Troopship groups and moved forward towards their nearest Space Station - everyone dropping to low orbit in preparation for the assault landings next turn. No-one had any viable targets due to scan ranges so there was no combat, and no Command Cards were played on turn one as we couldn't decide if the Fleet Commander had to be on table to do so. Something to look up later.

  Turn 2 Saw the arrival of the Scourge Admiral in his Shenlong class Heavy Cruiser and his escort in the centre, plus the second H\K Group south. The Troopship changed course a little to bring it into a position to assault either the Station or the ground cluster. In the North the H/K Nickars swung in at high speed towards the enemy in the centre and dropped into atmosphere. On the other side however there as an ominous sight of the Heracles lumbering on to the table with an escorting ECM Frigate, plus another Troop carrier group. The Frigates moved straight on to try and hit the Scourge Troopship with their burn-through lasers, one using the "Active Scan" order, however this didn't work as the Troopship used a command card to launch Chaff, temporarily reducing its signature to zero and dropping off scanners.

The Scourge also played a nasty "Abandon Hope" command card which caused the PHR to discard a command card at random. The two Scourge Charybdis Class Bombardment Frigates were forced to fight as standard warships, and suffered accordingly, with one Charybdis and one Harpy being destroyed in an exchange of fire with the PHR Frigates. At the end of Turn 2 it looked like the Scourge had a narrow advantage on the ground, having control of one Communications cluster and a Station but were in trouble in space.