Klingons and Hydrans, first helping

 The Klingons are attacking three Hydran Battle Stations, hoping to spread the little guys thin somewhere in order to do some proper damage. This may not happen at the first station:

The Klingons force here is led by a D7C Command Cruiser, and has no Scout. It does, though, have a Carrier Tug and an F5V Light Carrier. Basically, the Klingons on this front are not as well prepared as their northern brethren against the Kzinti, so they are having to make do in the meantime as the Klingon war machine gears up to send more ships in this direction. 

Unfortunately for the Klingons, the fleet they meet is composed of the vessels that have been built as new at the Hydran capital since the Coalition invasion of Kzinti territory. They don't have a fleet Scout either, but then they probably don't need one. This lot is led by a Paladin Dreadnought and also includes the first of a new generation of proper carriers: the Uhlan might only be Destroyer class, but it carries sixteen fighters, and its escort destroyer has another six. Also, and this makes things even worse for the attackers, the Hydrans are now deploying Stinger-II and Stinger-H fighters!

The Klingons are going to have to adopt a variant on Admiral Ulorf's anti-fighter tactics and hope that they can attrit the defenders to the point where they have to retreat. This probably isn't going to work here, though, because not only is this a powerful Hydran fleet in its own right, it also has a reasonable number of light ships in reserve.

Anyway, the first pass sees the Klingons mostly concentrating on fighters. Here's how it goes:

1: The Klingon fighters engage as many of the Stingers as they possibly can to stop them getting to the attacking ships proper. This is when the Klingons find out about fighters with gatling phasers. It isn't pretty for the Klingons.

2: In this same part of the action, a few Stinger-IIs get through from the Paladin's contingent. Ably supported by their Stinger-H friends, they cripple the F5C leading the Klingon Frigate squadron.

3: Elsewhere, the two Hydran Light Cruisers roar up almost to point blank range and let loose on the D6M Mauler Cruiser, taking it out in a single turn with heavy damage.

4: The D7 Wing gets the only decent shot of the battle for the Klingons as they force a Hunter Escort to retire with heavy damage.

5: The Hydran cruisers (two Rangers and a Dragoon) roar up and vaporise two F5 Frigates; they don't even need to use their heavy weapons.

6: The Klingons leave, having destroyed a respectable 19 Stinger-II fighters at the cost of all of their own. And they have no reserve fighters...

...and then Blogger crashed, so the rest of this campaign hasn't saved properly. I'll do a round-up to amend what I have here at one point.

The Hydrans at the end of this series of fights:


And the Klingons, who are not in good shape:


Quite a few Klingon ships went boom. Still, at least they kept what is probably the most powerful Hydran fleet from interfering elsewhere!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fly me to the moon

Image
 And other places. These are resin pieces, 6" diameter, sold by Combat Zone Scenery in the UK, and very nice they are too. Part of their Armada scenery range, they are useful hemispherical planets of various kinds. Here's my attempt at the moon/planetoid/large asteroid one: In any tabletop space combat game the miniatures are going to be wildly out of scale when compared with model planets, but often we need something visual to do the job well. These fit the bill nicely. Jungle planet: I used gloss acrylics for the sea effect. You'll notice a couple of metallic building son the surface - the moon of Endor? In fact, the other two definitely show the Star Wars Armada theme:  Ice planet - aka Hoth. And yes, that is a representation of a dead Tonton at middle right. You can also see a destroyed At-At walker at the top of the photo. The details are fun, but they have to impressionistic. I think this one turned out well, to my surprise. Someone once told me a long time ago not
Read more

Jupiter IV SFB decals

Image
 I bought some of these. They took well over a month to arrive from Canada:  For the Kzinti: ship insignia to the left as you look at them, and ships' names in suitably off-looking script to the right. I've tried them out now on the model I put together as a Kzinti Starbase, and they are rather disappointing. The sheet of Kzinti names comes out very dark, too dark for use, in fact, even though I tried them on a painted stripe of white. The ship insignia are also dark, but those ones are usable. I'll probably paint a little white rectangle on the ships themselves to make the decals 'pop' a bit more. One thing to look out for is that the entire sheet is covered with transfer film, so you need to cut around the individual decals to make sure there isn't too much extra - that can become a bit awkward when you are trying to put them onto a ship panel. This reminds me of older transfer sets like the old Revo medieval ones. Overall verdict: worth getting the insignia s
Read more

The Lyrans are coming!

Image
 Well, not quite - this is my attempt at a Battle Station. It would actually do for pretty much any of the major powers, but I gave it a base sandy color and stuck some Lyran Homeworld Clan markings on it: The Lyran decals have come out much more sharply than the Kzinti ones did, possibly because of the lighter background tones. And for some reason my stations always look manky rather than Star Trek pristine, but I like the well used look. The second photo shows more of the detail, of which there is a great deal indeed. The model is six inches across by two inches high. It came with a flight stand, but being made of resin the station was far too heavy to balance safely so I simply glued it straight onto its base. In any case its relative height means it will still fit nicely with my spaceship models. I'm getting quite a lot of painting done at the moment. Teaching has finished for this academic year, although admin and my own writing will keep me busy. Doing a colour every so often
Read more