Void Admiral Solo Starship Game

 Unfortunately, my planned game of Void Admiral this week had to be postponed. I have only played the rules a couple of times (but really like them) so I decided that, as I had the ships out anyway, I'd play a quick solo game to help reinforce the rules.

I decided to play the 24 pt Loyalist fleet I was intending to use and pitch it against a fleet from the Noble Houses. I thought this would give myself some tactical challenges, the Loyalists have strong frontal armour and long range missiles, whereas the Noble Houses have shorted ranged weapons, but being turret mounted are more flexible in their firing arcs. The Loyalists also have much better command and control.

The two fleets close in on each other. This is a basic "smash and grab" raid. The two space stations are old Imperial assets which contain important data which the Loyalist have come to retrieve. However as the Noble houses in this sector feel that the Imperium have effectively abandoned them to fend for themselves, they believe that any such Imperial assets now belong to them.

It's a version of the Hold the Line scenario in the rulebook. Fleets score 1 victory point at the end

of each round for each station that they have at least one ship within 6” of. But they do not score points for any stations that also have an enemy ship within 6”. 

In turn 1 only the Loyalist ships are in range, but their opening salvos of missiles do little damage (so really rubbish dice rolling!).

As the Noble Houses close the distance both the sovereign and a sceptre concentrate their fire on the Loyalist flagship, strippng it's shields and inflicting some damage.

The sovereign also launches a fighter attack, but the galleon's own squadrons and flak defences neutralise the threat. Both fleets have their smaller ships within range of a station, but it's the same one!

A Loyalist destroyer fires on a sceptre, not inflicting damage but knocking it's shields down.

This leaves the sceptre vulnerable to the shooting and fighters of the second destroyer, and the Noble Houses ship takes heavy damage.

The sovereign manoeuvres around into the rear arc of the galleon, it's turrets pouring in cannon and laser fire at close range. The Loyalist flagship explodes spectacularly.

Almost simultaneously the damaged sceptre explodes!

The fleets now have ships within range of both stations, but no-one is able to download data yet.

A space-age version of Crossing the T. Both Loyalist destroyers manage to get into the rear arc of the sovereign bombarding it and launching fighter strikes, but neither can get their powerful missile batteries to bear. The Noble houses flagship is badly damaged, bur still fighting. 

The remaining sceptre is now able to start downloading data from one of the stations.

Another Loyalist ship explodes under intense cannon and laser fire.

The little Loyalist corvette tries to hide behind a station, but a large Noble houses ship bears down on it, it predictable results, turning the corvette to space dust!

Having grabed some data, the last Loyalist ship breaks off and runs, leaving the Noble houses in clear control.

Final result after 5 turns, Noble Houses 20VPs to the Loyalists 7VPs.

It was fun and certainly gave me a better grasp of the rules. I'd only used the Loyalists so far and their increased armour and powerful missiles are only good if they can keep the enemy in front of them. Their weaker side batteries were no match for the turreted weapons of the Noble Houses who could combine both front and rear weapons into a devastating broadside, once in range.

I'm looking forward to play a live opponent again soon.