The Ultimate Parasites vs the Ultimate Bioficers? Which mighty fleet will be victorious…
Welcome to our First Battle Report from our recent in-house Dropfleet Commander tournament. This week Mat’s mighty Scourge, Bane of Eden Prime challenged Josh’s brutal Bioficers, Hand that Hungers.
Mission – Take and Hold
First Turn – During a mission to capture an outlying world of the UCM, the fleet came into contact with an unknown fleet of ships. Still, it was clear they were hostile as they moved into position (1st turn just positioning as fleets moved up to form battle lines etc)
Second turn – As the battle group Bringers of Death (Gargoyle Class x3) moved into position to board the orbiting space station with troops, the unknown enemy also made a play for a space station with an armada of ships flying in close formation.
While looking to achieve its main goal of occupying the UCM planet, we turned our sights to the other landing zones while being wary of the mass of unknown ships approaching. Contact was made on the primary Dropsite of this sector when a strange structure was detached from the hull of one of the enemy vessels and it moved toward the site unleashing what looked to be a landing ship. Seeing this Captain Josh ordered the battle group Harbingers of Darkness (Charybdis Class x3) to start their bombing runs to purge them from their target.
Seeing this Captain Mat ordered his ship to launch a screen of fighters to add some support to the fleet as they started their push forwards. Flanked by his two Lieutenants aboard their heavy cruisers the Oculus Storm (Shenlong Class) and the Corrupting Fire (Raiju Class), battle lines were drawn.
While this was happening the enemy fleet were preparing their own push with fighter and bombers being launched for support. Ships were moving into a direct attack position.
Third Turn – Taking the first chance Captain Mat pushed his ship forward to meet this threat head on and unleashed a barrage of shots onto the ship off his left flank, several of them scored hits and one of the light ships was removed from the battlefield. Seeing the enemy fleet’s lead ship (Scythe ship), they then unleashed a devastating barrage of shots onto the command ship wrecking damage throughout the ship’s hull.
Seeing this Captain Josh ordered all crew to evacuate to their drop pods and made planet fall (Command ship blown up). With their captain’s ship destroyed and not knowing if he lived or not the Oculus Storm moved into the void and unleashed its own barrage of destruction. Unleashing all its fury, its shots punched right through this enemy’s shields and hit its hull with such force it was blown apart from within. Not to be outdone the Corrupting Fire moved alongside its fellow ship and followed its lead unleashing burning fire into an enemy’s vessel and some of these smaller floating ships / structures.
It wounded the ship but not enough to cause it retreat from the fight. It was, however, able to destroy several of the smaller ships that were in orbit around the planet. While the rest of the fleet were engaging the remaining ships of the fleet, others were completing their assigned missions and were dropping troops and landers onto the other drop sites of this planet. The Bringers of Death took control of key points on one of the outer sites (left side of the board), while the Hells Fury (Chimera Class) was focused on the prize of this system and was landing its hordes of troops onto the primary drop site(center dropsite). However it was not alone as it was backed up by Striking Death (Lamassu Class). With this the world was secured for the moment.
Forth Turn – Seeing this display of power the enemy fleet unleashed salvo after salvo, bomber wing after bomber wing and in doing so blew up not just the Occulus Storm but Hell’s Fury and the Striking Death, forcing the senior crews to abandon their ships to the newly secured planet.
The rest of the scourge fleet that still remained carried on and deployed, reinforcing the sites they held at this point and preparing for the coming assault on their newly captured world.
Turn Five – Seeing the destruction of so many ships the Corrupting Fire made a choice and went for the destruction of the orbiting space station to deny the enemy a foothold within this system. But alas, this did not happen and he was destroyed by enemy bombers. Seeing that the world had now been garrisoned, the enemy fleet left as they did not have the resources or forces to be able to take back control from the Scourge. So even though most of his forces were decimated, Captain Josh was able to complete his mission and take control of the planet within this system.
Final turn – The Bioficers finished off what remaining ships they could and then made their exit from the battlefield. Final score Scourge 23 Bioficers 15
