'Schild en Vriend' is an old Flemish battlecry, used in the rebellion of the city of Brugge against the French, May 18, 1302. Legend tells that it was used to differentiate between the French-speaking (who could not pronounce 'schild') and Flemish-speaking citizens. Nowadays, historians tell us that it was probably 'Des Gilden Vriend'.
Full Thrust Narrative Campaign
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| It is March 28th, 2312, the Human - Xirin war is in it's sixth day. In the New Vilnius system, a crippled human carrier and a motley collection of civilian craft try to reach safety before the Xirin advanced units jump in-system. A small group of Space Fleet vessels prepares to hold off the Xirin attack... |
 CV-1 Morgenes | The scenario as we played it turned out to be not quite balanced. The basic victory condition for the Xirin player was to destroy the Morgenes, anything else was just icing on the cake for them. As a consequence, all the Xirin players had to do was concentrate all fire on the Morgenes and just ignore whoever else was firing on them, as Full Thrust has no target priority rules, and I had neglected to include some as scenario rules. Couple this with the fact the Morgenes started with a low speed at quite a long way from it's jump zone, in a location known to the Xirin players, and you'll see that the scenario was rather unbalanced, giving the edge to the Xirin players. Mea culpa. |
One possible solution I've come up with, which is in the files below, is to give the Morgenes some ability at hiding itself from the Xirin fleet (the crew is trying to keep all EM emission levels low, not a difficult feat to achieve, considering the fact that it's heavily damaged and most systems are down). At the start of the game, the Human player rolls to see in which of a number of locations the Morgenes starts. All of these locations are marked on the table by e.g. a black ping pong ball on a flying stand, and represent areas where an advance Xirin robotic probe detected something that might be the Morgenes before it was destroyed by Human forces (how's that for PSB?).
As long as the Morgenes' starting point remains undetected, the ship moves according to the normal cloaking rules, i.e. orders are written for the ship, but it is not moved on table. Whenever a Xirin ship gets within a certain distance of one of the ping pong balls (I chose 18", but you can choose another distance), the ping pong ball is removed, and the Xirin ship is able to detect if this the actual starting point or one of the fake ones (it detects the faint traces left by the Morgenes' drive system - PSB again). If the real starting point is detected, the Morgenes is placed on table, and it's movement from the beginning of the turn is carried out: the Xirin scanning equipment has found the trace leading to the Morgenes. This should give the human players more of a chance of winning, but the scenario has never been played in this form, so no guarantees! If anybody should happen to play this scenario with the new Morgenes' starting position rules, let me know how it went!
A final note: this scenario uses Full Thrust/More Thrust rules and ship diagrams (i.e. not the Fleet Book rules yet).
Download the scenario file as a:
If you want another format, mail me, and I'll see what I can do.
The game
In our game, the shoes (well, lower limb clothing items) of the Xirin commanders were aptly filled by Alan and Phil, while Bart D. and Maarten commanded the Human forces. Bart V, as umpire, controlled the civilian craft in the game (the Brixton X, the tankers and the San Carlos passenger liner).
As can be seen on the S&V BattlegraphTM above, the Xirin commanders opted for a two-pronged attack, sending the heavy squadron and the squadron of Ice Falcons around the right of the central asteroid belt, while the rest of their task force swung down the other side hoping for a flanking or rear attack on the human fleet.
The human commanders threw 408 Fleet Section forward on two different courses in the hope of getting close to the Morgenes before the Xirins did, and moved one of the Warthogs out of NV-4 and the Firefly strikeboats out of NV-2 to delay the leftmost Xirin attack. The Morgenes, meanwhile, squeezed every drop of energy still remaining out of the engines and fled down towards the FTL tugs waiting for her close to New Vilnius itself.
Beam batteries ranging in size from small close defence weapons up to big anti-ship batteries (C-batteries to A-batteries in FT lingo) opened up the moment targets came in range, with the Xirins concentrating on the Morgenes whenever possible, and the heavy weapons of the Rovannion and the two strike cruisers of 408 Fleet section desperately trying to stop the Xirins closing in on the old Lady M. On the other side of the asteroid field, the two Firefly strikeboats lived up to their name, disappearing in short and brilliant flashes of light as Xirin batteries destroyed one and forced the other to frantic evasion maneuvers, ending up in intimate contact with an - unfortunately much bigger and heavier - asteroid.
| Unfortunately for the Humans however, and despite the heavy fire put out by the five ships of 408 Fleet Section and a Warthog heavy cruiser, the already half-crippled Morgenes took several direct hits from beam fire and was in the end destroyed in a particularly impressive explosion.
After this, the remaining Human ships (which was all of them except for the strikeboats, BTW) tore into the Xirin attackers with a fury born out of the desire for revenge, destroying a large number of the smaller Xirin ships before the two fleets disengaged and jumped out-system, ready to fight another day. |  BB-408 Rovannion |
 Brixton-X | During all of this, the civilian evacuation of the New Vilnius system went on almost unhindered, with both groups (the Brixton X bulk ore freigter and tankers from the mining base in the asteroids, and the passenger liner San Carlos from New Vilnius, after picking up a last flight of shuttles out of NV-4) reaching the jump zones safely.
We declared the game a Xirin victory, as they did destroy the Morgenes after all, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, as it cost them almost the entire task force, only a few destroyers, a cruiser and the light carrier making it back. |
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