Monthly Meeting Saturday 4 May 2002

after action report (photos to be added soon)

 

Star Trek

 

Peter Hunt hosted a Star Trek game utilising his "To Go Boldly" rules:

 

Blinking in the starlight as they emerged through a wormhole from the farthest reaches of Peter H’s toy room, the Star Trek ships put in their first appearance in several years.  Once again the “To Go Boldly” rules (which are much stripped down and simplified “Starship Battles”) have been tweaked a bit, and this time some splendid planets produced by Jeff dramatically enhanced the visuals.

 

We managed to get through two games. In the first the Federation, Jeff and Dieter, were taking on a loose alliance of the Klingons, Denny and Peter M, and the Romulans, Paul and Philippe.  Unfortunately for the Federation although the bad guys victory conditions were to be the last men standing, they held rigidly to their alliance whilst the Federation were around. In the highlight of the game Paul made a cloaked approach Plasma torpedo attack on the Federation Dreadnought that Günter Prien would have been proud of, but in the final analysis, the Federation were unable to set the Klingons and Romulans at each other’s throats.  Thus the Feds did the right think by refusing two-to-one odds and warped off complaining that once again Starfleet intelligence on the relations between Klingon and Romulan was wrong.

 

The second game was stripped of any political complications and was a straight up fight between Klingons, (joined by Paul,) and Federation, (joined by Philippe.) The Klingons warped into the battle area only to find a solitary Federation Dominion class dreadnought under Dieter some way off and trailing its coat tails before them.  The three Klingon ships grouped up and sped off in pursuit only for the Federation to spring their trap with a flank attack by a Miranda class frigate and a Saladin class destroyer.  As the Klingons wheeled to face this new threat there seemed to be dissension in the Federation ranks as the Philippe’s Saladin peeled away leaving Jeff’s Miranda to face the enemy alone.  Baying in the best Klingon fashion, the bad guys closed to point blank range only to have Jeff play the self-destruct Kobiashi Maru card.  The Miranda’s warp core went critical as Jeff and his gallant crew made for the escape pods.  At the last moment Paul’s ship’s doctor and confidant had him reconsider his rash urge to get his K’Tinga class battlecruiser close to the Miranda, (i.e. he played the “Bones” card to get him out of the mess,) so it was Peter’s Kathless dreadnought and Denny’s old D7 class cruiser that bore the brunt of the explosion.

 

The situation looked grim for the Klingons but fortunately for them the Federation dreadnought was too far off to exploit the damage wreaked by Jeff’s self-destruction and by the time it closed the range the Klingons had been able to repair some of their systems.  Thus began a struggle between three damaged Klingon vessels and two fresh Federation ships. Things got close in and dirty and the Federation seemed to have the upper hand as Denny’s D7 suffered a containment breach. In true Klingon fashion however Danny refused to eject his warp core and the dogfight continued with both sides trying to inflict as much damage as possible on each other whilst trying to keep away from Danny’s ticking time bomb!

 

When the D7 went up Philippe’s ship was marginally damaged and, with the odds now against them, Dieter decided to cut and run.  As the Dominion worked up to warp speed Peter’s dreadnought fired a last salvo of photon torpedoes after it. Fortified by a couple of stiff slugs of prune juice, (another card,) the Kathless’ weapons officer excelled himself and the Dominion was ripped apart.  Outnumbered and alone Phil’s Saladin went down gallantly a few seconds later leaving the Klingons to celebrate their victory.

 

Denny missed his flight to Canada that day, but a good time was had by all, especially in the second game, so I’m sure the delay was worth it.

 

James ran a game of History of the World - the report of which is as follows:

 

Result was 1st - 5th: Ludovic, Neil, Chris L, James, Dan.  Ludovic basically led from epoch I only losing the lead briefly to James around epoch V.  Neil did well with the Romans and moved himself into second place.  Chris was consistently second last but managed to pip James in the last epoch.  James was second for most of the time, grabbed the lead only to fall back to 4th.  Dan was consistently last or equal last (better luck next time!).  And then Ludovic left the country the next day, back to France .

The Leaders were fairly useless.  Both Neil and Chris rolled triples the first roll.  Chris rolled another triple for his second Leader card, but later on, and it was only Ludovic who managed to have his leader fight till the end of the epoch.  A good game!

 

Painting Workshop

 

John and Richard ran a painting workshop, which created a lot of interest.

 

 

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