Imperials Skies at Recruits, Lee's Summit, MO, Aug 25-27, 2017

[The_Beast]

My friend Sean ran a participation game on Saturday afternoon, and my best friend VSFGamer and I took the defending German and Austro-Hungarian ships, respectively.

Here is his YouTube video: Sean Gewecke:Imperial Skies Battle Report 1

A few comments of my own: Our dice WERE bad, especially at those infuriating crucial moments, but we made a number of errors, in my opinion, the main I'd suggest was our over-spending of command points on initiative die rolls. Here, I take most of the responsibility.

In the one game I'd tried before, when the sides were even smaller, I was almost annihilated by losing initiative. When initiative is paramount, it's hard to spend too much, but you do cripple your ships without the special orders that can be SO effective. And each point bid on the initiative roll is one less special command.

Here, I must give high props to our opponents, whom I believe were learning the rules, as they masterfully saw the potential of special orders, and made the best use of whatever advantage the die edge gave them. Well done!

The importance of the special orders can be a matter of taste, and I am not as fond as Sean.

By the way, at a minute and twenty-two seconds, you can see Randy and myself in conference. While I generally avoid having my picture taken, you be the judge of how accurate my avatar is.

Sean's solo walkthru showing mechanics: Sean Gewecke:Imperial Skies Battle Report 2

Robin's(Rottenlead) overview video: Publisher's overview

Doug

[sean_68333]

Thanks for sharing the video Doug.  I had fun running the game and hope to get more games played soon.

[Captain Gideon]

Sean from the video it looks like all had a good time playing the game.

I'd like to ask you I'm very into Aeronef/Imperial Skies and I asked Doug this but I would like to ask you might it be possible for you to come up with several scenarios for me to try myself?

I ask this because I have an impressive number of Aeronef minis almost 1,100 last time I did a count.

You can PM me with the Scenarios.

I'd be grateful if you could help me out.

Thanks
Michael

[The_Beast]

Sorry, Michael. I may have missed, or simply in my eroding brain, forgot, your request.

Pretty sure in his video Sean already stated he had envisioned changes he wanted to make to the initial parameters to the game at Recruits.

Alas, it's early days for us; I've only played a couple of times, Sean's at the 'we've got to play this again, soon' point.

I've been considering a 'hunt the wounded lion' scenario, where a damaged heavy was discovered by smaller enemy units. Always wanted to try that with Aeronef, but never decided if the rules were amenable. Have only scratched the surface on such for Imperial Skies.

Doug

Edit: *blush* I see your request was JUST made on TMP. 

[Captain Gideon]

Doug I just posted a reply over on TMP and in part I said that I have enough ships to do almost any type of Battle/scenario but coming up with the scenarios is hard for me.

Now I have done a few games at conventions which worked well but nothing really impressive as I call it.

I'll be in touch.

Michael

[sean_68333]

Captain Gideon, I wish I had a collection of scenarios to share.  That is the biggest think lacking with this game, no scenarios.  Creating scenarios is always a challenge for me, but I enjoy them much more than just a straight up battle.

[Captain Gideon]

Sean I agree with you about what you said but I'll keep trying on my end but if come up with anything that you would like to share please let me know.

The thing I'm looking forward to is when the other card sets for the other Fleets once more out I can start thing about doing more games.

Michael

[sean_68333]

Captain Gideon,

I pulled out my Victory at Sea rules from Mongoose Publishing and opened up the scenarios for that game.  I'm going to try a game based on the Blockade scenario from that game.

Table size: 4' x 6'

Fleets: The attacking player (blockader) builds a fleet to agreed upon point value.  The defender (blockade runner) builds a fleet using 50% of the points of the attacker's fleet.

Deployment:  The blockader chooses a short table edge.  He then chooses a ship and places that ship anywhere along the short table edge up with 24" away from his long table edge.  He then rolls a die and multiplies the result by 12 inches.  The ship must be moved to the right this many inches.  He may deploy the ship anywhere within 6 inches of that position.  This must be done for all ships in the blockader's fleet.  When completed, all ships must be facing the same direction.

The blockade runner will move all his ships onto the table anywhere along the opposite long table edge in the first turn.

Scenario rules:  The blockade runner has a "fee" turn at the beginning of the battle.  In effect, he may move and attack with his ships normally, but the blockading fleet may do nothing - its ships may not move, fire, or use command actions.  They must simply take any damage dealt during this turn.  After this first turn, initiative is rolled normally.

Game length:  The game continues until the blockade runner has either been destroyed or has left the table.

Victory conditions:  The scenario uses Victory Points to determine who wins.  The blockader scores victory points equal to the value of any ship destroyed.  The blockade runner only scores victory points for moving ships off the blockader's long table edge.  He scores points equal to the value of the ship that exits the table.

[Captain Gideon]

Sean I don't have the Victory at Sea rules but I do however have a lot of the Avalanche Press games like Plan Z for example I got them for the what-if scenarios and the never built ships and one other thing new names I can use for my Aeronef ships.

So I can use the scenarios from these games and just replace the wet-navy ships with Aeronef ships I also might've to change some of the things within the rules.

And to be honest I never thought of doing that.

Thanks for getting me to thinking.

Michael