Battle at Sector 43-5 (a BFG BatRep)

"My Lord, the enemy fleet is exactly where you have forseen it. The other ships reports combat readyness." hist the small, hooded Dark Adept. The Arch Sorceror took only a brief note of his servant. His look was locked on the two giants in the center of the enemy formation in front of his flaggship Flames of Tchar. The Desolator battleship has seen many battles in his milleniums of service. Malachias the Enlighted opend a com-link to the other ships in his fleet: "The enemy is ahead. Destroy them." The thrusters came to life and his fleet began to engage the enemy. He had decided to split his fleet into two forces, to encircle the enemy and crush him between his two fleets. His own fleet, that had been the Flames of Tchar, the Archeron class heavy cruiser Spear of Darkness and the two Devastor class cruisers Blood Scythe and Eternal Suffering. The other fleet was under the lead of another Archeron class heavy cruiser, supported by two Carnage class cruisers and two more Devastor class cruisers. The enemy fleet has been not less impressive. In their center two mighty battleships: a Battlebarge of the Blood Ravens Chapter and a Retribution class battleship. Three more capital ships, a Gothic class cruiser, a Dictator class cruiser and a Dauntless class light cruiser, backed up the battleships. Additional two squadrons of three Cobra classes, one squadron of four Hunter classes, one squadron of three Nova classes and one squadrone of four Gladius classes completed the enemy fleet.
"My Lord the enemy has seen us. They open fire at us! We should evade!" "Keep course, worm." bellowed Malachias. "The Spear of Darkness, the Blood Scythe and the Eternal Suffering should concentrate their fire on the Retribution!" "The Spear of Darkness reports minor damage!" The Chaos ships opened fire. The Lances ripped through the hull of the Battleship with catastrophic result. Large firery pillars emerged from where the lances had penetrated the hull and incinerated the oxigen inside the ship´s belly.

As you can guess, i have played BFG. It was a funny game 2 vs. 2 with 2000 points per side. We played a Space Battle scenario. The Imperium decided to use the wedge formation centered along one long table edge, while Chaos (my team partner and i) deployed in a ring formation on both short table edges.
Imperium got the first turn.
The Imperium decided that it would be an easy victory with our forces devided. Their plan was to take out one, namly mine, fleet first and then deal with the second. But the Lord of Change had have other plans for me. Their first round was not very successfully. My Desolator lost the shield and my Archeron got 2 damage points.
Lord Tzeentch was with me and guided my hand. A concentrated volley from all of my four ships hit the Retribution and archived four damage points. The five ships of my team mate had been so far away that he could do nothing else then startings waves of bombers. I started my own enter boats and took of three cobras.

In the second round the SM fleet got also into weapon range and both Imperial fleets opened fire at my Desolator, which went on "Braise for Impact". Again Tzeentch was on my side and my flaggship got only four damage points.
My plan was to take out the Retribution but i missed my leadership tests for target priority and was forced to open fire on the closer Dauntless. God what was that ship dead. Again my new waves of enter boats took out another three cobras. My team mate finished off the Hunter classes, one Nova class and one Gladius with his own enter boats.

In the third round my Desolator was again the main target and they inflicted heavy damage on it, by bring it down to six damage points. Meanwhile my team mate and i united our fleets and concentrated our fire on the Battlebarge. We inflicted several damage on the large ship and crippled it with five damage points left. My enter boats finished the two Novas and my partner took out two more Gladius.

At the end of the forth turn both, my desolator and the BB had been down to two damage points (not bad for being the main target of two battleships for four rounds)

The fifth turn was the last and the and most important turn. The Retribution and the Gothic class had been very close to the table edge. That forced the player to make a leadership test to start the retro burner. He missed the first test (if you miss a test you can´t make more test for special orders for the rest of that turn) and both, the Gothic and the Retribution left the table. With only a Dictator and a crippled BB left they gave up. We had have no looses, my Archeron lost three damage points and my Desolator lost ten damage points. All other ships had been undamaged.

Stoic like a rock Malachias stood on the bridge of his burning ship. Deads are laying around everywhere but that meant nothing to him. He had smashed the enemy, that was all that counts. The damage dealed was more then worth the sacrifice of some lesser minions.
"The repair teams should double their efforts to rescue my ship!" His look fell on a small, hooded Dark Adept. "As you command, my Lord. The other ships reported no or only minor damage."

My team made had taken some pics: here´s the link to the gallery:http://cypramundi.de/?page_id=171. It includes some pics of another battle Imperium vs. Dark Eldar. The DE had won. Sad day for the Imperium.

Sounds like a really fun game. Are these the models from Aeronautica Imperialis? Or is BFG a different set of models?

BFG is a GW Specialist Game.
It has nothing to do with Aeronautica Imperialis. FW has some nice models for BFG, too. Namly the GK Strike Cruisers are beautyful. BFG is a quite easy to learn and quick to play game. We needed about 2 hours for it. And we have made a special gaming board for our BFG group. We had not used it this time cause not all of us had already prepared their flight bases with foam rubber. The table is a frame with two levels. The lower level is only for decoration and background with some nice airbrushed Nebular. An aseroid field, a planet and so on. All this is covered with a acrylic glass plate on which you´re play. To prevent scratches we glue the foam rubber under the flight bases. As long as i´m the only one who had done this, we will not use our "eye-catcher" table.
The rules can be downloaded here:BFG downloads

Interesting...I need to check this out. Thanks!