Full Thrust

This weeks game was a stab at Full Thrust.  I have not played Full Thrust in about 4 years, and even before that I had only played it half a dozen times.  Alec had asked about it as he had a Japanese fleet he wanted to try, and had never actually played the game before.

We managed to select two small fleets, each totalling about 1000points. I opted to use my NAC ships as my ESU fleet was a bit worse for wear after several years of neglect in the loft and I decided that using the Kra'vak would have been a bit mean on their first go of the game.

My fleet consisted of:

1 Heavy Cruiser

2 Escort Cruisers

1 Light Cruiser

3 Destroyers

NAC Fleet

Alec's fleet was:

1 Battle Cruiser

1 Heavy Cruiser

1 Light Cruiser

2 Destroyers

Japanese fleet

I had the advantage in the number of ships I had in my fleet but the Japanese fleet was of a generally heavier class.

As it was a first go we just set up at opposite corners of the board and went at it. 

In Full Thrust there is no theoretical top speed so I decided that I would go with the old Star Fleet Battles motto "Speed is Life" and closed pretty quickly.   In the initial pass I managed to do a fair bit of damage to the Japanese fleet, destroying one destroyer and doing a lot of damage to several of their other ships. I managed to get away with some heavy damage to one of the Escort Cruisers but little else.

Moving round for another exchange of fire at each other,

There followed a few turns of manoeuvring and low level sniping as we came round for another pass and this time the exchange of fire took place at point blank range.  The damage to the Japanese fleet was pretty conclusive, wit two ships destroyed and the rest of the fleet crippled, with the exception of the Battlecruiser, which I had ignored.  I managed to loose the heavily damaged Escort Cruiser in the exchange of fire and some minor damage to the rest of my fleet but apart from that I got off pretty lightly.  

Fleets closing for the final clash

We called the game at this point as the Japanese fleet was in no condition to keep fighting.

Another jammy victory as Alec was very unlucky when generating system damage to his ships as his fire control systems kept getting knocked out, leaving him unable to fire any weapons and I managed to win initiative a lot, which allowed me to fire the opening salvo of the turn.

All in all it was an enjoyable evening, with a chance to revisit a game that I have not played in a long time.  I don't think that I would like to play Full Thrust all that often, perhaps 3-4 times a year, but it is a nice change of scenery (or not, if you not what I mean).  Full Thrust is a good game but there do not seem to be that many decisions to be made in the management of your fleets, as you always get to fire everything that is in arc, and pretty much all you want to do is close and get the first shot of. Perhaps that is the novice Full Thrust player talking and there is more to it than that, but at the moment I don't see it.  it certainly doesn't compare to the decision making involved in Star Fleet Battles, which is about the best starship combat game I have ever played, if you do not go overboard in what you include in a game. Sadly no-one seems to play SFB anymore as again I only ever considered myself a novice at it and never got the opportunity to develop beyond that level.

The club was again full to capacity, and I am now trying to make sure I get to the club at a decent time, to ensure that I can get a table!  Again a nice mix of games getting played:

2 games of Fields f Glory

Check Your Six jets game (I think that's what it was)

X-Wing

3 games Warhammer Fantasy

ACW game (still don't remember what this was called)

Plus a few other games that I did not get a chance to have a look at.

Next week we are back to Oldhammer, with another 1500 point test game against Fraser's Undead (note that is just Undead, not Vampire Counts of Tomb Kings).