Have played our first game!

Other Games Galactic Strike Force
1

Whee, finally have been able to play a game of this…it took a long time, maybe three hours or something, to get through the game. The first round by itself took at least an hour, because I was reading and re-reading the rules to make sure we knew what we were supposed to be doing stuff - took a while just to find out what the green triangles meant because I'd missed that part in the Setup section and hadn't yet thought to look at the back cover of the rulebook ;).

We took the advice of the boko and went up against the…Bareg-Threllian Syndicate, I think it's called. We decided to stick with low-complexity ships for our first game so I played as the Conclave of Niphon and Ja'Ph' took Vigilance.

Combat throughout the game quite freuently consisted of both of us engaging the same ship, with him as Primary and me as Secondary, so I could use my ability thingy and chuck one of the other Opposition ships in the same sector over to another one, while Ja'Ph' demolished the engaged ship in one shot with the various guns and stuff he'd got (some was installed tech while sometimes he got buffed by me). One sector did get overrun but we'd already left it when that happened and never went back to it. The Cryoshade thingy came out after the second (or possible third, I wasn't keeping track) round and we had to keep blasting other ships away before we could go for that one. Finally we had, in our sector, just the Cryoshade and one other ship (a Neo-Elf Infiltrator from the Station deck), so we took one ship each and blew them both up :).

Having now read through most of the posts in this section of the forum, it sounds like the Syndicate aren't actually the best guys to go for in a first game. Oh well, we won anyway :D. Also, it sounds like I might've done something wrong regarding combat damage, having seen a post where someone said you don't take any damage if your shield total is greater than that of the damage being aimed at you. I was just totalling up the shield and weapons for an Opposition ship and if the damage being dealt by our ship (usually Vigilance - I was only the primary engager once…or maybe twice, I can't remember) was greater than that total, that was the ship dead. Meanwhile we subtracted the Opposition ship's weaponry total from Vigilance's shields. Example - "Okay he has shields of three and weaponry of two so that's five, so you need to do at least five damage to kill him…and you have fifteen weaponry in total so he's a teeny bit dead. Meanwhile he hits you for two, so take two off your shields." I think I need to re-read the combat bit and see what I missed there, because it sounds like we maybe weren't supposed to be killing stuff as easily as we were, but nor should they have been plinking down Vigilance's shields as much as they did…

Anyway…it was pretty good fun. Very long game, yes, but we expected that for a first run when neither of us had the faintest idea of the rules ;).

2

Combat damage is [Weaponry - Defense = Energy Damage dealt]

So that 2/3 Opposition ship would have been scrapped if you had 15 Weaponry, since 15-3=12, and 12 energy is enough to cover its 5. Vigilance would have only taken damage from that Opp ship if you had 1 or fewer shields. If you had 5 shields, the equation would be 2-5=0 energy damage (for all intents and purposes). Damage calc is done simultaneously for you and the opponent, so even if you would scrap the Opp ship, you still compare their initial weaponry to your shields

3

Yeah we were calculating both totals before actually removing tokens/scrapping ships - I got that bit from the rulebook :). I think I just messed up on calculating damage versus shields. So…you look at your weaponry total, and compare that to their shield total, then subtract the shields from the weapons and if there is any damage left over you then remove that many shields (and carry over into weaponry if there is damage left over after the shields have gone)?

I have a feeling we shouldn't actually have one-shotted the Cryoshade, lol. Damage dealt to it was 30 but it had erm…maybe about six(ish) shields left and about 14 weaponry. Something like that, I can't remember now.

4

Yup. Weapons - Shields = Energy removed (starting with shields then weaponry)

5

Okay. We just missed out the "deduct damage equal to your shields before removing shields" bit. Still, if that's the only thing we got wrong, that's not bad for a first game ;).

One other thing I didn't know about was the meanings of the symbols on the Station cards, as that wasn't mentioned in the rulebook anywhere (unless I missed it), but since reading on here I now know it's a means of telling what's gonna come up if the Opposition flips that card during the Aftermath phase.

6

Ah -- Thank you. I don't recall having this much trouble learning Sentinels, but the learning curve for GSF feels higher than anything I've tried recently.

"Damage = Attack less defense" seems obvious, but it wasn't getting through my thick skull.

7

One thing you could relate it to is DR, if you ever play D&D, or "reduce damage" effects in SotM.

8

I have to wait a whole week before I can play again - Ja'Ph' is working seven days in a row (from today through to next Wednesday), meaning we can't see each other on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday (when I'm off work)...however he is off on Thursday so should be able to come round then and we can have a game...probably against the Technovores since from the sounds of it they're better to go up against than the Syndicate.