Last saturday, we played a major battle of Pax Stellarum on our club. The clash took place on the Star Trek Universe, during the Dominion War. 5 players participated on the game, each controlling one of the main races involved in the conflict: Dominion (Jem' Hadar + Breen)and Cardassians againts Klingons, Federation and Romulans.
I controlled the romulans, and took the right flank of our table edge. The Federation deployed in the middle and the klingons on the left, facing the Cardassian forces, while my Romulans and the Federation were left to fight the Dominion. Part of our forces was designated to enter later on by reserves, through Warp Jump.
The Federation ships took the heaviest toll during the battle, due to its position on the middle of the table. I tried to hold the Breen and Jem' Hadar on the right, but my reserves were taking too long to arrive, and things were beggining to look grim...
By the end of the 4º turn, our side was too weakened and lost a Morale Check, which meant we were going to leave the table by the end of the next turn.
The Star Base on the midle of the table was the virtual objective of the game (virtual because we didn't give it any stats, it was basically decorative).
Game turn 5 ended and our side made a warp jump, withdrawing from the battle. All victory points accounted for, the Dominion side prevailed. But this war is far from over. The fate of the Alpha Quadrant is at stake. We will reorganize to fight another day.
This was another game we played to test the changes I'm implementing on Pax, and progress is being made. I hope to finish this revison by the end of the year.
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Nice, big game. Hopefully everyone had fun!
ReplyDeleteI hope you are adding new ships (40k universe, Babylon 5, Galactica) to the game.
ReplyDeleteFinally had my first game of Pax the other nght. Really liked how it played. I liked the sluggish movement of the larger ships and the way shields are worn down. Very Trekky. Is there any further development work being done on the game?
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoy it, Lance. I'm in the process of revising and streamlining the rules, but this is a side project right now, as I focus on building my napoleonic armies.
Deletehappy to feedback/help. Only one game in and only used 3 ships v 2 so too early to pass many judgements but will let you know how future games go. Only one at the moment was we didnt get many critical hits in the first game or at least they didn't have as much an effect as I thought they might. Could have been down to the appalling dice rolls though lol.
DeleteLance, what size of ships were you using? Critical hits have much impact on large ships, which are capable of taking several volleys of fire without blowing up. Statistically they end up accumulating several critical hits on the process.
DeleteSmall ships die quickier, so they usually die before getting any critical. This is all intentional, as small ships accumulating critical hits would bring too many tokens to the table, clustering things excessively.
We used some cruisers with about 12 hull boxes and destroyers at 6-8 boxes. We did get some criticals on life support and sensors on the 2 larger ships. By that time though we were close enough for sensors not have any affect and the ship didn;t survive long enough for the life support to have much affect. One game is not enough to make a full judgement and the dice rolls meant we didnt see a range of effects across the ships.
DeleteAs an aside, we are looking at creating some small laminated cards to place next to each ship. We can then update them with dry wipe pens to keep track of damage without loads of tokens on the table. We will use small d6s for shields as these go up and down a lot more.
Lance, as I go throw the revision of the rules for edition 2.0, it'd be nice to hear more of your feedback. Feel free to drop me a line on email if you will: mateus_carneiro at yahoo.com.br
DeleteCriticals worked better in game#2 with a couple of heavy cruisers and couple of light cruisers per side. We also used the revised critical hit table.
ReplyDeleteHaven't used squadrons yet but can see how they make smaller ships viable. In other games they can be be cannon (laser) fodder.
I'd say the only area that is taking a bt of time to get used to is the fire power effects. When there are multiple weapons firing at the sam time with different FPs and characteristics you have to organise your dice appropriately. Coloured dice helped a lot with this and minimising the special attributes of the weapons helps too.Will keep you informed as the game go. Star Wars Armada is scheduled for this week though.