Full Thrust: Convoy Escort

Back in August, we gathered at Stephen's house for some Full Thrust action. Stephen had laid out his star cloth and placed a large number of dust clouds. I arrived latest so I got command of the convoy and a few light escort ships. Here's the opening layout with my ships circled:

In the scenario, we knew that we were being pursued by a large force. We figured that we would also need to fight our way across the board. Most of our gunnery is forward facing so being aggressive seemed the best plan.

Our admiral had done a wonderful job of setting things up. The convoy could run at high speed and also avoid most of the dust clouds. We just needed them to make one turn. The dust clouds would start doing damage to any ships that go faster than 6. Because the convoy's course avoided the dust clouds, I gave them a healthy 12 initial speed.

Being experienced with Stephen's ways of running scenarios, I figured something was up. I scanned ahead and got a result. There was something on that large asteroid ahead. I didn't, however, roll well enough to identify and fire on that something until it fired a couple of very heavy beams. Being NAC, we immediately retaliated with missiles. (red dotted line is the convoy's track)

The thing about the missiles is that in Full Thrust, you plop the missile targets first, move, resolve the missiles, and then resolve other fire. Stephen had designed the scenario with a nasty base. Then just before the game, he decided to make it even nastier. I think he went from 40 points to 60 or something like that. He didn't think, though, that we would hammer it with our missiles. And missiles are the absolute best weapon to use against bases because they don't move. 

Meanwhile, the enemy finally showed up. I was delighted to see that they were behind us and on both flanks. We sent some missiles in their direction as well.

Our missiles devastated the base. It wasn't quite dead so we used the fire phase to finish it off. Our missiles also took out a couple of pursuing ships and a couple of ships to the right. It wasn't a one-sided fight as I lost a light cruiser and the biggest ship in our rear guard blew up.

The convoy continued its run past the destroyed base and we continued to send missiles at the enemy to the right. 

But we were running out of missiles and also losing ships. Most of our ships were NAC and the problem is that they are garbage once they've shot off all their missiles. Most importantly, the convoy was getting away.

Here, I've taken the pictures from the opposite side. The convoy is making the only turn it needs to make. A couple of smaller enemy ships are harassing it, though. The rest of our escorts are taking a pounding and are beginning to get severely outnumbered. 

But victory is ours as the convoy leaves the board. The sacrifice of most of the escorts is not in vain because the convoy lost only one cargo hold in total.