Leaving Frankfurt reflections #2 Demoing Full Thrust to 2 newbies

As noted below, I'm leaving Frankfurt this Sunday.. I did some gaming while I was here..
[originally posted on boardgamegeek.com.. Scenario here.]


"..Gidday all.

I winter in Frankfurt and begaN meeting some of the smal number of wargamers (miniature and board) who are scattered about the place.

Matt is a pom who works locally and he and Oliver are members of http://www.spieltrieb-frankfurt.de/ a small club ina room about 15 foot by 8 foot. with 2 5x 3 tables.

anyway, when people ask me what I play I say Full Thrust and most gamers have "heard" of it.. and wanted to get into it.. so I evangelize a little and got a demo arranged and that was it.. I sent them links to FT light and Fleet books 1 and 2.

I wanted to teach them cinematic movement to start with but they insisted on Vector movement... oh well.

Oliver took the Kravak and Matt the UNSC -as these were the figures Id brought to aint on Holiday I only had a 0 brush with me so im not showing you the paint jobs until theyre done ;)

This was their first game of Ful Thrust.
I did some demonstration movement, went through the weapons systems and arcs and pointed out the arcs and kill zones and range brackets for the weapons that they each had.

matt deployed Superior geneva and eyre, the three dual graser-1/beam-2 armed lake class DDs in line abreast screening the stricken carrier and waited for the Kravak to arrive. he pushed the fighters out

Oliver proceeded slowly and almost in a sail broadside oblique approach towards the humans, despite every KV shp ever made have front arc primary weapons.. I almost wanted to yell "get in there, son!" to encourage him to swoop in. he decided when in 30 MU range to split his fire with K-guns and did soe scattering of damage.

the fighter groups spooked him a little and did the job of pushing the KV to one side of the board.

the UNSC fighters cut off and killed one of the Corvettes, the KARMA, in exchange for getting one group totally mauled (down to one fighter) on the turn the engines on the ranger came back to allow her to move off at thrust 2. the UNSC heald back until the first of the reinforcements arrived, the UNSCS BISCAY then a Kravak Reinforcement the PARMA CL arrived and sped in.
The UNSC fighters killed the other Corvette at the cost of the damaged group and the Kravak defenses left the single remaining group with one fighter.

The Kravak fnaly decided to close and did a double threshold check on the DD EYRE damaging engines knocking out the port graser and the beam-2, matt later reaired the graser.. in response the UNSC DD's now having a target inside the 18MU graser range opened up on the RISHATHRA and lets just say they umm performed rishathra on it..

The graser dice were ugly with two rerolls.. not the sort of hiding that you like to see dished out to a newbie.. I stopped counting the dice pips at 22.. the RISHATHRA is an ex ship it ceased to be.

Oliver had little luck with his reinforcements for the rest of the game he didnt get any help but snuck one DD in and scored a few points on the Range as it loped along doing 5 points in a high speed run before the DD went off table..

Matt beagn to move up table an then the AMAZON arrived, but played little part in the action by the point at which we called time or rather my fiance did, on the game.

in hindsight, beng a newbie scenario, I should have reserved the reinforcement rolls for myself to keep it balanced for as long as I could and also provided a list of orders to make plotting orders clearer and a bit easier.

Its led me to think about how FT vector movement should be explained and taught as this was the only confusing issue for the players in the game..."