Yaaaarrrr Me Hearties!

A little while back my friend Rich H and I started a Dreadfleet campaign. Playing each mission switching sides and keeping score. We did a few missions on the trot when it first came out and since then we've been picking up the odd game here and there when we've finished our respective games of 40k early at Monday Geek Club and think we have time for a mission.

The best pirate you've ever heard of?

Now for one reason or another, the normal rules of my club (Ginge rolls badly, any roll of 50% or more dice coming up 1 is called a Ginge roll, 5 times out of 6 Ginges demo charges will end up behind the thrower - much to the disappointment of the throwers squad etc) do NOT apply in dreadfleet. The game loves me, and hates Rich. Maybe cos I think I'm the guy on the right, maybe because I consider myself a Pastafarian, maybe cos at least twice a year if not more I'll go out on the piss dressed as a pirate (and not always because it's a fancy dress occassion, i've done it twice just to see the looks on peoples faces) the reason is not clear, but what is clear is how well Rich can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. From missions where you collect damage cards where his ships would NOT die accumulating dozens each while mine went out with a whimper giving him a score of two. Where he goes from a dominant position to half his fleer dead in one bad turn. Something ALWAYS happens. This has allowed me to get to a campaign score of about 60 something, while Rich is on -22.

But NOT tonight.


Tonight the game abandoned me. The first card out gave Rich a nasty attack, that hits all ships within 3D6 of any chosen point on the seascape. Bad enough in a normal game, but when he gets to activate it before I can move, in a mission whose deployment clustered all my ships within a 12" quarter circle - it was devastating. Two of my ships were crippled on turn 1. I then failed pretty much every command check for two turns, meaning that I couldn't stop the Heldenhammer piling into the fight between the Swordfish and the Bloody Reaver. The three hits it did, all crew, meaning that it then lost the subsequent boarding action and was dead in one combat. My entire fleet followed by halfway through turn two. This left his fleet 3 turns to collect treasure at will, with me just hoping that fate cards may be able to give me something that would interfeere with his plans. They didn't.


With 5 treasure in his possession, RIch would get campaign points of 5 (treasure tokens he won by) multiplied by 3D6, for a potential score of 90. With heart in mouth that my entire campaign was about to be undone by one bad game, Rich rolled... a score of 4! Totalling 20, not enough to even get him out of negative score! Fantastic! The game hasn't abandoned me, it gave him false hope and screwed him in the final tally! Yaaaaarrrrrrr!

When we next meet it's my turn, but in the later missions there are a lot of points up for grabs for either side. I don't think there is any card as potentially devastating as the one he inflicted on me, and that isn't available to the bad guys, so hopefully this time around things may go a little better. We shall see.

In the meantime... Drink up me hearties yo ho...