Battle Fleet Gothic Campaign - chasing ghosts

Josh has kindly organised a Battlefleet Gothic campaign down at the club. He is already in the top 10% of campaigns because he has got past the talking about it phase and played games.

10 of us gathered at the Warlords for games. I am playing on Team Imperial.

After the draw for games was complete and opponents were determined I was drawn to play James and his Eldar.

Admiral Ackrell frowned, these orders were ... unpleasant. With rumours of sightings of chaos vessels across the sector, being sent to an uninhabited backwater system to investigate possible Eldar sightings sounded like a huge waste of time.

Trying to bring the Eldar ships to battle was often an exercise in frustration. Sensor indicators that could be ships would drift in and out of the tactical plot often moving in what appeared to be impossible directions, before fading from the instruments and blooming somewhere else.

The fleet emerged from the warp at the edge of the system, just inside the inner diameter of the systems oort cloud. Deploying this far out would give us time to scan the system and would give us cover if we needed to retire. It didn't take long for the wisdom of this plan to become apparent.

Here are the Marathon Triumphant and the Imperial Endeavour trailed by the Strike Cruisers of the Executioners Chapter Broadsword and Battleaxe.

Sensor Operator, Sir I'm picking up multiple ships of unknown configuration. Reads like three capital ships and several escorts on a reciprocal bearing. Ships producing neutrino readings consistent with Eldar vessels. unable to localise contacts.

Helm, steady as she goes, lets see what they do.

Sensor Operator, Alien ships have changed course towards our position. Designating contacts as Bandits 1, 2 and 3.

Sensor Operator, all bandit targets showing multiple energy spikes, new energy readings, Vampire, vampire vampire. Enemy ordnance heading for our position.

Launch the alert fighters establish a barrier. All ships to come right to unmask weapon batteries. Set weapons to proximity fuse and establish a defensive barrage.
The Space marine strike cruisers swing around in tighter arcs and a CAP of Thunderhawks launched from the Battle Axe spread out to cover the two cruisers.

The Eldar bomber streams easily navigate the asteroid fields and are rapidly closing the distance to the Imperial ships.

The Eldar cruisers darted through the asteroids and attacked the Broadsword. their lances did some damage to the armoured hull of the marine cruiser. Then they darted back and around the asteroids
Two Eldar bombers made it through the defensive barrage and CAP fighters of the Imperial ships to attack the Broadsword. The Cruisers close in defence network dispersed one bomber (its hard to do when you need a 6). However the last survivor rolled a 6 for attacks and with rerolls got three hits. I then failed all my Brace for Impact rolls.

Covered in explosions lights went out on the Broadsword as the power grid failed.

With another wave of Edar bombers inbound and the Endeavour flight decks jammed and unable to relaunch a defencive screen, Admiral Akrell gave the order to move into the asteroids and go dark.

Two Firestorm frigates were lost in an ambush by a squadron of Eldar escorts.

So all in all a rough start to the campaign. The Eldar were exactly what I was expecting. slippery and impossible to get to grips with.

I lost 3 renown, but I only had one and can't go any lower.