Wednesday 18 September 2013

An example turn in a game of Engage

An example of a turn in a game of Engage

I'm putting together this short piece to give people some idea of how the game actually plays, if you're like me then you find that it’s one thing to read the rules, but another entirely to read them 'in action'





A simple face off with two players, each with a Destroyer

Both sides roll for initiative, however, player A has a ship with 1 command point, adding +1 to his initiative roll. Player A scores higher and so takes the first turn.

Selecting his ship, player A must decide how to spend his three action points. He starts by re-assigning two auxiliary power to the sensor array (which is currently at power 1), giving him sensor power 3 (this value positively modifies the ‘to hit’ rolls), at this point in the game, with both players either side of the board, this is a big help. Player A then moves the ship forward and declares that he is shooting beam weapons at Player B’s Ship.

Given the opponent’s thruster value, player A needs to roll an 8+ on 2D6 to hit the target, but the distance between them also adds modifiers. Measuring from the stem of the attackers base to stem of the defenders base, the distance comes in at 32”. In Engage, for every 12” range band after the first 12", a -1 modifier is added to the ‘to hit’ score. In this case, a -2 modifier is added, making the 'to hit' value 10+ on 2D6.

This is quite a tricky value to beat, but we then add the sensor array modifier, of +3, which in fact bring it back down to 7+, and we can now see why player A chose to move power to sensors.

Player A rolls 2D6 and scores a 9, the shot is a hit, but no damage has yet been made against player B’s ship. He rolls 1D6 for each point of the beam weapons ‘attack value’ which is 4. The aim here is to score higher than the opponents shield value of 4, thus punching through it and damaging the hull.

Player A rolls 3, 5, 5, 6 a very respectable score that will do lots of damage. The 3 is ignored because it failed to beat the shield value. The two fives each do one point of damage to the hull, and the six does one damage to the hull and one damage to the shield!

Player B’s ship has lost three hull points and now has just four left (0 means destroyed) and the ships shield has taken a hit and is now shields three, meaning any future attacks need to roll 4+ instead of 5+.

Player B will need to either spend an action reassigning auxiliary power to supplement the shields (but risk doing more damage because he’s pumping a damaged system with extra juice) or attempting a repair action to bring the shields back to normal

This was quite a dramatised turn, but one that hopefully gives you a very simple idea of a turn in Engage and lets you see that it's an easy game to play, but one that does require tactical thinking. There are lots of extras that I haven't begun to mention that also impact on gameplay, the command points at the beginning have a whole range of other implications, as well as different weapons and armour types. 

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