Dreadfleet: Between a rock and a hard place AAR

Both the Grand Alliance and the Dreadfleet finally meet in force, all their ships join up in the first full scale battle involving every ship in the game. Each fleet starts out at the opposite table edge, between the fleets there are two islands. Leviathan Island is the home of a large bone giant who bashes any sheep that comes to close, inflicting Hull Damage on the unlucky or foolish. The other is Hellfish island, which is surrounded by flesh eating hellfish which inflict Crew Damage cards.

As soon as a ship ends its phase within 6" of any island damage cards are drawn (1D3 cards, and only the appropriate effects are applied).

The victory conditions for both fleets is to mess up their opponents, the fleet that starts their turn with only 2 or fewer ships remaining in play loses the battle.

The battle began a "Ghastly fog" rolling in on the area, limiting line of  sight to just 6". With that the Dreadfleet admiral, count Noctilus making a daring move, sailing full speed ahead down towards the left flank of the Grand Alliance. This however made it possible for the Flaming Scimitar to sail past, and attacking the vampire ship with its fire efreet setting the enemy ship ablaze!

Grimnirs Thunder made a U turn and too intended to close in on the vampire to strafe it with projectiles, inflicting light damage doing so.




The threat of losing their main battleship forced the rest of the Dreadfleet to move carelessly through the dangerous gap between the islands, Skabrus sailed up and fired upon Grimnirs thunder, smashing through the thick hull with its warp lightning cannons. The rats had little time to celebrate however as they soon came under attack from both the Seadrake firing bolt throwers, a dragon and the Heldenhammer. The pounding the bloated carcass took finally made it sink, dragging the undead rat crew with it into the depths while battle continued to rage above the surface.

Intending to lock the enemy in place the Swordfysh decided to ram the large vampire ship, little damage was inflicted with the ram but both Aranessa Saltsprite and her crew had immense luck and managed to outduel and outfight both count Noctilus and his vast crew against all odds! Noctilus couldn't believe what was happening, he was sure the foolish Swordfysh crew would be easy pickings - instead he was busy putting out fires started by the Flaming Scimitar and Grimnirs thunder.

The Black Kraken decided to intervene and sailed right up to Grimnirs Thunder and began tearing it apart with its metal tentacles. The Seadreake which was about to launch a boarding action to aid the Dwarf ship was itself rammed by the  Curse of Zandri. This meant there were now 3 separate boarding actions going on!

Count Noctilus finally gravely wounded captain Arenessa but his ship had taken so much damage that it was slowly capsizing. As it turned out the damage card deck ran out soon after and made the Bloody Reaver sink beneath the waves.

Briefly demoralized the remaining Dreadfleet ships smelled defeat, but then managed to sink Grimnirs Thunder with the Black Kraken which continued to fight the leaderless Swordfysh and quickly smashed it into splinters reducing the Grand Alliance to 3 ships. Meanwhile the combat between Seadrake and the Curse of Zandri was going equally bad for the good guys. However the high elves somehow prevailed, and at the start of the next turn the two remaining Dreadfleet ships were forced to withdraw.

The Grand Alliance had won another battle, although it had been a close call towards the end.