Full Thrust



I recently had my first game of Full Thrust, kindly put on at the Wassail Games Club by Andy, with help from Toby ("I don't believe it! A Spikey in chain-mail!"). There were three players on each side.

I was really quite impressed by the game, even though the side I was on was thoroughly trounced.

Here is a brief report of the battle.

The second battle of Kaou Pih


Admiral Esther Royd-Belt tried to open her eyes, slowly regaining consciousness. Just dark shapes and intense pain. She winced as she tried unsuccessfully to move; must be strapped to a medical table, and doped up to the eyeballs, she thought.

She began to remember the battle. Their mission was to prevent a heavily-escorted Spikey broodship escaping from the Kaou Pih system.



A Spikey broodship, with escorts.


Her force consisted of three groups of ships. Force Heaven consisted of two light cruisers and one heavy cruiser. Force Hell had three corvettes and a battlecruiser. Force Purgatory, her flag group, had the battleship 'Taking Umbrage', and the heavy destroyers 'Keel Hauler' and 'Three Sheets'


Force Hell: the battlecruiser 'Case Hardened' with the corvettes 'Stem the Tide' and 'Angry Brigade'


The heavy cruiser 'Bury the Hatchet', part of Force Heaven, near to Gamma Kaou Pih

Her plan had been simple; to converge on the route of the broodship with Forces Hell and Purgatory, from opposite directions, and engage it from the front, whilst Force Heaven attacked it simultaneously from the rear.

Things had started to go wrong as soon as Hell and Purgatory began decelerating to place themselves in the path of the broodship. There were many more Spikey ships supporting the broodship than Intelligence had suggested, and for some reason Force Heaven made a sharp course change towards the Spikeys and began to engage them.

Force Hell, seeing this, changed course to support Heaven, and attacked the Spikeys from the opposite side. Purgatory would need to support Heaven and Hell quickly, before they were overwhelmed by the hordes of Spikeys. Royd-Belt ordered her force to engage the Spikeys as rapidly as possible. But 'Taking Umbrage' was a big underpowered ship, and so, despite using maximum thrust, it took Purgatory an agonisingly long time to get within range of the Spikeys. By then the other two forces were very severely depleted and could do nothing to stop the alien ships.

Force Purgatory engaged the broodship as best it could, with salvoes of missiles and disruptor beams, but very little significant damage was done on either the broodship or its escorts. Captain Wyatt Hole's 'Three Sheets' soon had only its point defence weapons operative. A ferocious attack from Spikey fighters and beam weapons took out all the major turrets of the 'Taking Umbrage', rendering it useless. Captain Knut Ronstar's 'Keel Hauler' was still putting up a strong fight, but the Spikey's seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of ships.

Royd-Belts last memory of the battle was of the broodship screaming past, about to jump out of the system, and massive vibrations as a Spikey beam weapon began punching holes in the structure of the 'Umbrage', just below her feet. She had lost consciousness as the resulting intense shock waves had passed through the bridge. She guessed she had been bundled into an escape pod and, very much later, picked up by one of their rescue ships.

She tried to move again, with no success. She opened her eyes and, blinking, saw a very distorted image of a green planet.

And then she saw a Spikey escort ship...

She realised that she was not on a rescue ship, but in an absorption vesicle on the outside of the Spikey broodship. She began screaming as she realised that her fate was to be dissolved and incorporated within the fabric of the very ship they had been trying to stop.