Firestorm Armada, Baptism of Fire

Hi Kids,  Finally got off my butt and scheduled a game of Firestorm Armada, and dragged my Sorylian fleet kicking and screaming into the battle!  I have this weird rule about not used unpainted figs, so while everyone else I know has been playing this game I've been holding off, painting away.  Naturally, as soon as I was finished everyone had shifted to different games.  Argh!  Anyway, we finally got back around the deep space and played a game!  Amazing, I know!

 The Sorylian Fleet, painted in my own weird blueish/inverted teardrop camo.  I supersized the teardrops on the battlewagon (The Battleaxe) since painting the smaller variety would have taken too long.  You can see the crusiers have much better camo, I painted them first.  Yep, gonna have to glue them onto the bases to stop those weird angles of attack.   I named all my ships after tools; such as Lugwrench, Pipewrench, Crowbar, Sledgehammer, Rubber Mallet, Lead Pipe, Billyclub, and Spork.

 The Bad Guys, the Drindrenzi.  These are second printing ships, I think they are a little bigger than the first gen ships.

 The Bad Guys deployed.

 I left off the carrier and my second squadron of escorts just to make the fleets even.  I'm trying to from a line of battle to use my best guns, mounted broadside.  I've already blasted two BG escorts, and lost one.

 My counterclockwise tactic seems to be working and the enemy escorts are crushed, while not taking much more damage myself.

 Since friendly ships don't block shooting, I set up for a massive combined strike against the enemy battlewagon while my escorts try to keep the enemy crusiers busy, doing better than I expected, they blow up another one!

 YE GODS!  The enemy battlewagon moves faster than expected and cuts through my crusier line, unleashing massive firepower in all directions!  Two crusiers are destroyed outright while the third is crippled!

 Eye-yi-yi.....  The fleets are back to evenly matched now, as my massive numerical advantage is wiped out!  The enemy battlewagon is down to one hull point, while the Battleaxe is down to two!

The game ends due to a random die roll, and everyone starts rowing for home! Victory Points were within one of each other.  I really wonder who would've won if we had continued, but was happy just to have some survivors of the fleet after my first game!