The Shipyard: Brakiri Blitsi-class Heavy Escort

The Ak-Habil Blitsi

    The Brakiri Syndicracy is somewhat unusual in that they do not have a single unified military. Instead, the corporations that form what passes for a government are the ones that are responsible for the defence of Brakiri space. The four primary corporations all maintain a standing military force capable of protecting Brakir, but more often this is used to protect the interests of the corporation and it can lead to confrontations with their competition. As a consequence of this the Syndicracy has 4 quite distinct design lineages and the official A Call to Arms fleet list only brushes the surface.

    Today I am going to be taking a look at the Blitsi-class Heavy Escort. This is a design for Babylon 5 Wars by Anthony Pakizer. In B5W it sits between the Halik and Avioki in size and firepower and entered service in 2250 which is the same year the Halik entered service.

    Tyrel Lohr has produced a Blitsi STL (at time of writing available on his Patreon, but likely to be on cults3d soon) which is smaller than the Avioki by a large margin, and probably on a par length wise with the Halik for which the official miniature is the only one currently available. There is one control sheet available in the amazingly named 'new burger ships' available on the Babylon 5 wars vault, I'm not aware of who the author is, and it rates the ship as a skirmish priority level ship.  I think this is quite a good move as the Brakiri are somewhat lacking in the official rules when it comes to smaller hulls, their roster being weighted towards Battle Level and above. 

The Ikorta (Pri-Wakat), Brikorta (Ly-Nakir) and Shakara (Im-Rehsa)

    The Brakiri offering for skirmish ships is also a bit mixed. The Ikorta, Brikorta and Shakara are all specialised ships, the Ikorta being an assault ship packed with troops, the Brikorta being a light carrier and finally the Shakara is a stealthy scout ship.  None of those ships being good at ship to ship combat, instead filling specialist roles. The only other official skirmish ship is the Haltana which appears in Powers and Principalities. That ship is based on the Halik hull and is extremely powerful, so powerful in fact that I have my doubts as to whether it was properly play tested. I have previously produced house rules for some Ikorta variants, but these are not official and still need extensive play testing but the Ikortas will fill in some holes at skirmish level.

If we discount my previous contributions and the Haltana that leaves a nice space for a Skirmish level combat ship to fit into, and an Ak-Habil one at that.

Some other Ak-Habil ships, the Avioki (left), Antoph (right) and Kabrik (front)

I've taken the ship from 'Burger ships' and made a couple of changes, firstly I've changed the range of the Graviton Beam to 18 inches which is standard for Brakiri ships and I think it was a typo to have it as range 12. I've also added anti-fighter 1 since this is an Ak-Habil Conglomerate ship. This change is more for fluff reasons than anything else. If you are familiar with the Brakiri background you will be aware that the main competitor for Ak-Habil is Ly-Nakir. Ly-Nakir is a corporation that produces Brakiri space fighters and their ships are without exception, carriers. If Ak-Habil and Ly-Nakir ever came to blows, the Ak-Habil ships would have to deal with fighters, and a lot of them. Every other ship Ak-Habil has produced in the official rules has at least some Anti-Fighter. You may remember the Kabrik Police ship. the rules for that are not official, and its a police ship rather than a war ship so not designed to fight in a battle, in previous battles I have taken them they have been bullied and beaten and suffered immensely.

What do we get for our skirmish point? The Blitsi has an above average damage pool, a respectable armour of 5 and  a varied armament. Like the Halik it is reasonably fast and agile with 8" movement and 2 turns of 45 degrees. Like most Ak-Habil ships it lacks interceptors meaning you will have to support it with fighters if you want to avoid damage and the damage dealing ability is somewhat lackluster, if falls far short of some other ships at Skirmish level but this is balanced out somewhat by the extra range on its forward weapons. The beam, although slow loading, ignores interceptors and is always a wildcard that can spike and take out much larger ships.

Overall I would say the ship is quite average, which is a good place to be and leaves room for improvement. I would expect the ship to lose the majority of the time against a Vorchan which is a frankly ridiculous ship, and get pushed around by the Artemis in a 1v1 encounter.

As always, If you plan on using any fan content in your games, discuss it with your opponent first. If you want to use the Blitsi though, just remind your opponent that the Haltana is busted and it's and official ship!

What do you think of this ship? do you think its strong, weak or just right? would you be willing to play with or against this ship?

Let me know, and I will see you next time.

STLs by Tyrel Lohr.

Miniatures painted by me

Thanks to Anthony Pakizer for his B5W design.