The first duel of the second round is the Gorn "C.S.S. Reptilicon" and the Lyran "S.M.S. Prowess". I've already written about each of them in previous duel previews, so I'll just recap the high points of each ship. The Gorn Heavy Cruiser has good all-around shields, more warp power than most other ships, good all-around phaser-1 suite, and two plasma S torpedoes. Bad points are its awful turn mode, inability to shoot all phasers in any direction, and bad plasma arcs, which makes it harder to have both plasma torpedoes hit the same shield.

The Lyran Heavy Cruiser has the best #1 shield in the group (except for the Hydran which also has 33 shield). All phasers can fire down the front hexrow, 2 Expanding Sphere Generators while still having 4 Disruptors, and good Hull configuration. On the negative side, it is a pretty average ship otherwise. Ok power, ok turn mode, ok flank and rear shields, ok internals. The biggest lack is only having 4 phaser-1s, although the 6 phaser-3s somewhat makes up for it in certain situations.

One feature I tend to discount is shuttles. The Gorn has 6, the Lyran has 2, but I don't use shuttles well. I don't generally want to deal with them, so they either stay inside or launch quickly as a group and become a slow-moving road block. In the Cadet Training Handbook you can only use shuttles as admins or as suicides, and suicide shuttles take power. In Star Fleet Battles, you need to use every tool at your disposal, but sometimes I am lax, especially when I'm playing myself.

So, what does the Gorn want to do? Well, what did the Romulan KR do? It closed and fired both plasmas, scoring with them, but then it was overrun by the ESGs. The Romulan doesn't take internals well, but the Gorn is one of the more robust ships in the game. The Gorn still wants to stay out of range 4, which would cut the Lyran firepower in half, but that will be hard to do. The shuttles can make a difference if both ships gut each other.

The Lyran still wants to overrun. When the Klingon fought the Gorn the Klingon took too much damage in the initial pass without doing enough. The Lyran can do more damage and he still has the same goal: two torp hits to take out the plasma torpedoes (torp hit on the damage chart is an 11 (2d6 roll)). You can only hit one torp in a volley, but the ESG does it's damage during movement. So if you can hit the Gorn with both ESGs at max damage (which means they have a range of 0 and you have to literally hit the Gorn), you'll do enough damage to penetrate a shield and do a few points of internal, hopefully taking out one torp. Then you can take out the other torp in the direct fire weapon phase of the turn.

This fight will at least initially look somewhat like the Romulan KR vs Lyran duel. The Gorn can do more damage and take more damage than the Romulan, if it's flown carefully. The extra shuttles can make a difference if the Gorn decides to just fly in and trade alpha strikes. The Lyran, although initially having better damage potential (at range 0), also loses heavy weapons twice as fast as the Gorn (Disruptors on torp hits and ESGs on drone hits).

Predictions: I like the Gorn. In this fight he can afford to be aggressive against an opponent that has to close to do damage. This is a good situation for the Gorn, one where he can do a great deal of damage before the Lyran gets to range 0, perhaps taking out one ESG. If so, the exchange will be even and if the Gorn doesn't lose both plasma torps he'll win.