It was a very well run event and props to Ben for going around with time reminders each round. Think he came around every half an hour or so. From what I remember only table run into the lunch break. The turn out was also good, even though it was one less table than last time. I did meet bunch of new people and I am sure for the next one, more of us from Leeds will attend.Also you will notice from the photos that they did fill up tables with the Corvus Belli card board terrain and I thought it worked well enough.
Photos from the day by Ben Tyrer, the TO: http://infinity.boltonboardgames.org.uk/#!album-6
I came 5th (same as the first event) but had a good day of games and the price support was nice. Everyone got a set of Camo/S2 silhouette token with a small round template, both with engraved Harlequins. Which I thought was very neat. There also was a blind-pick of Customeeple baggies. I managed to get a set of Haqqislam tokens (very useful since I am starting Haqqislam).
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| Photo by Ben. I am in the middle-ish, red top and hat. |
List A
List B
These lists might deserve a full breakdown article but if you read my event articles from last few months you will recognize them. My core tends to be the same, Wallace+Link, Uxia, Cateran and Warcor. The list is then based either around Scots Guard or Wulvers. I think the weakest part for both were the 5 pts Baggage bots, they did cause more damage to me than being useful by giving extra 20pts to my opponent. So definitely need to consider their usefulness for missions where you get points for killing more.
That said Urugan with (normal) Hacking Device is a pretty good combo and it helped me a lot. Another less useful unit was Scots Guard with SMGs in Camo. I forgot during one game he is not a Specialist anymore, but at the same time he did work well in one game so it really depends on the mission (as always). Overall I was mostly happy with both lists but especially for Biotechwore I could have tweaked it better.
Game 1: Supremacy - Caledonia vs Morats
Won 8 to 2 (3 TPs)
It was almost draw of fate that I got to play Lawrence in the first game. Last time we played in Harlequins he won, so this was my chance to even the score. Previously he played Ariadna but this event he came with Morats. It is an army I play myself but have not faced them this year that I remember. Lawrence won the Lt Roll and decided to go first. I chose to deploy on the side with the highest vantage point, as I always try to do when I have to pick deployment. I was running a Wulver Link so my deployment was mainly hidden with troops able to ARO only if Lawrence was trying to get to the Wulvers.
The first turn wasn't very eventful for Lawrence, with only 8 Orders in one pool and 2 in the other (not sure on the second pool, but it wasn't big) he had to spend them all on moving his troops rather than getting something into my deployment zone to attack. My hiding did give him almost entirely free movement everywhere but at the same time it helped me. He was able to get close which would mean less orders for my troops to attack as they wouldn't have to walk far. On the other hand, it was a gamble to let Lawrence be in three quadrants as it meant I had to take at least two from him. In my turn I was able to take out his Total Reaction HMG with a Cateran which allowed my Wulvers to move out. The next speed bump was a Suryat with HMG in Suppression but I was able to get close by being behind a building. Then three Wulvers did Speculative Grenades fire, with Wallace throwing Smoke Grenade. I was only going for breaking the Supression but I landed three Grenades and Lawrence failed all three ARM saves, which was pretty lucky.
I followed it up by Wulvers running behind another building and then on top of it, with Heavy Shotgun Wulver going around the corner. Behind that building was Kornak, Slave Drone and Witch Doctor. At close range with full link support, not much can hold against D15 Heavy Shotgun, especially when I was hitting on BS21 from this range and getting them out of cover! But it did take all my Orders and in the second group nothing really happened. My Scots Guard tried to Surprise Shoot a Raktorak to reduce Lawrence's Link a little but got killed, think he might have been crited. At the end of the turn I held two quadrants as the Wulvers moved just far enough to the top left and I also held bottom left (from my perspective).
In the second turn Lawrence continued with the offensive on my right flank and I think everything got killed. It was mostly cheap Order support so it didn't hurt that much, but it meant I had to be more careful with Orders. The Raktorak Link had three to four Shotguns in it which wasn't great as I didn't have the Orders go take a long way around as getting close would give Lawrence the advantage. Instead I just took out the HMG I was able to see from distance and avoided them otherwise. Only later on I realized I could see another member of the Link from distance and took him out too. I was able to take the two top quadrants and still held the bottom left quadrant. Lawrence only had the bottom right one.
As tends to happen in the last turn, Lawrence had only few Orders to do something with the last three Raktoraks in a Link and one or two other troops. He did managed to kill one of my Wulvers and then fortified his position on both right quadrants. I didn't have the Orders to take the bottom right one so the only way for me to win the third round as to take the top right quadrant where Lawrence had most of his points. I had a choice of attacking to reduce the opponent's point or hold back and just put in more. I decided to go with the safer option and kept out of sight as I moved the remaining Wulvers into the quadrant. Even three of them were over 100pts which was more than Lawrence had. Not spending the Orders on attacking also allowed Uxia, who was doing nothing till now, to get one objective and then move up over the middle line to do Sabotage.
Afterwards we had a good talk about the game and how it could have gone differently. I think the advantage I had was him not knowing how hard hitting the Wulver Link can be and I had the second turn so I knew where to put my points. The way I seen it after the game, he could have either attack them directly in his first turn (basically going for Alpha Strike) or avoid them by taking out my cheap Orders and being very defensive. Though the later option would be more about going for a draw each turn, and the first option is risky as it might have cost him the attacking troops and lots of Orders getting all the way to my DZ.
Game 2: Biotechwore - Caledonia vs ALEPH
Won 7 to 4 (2 TPs)
I don't believe I played Al before and we did not get a great table for Biotechwore. The table it self was fine, very dense and very few fire lines on the ground level but it was going to be a slaughterhouse in the middle strip outside of the virus zone. As Al was playing ALEPH I was expecting lots of ODD and overall did not fancy my chances. I know from experience my army can bounce off ODD, so it didn't help Al was playing both Achilles and Hector! Al won the Lt Roll and decided to go first. The table had only one high tower and I seen it as my only option for defensive position so I took the side closest to it. After Al deployed and I realized he would struggle to have more than 10-11 Orders, I went for deploying out of sight and only had Camo Marker (Cateran) standing up, everything else would get ARO only if Al came close.
In retrospect I probably should have deny Al use of more than one Command Token but I went with removing two Orders. I figured he'd move everyone out, get closer to me, and burn through his Command Tokens quickly. Which is what happened. What was very lucky for me in Al's turn was criting his Total Reaction Remote with the Cateran. The place where it was going would have given me a world of trouble trying to move anything out of my DZ. I think I also managed to kill some cheap trooper with Chain Rifle that moved too far and my Wulvers saw him. Al ended with Achilles and Hector in defensive positions which gave me only one safe path for the Wulvers to get to the tower. Start of the turn I knew I couldn't get everyone out of the virus zone so I decided to focus on keeping the Wulvers alive and sacrifice everyone else.
It was a gamble but the Link is worth almost 2/3 of my army. I spent the first turn getting to the tower and then getting all the way to the top. I had to spend two Orders for Wallace to climb and realized the top level had no access point to it, which would help me a lot to defend it. The only other unit to make it out of the virus zone was Scots Guard in Camo. Everyone else but Uxia (she failed to infiltrate at the deployment) died in it at the end of the game round. The three Highlanders died earlier in the turn by attacking with their Chain Rifles. Al didn't have much to attack so Achilles and Hector went into Supressive fire to hold back any of my attacks. He also tried to kill the Scots Guard but I was pretty lucky with him, believe I got a Crit against something.
I spent the whole second turn just killing Achilles. I figured he cost the most points and if I can take him out I'd swing the game in my favour. It took five rounds of shooting from the roof (20 dice!) before I managed to kill him by two crits. We were over 16" and he was in Supression but I got him out of cover while he was shooting at me in cover, so we were both at BS12. My only advantage was having extra Burst because I was in full Link. In retrospect probably not the smartest choice but I didn't see other options at the time. Since we were rolling for the same number, I figured I'd try my luck at rolling better.
Al's only option in the last turn was to try take out some Wulvers with Hector but he couldn't just Climb up as it would give me free round of shooting when he got to the top. He tried to Stun me with Stun Grenades but they failed to do anything, twice. In the end Al went into defensive position. In my last turn I used one Wulver to get down from the building to Coup De Grace someone for one of my Classified Objectives.
In the end I won only by a small margin, I had more points alive than Al but also managed to kill more. Which was very close because with both of my Baggage units being dead, Al had those extra 40pts. It was a good lesson at not taking Baggage on mission like this, or at least being more careful with it.
Looking back I think instead of hiding up on the building, I could have take my chances at attacking Hector with the full Link. It would been riskier but I would be able to get close thanks to Smoke and then Heavy Shotgun would have had decent chance at taking him out. Or even more balls out, I could have Smoke the path all the way to him and then take him down in CC with Wallace (or Wulver could be better choice). But considering Hector has EXP CCW, probably not the best idea as we'd likely trade models. If I managed to kill Hector in some way, Al would be in Loss of Lt in his second turn, making it harder for him to retaliate and giving me the time to fortify defenses. The main reason I went with hiding instead of not wanting to get stuck shooting someone while I was on the ground and in the first turn. It doesn't help both Achilles and Hector have three Wounds and high ARM.
After the game we talked about Al choices and he also could have gone into full hiding. Which might have given me more freedom of movement if I got down from the roof, and probably would have make the game very different as I would have to be the one finding a way of attack.
Game 3: Decapitation - Caledonia vs Imperial Service
Lost 2 to 7 (0 TPs)
This was the first time I played Nigel and it was way more fun than I expected it be, mainly because I did not expect my army to work that well against his Remote heavy IS army but we also joked a lot during the game. Overall the game was very back and forward with neither of us having a big advantage and even when I thought I did, he pulled it back and in the end I lost because I made a stupid choice of trying something very risky instead of taking a minute to think about how many points I had alive. The worse thing is, I think I would have won if I simply didn't spend any Orders and kept everyone alive! Definitely a good lesson for the future.
The table itself did look dense but it was actually quite open thanks to no high LoF blocks in the middle. Nigel won the Lt Roll and decided to go first, which pretty much ended my plans of Alpha Strike so I have chosen the side with the best defensible position. I did consider using Uxia to deploy close to enemy lines but Nigel did have the Remote with Sat-Lock and Sniffer, which would kill her fast so I didn't bother and instead positioned her over the middle line to take out some HMG Rems.Wallace and Scots Guard deployed in a two stories building with Wallace all the way on the top so if Nigel wanted to attack him, he'd have to go through the whole Link and some other units. He didn't have Missile Launchers or Grenade Launchers, so I wasn't bothered being bunched up on the top roof.
The first turn didn't start out so well. Nigel started with the changing Rem, Su-Jian, and it proved to be pretty deadly. I believe he got a crit or I might have just roll bad, but my Missile Launcher was first to drop unconscious. This was followed up by shooting my Cateran who died outright and then more fighting with the Scots but Molotok prevailed. The Su-Jian went into suppression near my Deployment Zone. Nigel then moved up his other Remotes to my surprise, he had two HMG Rems deployed on a roof with his Lt. My first turn was about trying to reduce the number of Rems. My one plan of attack was using Cameronian to get to the Lt but the board was way too open and he'd take tons of AROs, so I had to bide my time. My 112 healed the Missile Launcher but he couldn't stand up without being shot to pieces so I used Uxia on suicide mission to take out one HMG Rem, unfortunately for me it didn't die fully though but at least it was out of the way for now.
Then I went to deal with the Su-Jian. First thing was to get it out of suppression fire. I was bit stupid and run out with a Volunteer who Chain Rifled it. I needed to move him due to having a Hacker nearby who needed to move where he was. I could have saved the Order for later by simply moving him away. I think he might have took a Wound off the Su-Jian, so there was that. The Hacker then tried to hack the Su-Jian and while it didn't work, it did force him to do Reset and break suppression. Which then allowed my Molotok to take it out with Burst 5 vs Burst 1. The other target I could safely see was a unit with Holoprojector Lv2. I shot one and it was fake. Then I gave Urugan Marksmanship Lv2 and it blasted the other two markers, managing to target the right one and killing it for good. Don't think I done much more besides getting my Highlanders killed. Nigel had the board locked down.
However, it turned out Nigel's plan of attack was gone. The Holoprojector unit was his plan. He also tried heal his Remote with his Engineer/Doctor ALEPH unit but managed to kill it and he was all out of Command Tokens. I believe he then advanced with a Link Team full of cheap Chain Rifles and flanked with one HMG Remote which I did manage to take out but not before it killed something of mine, I think it was Marksman Rifle Scots Guard (my memory of these last two turns is getting blurred). Half way through my second turn I realized my worst mistake. I believed his third S3 Remote was also HMG, not realizing like a moron it was just some Combi Rifle cheap Rem. The other S5 Rem also only had Spitfire so I was able to outshoot and kill them both with my Scots Guards. But it was too late to do anything else that turn.
To my desperation Nigel managed to fix his Rems in his last turn. He also attacked with one trooper in the Link and while I did manage to kill it and break the Link for good, he also managed to kill my Urugan because apparently I can't save Chain Rifle hits. So we are at the start of my last turn and I am almost certain I have more units alive, at least more expensive ones. But I also think I might have a shot at taking out his Lt with Cameronian which would win me the game. So I risk it and jump out. I figured I could tank two Rems. Problem was, it turned out I was also just in range for two Chain Rifle and again, failed both saves. I still had the choice of going for Classified and healing my unconscious Dozer. Instead I got this idea if my 112 hits Cameronian with Medikit, I still have a shot at taking out the Lt. So he stands up, takes the shot, misses and dies. Then I also managed to get my Hacker killed by going for Classified she failed to do anyway. With last orders my Molotok goes to the top of the roof and takes out the Rems again.
Unfortunately, due to taking the unnecessary risk, I lose 50+ pts and did not even attempt to bring back my Dozer which could have give me extra 14 pts. In the end the difference between our Points killed wasn't that big. I think Nigel managed to get one of his Classified. The big lesson from the game would be to take a minor victory instead of risking a loss to have a chance at major victory, or in other words if you have more alive than your opponent in the last turn and the mission is about who kills more, don't throw away your units. Especially if you are at the top table in the last game!!!
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