Renegades Direct Action - The Holy Crusade

In the year of Our Lord 2016 on the 10th of September the PanOceanian Crusader Army of Christ took upon the fields of battle in the city of Kingston upon Hull. By the will of our Lord the Maiden of Orleans did not lead them to victory but their sacrifices will not be forgotten, they will live forever in the Kingdom of Heaven and will be remembered as Martyrs of the Holy Crusade. 

This was first event of the new ITS Season 8 "Tagline". If you read my previous article, for this season I decided to play more fun games and use my other armies. I decided to take my Military Orders for this event. I really wanted to get them painted and this was as good as reason as any. Plus I played them only once before. So in a week I painted my Crusader Army and off to Hull I went with James and Matt.

The event was hosted by the Yorkshire Renegades. 

I lost all thee games and came last, mix of bad match up and just terrible luck. I think I might have done better in Limited Insertion event because I only took 10 Orders, which was mainly because I didn't have enough time to paint more models. I enjoyed playing this army though, space-Knights are cool. I will likely keep this army for Limited Insertion events in the future as I don't plan to buy more units to make it a viable competitive army for normal ITS.

Game 1: Supremacy - Crusader Army of Christ vs Yu Jing
Lost 3 to 7 (0 TPs)

"Wrath is no vice when inflicted upon the deserving."

The Maiden of Orleans and her Crusaders of the Lord took it upon themselves to liberate our faithful citizens from the clutches of the evil Imperial Service after the heathens of the Yu Jing StateEmpire had the audacity to try subjugate one of the Hyperpower's residential areas. By Will of the Lord, Saint Joan's army was able to break the enemy lines and establish a defense perimeter to evacuate our innocents civilians. The enemy horde was relentless and many pious soldiers of the Lord fell that day, forcing Saint Joan and the Crusaders into tactical retreat. 

In the first round I was matched up against Nigel so I knew it will be a very hard game. Nigel's army is very competitive so I didn't think my first attempt at Military Orders had a chance. The table, while very pretty was not good for this kind of mission. On both sides you had only one building outside of the deployment zone, otherwise it was all open with wide streets going both horizontal and vertical. If like Nigel you had two Total Reaction Remotes, they could easily lock down much of the board. In my opinion every board needs some closed routes to get you out of the DZ, if they don't it can end up frustrating real quick.

Considering I had only 10 Orders vs Nigel's 16 plus 6 or so Impetuous, I was aiming for a draw at best, I had no chance controlling more zones than him. My only advantage was going second and having expensive units to throw into quadrants if he spread himself out too much. My plan was to have Joan and two Knights of Santiago on my right flank in a building outside of DZ, and then Knight of Holy Sepulcher (who spent most of the game pretending to be three Fusiliers) and Infiltrators and Crusader on the left. I knew who Nigel's Lt was so I thought if I kill him, I could get draw or win on quadrants first and second turn.

But there was only one real way to kill Nigel's Lt, by having Infiltrator on a roof in the middle of the board. Which I did. Nigel was smart and got his Sensor Remote on the roof, which forced my hand to reveal my TO unit and shoot it for free when it finished climbing. But that allowed Nigel to use his tiger/mini-TAG unit to climb up and kill my Infiltrator. That unit also took out my hacker through a really awkward LoF. Then it stood there in Suppressive Fire and was a problem to shift. Luckly for me Nigel didn't move much into any quadrant. Which allowed me to move Joan and her Knights to get lower left, my second TO unit to take lower right and then my Crusader Brethren took out a unit on top right quadrant and captured it, so I was on good start.

It didn't last long, the buildings turned out to have even more awkward LoFs through windows because they had no internal walls so my Crusader had nowhere to get in cover. Nigel killed him and then moved up his Chain Rifle guys to take out my TO unit, followed by Total Reaction Rems moving up to the middle. It basically locked down my entire Deployment Zone as the table was crazy wide open. I did manage to take out some of the Remotes and give me just enough to force draw on second turn but Nigel was then able to just heal up everyone with his Engineer and since he had double the Orders, he took three of the four objectives. In the last turn he had more quadrants. The game went better than I expected but the result wasn't surprising.

Game 2:  Decapitation - Crusader Army of Christ vs Morats
Lost 0 to 7 (0 TPs)

"Suffer not the alien to live!"

The Devil saw his chance and part of the Crusader Army was cut off by the Devil's alien minions known as Morats. The force of evil struck quick and hard but the Crusader Army fought with valor.  Identifying the Devil's Lieutenant, the Crusader Brethren descended from the Heavens like the blessed Angels but unfortunately not even all their might was enough to smite the alien evil. Before they were overrun, Knight of Holy Sepulcher in command ordered to leave the battle and rejoin with Saint Joan.

Normally I get paired up again James in the last round and the result is also predictable (you can read my previous reports on how bad match up my Caledonia is against his vanilla Ariadna), but this time he was also playing for fun and had his Morat army. So we thought this could be a good match up, both had heavy hitting armies with few Orders. My plan for this mission was having Knight of Holy Sepulcher in Holoecho state, with Auxbots, Hacker, Hospitaller Knights and Black Friar protecting him. Then I would use Crusader Brethren to AD behind enemy line to suicide while killing the enemy Lt. I also had TO Sniper Infiltrator for the chance of getting a nice sniper angle on the enemy Lt. Good plan I thought, and it sort of worked. I just had terrible, terrible luck.

James got the first turn and I was perhaps bit stupid but I had my HMG Hospitaller Knight watching a fire line. I thought with high BS and ARM and Doctor near by, he'd have a good chance. But I didn't realize how good Rodok HMG in full Link Team is. BS15 with Mimitism is really powerful. So my Hospitaller Knight died and then was shot while unconscious. James ended his turn just holding back around the middle, with Kornak behind his troops. He was in the open if I got behind him and there was lots of open space to AD into, it looked good. So I started my turn by activating Hacker and gave my AD troops +3 PH. PH14 is got great but its above average. Plus James did not have a normal Hacker so it was unopposed. My first Crusader with HMG dropped down without problems. I got to shoot at Kornak in the open while I was in Cover... but I rolled so low on four dice that James won the roll and I of course failed the ARM save.

I thought lets try it again. This time my Crusader failed to land and scattered so only one Rodok with Shotgun could see him. He hit, I failed ARM save again, plan out of the window. Next turn nothing major happened, I think James wasted all his Orders just getting a Classified Objective and getting everyone back to where they started. My Hail Mary was using my TO Sniper to take out his Tempest Regiment units. They were in the open, I had the range, the cover, the TO, the surprise, basically putting them at -9 because they were also in their good range. I needed 15 vs their 4. What do you know, James crits with both units! BOTH!

With half my army dead and no chance getting past his units, we called it there and went to get some food. James couldn't really get to my Lt either, it was on roof with no ladders, in marker state, with flamer bots and mines around the way to get to him.

Game 3: Frontline - Crusader Army of Christ vs ALEPH
Lost 0 to 2 (0 TPs)

"Through the gates of hell we make our way to Heaven."

Betrayed by its very creation, just as God was betrayed by his angel Lucifer, forces of A.L.E.P.H. attacked the Crusader Army. Guided by the Holy Spirit the Crusaders attacked swiftly with the Lord's might and in His name they slew A.L.E.P.H.'s champion Achilles. Unfortunately the enemy was not slowed down for long but every inch of the battlefield was paid with blood. The Holy Crusade came to an abrupt end when the Maiden of Orleans fell in battle. The Lord works in mysterious ways. 

Last round, last chance for victory. I went against Al who was playing his Achilles & Hector list. I felt good about it because once more we had around the same number of Orders. The table was interesting, one half was infinite high buildings and the other half was super open with saturation zones. So for all intents and purposes we played on one half of the table, you can guess which one. The table also did not have a single tall building or roof with cover, the only high place was a catwalk around middle of the board on the side we didn't use (we both had one unit on that side of the table). The mission was front line so the plan was to move up a little each turn and set up good defenses so I would finish the game with units in the middle and in the furthest zone from my DZ. I believe I won the Lt roll on this one, I had the first turn either way.

After deployment an exciting opportunity presented itself in form of Achilles deployed near the edge of the board in a building with doors facing the edge of the board. He was also outside of Al's Deployment Zone because of his Forward Deployment. It meant I was able to send AD trooper and TO Infiltrator to go assassinate him, or try to anyway. First I moved the TO unit to plant a mine in a doorway, he was on the right side of the doors. Then Crusader walked on the edge on the left side of the doors. Al had one chance to change facing when I was placing the mine but after that, any ARO and he'd have to take the extra hit. With the Crusader I then went to shoot Achilles in the back with Al doing change facing. He failed his rolls and then managed to fail three ARM saves too, which was lucky for me. I am not sure if it was before or after shooting Achilles, I had a go at shooting Hector. It didn't do anything but it made Al throw a smoke grenade with one of is units, blocking LoF into the building where Achilles was. It allowed my Order Sergeant to run in and Coup de Grace, I did not want to risk Al having a doctor somewhere.

Al also revealed his TO Hacker and I screwed up moving my TO Sergeant and the Crusader, so I ended up blocking my own mines that could have hit the Hacker. Which I paid for later in the game. The Hacker was in such a bad place for me that I couldn't go shoot it without risking my HI unit being hacked. And Al killed my hacker in his first turn. Looking back maybe I should have just go risk it, my troops had decent BTS but I thought I could get around with my Knight of Holy Sepulcher. He did really good in the game, put Hector down to 1 Wound and took out some units. Al was holding back for first two turns and I did not have enough Orders to push much either.

In the last turn I went for it but the Knight of Holy Sepulcher got killed. After that I didn't have enough Orders to go anywhere. I left my Knights and Joan overlooking access routes to the zone in front of my DZ, which Al wanted to get, trying to at least stop him. That plan failed when one of his units went against Joan and I failed to hit and then she failed three ARM saves. There was also a point earlier where I needed like 11s or 12s to hit and I managed to roll three 13s, it was pretty amusing. Al got the victory in the end by capturing the quadrant that gave him the most points.