Harlequins 3 - Rapide! Rapide!

The French army that I took to this event was something I have been wanting to do for a long time. It did not work as well as I thought it might have but I still believe it has potential, I was just not playing as well as I could and it certainly did not help this was the very first time I actually used the French. I should have had few games before the event to get a feel for how they would play. 

In the end I lost all three games but some were fairly close until the last turn. All of them were fun though. This army was definitely very entertaining to play. I think I was too excited to keep deploying everything on the middle line of the board, which was not the smartest thing to do. But now I have tried it and I know how to play this army better next time, or so I hope! 

Looking forward to visiting Harlequins again the future for more events.

My Army List

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What has always attracted me to the MRRF were the multiple units that can deploy outside of the Deployment Zone, its just something I really enjoy in units. So my idea for this list was that none of my units deploy in the Deployment Zone. It does have less Orders than you would expect in an Arianda army but to me its justified by deploying up to middle of the table so you don't need to spend as many Orders moving. 

As you can see the army is very simple, four Chasseurs (Infiltration), four Moblots (Infiltration) and four Zouaves (Mechanized Deployment). I would have preferred to have four AP Rifles and four Minelayers but I couldn't afford it all. I would have had to drop either one of the HMG Sappers, or change the Zouave Lt to two Metros (both with Rifles, one of which would be Lt) and a WarCor. It would give me bit more Orders and four Minelayers and four AP Rifles, but it would mean deploying something in my Deployment Zone.

One thing I also thought I should have changed was the Order pools and have one group of 9 and the other of 3. I want to go first with this list but then I was worried my opponent would take two Orders from the second group which only had two to begin with. It would have left my Sniper and HMG unable to do anything if I didn't spend Command Tokens to move units between Combat Groups.

Game 1:  Deadly Dance - MRRF vs Onyx Force
Lost 3 to 7 (0 TPs)

In the first round I played Michael, a new opponent for me. I did not really know the mission but it was quadrant control so I figured I'll deploy everything the middle (as planned anyway) and move my army as needed across the section borders. The only trouble was that I had to be ready to go into either of the four sections so I had to stretch my units across the table. That said I certainly had advantage of being able to deploy on roofs where I could keep my units safe. 

The first turn I thought went well for me. I couldn't see much but Michael deployed one of his Onyx mini-TAGs in the open as he couldn't get a good hiding place and I could also see his HMG unit that was deployed on a very high tower. Because the TAG was in the open it wasn't too hard to take it out with a Moblot who had AP Rifle, which made the TAG's armour less relevant. The HMG trooper on other hand was a pain as the only unit of mine that could see it was a Moblot with AP Rifle but shooting across the whole board, we were at like 42" range. I was on worse odds as I was on -9 and Michael was only on -6, so I was on BS 4 and he was on BS 6, but I had more dice. I figured it was my best chance of taking out the HMG. 

It did work as I managed to kill it on third round of shooting but I admit I was lucky because Michael was getting free shots from a different unit the whole time but I kept passing Armour Saves or he was missing the free shot. The rest of my turn was moving units into my assigned quadrant and putting units on Suppressive Fire.  In his first turn Michael moved some units into his quadrant too but mostly just spent the turn killing my HMGs and Sniper with his Fireteam of Batroids, who all had Plasma weapons which are just brutal against any Ariadna army. 

In my second turn I moved more units into my quadrant. At the end of the first round we both scored 1 Point, but I did not have as many units in my section as I'd like. I have not really killed much in this turn, only one Batroid to bring the Fireteam down to 3 (I managed to kill one of them on ARO before). I did plan to kill more but those things can go Dogged and I did not want to risk my Moblot being killed by a unit that was going to die anyway, it did not feel like a good trade, so I decided to wait the turn and bunkered down a bit. Michael did not kill much either and also focused on securing his quadrant. He still had a second TAG left and tried to kill two of my Moblots but they were both on Suppressive Fire. It took him too many Orders to kill one of them as the odds were not great and I kept passing ARM Saves. As did the TAG because he was shooting the one Moblot that did not have AP Rifle. 

In my last turn I was still in the lead because I killed more units. I saw opportunity to kill Michael's remaining two Batroids (the other Fireteam member was a Nexus) so I went to kill them with a Moblot. Even got them out of cover so I was hitting on 16s but then Michael crited me. I tried to kill them with a Chasseur too but he passed all his ARM Saves and I didn't. In the last turn Michael played smart by moving units to take over my quadrant as I had only two units left there and then moving his TAG to his quadrant, netting him more Objective Points in the last turn and winning the game.

 

Game 2:  Firefight - MRRF vs Onyx Force
Lost 2 to 6 (0 TPs)

 My second opponent was Luke, we played bunch of times before and it was always fun. Unfortunately for me though he also played Onyx Force so I had to face more Plasma, what a joy. The table was interesting and I was able to take advantage of deploying the middle of the board, very close to the objectives where my units could get new weapons/gear from Booty tables. The only trouble for me was that I couldn't really advance on Luke's army as he had lots of high ground in his Deployment Zone; I took the first turn again so Luke decided on the sides.

The funniest thing about this game was that it could have been over for Luke in my first turn. He deployed his Link Leader and Dr.Worm on the highest roof, part of which was just outside of his Deployment Zone and I managed to Infiltrate one of my Chasseurs there.  The plan was to kill the Link Leader, kill Dr.Worm and then mop up the rest of the Batroids that would be out of the Fireteam. If the Chasseur lived he could have also kill more units from his high vantage point. What happened instead, I needed 14 to hit, I rolled 15 and 17 while Luke rolled double 1 and killed the Chasseur. Very anti-climatic ending for me. After that fail I spent the turn taking Objectives and putting units on Suppressive Fire. 

Very similar thing happened in Luke's first turn as it did in the previous game. Though instead of a Fireteam doing all the killing, it was a Plasma Rifle Q-Drone that was given Marksmanship Level 2 that did the damage, taking out my HMGs and Snipers. Though I did manage to kill it in one ARO in the end. As Luke spent all his Orders on the Q-Drone, he didn't do anything else. He did reveal a TO unit in his Second Group that tried to take out a HMG of mine before the Q-Drone but it did nothing. Luke missing his free shots when I was on -12 and then I was able to tank the other hits. My second turn was also about taking more weapons from the Objectives, stupidly I ended up with two units on Motorbikes which was not helpful. 

I also managed to kill the TO Unit (a Malignos) but it cost me a Chasseur. The trouble I had was not being able to get close to Luke's units but it wasn't large advantage to him as he couldn't get down from the roofs either. He did have an AD Trooper which he wanted to use to kill my Lt, but it scattered off the board and landed in his Deployment Zone. He then used the AD Trooper, who had a shotgun, to attack one of my Chasseurs (who was now on a bike) and a Moblot. The odds were not great for him at first, I hit him twice but he kept passing all the ARM Saves and even when he failed the AD Trooper had a Survival Form that kept him alive, so frustrating. I lost both the Chasseur and the Moblot in the end and the AD unit even tanked two mines. 

There wasn't much I could have done in the last turn, I just used my last three units to go out and attack anything they could, getting them killed in the process. It was throwing away units but it made no difference at that point besides fun ending. 

I definitely feel I could have played this mission smarter but I started to think about the objectives of the mission too late. What I should have done instead of deploying everything so far forward was to get into defensive positions where Luke couldn't attack me from his high roofs and just take out what I could with Chasseurs, and also taking the Objectives. If I managed to kill one or both of Luke's Specialists I could have then waited the game out, forcing him to get down from the roofs and get closer to me if he wanted to get any weapons from the Objectives.

Game 3:  Supplies - MRRF vs PanO
Lost 0 to 2 (0 TPs)

My last opponent was Tom and his Jesus-worshiping PanO, someone I also enjoy playing against and it was good to see him on tournaments again. The table we played on was very unique and also open, so we decided to play the trees as solid terrain that completely blocked Line of Sight and was infinitely high; we both felt it made the table lot better as you could actually move around. Supplies is like my favoute mission but I was stupid and didn't take three Specialists as I usually would, I only had one. So my plan was to take one objective and then completely surround the other Objectives with Mines so Tom couldn't get to them. But Tom won the Lt roll by 1 and decided to take the fist turn. 

Just like in the previous games, the first things to die were both HMGs and the Sniper (I really need to deployment them better). Tom had a Jotum TAG which just wrecked them, I didn't even had chance to put the HMGs on Suppressive Fire. But he also made the mistake towards the end of his turn where he left the Jotum in the open without realizing I had an ARO after his second Move. This ARO happened to be a D.E.P. from a Moblot in my good range and then I rolled a Crit! Which managed to take out the Jotum. Fun time for everyone.

Tom had just enough Orders to run an Engineer Palbot to the TAG and bring it back (after spending two Commands Tokens to re-roll). But he didn't leave any Orders spare to put things on Suppressive Fire so in my first turn I was able to take out the Jotum with AP Rifle and then Coup De Grade it with one of my Chasseurs; which died in the process but so worth it. I have also managed to get another Chasseur close to Tom's Remote with OOD and burned it, which also killed Switch (Hacker with Holoprojector  Lv1 that was pretending to be a second Joan of Arc). After the REM was reduced to Mimitism I was able to kill it with a Moblot. That was end of my turn.

Tom's second turn did not go as well as his first. The rest of my army was in hiding and I still had mines around the objectives (planted by Minelayers at deployment). I got lucky with an ARO against HMG Remote that Tom wanted to re-position, making him spend more Orders on his Engineer to repair it after I killed it. The most frustrating thing for me was that Tom run with Joan to the middle and into cover, where I killed the Jotum, and put her into Suppressive Fire. 

I got tunnel vision on her and wasted too many Orders and units trying to kill her. It did not work, even when I managed to get behind her. I really should have just kill the other units and ignore her but if I killed her, Tom would have been in Loss of Lt and not able to do much in his last turn, basically allowing me to win the game as my Forward Observer Chasseur was still alive and hiding. It was a high risk with a high reward but it did not pay off. 

In his last turn Tom mopped up some of my units and then was able to grab one of the objectives (one that didn't have mines around it anymore). I had only two units alive at the start of my last turn and just for the moral victory and run into the open and shot the Tom's unit that held the crate. I had my second crit of the game and killed her, which would have been a draw as neither of us controlled any of the Objectives but Tom did his Classified while I forgot about mine, so he won by two points.

Campaign Weekend - L337 Morat Haxors

My mate James organized a campaign weekend earlier in April, a two day event with bunch of games to play for fun. We used a mix of 200pts, 300pts and 400pts army lists (with a free 15XP Spec-Ops) and over the course of the games there were opportunities to gain wargear, weapons and extra units. I decided to take my Morat Aggression Force because I enjoy playing them the most for fun, plus I had to make a come back with the list where almost everyone is a Hacker! 

The premise of the campaign was that all of our forces were left behind on a war torn moon and were fighting over resources and the chance to get off the moon. Each mission had a narrative to it, from early skirmish to signaling your faction to repairing a spaceship. I will be only giving brief overview of my games but I have lots of photos. 

Game 1 - 400pts

My first game was against Caledonia (which made me feel bad, fighting clansmen). The day started off with 400pts which was a lot, considering that both me and my opponent had 20 units each. Sadly, many of mine were hackers (8 in total) and I had nothing to hack! The mission objective was straight forward, just kill as many things as possible. There was also an addition of virus zones we placed on the table (radioactive templates in the photos).

The mission was a grind as I knew I didn't want to get too close to Caledonians so I was trying to keep distance and try to kill as many things as I can with HMG Remote and Tempest Regiment. It was a bloody battle and I managed to get a win because the Tempest Regiment wouldn't die (I kept passing all saves) and I got lucky with attacking a Link Team of Volunteers and Grey Rifle. They bunched up together with other units (notably a Spec-Ops and Wallace), which gave my Hungries a chance to attack with Chain Rifles and then my own Spec-Ops with a Boarding Shotgun. 

After this game, the winning players formed a faction and so did the loosing players. Our faction was led by Combined Army and also had Yu-Jing and Tohaa alongside my Morats. The enemy team were two Haqqislam armies, Ariadna and ALEPH.

Game 2 - 300pts

The second game was also bloody but not at all in my favour. The mission was to set up a beacon on the highest point of the table, and there was a chance to recruit some renegade Morats to your army. The table was purposefully set up to be open in the middle and thanks to bad deployment (and no Smoke Grenades), my opponent was able to destroy me with long range weapons. In one corner he had HMG Remote, Sniper and a Missile Launcher. They had AROs like everywhere.

It wasn't until too late in the game that I killed them all by playing smarter and using my own HMG Remote to engage them one at a time. It was certainly a good lesson to not deploy all of your long range weapons exposed, especially when going first. At the end of the game my last remaining unit was a 3pts Slave Drone, everyone else died in the crucible of combat like a true Morat would. 

Game 3 - 400pts

The last game of the first day was against Haqqislam, and again not much to hack with my abundance of hackers! In this mission the objective was to kill High Value Targets, each person picked two of their own units and then two from the opponents army to be HVT (so four targets in total for each player). The two units I picked from my army were well hidden but then my opponent picked my HMG Remote and Krakot as the other two. I had similar targets to kill, two well hidden and two I was going to kill anyway.

My first turn went well, but I got too excited with my Krakot (forgetting he was a HVT) and whilst he did kill lots of enemy units, he did get killed in the end. Similar thing happened with my Remote. I was trying to kill a Spec-Ops which had Mimitism. I was overconfident and engaged it within 8", which turned out to be a terrible idea because the Spec-Ops also had a Shotgun and was able to out shoot me.   

The game kind of stalled after that. My opponent tried to assassinate my other HVTs with an Infiltrator but I was able to kill it before it got to my HVTs, though the Fidaj did kill some other units. After that I did have a chance to win but my Tempest Regiment was pinned down by a TO Sniper, I just couldn't get where I needed to go fast enough while trying to kill or dodge the Sniper.
 

Game 4 - 200pts

At the start of the second day the campaign had a twist where the General of each group accused someone of being a traitor and that person switched teams. I believe we gained a Haqqislam player but our General decided to betray us and joined the other team! Typical Combined Army that. 

I actually forgot to take photos of this game. I was playing against ALEPH and the mission was to assassinate the Lt, which was open information. My Lt was a regular Vanguard and well hidden but my opponent's Lt was Achilles, at 200pts! You can imagine how did that go. I thought I was doing okay at first but then everything slowly died trying to take out Achilles. I believe in the end we had a draw.

Game 5 - 300pts

Last game was the funniest from the whole day. I ended up playing James and his Yu-Jing. Originally he wasn't playing in his own campaign but one player didn't show up for the second day. The mission was about getting to a broken spaceship, fixing it and then getting inside and staying there until end of the game. The middle of the board was pretty open again but I was smarter with deployment.

James was very excited about his Shikami and how it was going to ambush and wreck my army, so I tricked him with my Holo-Projector Lv1 Spec-Ops, who had a BFG (very overpowered gun I gained in an earlier game) and killed the Shikami with the first shot of the game. Fun time for everyone. I then proceeded to kill every single long range weapon James had that was in ARO position. The first turn I thought went rather well for me. 

But that didn't last long. James kept his head in the game and dropped down a Tiger-Soldier with Spitfire, which proceeded to slaughter like over half my army with all the remaining Orders James had available. It was not pleasant. With almost nothing else left, I decided to fortify my position around the spaceship with HMG Remote and lots of mines. Go Kurgat Engineers!

This allowed me to hold off all James' attacks. As last resort to repair the spaceship and use it, I spent all my Orders on Kornak in the last turn but he couldn't pass two WIP checks (at -6). James did try to get to the ship but didn't have anything left that could take out my ARO units. In the end both of our armies ended the campaign stranded on the moon and fighting over the remaining resources. No happy endings.

Expanding Caledonia Starter Set

Every so often someone asks what to buy next after getting a faction starter set. While I do believe it is better to have a bit more in depth discussion before suggesting what models to buy (because there are so many different ways to play each army), I also understand its not the answer people might be looking for. Some people just want a simple answer to build an army and get playing.

Considering the recent news we will be getting a new Caledonia Starter Set, which is bit different from the current one, I thought it might be a good time to offer my thoughts on how to expand the upcoming Caledonia Starter Set.

Few disclaimers first though: these will be just suggestions on a generic Caledonia army and not tailored to any kind of ITS missions. It should give you a good broad understanding of Caledonia but there are many different ways to approach an army and it is best to find what suits you the most.

The New Starter Set

As expected with any Infinity starter set you will get six models, three line troops and three other units. The models are three Volunteers, a 3rd Grey Rifle, a Wulver and a Mormaer. The differences between the old and the new is that Corvus Belli seems to be moving away from including a skirmisher so you no longer get an S.A.S. and you also don't get a Chain Rifle on a Volunteer. This time all Volunteers have Rifles, and on the promo art they suggest one of them is a Paramedic. The other three units all get T2 Rifles.

This box set does have a definitive lack of heavy weapons, such as a HMG or a Sniper Rifle, but T2 is very deadly ammunition (causes 2 Wounds on one failed ARM save) and I think it compliments how Caledonia should be played to maximize its strengths. It is a very aggressive army and having only Rifles should force you to get closer. The good thing is that the set does give you the tools to do this. The Grey Rifle comes with Smoke Grenades and can form a Fireteam with Volunteers, so he can use Smoke to cover your advance. The Wulver has Climbing Plus and very high PH so they can get where they need to quite easy. The Mormaer is slow but he does have ARM 5 and X-Visor which extends the range of his Rifle so he doesn't need to move as much.

The points value of this Stater Set is 125pts (assuming you take a Paramedic as suggested by the set).

I have decided to offer my suggestions for lists of 150pts, 200pts and 300pts. This should help you start small and grow your collection, especially if you are doing an Escalation League. I am also assuming you might not want to spend lots of money right away so I will try to limit the purchases and make use of most models when suggesting a box set.

Easch list will be a direct expansion of the previous one.

Expanding to 150pts
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You don't need to add much to go from 125pts to 150pts but I would recommend your first purchase (expansion) to be a box set of Volunteers. The new set that is coming out should offer 4 to 5 models (more likely 4, but not confirmed as of this article writing). My suggestion to is to add a Volunteer with a HMG and a Volunteer with a Chain Rifle. This is exactly 25pts.

This will allow you to maximize your Fireteam Core (four Volunteers and a Grey Rifle) and it will give you the much needed heavy weapon. Plus you will have two Volunteers with Rifles on the board, one of which will be your Lt, so your opponent will have to guess which one it is. I would not recommend to make the Mormaer your Lt because he will be targeted by your opponent often as he is a big threat.

Expanding to 200pts
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For the next 50pts I would suggest Uxia McNeill and a Cameronian. Infiltrating Specialists are strong in all Ariadna factions and Uxia is the best of them all. If you take her as the Cover Action option she will give you lots of tools to use and she is a Specialists to do Objectives in ITS missions. Cameronians are like a bigger version of a Wulver, fast and deadly. They come with Smoke Grenades, Physical 16 and two Chain Rifles, not to mention Super Jump and Total Immunity. They are hard to kill and if you are careful, you can easily charge them down the board, under Smoke cover and kill whatever you need killed.

These two models are very different in how they work in the table but both will help your army to achieve its goals, either killing enemy units or getting to objectives. At 200pts you are quite limited with only 10 Orders but I wouldn't expect to face more models at this level. Some practice with Uxia and the Cameronian should give you a good idea what these units can do, which will help you use other units that have similar roles.

Expanding to 300pts 
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Going to full 300pts, we will go from 10 Orders to 17 Orders which is more average for Ariadna armies. It is the low-tech faction and you will almost always outnumber your opponent. I know it might feel like lots of stuff to buy at once but that is the downside of being able to field lots of units. You can play Ariadna (and Caledonia) with more expensive units (and so less of them) but I would suggest to do that only if you have experience with the game as it is the harder way of playing Caledonia. 

The core of the army will remain the case, Fireteam of Volunteers and a Grey Rifle, a Mormaer and a Wulver. The only change with the Volunteers I suggest is to change non-Lt Rifle to a Grenade Launcher. The army is so big enough to give protection to your Lt without need for a decoy. I have also added a S.A.S. Forward Observer (FO) to get another Infiltrating Specialist. These guys are useful to either do objectives, ambush enemies or mark them with FO skill to other units get a boost to BS when shooting the market target.

In the second group you have the Cameronian, and six new models. Firstly I would suggest a 112 Emergency Service and a Dozer. This will give you solid Specialists (Doctor and Engineer, respectively) to help with Objectives. I highly recommend to get used to playing with these two as they can be quite helpful. Then you have a Cateran, an excellent Camouflage Sniper with T2 Sniper Rifle. He will add more long range support to the army.

Last but not least, the three Highlanders, one of the most deadly units in Caledonia (and in the game in my opinion). These guys are dirt cheap, fast and lethal. I think the Chain Rifles are best value for points (only 6pts!) but the Highlander box set comes with models holding Chain Rifle, Sword, Shotgun and Rifle. The Sword can be any kind of loadout and I don't recommend the Rifle because these guys are only BS10 and want to be close to the enemy (preferably in Close Combat), which make the Shotgun much better and deadlier option. The Highlander will take some time getting used to before you might see their potential but I highly recommend to practice with them a lot, you won't regret it when they are shredding enemy Heavy Infantry with claymores!