The Wulver Train

I heard people before to call a Fireteam of Nomad Mobile Brigada the "Pain Train", which in my humble opinion would make a Fireteam of Wulvers the "Freight Train of Pain". Chances are you saw me talk about the Wulvers before on this blog, I use them often and I keep promising to write a full article about the Fireteam. Well, I took my time but here it is!

So what makes Fireteam of the 9th Wulvers Grenadiers Regiment so good? Let me break it down for you.

First lets take a look at the Wulvers profile. Their stat line is what you would expect from a Heavy Infantry (HI) unit but they are classed as a War Band (WB). As part of Caledonia elite units, they have high CC 21 and also high PH 14. They come with BS 12 which is high in the army (but average in the game). Their WIP 13 is good, but standard among Caledonia. The Wulvers are quite survivable thanks to ARM 3 and 2 Wounds, yes you read that right. They are one of the few units in Caledonia (and in Ariadna) that come with 2 Wounds. They have no BTS but that is expected from Ariadna units.

What makes their stat line go from average/high to excellent are the Special Skills. Climbing Plus combined with 4-4 MOV allows them to get into position very quickly and it lets you attack from unexpected angles and take the high ground. They also get Kinematika Lv1 so their Dodge and Engage movement is 1" longer, it does make more difference than it might seem. The best part, however, is the combination of Berserk, Natural Born Warrior and CC 21. This makes them extremely brutal in Close Combat (CC). No matter which opponent they face in CC, you have something to deal with them. 

Natural Born Warrior gives you the choice of either denying any and all CC Special Skills of your opponent (Martial Arts, Berserk, i-Kohl, Surprise Attack, Protheion, Poison and Natural Born Warrior Mode A), or you can give yourself +3 CC and +1 Damage. Then you can also activate Berserk and get extra +6 CC and make the combat Normal Rolls instead of Face to Face. This guarantees you will hit your opponent, and the best art? You are at CC 30! So you need 10 or more for a Critical Hit. If you don't get Critical Hit, you are still at Damage 15 and thanks to the 2 Wounds you can often take a hit in return and still live.

Just a little side note, the Wulvers do have Frenzy which makes them Impetuous after they cause a Wound on an enemy unit. However, this does not affect them whilst their are in a Fireteam and so I won't go into detail about it.

The Wulvers have a good selection of weapons for very affordable points cost. You can have a T2 Rifle, a Mk12 or a Heavy Shotgun. All three options come with Grenades and AP CCW. This gives you a good mix of range bands: Shotguns for close range, Rifle for mid-range and Mk12 for mid to long range (up to 24"). With Wulver's mobility you shouldn't struggle getting into optimal range with either weapon. Both the Mk12 and Shotgun are Damage 15, and T2 Rifle has T2 ammunition (as the name would suggest), so they are all deadly. Especially the Heavy Shotgun in a full Fireteam and within 8", you'll go up to BS 21 with three templates!

The best part about the weapon options is that all of them are 0 SWC, so you still have plenty of room for other units with special weapons. There is also a fourth option, a T2 Rifle for 1 SWC that comes with Fireteam: Haris. This is handy if you want your Fireteam: Core to be made of different units (like Volunteers or Scots Guard).

You might have already notice that I keep talking about full Fireteam of Wulvers, which is 5 troops but Wulvers only have Availability (AVA) 4. So how can you make a full Fireteam? Well the key to make this freight train is William Wallace as the Lieutenant . He has the ability to join any Fireteam Core or Haris in Caledonia. And so with four Wulvers he can make a full Fireteam Core of five. Not only that but he makes the whole Fireteam so much better because of his Smoke Grenades. That way the Fireteam doesn't need to rely on other units for cover.

In my experience, I found it best to use the Wulvers Fireteam in missions where the objective is to kill enemy units or board control. Mainly because you might not have many Specialists, or even Orders, to do other Objectives based missions as most of your Orders will likely go into this Fireteam. The Fireteam I always take is one Mk12, two T2 Riles, one Heavy Shotgun and Wallace.

Now that you know why Wulvers are so awesome, here are some tactical tips on how I like to utilize them on the battlefield: 

Sledge Hammer

This is the most aggressive way I use the Wulvers but it makes for an excellent Alpha Strike and it can more or less end the game before your opponent even had a chance to have his turn. Simply put, use as many Orders as you need on this Fireteam to get into the enemy deployment zone and kill as many enemy units as possible in super close range using the Heavy Shotgun. This is especially devastating if you opponent deployed their units in groups because you will have three shots with a template at Damage 15 and potentially at BS 21.

I would recommend to only do this if you see a good path to the deployment zone and you actually can take out more than one unit at a time. Keep in mind that most likely you will have only 8 Regular Orders (and the Lt Order) as your opponent will probably take 2 Orders from you with their Command Token.

If you opponent set up well and you can't get the Shotgun to hit multiple units, it might be better off to attack from range with different weapons. This is high risk-high reward tactic. If you fail to do enough damage your Wulvers will be left far from your army and your opponent could destroy them, after which it might be game over for you as this Fireteam will be more than half your army.

For maximum effect, I also recommend use Uxia (or another Infiltrator) to kill the enemy Lt, if the Wulvers can't, so they are in Loss of Lt when they start their turn. That way they will really struggle to retaliate and your second turn will be just mopping up what is left and securing your victory.

Example game play here (Game 3).

Hold the line

It is not always possible to be super aggressive, in some games it is more important to take board sections and hold them at the end of the turn. It is always preferable to go second in those kind of missions but I played games where I went first too and Wulvers didn't let me down. They are good at holding ground when you need them to. In the Fireteam they will have Burst 2 in ARO and as long as there is five of them, you'll often be shooting at BS 15 or BS 12, which gives you good odds. The trick is to find good spots where your opponent can't easily engage your Wulvers in their bad range bands. For example, if your opponent can shoot at your T2 Rifle from over 16", the odds will not go in your favour.

I would recommend to always give them support from other ARO units, like Snipers. Though more often than not, even when I lose the face to face rolls for shooting, the Wulvers survive thanks to 2 Wound and ARM 6 in cover. Sometime your dice will be bad and there is nothing you can do about that, but most times my Wulvers came out on top from any firefight (where the odds were not heavily stacked against me by playing badly or just being outplayed).

This is something that I found to be very handy in board control missions. Thanks to the high cost of this Fireteam you can very easily dictate which sections you want to hold because three Wulvers in a section is almost 100 points that will be hard to shift. And that still gives you around 60-70 points to have in another zone. I try to always keep the Wulvers near the section borders so you don't have to spend much movement to move in and out of a zone, and you should be able to take 2 sections easily, sometime even 3.

Also, a useful thing I learned is to not have Wallace as the Link Leader by the end of your turn, unless he is really well hidden (but even then I tend to not do it anymore). He will be a big target for your opponent so chances are you might want to be Dodging with him while Wulvers would be better off shooting. As long as he is not the Link Leader, he can break out of the Fireteam and do a different ARO without breaking the Fireteam as a whole, so your Wulvers can still have some support bonuses.

Game play example here (Game 2) and here (Game 1).

Death from above

Sometime your opponent is too well entrenched down for a direct attack; such as a TAG on Supressive Fire, or you might see a group of enemy units but a Sniper is making it hard to reach them. Whatever the case might be, never forget that your Wulvers all have Grenades and high PH. This is a perfect combination for some Speculative Fire.

In the best case scenario, you want to get four Wulvers within 8 inches of your target. Then you can use Coordinated Order for all four of them to Speculative Fire. This will give you four attack on PH 11, so more than 50% chance to hit (-6 for Speculative, +3 for Range). If you are over 8 inches you will be hitting on PH 5, which I only recommend for desperate situations.

Few things to keep in mind: you only have to clip your target with the Grenade template, but they all have to go into the same place. Doing a Coordinated Order will also break the Wulvers from a Fireteam so to save Command Tokens you can use Wallace's Lr Order to do a Coordinated Order (thanks to Inspiring Leadership) with him and three Wulvers (he will throw Smoke Grenade as he doesn't have regular ones) and then use a Command Token to re-link the Fireteam if you need to.

High castle

This is something I would only recommend if you really want to win, because it is the sort of tactics you could call cheesy. I used it only once and whilst I won the game, it wasn't the most fun I had.

It will mostly work on a table with high terrain, preferably with the top being hard to reach. What you can do is send the Wulvers to the top of some high terrain to make it hard for your opponent to attack them. They will get there really fast thanks to the Climbing Plus and Wallace can Climb 6" per Order so he won't take long either. Once you are on top it should be really hard for your opponent to reach the Wulvers, especially if the terrain has no ladders or other access points. Your opponent will not want to Climb to the top because once they get there, the whole Fireteam of Wulvers will get free AROs and most likely slaughter them.

This way you can hide 170pts in a hard to reach place, if they mission is about having units alive or board control (and the terrain happens to be in a good spot to take control of board sections), it will make it very hard for your opponent to win.

Before you commit to this though, make sure your opponent doesn't have any units with special skills like Super Jump or Climbing Plus, or weapons that can Speculative Fire, like Grenades. It could backfire on you if your opponent has a way to deal with this.

Example game play here (Game 2).

The Thermonuclear Warhead of Pain

This is my all time favourite combo in the game and it is also the most devastating one. What you need to do is get Wallace and all the Wulvers into CC, which can be very easy for these guys once you practice it few times. Then as the Link Leader Wallace will attack with Fireteam support, +1 Burst and +1 Damage for each other friendly unit in CC. This gives him up to CC Burst 5 and Damage 18 (if you get all of them base to base, keep in mind the Silhouette of the enemy determines how many can be base to base).

Then you activate Berserk and Wallace goes to CC 28 with Explosive CC Weapon. So you will be rolling 5 dice with Critical Hit on 12. That will guarantee 15 Armour Saves for your enemy at Damage 18, five of those very likely to be Critical! Nothing in the game will survive such onslaught, NOTHING! Okay, maybe if you opponent is extremely lucky to roll high on 15 dice and you got no crits, that way they can survive.

The downside of this is that Wallace will get hit back, so he might not live through it himself. Depending on your target, you can switch Wallace with a Wulver for slightly lesser impact, but still a deadly one. You can even keep Wallace out of the CC and just use the Wulvers. One of those with support of three will roll four dice at up to CC 30 with AP CCW at Damage 17, 95% units in Infinity will not live through that either.

Example army list

The Wulver Fireteam will be more than half of your army points so the rest of your army is more or less build around them but considering how cheap Caledonia units are, there are many different ways you can do it. It really depends on your preferences and available models but if you would like an example this is the kind of a list I would take these days.

While Wallace is alive it will give you 17 Regular Orders and 3 Impetus Orders, which should be enough to put into the Fireteam and other units like Uxia or the Caterans. I find the Caterans to be the best long range options in Caledonia, which is why I wouldn't bother with HMG or such. The rest of the army is pretty aggressive and Doctor with Volunteers will cover your back lines.

Strikezone: Wotan - First games

The new online campaign started yesterday and to kicks things off I played against my mate James. He decided to side with Yu Jing and I went with Ariadna. The articles here will be mostly copies of my reports on the Wotan website, but I would like to have collection of them here so future reference.

First game we played was the Ariadna mission and then the Yu Jing mission. In the first game I used my ITS Caledonia lists (designed to kill TAGs) because I didn't have time to write a new list beforehand, so the game went very much in my favour as James had less competitive list. Feeling bad (and wanting a more fun balanced game), I wrote a new list for the second mission. I used French in the second game and for the first time tried the Anaconda TAG. I admit that I was very disappointed with the TAG though, to me it just felt like an oversized and expensive Heavy Infantry. Now I completely understand why people don't play it much. 

Game 1: Defence of the Armoury 

"When the Caledonian detachment received intel about the great General of the Yu Jing Sun Tze planning to raid the O-12 armory, William Wallace gathered his freedom fighters and in true Caledonian spirit decided that offence was the best defence..." 

 My deployment option were tricky due tot he infinitely high objective room and only one elevated building in my deployment zone. I went with Wallace and his Highlanders on left flank and McMurrough on the right flank, with Urugan and snipers covering the middle lines. As I couldn't have any reserve I have infiltrated Uxia into one of the buildings where Sun Tze would most likely hide, basically trying to force him to deploy where Uxia wasn't. It worked and he deployed on my right flank where McMurrough could get to him.

The first turn turned out to be very brutal. I went super aggressive and first moved up McMurrough, trying to hit Sun Tze with speculative Grenades. It worked but then I found out how tough Sun Tze is, so instead I jumped closer to get line of sight and hit him again but on better odds, which didn't work again. Deciding it wasn't work the Orders, I went to kill some line troops with Chain Rifles but my opponent managed to pass all Dodges and McMurrough sadly took two Wounds from all the AROs. With last few Orders that group I have gave Urugan supportware Marksmanship Level 2 and moved it up closer to the middle for better range bands.

The biggest threats for me were Su Jian and Rui Shi, I couldn't get to the Rui Shi remote but I had good path to the Su Jian. It took few Orders to get Wallace and Highlanders into position, mostly because of a lone Kuang Shi blocking the path and I was trying to keep all Highlanders alive for Fireteam bonuses. I did manage to kill him with one Highlander in Dogged state, which allowed me to hit the Su Jian with a Boarding Shotgun on BS 19 and Burst 3. With the AP mode available the Su Jian did not live for long.

My opponent's first turn was a bit stressful for me because Wallace and remaining four Highlanders were pretty much in his deployment zone and there were around half a dozen more Kuang Shi nearby, so for a long time they just kept running at Wallace, shooting with Pistols or Chain Rifles. Thankfully I was careful with positioning so many Kuang Shi died before Wallace was exposed, so did all my Highlanders though. In the end one Kuang Shi remained facing lone Wallace who was on No Wound Incap by the end of that attack.

I made bit of a mistake of leaving all my Snipers standing when I ended my turn, so my opponent dropped Smoke Grenade near his Rui Shi (I just did not realize he had Smoke available), which was in his second combat group and was planning to kill the snipers one by one. He killed on Cateran fairly easy and then took on the Urugan. Thanks for the Marksmanship Lv2 I was at -9 instead of -12, so I needed 1 to hit but it also meant 1 would be a crit. We rolled the dice and I managed to get 1! My opponent then ended his turn just redeploying some line troops which were in a Fireteam for the next turn.

I started my turn with a second Cateran making his way across buildings, thanks for Climbing Plus, to save Wallace from the Kuang Shi that was waiting for Wallace to activate. This pretty much ended the game as my opponent had nothing else he could do to win, his remaining units were WarCor, Sun Tze and few line troops. Neither of us secured the Armoury in the first round and we both used my Classified to add Points, so I capped out on 8 Objective Points while my opponent got 0.

Game 2: Rapid attack of the CIC

"With Sun Tze defeated, the straight outta Caledonia operative (code name Lilith) saw an opportunity for a surprise attack on the Yu Jing Light Frigate. The Merovingian task force, however, was the one surprised as the Yu Jing defenders were waiting for them..."

 

My opponent had the first turn in this mission. My deployment was made difficult because his plan was to use a hacker to Spotlight my units through the consoles (which count as Repeaters) and then blast them with Guided Missiles. My biggest mistake was that I read the mission wrong and thought the Repeater range was 4 inches, same as the Zone you have to be in to score. Turns out that the Repeater range was 8 inches, like normal, so many of my units were outside of the scoring zone but still in danger. Luckily I had my own Hacker in Repeater range, so if my opponent activated his only hacker I'd have a chance to kill him.

He didn't want to take that rick because we both had line troop Hackers with the same WIP, so it would just be purely who can roll higher. Instead his plan was to kill my units the classic way. The first attack came from a Aragoto on a bike with Spitfire. He drove at my Fireteam of Loup-Garou and got shot dead by my Sniper Rifle (I rolled a crit). Next up was a TO Camo Marker, which turned out to be a Hac Tao with HMG. He attacked a Loup-Garou with Viral Rifle and I was still lucky and managed to score a Wound on the Hac Tao. The next round of shooting I got Crit but so did the Hac Tao. Third round of shooting was bad for me and the Loup-Garou died. Then two more Loup-Garous, Briscard, Chasseur Minelayer and a Volunteer also got killed. To make matters worse the Hac Tao ended his turn scoring one of my Objectives, so my opponent had three and I had one. I wasn't feeling swell.

Since the Hac Tao was left standing in the end, I started my turn with moving my Anaconda TAG to get Line of Fire and shot with the Spitfire. I was on -9 thanks to bad range and TO, but I managed to roll 1, 2 and 3 and it was enough to finish off the Hac Tao. This allowed me to bring down my Para-Commando with HMG and get some revenge. It wasn't as epic but I did kill a unit with Holoechos and some medic. I also tried to kill a unit off an objective but that didn't work. Thankfully my Para was close enough to the enemy objective to dominate it because the enemy unit next to it was cheap. This gave me first round victory.

In his second turn my opponent killed the Para and also my Loup-Garou Sniper with Xi Zhuang. Before the end he also brought on his Tiger Soldier AD unit and moved him to where the Hac Toa was bleeding on the floor. This meant I had to spend my second turn killing the Tiger Soldier so I could take the objective (my opponent still had two). Thankfully I still had one last Loup-Garou alive with a Shotgun. With him I was able to take out the Tiger Solider and dominate the objective again. Before I ended my turn I also had just enough Orders to use the Anaconda to kill the Xi Zhuang. In the end we drew on the Objectives.

 Considering that most things were dead at this point, my opponent started his turn by activating his Hacker and we both did a Brain Blast. Sadly I failed both the face to face and then the BTS save. My opponent then spent 7 to 8 Orders trying to Spot Light the last Loup-Garou but either he failed his WIP or I kept winning, until the almost last Order. Loup-Garou for targeted and then blasted with a Guided Missile. Very fast last turn for my opponent.

Mine was about as fast though. I still had a WarCor near the objective where Hac Tao, Tiger Soldier and Loup-Garou got killed, so I was dominating it. I also had my second Chasseur dominating my second objective, so we were gonna have a draw on those again. However, my opponent completely forgot to do his Classified Objectives so all I had to do was run the Anaconda to the enemy HVT and Secure it to win the game. Which is exactly what I did.

It was a hard won and bloody Minor Win for the French!

Northern Open 9 - King of the North!

If you have been following my blog for the last few months, you might know that I went to the current ITS season with the intention of playing more for fun. Which did show on my results. My fun armies did not end up ranking well and I have been loosing a lot. My mates kept making fun of me for it, so I had to show them I still got it. The Norther Open 9 was also a qualifier for the UK Masters, so it was a good opportunity to actually try play well again. So I did and I finally won a Northern Open tournament! Which is all the sweeter considering I got a wooden spoon on the Northern Open 1 (which I still have at home).

It was really close though, the Totally CRIT crew came up from South and secured 2nd and 3rd place. I was fully expecting them to win after I won one of their tournaments down South last year. It was great to see them and the guys from Midlands who I also haven't seen this year yet.

Also special shout out to my mate Matt (s0tek in ITS) who was using my MRRF army that I lost every game with on the previous tournament. He managed to rank 5th with two major victories and one minor loss where the difference was only 1 Objective Point. I think that really show how a good player can do well with (almost) any army.

I was deciding between taking USARF and Caledonia. After some play testing and discussions, chose to take Caledonia as I was more confident with how to play them and army building. Whilst I have lots of USA models, I do feel like I am lacking few more heavy weapons. I do have lot more options with Caledonia. One of the lists was a variation of an older list I used in the past and the second one was new, specific for the Deadly Dance mission. 

Overall, I would say this might have been my best performance yet. I ended up with three major victories and I don't feel like I have misplayed in any game.  

My Army Lists

List A

List B 

The List A was a variation of a list that I like to use for the Supplies mission. Normally I would have three Infiltrators (Uxia and two SAS) but from playing my USARF on Northern Open 8, I learned to not rely on my Fireteam as an ARO unit only and instead put it on the ground and take objectives with it since there are Specialists in it. With this in mind, I was able to drop one of the SAS and change it for three Volunteers with Chain Rifles and a Highlander with a Chain Rifle, giving me three extra Orders. I really wanted to play two Caterans because one never feels as enough and having two gives me more chances to kill whatever I need killed, in case first attack goes badly.

I was also planning to use the List A for Firefight. Mainly because I feel the Scots Guard Fireteam is better at engaging other Fireteams than the units I had in the List B. The List A has more Specialists than B but in that mission killing more Specialists is only 1 Objective Point so I wasn't too bothered. 

The List B was designed for the Deadly Dance mission. I was considering to use an Anaconda TAG but I never played with it before and I wasn't confident taking it over other units (60 points is a lot in Caledonia). As such I decided to make a TAG killing list instead, I knew I wouldn't be able to get full 10 on the mission without a TAG but I would make sure my opponent couldn't either. To that effect, I took two Caterans with T2 Sniper Rifles and Camouflaged Scot Guard with a Missile Launcher for long range, Urugan and a Hacker to give it Marksmanship Lv2 for mid range. On top of that I took Wallace with Highlanders to engage TAGs in Close Combat, and McMurrough who can also shred TAGs in CC. Should all that fail, Uxia was last resort to plant D-Charges on TAGs. 

I was tempted to take a list with a Wulver Fireteam but I was thinking that if my opponent had some hard to kill TAG, like Cutter with TO Camo, I'd need more units able to engage it from various distances and angles.

Game 1:  Deadly Dance - Caledonia vs Haqqislam

Won 7 to 0 (3 TPs)

My first opponent was someone I met on the previous tournament in Harlequins, Joe or John I think (I am just terrible with names!), but we didn't face each another then. The table we played on was also new to me, it was brought by the Totally CRIT crew. I lost the Lt roll and my opponent decided to go first, after quick look over the deployment zones I took the one with the high ground to give my snipers the advantage. I did have slight difficulty deploying all of my 20 models on the table but that was my entirely my fault for having so many models, not a fault of the table. But even so, there was still enough places to deploy.

My biggest challenge during deployment was that I fully expected my opponent to put down a Fiday because he had 2 reserves (which meant his Lt was going to be Saladin). I did not see any good spot to hide Wallace who was my Lt so I resulted with deploying in such a way to have bunch of AROs before he could get to Wallace. But instead my opponent put down Maghariba Guard TAG, in addition to Scarface who was already on the board. So I was going to face two TAGs. Which didn't worry me too much as I designed this list to kill TAGs, but I was still bit concerned as I did not expect it.

The zones we rolled for the missions went in my favour, I rolled quadrant in front of my deployment zone to the left and my opponent rolled the one to my right, so I didn't have to move far to get in but he had to get across the board.

The first round was bit of a roller-coaster. It didn't start well for me but by the end of it I couldn't really complain. The first kill of a game was one of my Caterans sniping a biker that moved just too far with the second part of an impetuous move. Though then my opponent dropped Smoke with a different unit and moved a Djanbazan into it. Which allowed him to kill the revealed Cateran with relative ease. I think he then also tried to take on a second Cateran, but couldn't do it from Smoke which got him killed (the Djanbazan did die somehow in during the turn). My opponent then used Scarface to take on the second Cateran and got a really good roll with Panzerfaust which was not something the Cateran could survive.

But I still had a third camo marker in my deployment zone. Which turned out to be a Scot Guard with a Missile Launcher who got a crit on the Scarface and killed him with one shot (he failed the other two ARM saves too). My opponent still had a second TAG though, the Maghariba Guard went on a little rampage and killed one of my Volunteers and also my Urugan Remote (which was kinda sad for me, didn't even have a chance to use my Hacker on it for Marksmanship Lv2). The TAG then ended the turn by sitting on top of a terrain in Suppressive Fire.

Although I did have my assigned quadrant close, problem I had was that there was an expensive TAG sitting in it so I had to kill it. As my army was spread out so much, it would have been hard to get so many points in (especially because my baggage Urugan was dead and the second one was on completely opposite side). McMurrough and Wallace's Highlander Fireteam were an option but it would take lots of Orders so I decided to try with the Missile Launcher despite him being fairy close to the TAG. I went back to Camouflage and then shot it around the corner. Thankfully we were just over 16 inches away so he was in bad range for Suppressive Fire and ended up shooting on 2 (as he got -12 modifier) and I was only on -3 overall because of the Suppressive Fire, so the odds were decent. I won the roll but didn't kill the TAG, so I went back to camo and tried again. This time putting the TAG unconscious.

I finished the TAG with a Volunteer's Light Shotgun as I wanted to move him up into the quadrant. I don't think I killed anything else in my turn, I was mostly just focusing on getting units into my quadrant. The one mistake I made was not leaving units in ARO positions, at least not long ones, everything was mostly hidden and AROs were all short range. This gave my opponent bit of a free reign in his turn but without the TAGs he didn't really have anything scary left. One of his units did turn out to be a Hafza with a Rocket Launcher, it tried to take out my second baggage Remove (5pts Minesweeper) as it moved into his assigned quadrant. My opponent also ended up with a Specialist, Cordelia, next to one of the consoles.

At some point my opponent did try to get to Wallace with a Mutt (I can't recall if it was his second or third turn) but the Mutt couldn't get close enough. The Mutt did manage to kill two Highlanders but in return took 2 Boarding Shotgun shots and 6 Chain Rifle hits... yeah, he didn't survive.

I spent most of my second turn hunting down Saladin. It took lots of the first group Orders because the Scots Guard move only 4-2 but I did manage to get across the board and hit Saladin. He only took one Wound. But I was dedicated so I spent the rest of the Orders to finish him off. Saladin did not survive a second missile. Thanks to Cordelia I had to move one my own Specialist, Dozer, to a console as I didn't want my quadrant to move. When we did the scoring at the end, I dominated my opponent's quadrant by accident as I had Uxia hiding on top of crates the whole game but his one model, the Hafza, was less points than she.

We then both failed the WIP check on the consoles so neither quadrant moved. As my opponent was in Loss of Lt, he spent his last turn just running as many units as he could into his quadrant for some objective points. I remember thinking I didn't need to do much to win because I was already ahead but then realized you get more points for dominating more quadrants at the end of the game so I had to either kill all of my opponent's units or move in more points. I decided to try the killing. McMurrough went in first but he was already wounded and then took another hit. I still had a Volunteer close so I tried with him and his Chain Rifle. He managed to hit three units, a little remote, a Mutt and a Hafza. The Nasmat died, Hafza survived and the Mutt went Dogged. My Volunteer also survived and for his second attempt used a Light Shotgun. This time everyone died, including him.

Thanks to his sacrifice I managed to secure more Objective Points and got my Second Classified by using the Scots Guard to secure HVT (earlier in the game my Hacker scanned an enemy). I did cap out on 7 Objective Points for this mission as I didn't take a TAG but I was glad to see my TAG killing list had a chance to actually fight TAGs and performed well doing it.

Game 2:  Firefight - Caledonia vs Tohaa

Won 9 to 1 (3 TPs)

The second game was against Matt Spears, a winner of the Norther Open 8, so I wasn't super confident going into the game. He can play his Tohaa really well. I can't recall if I won or lost the Lt roll but ended up deploying first and taking the first turn. I was torn between deploying my Fireteam om high ground or staying on the ground. I went with deploying on the ground to give me more flexibility of where to engage with them (sticking with my original plan). I was expecting Matt to play the Tohaa Beasts which are deadly against Fireteams so I deployed the rest of the army sort of covering the Fireteam. Which I was glad I did as Matt did deploy the Beast unit (only one Beast though). Since I don't bother hunting for Tohaa Lt (they always have Chain of Command somewhere), I deployed my reserve, Uxia, to take on the Beast and its controller.

My first turn went really well and was glad that I did remember not dropping Smoke with Highlanders in such a way to block my own snipers. After the Impetuous phase I used my Caterans to take on Matt's snipers, one of which had MSV Lv2 and the other was a Sapper. I was able to attack them one at a time and despite the frustrating Symbiote Mates I was able to kill them both. Tohaa really do not like T2 ammo! With the snipers dead I was then able to take out a unit with HMG, which I managed to crit so the Symbiote Mates did not help him. Frustrating was that I run out of Orders in that group so I couldn't kill the HMG unit, it was just unconscious and I was worried Matt would have some kind of Airborne Deployment Doctor. He had no medics on the board.

Uxia, who was in a different group, first tried to use her shotgun to take out the Beast and the controller. They were lined up so I was able to hit both by shooting the Beast, sadly for me nothing happened as nobody died. So instead I moved her out and used the twin Assault Pistols to attack the controller. I managed to cause one wound but Uxia died. I did then try to use my Fireteam to kill the beast but it survived a Missile Launcher too and Dodged away (bloody thing just wouldn't die). It was out of LoF so I couldn't attack it again so instead I shot a Tohaa Diplomatic Delegate with the Missile Launcher (and killed it) and then I positioned my Fireteam in a way to get as many AROs as I could before the Beast could reach them.

It turned out my fears were warranted as Matt did have an AD Paramedic and managed to revive the HMG unit which then took its revenge on the Cateran. The Beast and its controller first dropped Smoke before advancing but I still had Cameronian around a corner. Matt decided to go into Close Combat with the Beast and after two rounds I managed to win. It was interesting because neither of us had any CC Special Skills to it was just who can roll higher, I had +1 to my roll and Matt had +2. Matt also managed to kill two of my Scots Guard in his turn. The Missile Launcher and one of the Forward Observers died to a triad with a Viral Rifle.

My turn started with the Cameronian jumping into CC with the Beast controller. I think I won the CC roll but neither of us died either way. Instead of continuing that CC I used my Highlanders to attack the triad that was killing my Scots Guard. One Highlander was able to Chain Rifle two of them but didn't kill anyone, dying in process himself. Though another Highlander managed to kill the Viral Rifle unit by going into CC and activating Berserk. My other orders were spent on remaining Scots Guard and Wallace to go to the middle of the board, allowing a Guard with Molotok to first kill some unit with Flamers and Pistol, and then also kill the revived HGM unit, killing it off the board this time (Burst 5 AP rounds for the win).

In his second turn Matt tried to kill Wallace two times, maybe even three times. First he tried to hit him with a Flamer, which did kill the Scot Guard with Molotok but Wallace Dodged it. My other Scots Guard and a Cateran killed the attacker. Then he tried with something else that had a Combi Rifle but Wallace managed to out-shoot it with his own Combi Rifle. Somewhere during the turn Matt also took something out of the Objectives, +1 ARM for some unit. Which reminded me I should use the objectives myself.

I started my last turn killing the Beast controller with Cameronian and then activating an objective with him. The Cameronian found himself a Light Grenade Launcher and whilst jumping to another objective, he managed to kill someone with it. I didn't have enough Orders for him to try find another thing. Instead I used remaining Command Tokens to do Coordinated Orders and run with Volunteers to the objectives. One found a Nanopulser and the other an Auto-Medkit. I don't think I done anything else that turn, I was just trying to maximize my objective points.

I don't think Matt was in Retreat but he didn't have much left when he started his last turn. He did reveal a TO unit on a roof where I also had an SAS, who did nothing thus far. The TO unit did manage to kill the Cameronian by shooting it from behind, my SAS had a free sot but failed to hit with his pistol. Matt then moved close enough that I was able to engage with the SAS. He did ponder activating the CC but decided not to because his unit wasn't good in CC, while the SAS was.

During my turns I was able to do both of my Classified Objectives, one of them was Forward Observe a HVT and I am not sure what the second one was, I think Coup de Grace someone. The only Objective Point I didn't get in the end was killing more Specialists. I lost Uxia and one FO Scots Guard, but killed only one of Matt's. Though I did kill one Lt of his (which I didn't realize until he told me at the end), had more things from objectives and also killed more army points. 

Game 3:  Supplies - Caledonia vs Qapu Khalqi

Won 7 to 1 (3 TPs)

I was going into this game bit nervous. It happened many times before that I lost after two victories and this was the closest I got to winning the Northern Open. From talking to people I think I was the only one on two major victories (I wasn't sure though) but there was at least one other person with the same amount of Objective Points, so not only I had to win this game, I had to win with lots of objective points and preferably get a major victory. So no pressure!

I never played my opponent before (odin6 in ITS) and don't think I met him on other tournaments either, so had no idea what to expect. I lost the Lt roll on this one and my opponent chose the deployment zone. They were both fairly equal in terms of high ground and density of terrain, though the side he chose had better access to the objectives as they were hidden from sight from my deployment zone. I chose to take the first turn, which is what I prefer on this mission. During deployment I was again tempted to put my Fireteam on the high ground but I kept in mind that I want the flexibility of being on the ground. Plus my plan for this mission was for them to take one of the objectives as I didn't have three Infiltrators to do it.

My opponent deployed his Djanbazan Fireteam in a peculiar way, they were all bunched up behind a car. I thought he'd have some kind of a way of protecting them as I did deploy a Missile Launcher in a Fireteam. I also tried to get Uxia infiltrate close to them and soften them up with a shotgun but she failed her infiltration roll. After deployment I had one SAS near an objective and my Fireteam heading for another but I was fairly certain I had no easy way of getting the third one in my first turn. Instead I planned to focus on killing enemy threats to make it easier for second turn objective grabbing. 

The first death of the game was an Al Hawwa, it infiltrated near an objective and revealed itself to shoot a Highlander as he run by the camo marker. He didn't die and then engaged in CC, going Berserk and killing it. He did die in the process from Djanbazan AROs. Next I used my Caterans to take out long range threats. Thanks to the high ground being near the end of the board I was able to shoot at a Total Reaction Remote from over 32 inches, giving it a -12 to shoot. I did manage to put it unconscious with my free shots and then killed it to make sure its off the board as there was an Engineer close to it. My second Cateran was able to take out a Janissary with a Missile Launcher. This allowed my Fireteam to advance without AROs across the battlefield to engage the Djanbazans.

This is where it got very unfortunate for my opponent. He didn't know about the effect of template weapons affecting every unit in its zone as long as it hits, even if he wins the face to face roll. Only one Djanbazan had Line of Fire, so he declared to shoot back (which meant the others as part of a Fireteam didn't Dodge). I hit with both of my rolls and my opponent rolled better against one of them. As such, the Djanbazan I was shooting at had to take 3 ARM saves and the others had to take 6. Needles to say, most of them died and only one was standing. The last one I was able to finish with a Molotok. 

I didn't realize until then my opponent would start his turn in Retreat. The Djanbazans were around half of his army points (probably bit over) and with everything else that died, he didn't have much left. Thankfully I still had some Orders left for my SAS to grab an objective and then my Cameronian used four Orders to jump around 36 inches so I could Coup de Grace an unconscious Djanbazan, accomplishing a Classified Objective. I could have also try for secure HVT but realized too late. Thanks to being too aggressive and not thinking about Retreat, there was no second turn and I couldn't get more than 7 objective points. 

While I did get the major victory I needed, I was still worried because I didn't realize the person closest to me in rankings didn't have two major victories. I kept thinking if he wins with 8 or more objectives points I could still end up only 2nd or 3rd. Thankfully this mission is not that easy to get a big major victory. In the end he did end with 7 Objective points major victory, so we would have been tied on those but even if he also had 9 tournaments points I was 98 points ahead in Victory Points (army points left at the end of each game).

Pride of Rodina Painting Contest

The Pride of Rodina is hosting a Kazak painting contest, I am getting bit late into it but there are still over two weeks left so I should have enough time to paint one model! The model I will be painting is the Veteran Kazak with T2 Rifle (from Ariadna Starter Set). It has been one of my favourite models in the game for  a long time and if I did play vanilla Arianda, he'd be in every list. 

The colour theme for the model will be desert based, though as you will be able to tell from the photos, he won't be on a desert base. I haven't decided yet on the camouflage pattern but it will be either mostly brown or with a mix of green. I will be drawing inspiration from the French Foreign Legion as I use this model as a Moblot in my French army (as there isn't enough unique Moblot models yet) and all my French will be painted as my take on Ariadna's MRRF Foreign Legion. 

So far I have the model built, primed and based. By the time I post next it should have base colours done.