Mission 007 Report: Hallelujah
Here are the usual catch up links for Mission 007: It’s Raining Men.
Feedback Summary
I was really pleased to have so many responses this month, including someone who tried a four Hellcat and two Tomcat list!
Some of our respondents are either newer players or are new to AD troops in general, so we had some initial missteps in their first games. Dropping a Meteor into a hot LZ and granting an ARO is one such example. The Meteor’s 6″ move was helpful to Victor though, who turned a loss into a win due to the extra movement letting him get to an objective when he was scraping the bottom of the barrel for options.
We’ve got some pretty detailed reports this time, so I’ll let them speak for themselves, but it seems the trend is to be very aggressive with the AD troops. This is indeed their intended role–you’re dropping into hostile territory from the sky, basically, but some measured caution can go a long way.
Here’s some concrete advice. Most of the time, when I drop in an AD troop, I look at a few things:
- Is there a good position to exploit?
- Am I safe to come in here (Sam’s Hac Tao surprise notwithstanding)?
- What are the next 2-3 orders I plan on spending this turn, after I drop my AD guy in?
- What am I attacking with him?
- What’s the attack vector? Is there a clear movement path to do that?
- Are there follow up targets?
- What is the expected likelihood of success?
- Is this a suicide drop, or do I plan on retreating the AD troop and forcing my opponent to dig it out?
- Have I budgeted orders to get them to position of safety, or throw them into suppression?
- What tool is my opponent likely to use to remove my AD troop?
Sometimes you have to take big risks, and they don’t always pay off. It happens. It’s incredibly difficult to implement all the time, but try to have a backup plan if your AD fails. These considerations may go all the way back to your list building efforts, but having a reasonable (if not optimized) backup plan can really help mitigate bad dice.
Thanks to all those who wrote in–many of you are repeat respondents, and I thank you for taking the time! Good Hunting, Bromads.
This month’s winner is Sam! Ping me at [email protected] with the blister you want and your address, and I’ll have it sent to you! –WiseKensai
Raw Feedback
Desanges
Hello,
Wanted to share a quick report/thoughts on a JSA vs Vanilla Nomad game I had this month. The mission was Supremacy.
Ran a list with 4 AD Hellcats and 2 Tomcats just to see what would happen. Unfortunately, had a disastrous first turn with Shinobu Kitsune getting an alpha strike in and getting to my cheerleaders, Salyut Hacker and Interventor Lt. which wasn’t help along by very poor rolls on my part and 3 crits in a row from my opponent. Luck was not with me at all!
On my half of the first turn, I dropped everything but scatter meant only half of the hellcats made it into the quadrants I wanted them to control. Still ended the first round with more points than my opponent and a good laugh from the craziness. This also left me in the fight for at least one more round as the Hellcat spitfire managed to get some kills in but with most of my forces dead I had no way of taking quadrants or hacking, and we called it there.
My thoughts in-general about this game was:
- My dice really needs to be exorcised because it isn’t the first time they’ve given me a streak of bad luck (not relevant to the report but hey).
- I really need to remember that the Hellcats can walk in the board. I’m used to them having the +3 from the Salyut or the Interventor and while one one half of the board, forcing the drop rather than walking in was justified because it was a hot dropzone and I needed to position for cover, the other half of the board I could’ve just walked in with no opposition as it was blocked by a large building.
- 4 Hellcats and 2 Tomcats are crazy fun but I think I’ll stick to just 4 Hellcats and 1 Tomcat so I can get an Engineer for classified missions.
- I really messed up deployment by spreading my cheerleaders over a wide area. With the Hellcats and Tomcats providing the AD mobility, I could’ve just concentrated my deployment in one firebase protected by the Intruder. Similarly, I should’ve remembered to just have the Interventor up the roof prone, although my initial thought was I wanted her mobile for hacking.
Regards.
Desanges
Sam
So I just played in my first tournament, which also happened to be my first set of 300 point games. I had bought Icestorm around a year ago after a friend talked up Infinity to me, then promptly had my second kid and had zero time for gaming. I put the past year to good use, painting up my Nomads and listening to as many podcasts as I could during my work commutes, but only got to play a few of the Icestorm missions and one 200 point game prior to this tournament.
Game 1 – Supremacy
So there I was: Supremacy was the first mission. I put my primer grey Hellcat in the second combat group to be ultra sneaky. I wait until the second round and proudly announce that I am dropping him in right behind my OSS-playing opponent’s group of bots and a controller (not a clue what they are called). I figure I have a sure thing blasting away with the boarding shotgun.
Haha, no of course not! He immediately over-rolls and dies.
Game 2 – Unmasking
My opponent is playing Yu Jing and I leave no one out to ARO as he goes first. He walks up his monks and kills all my infiltrating specialists that I deployed close together to make it as easy as possible for him to fit them all under a chain rifle template.
My solution: DEPLOY THE HELLCAT BEHIND HIS NINJA!!!
His solution: shoot at the Hellcat with something called a Hac Tao. Dead Hellcat ensues.
Game 3 – Power Pack
I am playing another first timer! Thank goodness. We are playing power pack. I wait until the opportune moment and think I am being ultra clever by dropping the Hellcat behind his own Aleph droptroop. I of course whiff the PH roll and disperse back to my deployment zone, where he stays while my Hollow Man picks up the slack and wins me the game.
Lesson learned: drop troops are super fun to play, but I need to learn what my opponents are playing so I can tell when it’s a Bad Idea(tm) to drop in. Also, don’t roll bad.
-Sam
Luke
Good morning/afternoon/evening,
Here is a small run down of how my attempts at making it rain men. Sadly all I did was make the bodies hit the floor.
In Cardiff we had a fairly casual round robin 3 day event between five of the regular guys and myself.
The three missions were hunting party, fire fight and the armoury. I decided to take vanilla nomads because I still have a smattering of nomad units and can just about make up a dedicated tunguska army, but I needed those havoc causing hellcats.
Game 1 – The Armory
Given first turn by my opponent
Move my zero into the armoury, punch a panoply and go into suppressive
Then a 3 man harris (shakti, yadu HMG and asuras LT lvl2 )proceed to shoot my HMG bot off the board (maybe bad dice) and proceeded to murder all my good units and take a hold of the armoury murdering my poor zero.
My next turn had me murder the asuras with my spitfire tsyklon (eventually) and dropped in my hellcat to try and kill some of the back line troops and kill the haris order pool / flanking ARJUNA however he scattered and ended up in my deployment feeling silly. After that my opponent just swept around with the ARJUNA and put me into retreat then I conceded.
Game 2 – Hunting Party
My opponent used a Vanilla ariadna list compromising of as many mercenaries as he could fit in, le muet, aida swanson, a libertos mine layer and a krakot renegade
I was given 2nd turn and lost my lunokhod to a sneaky aida swanson and the heckler jammer was murdered by a scout with Ojotnik in the reactive turn. With aidas last order I was able to reveal my TO sniper and put her down in ARO.
The game was very tame and felt a lot like WW1 with very little happening until the last turn. As my opponents Lt was in camo state on top of a building with his only specialist prone next to him I had to make a big play. I had two AD / airborne infiltration troops both with an immobilizing weapon. Here is how the game could have been won! But was lost.
By this point the tank hunter was stood up on the top of the building to act as an ARO against other units. I walked my cube jager onto the board to coax the tank hunter into coming out of the camo state and shooting him.
He then glued the jager with a free adhesive ARO (giving him the point for immobilizing a specialist). I then dropped my hellcat in (has a free adhesive launcher for being an elite troop) and popped out to try and glue the tank hunter. I lost the face to face and hence lost the game. Would have been good if it came off.
The final turn was consisted of my interventor making 8 BTS rolls from stun guns trying to run up the board and eating a mine in a last ditch effort to win.
Game 3 – Firefight
Against invincible army, I got turn one but didn’t make the most of it failing a few rolls burning my orders.
First used white noise to allow my Tsyklon to pop out and pitch a repeater by the MSV2 sniper acting as an ARO on top of a building. (learning lessons from the last mission) this stopped the link team from acting in the active turn for the rest of the game.
Pi-well moved up to hit a panoply and head over to kill a rampaging ruishi and sensor the enemy dau-ying hacker LT so I could blast his brain.
After failing a few rolls and running out of orders I passed my turn.
Then out of nowhere comes the hac tao killer hacker who proceeds to trinity crit my zoe and mary problems off of the board in his turn 2 whilst my interventor fails to break water him back. I realise now that break water was a mistake and I should have just tried to isolate him. He then had 8 more orders to kill my LT and take the game.
Who knew that fairy dusted surprise killer hackers were such an offensive weapon.
To claw some points back in my last turn I walked my hellcat onto the board to secure his HVT whilst pi-well tried his darnedest to finish off the hac tao.
Over all I felt like both of my lists didnt have anywhere near the order efficiency that any other players lists had. Lack of fire teams, LT level 2, NCO using LT orders and once I lost one or two units I was unable to effectively kill something or get an objective done.
The Armory and Firefight
GROUP 1 |
10
INTERVENTOR Hacker Lieutenant (Hacking Device Plus) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 25)
INTRUDER HMG, Grenades / Pistol, CCW. (1.5 | 42)
ZOE & PI-WELL . (0 | 47)
PI-WELL Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 19)
MARY PROBLEMS Hacker (Forward Deployment L1) Submachine Gun + Zapper, Pitcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 30)
PERSEUS (Super-Jump) Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades / 2 Pistols, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 34)
HELLCAT (Deployable Repeater) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 23)
TSYKLON Spitfire, Pitcher / Electric Pulse. (1 | 31)
ZERO (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 19)
TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
GROUP 2 |
3
2
REAKTION ZOND HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 26)
MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, E/M CCW. (0 | 6)
WARCOR (Aerocam) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3)
5 SWC | 300 Points | Open in Infinity Army
GROUP 1 |
ALGUACIL Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)
JÄGER Submachine Gun + E/Mitter / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon. (0.5 | 18)
LUNOKHOD Heavy Shotgun, Akrylat-Kanone, D-Charges, CrazyKoalas (2) / Electric Pulse. (0 | 24)
HOLLOW MEN MULTI Rifle + Pitcher, Chain-colt / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 35)
RIOT GRRL Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (2 | 34)
HECKLER Combi Rifle, Jammer, 1 FastPanda / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23)
GROUP 2 |
SPEKTR MULTI Sniper Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 39)
5.5 SWC | 299 Points | Open in Infinity Army
Piotr
Nathan
Here is a report talking about all the bad decisions I made with my Meteor Zond.
Lots of bad decisions in general.
Jhokalups – Field Operation Action Report – 14
Victor
Hello Bromad,
I have only been able to play once this month, with Bakunin, so here’s my experience with the Meteor Zond.
I’ve been playing Bakunin since the start of the season but there were other troops I wanted to play before playing it.
I used it for the first time for tic-tac-toe and it proved to be really useful because of his speed.
I was playing the last turn, and I was in a desperate situation, starving on orders and without my killer troops alive.
I deployed it after a building, where nobody could see it, it moved to a corner without being seen, and it was able to do its first movement and then activate the antenna with its second short order (The distance between the safe spot and the antenna was longer than 4″).
The sad part is that it died during the activation. I told you it was a desperate situation! The antenna was guarded by a fireteam with 3 members looking at the antenna.
This could have not been possible with my typical AD units, tomcats and hellcats, and the high first movement of 6″ helped a lot.
Regarding timing and position, I delayed its landing because my opponent didn’t leave any clear spots for landing until the last turn, but it turned to be ok for me. I landed it on a hidden place and it got me a victory when I was losing.
As a conclusion, I’ll be using it more often thanks to the Bromad Academy! 🙂
I still have to use it with assisted fire and create havoc.
Regards,
Victor Juarez