Nate’s First Game of N4

So Adam (TheDiceAbide) and myself (NateTehAggresar) got our N4 on! We decided to play a game of Supremacy, I wanted to try out Operations having had little chance to take them out since their release, and Adam decided he wanted to take his “Nomads” for a spin. (This meant Bakunin since Adam swears he won’t play 2 vanillas….)

Overview

• Mission: Supremacy
• Factions: OSS versus Bakunin
• Deploy First: OSS
• First Turn: OSS

I’ve always enjoyed playing more elite lists, my comfort zone in N3 was ~12-13 orders. I am very excited about the revisions to the Asura profiles and decided I wanted to play a list with her as a feature, I quickly settled on the HD+ LT with an extra LT order. I quickly added a Yadu HMG with NCO to start forming a Haris, and to have another option to make use of the LT orders. Trying to round out the haris was tough, originally I had Shakti, but it felt duplicative with the Asura, 2 models with trinity, Shakti has an MK 12, which has better ranges than the multi rifle on the Asura, but didn’t really feel sufficiently different, the most utility she brought was the e/marat, but that didn’t feel justified for the points. A latter version of the list cut costs and brought a deva hacker, cheaper, still close to 2 wounds and bringing more hacking programs. Eventually I followed my heart cut order count to get to 1 combat group and replaced the deva with a rudra K1-Marksman.

I’ve never had the chance to take a rudra for a spin, climbing plus is now “movement” so it can climb, while the link walks. The repeater brings other hackers along for the ride, K1 got buffed to damage 13 so its always as good or better than normal ammo… potentially by a lot. I really like mine dispensers in concept, so was looking to cover the board with mines.

So… a natural choice to support all of this is a probat with EVO. Its cheap, 15, .5, can reload the mine dispenser, buff the bot with assisted fire, or but down a firewall on the Asura permitting her to trinity with a +3/(-3 from firewall) with BTS 6 (+3 from firewall). This seems likely to be able to melt most anything in Bakunin who is oddly now the weakest Nomad ship for hacking. (see Jazz, and d’uh Tunguska). The perks for holding zones with an extra 20 points was not lost in this mission either.

The list was rounded out with Dart. There will be Zeros for sure, shes a camo hunter extraordinaire. I picked the EM grenades version on the off chance Adam did something crazy like bring a Lizard.

I selected a Garuda Spitfire, this was in all versions of the list. I have one painted nicely, it gets work done, and theres Evo too.

A lamedh Support bot, an order and flash pulse is great.

 2 Netrods, 2 orders for four points each, whats not to like? Also they can’t scatter off the board a deployment anymore so its even better.

Last there were the post humans. The MK 4 HRL was my first choice. I loved this guy in N3, I think I’ll love him in N4 too. He’s cheap, he’s beefy, he has an ARO you can’t ignore. 

Next was the Mk 2 hacker, shes an good specialist, another hacker to use the repeater coming along with the link, and she’s a pretty good close quarters fighter with NWI, a shotgun and TO, even though she no longer has hidden deployment.

Finally I picked a MK 1 doctor. I had to think between the DR and the Engineer, but in the end I decided I had a lot more important things with wounds than I did with structure, and even though EM was a concern… I’d prefer to not die. I had 5 points left so a Yudbot was purchased to support the Mk 4 on ARO duty. Full list is as follows.

Adam’s List was something like

I chose to go first, its been roughly a year since I played my last game, and would prefer not to have to set up ready to defend. (Defending had a lot of advantages in Supremacy since it has round scoring, but I didn’t have the mental energy to manage that, so I didn’t). During set up I noticed my first mistake, the Netrods no longer deviate when you fail, they just walk on an edge in your deployment zone. There really isn’t a reason to be “conservative” with your placement. I tried (and failed) then tried again and succeeded to land one of them just inside my d zone. In hindsight, it probably would have been better off on a 2nd floor in a scoring zone. Because there was no chance it would go somewhere bad, I should have just been trying to place it where I wanted it. This also had a side effect of denying me to later placing a rudra behind the same building, a 50mm base is BIG and the netrod hiding behind a building at the edge of my D zone got in the way and forced me to less than ideally position the rudra behind a different building.

Deployment

The Ausra Haris was mostly deployed centrally, prone behind baracades planning to move forward and own the center with the powerful weapons and pile of points to easily claim what quadrants I needed.

Adam set up his dudes, mostly all in hiding behind his buildings. He made a few mistakes in facing that would bit him later, a morlock was facing into a wall, instead of watching the back of her D zone.

I placed my post human(s) as my reserve, MK 4 out in the open, aggressively AROing a lot of the board.

Adam placed his sin eater centrally watching my planned advance. POOP!

(some pics of deployment, you can see the center lane which is where most of the engagement in the game happens, first the sin eater down the lane, and later the Moira, and Swast going under Adam’s bridge)

Nate’s Deployment

(You can see the netrod right, deployed where a Ruda would like to be, proper placement should have been behind the building on the second level, it would open space AND be 4 more points in the zone)

Adam’s Deployment

Turn 1

Well, my primary offense was stalled out before it started, which was a pain in the butt. (the sin eater would have 4 dice on 13, +3 range – 3 cover, the Yadu would have 5 on 10s +3 range, – 3 cover – 3 mimitism, Asura would have 4 on 8 (-3 range, -3 cover), Rudra even worse. (N3 dice calc puts Yadu at 26% v Sin Eaters 40% to score wounds)

Looking over Adams deployment I noticed he didn’t watch his back, so the EVO put on assisted jump and the garuda landed behind Adams deployment out of everything’s LoF/Zoc then gunned down a morlock. (along his board edge to left of the crates)

This permitted the Sin Eater to turn around, but he had to choose to let me get back shots with either a TO camo marker, a garuda, or a Yadu. He picked to let the TO camo shoot him in the back and I obliged him that knocking the sin eater out. I spread my Asura link out to claim both zones on my side definitively. The garuda removed a flashpluse bot, and the clock maker, and tried to put wounds on the swast before taking cover.

On Adam’s turn the prowler forces my post human Dr to fall back into cover, then murder the post human hacker. His swast takes out the garuda. The Moria HMG then repositions and starts slicing the pie on my Haris, Rudra take a wound, goes prone behind a barricade, Yadu takes a wound, goes behind a barricade, Asura tanks it, then takes 2 wounds and goes prone behind a barricade as Adam runs out of orders.

Score 1-1, 2 zones each

Turn 2

The post human dr walks up and heals a wound of the asura. The Asura cautious advances across a gap then walks forward in to her 16 against the Moria, and puts her down with shock. The Asura link advances into the middle of the field, the Asura takes out a near zero FO, then next order is stunned by another flash pulse. The Yadu HMG removes the far zero FO. Posthuman fixes the asura’s eyes. The Asura then walks through the middle of the field and takes 1 wound from the prowler from a crit, before killing him and taking partial cover in the nook of a building.

On adam’s turn the fast morlock threads the needle to climb up a building avoiding a HRL, K1MM, and HMG shot. (The new lack of move restrictions (only no doubling back) permits a lot of flexibility around your impetuous mans!). There is a post human combi at poor range that misses. For a second order the Morlock runs along a bridge forcing the Yadu, post human dr, and ruda to dodge, while Dart, and the mk4 past him. The Morlock chain rifles the clump of dodging troopers, finishing off the Rudra, well worth it for 6 points. Adams’s SWAT walks around the back of his D zone, while the linked grrl advances into a his right scoring zone on top of a building. The swast eventually draws lof on the Yadu and kills her, then the Asura and fails to finish her off.

Score 2 points each, we each have 2 zones.

Turn 3

I feel pretty good about my turn, I still have 7 regular orders, and 2 lt orders, and a murderous LT who is worth lots of points.

I decide to hedge my bets and spent 3 orders running the post human around to heal my Asura before going after the swast. At the end of order 3 she hacks a console. Order 4 has her run into B2B with my Asura, then kill her, command token reroll, kill her again, command token reroll, kill her again. The Dr. dies to the red fury shot from the swast. Dang! That didn’t go as planned!

I move the Evo forward and hack the other near consol, and shuffle around some ARO presence, which is now lacking due to no ruda, no yado, no asura, no mk 1 or 2 post humans, but I have Dart, Mk 4 and a prayer. I think the Mk4 also kills the last bakunin flash pulse at this point, 

Adam starts his turn with 3 or 4(?) regular orders. He proceeds to waste his first order moving his Moderator LT forward into a zone, getting plastered by the HRL. He then moves a Zero into the open, getting discovered along the way, its not next to a console yet, and if he moves it again the MK4 had it in the open and good range.  the Swast then moves and takes some shots at the MK 4 who takes a wound.

With Adam’s last order he looks at me and says that he’s an idiot. I nodd, grin and agree with him.

Adam realized that if he moved his swat across the board into one of my zones he’d flip its control, and if he moved further he could secure my HVT. Adam moves, and dodges my HRL, its enough to get into my zone, but not enough to get my HVT.

Score 4-4, Adam had more zones (2 points) I have hacked 2 consoles (2 point)

First game of N4 is a Tie!

Post Game Analysis

I tried to call out my new N4 observations above when talking about list construction and the game. 

One that hasn’t come up, since its positioning dependent, is just that it’s really easy to claim partial cover in N4. It’s very easy to have just a tip of your base behind a wall etc., it’s much harder to deny cover, those arm 5 models if you’re thinking about where you place them should be tanking hits with arm 8. 

Another position related issue is the large base for the Ruda. It is hard to move and keep hidden. Luckily they can prone, which saved its butt a few times, but even while prone its trailing edge would be seen by the Sin Eater so it tied the Ausra Haris in place so I had to deal with it, or forgo a third of my list.

Thinking about the last turn, and running some numbers. A safer play would probably have been to just use the Asura’s LT orders to push against the Swast who was in the open. N3 calculator has about a 5% chance for her to be wounded, which is close to what a fail dr with a reroll is. The difference is the four orders sunk into getting the dr there, if the Asura’s push failed, I would still have had 7 orders to pump into Dart, which could have cleaned up some on her side. The Asura’s chance of death was similar, but the sunk orders cost is what ended up making me “not win” the game.

I’m sure Adam will send in his thoughts so you’ll hear this from his point of view as well, but it’s at least fitting that if I failed to win because dice, Adam at least could fail to win because Adam!