By Tcional

Overview

• Mission: Frostbyte
• Forces: Bakunin versus Qapu Khalqi (200 + Soldiers of Fortune)
• Deploy First: Bakunin
• First Turn: Bakunin

The list was built around 3 things basically. 

• Zoe and Pi-Well, because they can accomplish 16 out of 20 Classified Objectives (and this scenario takes 3 of them so versatility on 200p is key). 
• Moderators Fireteam that has a long range MSR, medium range Spitfire, a Paramedic to fill couple more of Classified Objectives (and hopefully do some revives if needed), a cheap Lieutenant profile and a Grenade Launcher just in case (and because it’s cheap). 
• Taskmaster + Morlocks Haris that I have found during the last update and might be stupidly strong for a Bakunin fireteam. Taskmaster gets a free +1 B (I would probably take the Morlocks anyway), Morlocks lose the Impetuous and transform to Regular troopers. It’s like a triple win in itself and Taskmaster has a personal guard that can fight in CC better than him.

Then I filled last spots with Lunokhod and Transductor to secure the Exclusion Zone for final scoring (they are REMs so they don’t get killed by Killer Cold). I thought about putting McMurrough in from Soldiers of Fortune, but I didn’t have the 0.5 SWC to activate the bonuses – I decided to leave Grenade Launcher instead, and Lunokhod put the final blow to my Opponent.

And, of course, Red Fury Motorized Bounty Hunter, because why not take the strongest profile when it’s free, right?

A Ghulam Fireteam with 2 Snipers. I’ve tried that with Moderators back in 2018 and they have won me a game against a strong Corregidor player in our local league – Intruder and McMurrough had a very hard time fighting 2 MSRs and a Sin Eater’s HMG. So I figure it’s a strong defensive Fireteam.

Azra’il, Rouhani and Hafza (disguised as Leila Sharif) were just messing with B4 Feuerbach and a Doctor to support it, really annoying stuff.

McMurrough, because why not. My friend find him stupidly strong (and I agree). He takes him whenever he is available and I’m not surprised at all.

Digger with a Chain Rifle, because Heavy Infantry for 14 points? What’s not to love?

It’s missing from the list, but Motorized Bounty Hunter with Red Fury was obviously present.

And a small group for ARO purposes.

I like those lists. Both have a purpose, strong attacking pieces with decent defense and possibilities to control the Exclusion Zone for final scoring. I feel like I had slightly better area control due to Koalas, while having slightly worse Reactive Turn shooting capabilities, and QK had stronger offense, but it was slower than my Haris.

Deployment

For my Classifieds I picked up In Extremis Recovery, Test Run and Sabotage. And won Initiative Roll to keep Initiative.

I’ve put Fireteam to defend longer ranges with MSR and my half of the table with Spitfire (hidden on the left near my Combi Rifle Moderator, Spitfire guy barely sticks out of the building), a Paramedic close to MSR and Grenade Launcher hidden closer to the center of the table. Zoe and Pi-Well in the middle so they can react on both sides. Taskmaster in the front with Morlocks so they can start attacking early. Lunokhod took the left side to cover the left console in the building and Transductor has an easy approach to the Exclusion Zone through the right side. Bounty Hunter remained not-Impetuous and got MSR from Booty (I decided to keep it so she can cover long range bands if needed).

Qapu put Ghylams in the middle for ARO with 2 of the regular Rifle+Light Shotgun profiles hidden in the back. Azra’il sees the area near my Grenade Launcher Moderator and not much else. His Haris buddies are lying completely hidden. 2nd Combat Group ARO pieces or visible next to Haris near and on the barrels. McMurder, Bounty Hunter (also non-Impetuous and +4 ARM) and Digger cover the left flank.

Turn 1

Top of 1 – Bakunin

Qapu Khalqi takes two Orders from my main Combat Group.

First things first. Got to take down ARO. Taskmaster seems the best for this job, so he goes forward and shoots down Fanous Remote and Warcor next to him.

Then Taskmaster walks up a step to see the Ghulam Sniper (who will proceed to die in the second FtF, while putting a Wound on Taskmaster in the first FTF) while Morlocks run into the building.

Another Ghulam gets targeted by my MSR Moderator and dies promptly.

So 2 Ghulams died, I don’t have to worry about the Doctor picking them up. Taskmaster goes further into the central building, pushing Morlock even further, goes into Suppressive Fire and one of the Morlocks crosses the door without being seen by anyone.

Bounty Hunter takes a 2 inches long step to see the location of one of the late Ghulams and I’m left with 2 Orders to push Lunokhod to the left side building and plant a CrazyKoala next to enemy positions.

Bottom of 1 – Qapu Khalqi

Qapu lost 2 Ghulams and the entire 2nd Combat Group. McMurder and Digger use their Impetuous Orders to move forward. Heavily armored Bounty Hunter takes out my Morlock while he tries to cover himself up with Smoke. 

McMurder follows it up with an aggressive Super-Jump into the central building where Taskmaster is waiting in SF Mode.

He takes hits from Taskmaster, Transductor Zond, Bounty Hunter and Pi-Well. McMurder dies in a blaze of glory while firing a Chain Rifle on Taskmaster and putting him into Unconscious.

Next up is Bounty Hunter, she drives up the left flank to the console on my right, (on a second try) activates Heater in QK Deployment Zone and leaves herself next to the window in Partial Cover.

I think at this point Azra’il tried to walk forward to (successfully) kill 2nd Morlock and take a shot at my MSR Moderator and he got shot down while doing so. Rouhani had to pick him up and reform a Fireteam for a Command Token to have B2 for the next Reactive turn.

Turn 2

Top of 2 – Bakunin

I open my turn 2 with Bounty Hunter. She drives up the right side into the Blizzard and takes a Wound out of Digger, who decided to go Prone.

Next up, enemy Bounty Hunter. In cover and with ARM 5 it might be difficult, but while the first FtF gets saved by enemy Bounty Hunter I drive for the second one to catch her out of cover causing her immediate death due to Shock ammo.

In the next Order I activate my DZ Heater and drive towards the doors. Transductor catches up in the saturation Zone in 2 Orders.

In the following (or prior to the whole Bounty Hunter thing, not 100% sure) Orders I activate a Moderator Fireteam. MSR takes a shot at Azra’il, but he saves all the hits and hides a bit so that my Moderator has to relocate. I do so by pulling left side Moderators towards the building with MSR, Paramedic goes out front, and MSR slides towards right side of the building to catch a line to Azra’il through the window.

Azra’il again saves all hits and hides a bit more. This time I will have to lose some cover, but I don’t have much else to do. At this time my Paramedic is also in the crossfire (as seen in the screenshot) on his way to Unconscious Taskmaster. 3 Moderators and Pi-Well (it should have been Zoe now that I look at it but we’ll get to it later) get coordinated. Paramedic tries to slip further and hide from the Azra’il, MSR jumps out of the window and runs to the next cover so that he can actually see Taskmaster and a Grenade Launcher Moderator pops out from Total Cover. Pi-Well just runs down the middle in a sort of pointless way.

Due to Blizzard it doesn’t matter who is a Spearhead and Azra’il takes a shot at MSR Moderator, and all three Moderators fire at the Haqqislamite. I think this is the point where Azra’il finally gets knocked out and I run out of Orders to follow up the Paramedic.

Bottom of 2 – Qapu Khalqi

Digger starts with his Impetuous, runs into the middle of the field, fires his Chain Rifle twice and knocks out both my Transductor and Motorized Bounty Hunter in exchange for his own life when Bounty Hunter fires her Red Fury.

Azra’il gets picked up by Rouhani and proceeds to mow down both my Moderators that were left for ARO (MSR and Grenade Launcher). Despite few Orders the turn was pretty significant for me in terms of what I could (and had to) do during my last turn. Azra’il with Digger took out 4 of my models and I had to secure the central zone for QKs turn 3. My opponent decided to keep Azra’il out of the Fireteam as he thought he would need CTs later.

Turn 3

Top of 3 – Bakunin

Few things left for me to do. I open by putting my Paramedic on a crate to shoot the Taskmaster with Medikit. I hit and Taskmaster makes his PH13 roll! He’s up, he’s running and he’s dangerous again. 

Lunokhod has a Sabotage to do so he goes out of the building and Azra’il catches him in ARO!

I decided that Akrylat-Kanone is my best bet and I win the FtF and Azra’il after failing his PH-6 is out for good!

Next order is Coordinated with Lunokhod, Taskmaster, Zoe and Pi-Well. Taskmaster, stupidly, goes forward and out of cover (I had no specific plan for him), Lunokhod touches the barrier next to him and goes back, Zoe moves towards Transductor and Pi-Well follows Zoe. Lunokhod plants and detonates D-Charge to complete Sabotage. Last thing to do is securing one more objective – Test Run. Zoe has not enough orders to reach Silhouette contact with Transductor (just 2), so she jumps on a crate where Transudctor started the game and shoots him with B1 Gizmokit (-1B for Saturation) and she misses him!

That’s the end for me. Lunokhod and Taskmaster are in the Exclusion Zone, Paramedic Moderator is in the Dead Zone and the rest is just chilling in my Deployment.

Bottom of 3 – Qapu Khalqi

Qapu is having a hard time. Azra’il won’t win the game for them, there’s no Engineer to help him out of the glue and Resetting might take a few very valuable Orders. I think they have 5 or 6 orders left. Fireteams are broken and Core with 2 Ghulams, Leila (Hafza) and Rouhani is reformed (I have no idea when Qapu lost 3rd Ghulam, could be some Lunokhod action in this turn. Lunokhod is shot off by the Fireteam and Rouhani approaches the central building to fire on Taskmaster.

But that guy even out of cover has decent armor. Rouhani has SMG with AP ammo though. After a couple of Orders both are still standing and in the last Order Rouhani tries to move towards his Deployment Zone (but clearly it won’t be enough not to die). Taskmaster still manages to survive as the enemy flees and the game ends.

Rouhani and Moderator Paramedic die to Killer Cold and the only model left in the Exclusion Zone is my Taskmaster.

Had Rouhani survived it wouldn’t have changed much as he was worth 21 points and the score in surviving army points was 115-91 for me.

That leaves me with 3 OP for killing Army Points, 3 OP for dominating Exclusion Zone, 1 OP for having a heating unit active and 2 for Classified Objectives (Sabotage and Secure HVT).

Qapu Khalqi had only 1 OP for having an Active Heating Unit. That leaves us with

9 – 1 

Bakunin win

Post Game Analysis

This game hasn’t really shown what I like about fully Composition-wise clean fireteams. For me they are about being cheap and reliable at the same time (though that was shown to some extent). Ghulams with 2 Sniper rifles only did 1 Wound to my Taskmaster and there wasn’t much to them anymore in the game.

My Moderators have shown some reliability. Having retained all bonuses from old rules due to composition of the Fireteam they could take out Azra’il raining fire with his Feuerbach. 2 Snipers in a ‘native’ fireteam can be more reliable since they don’t lose all BS bonuses when one of them dies and they have shown me some crazy stuff in a game I mentioned in the introduction. A Fireteam of 2 MSR and a Spitfire Moderator with 2 others and one extra to fill in in case of death of one of them held firmly the assault of Corregidor’s Intruder, McMurrough, Tomcat and Bandit. Intruder had to be revived despite having smoke cover and yet they all fell to the might of Moderators. Spitfire was just cleaning the remains of those who were assaulting my positions in a 3-person Core and my opponent really didn’t like what happened there on that day.

Overall I like those fireteams as they fill up orders pretty easily and (especially for Moderators) don’t take too much points and SWC so I can take more point-heavy toys, like Taskmaster in a 200p game. Also, they can accomplish something in the game if you lose the MSR and start pushing forward with Spitfire. It’s not a Crusade fireteam but can be pain to deal with.