My Irredeemably Irregular 150pt game 

By Gus Johnson

Overview

• Mission: Firefight
• Forces: O-12 versus Vanilla Nomads (150, <60pt model cost cap)
• Deploy First: Nomads
• First Turn: Nomads

My list:

we’re doing an escalation league here in our meta to season a few new players and provide some of our vets with new armies an opportunity to smooth out the edges of fresh playstyles. 

After taking two bounty hunter bikers in a 100 point list last week I was inspired to try out this month’s bromad academy prompt. O12 doesn’t have a whole lot of options for irregular units so I thought that a 150 point game would give me a low enough threshold that I could build a good list with the irregular attack pieces before they were outclassed by more durable units like the gamma and omega or skilled fighters like hector and hippolyta

The crusher and bounty hunter were intended as my main attack pieces. The beast hunter was there for aro duty along with two flash pulse bots and a TR bot. The raven eye was included to back up the crusher on classifieds and brick down the area around the panoplies with EM mines while the monstrucker pulled double duty as a mobile specialist who could also fix the aro bots as needed. 

 Christian’s list:

Christian is one of our newest players locally. I had sold him a significant chunk of my nomads after conceding that their playstyle and mine just weren’t a great fit. Fortunately for Christian, hacking and unique attack vectors appears to be his bread and butter and he’s been picking up all the typical nomad tricks with ease. It was great to see them being enjoyed by someone who could fully embrace their flavor on the table. 

spotlight (provided by Jazz and Billie today)/smart missile is one of christian’s favorite plays and he leveraged that along with really leaning in to the supported deployment feature of the firefight mission with 2 combat jumpers and a parachutist. a hidden deployment prowler and a moderator lieutenant rounded out the list. 

Deployment

christian won the roll and took first turn. I chose to deploy second on the side I felt had a less obstructed path to two of the three panoplies as well as shorter range fire lanes to capitalize on the shorter range bands across most of my list. 

Using a command token to hold back two models Christian’s initial deployment consisted of a prone missile bot on a roof in a far corner and jazz in a building watching the other flank. Billie came down in the center as one reserve and a moderator went down standing on the same roof near the missile bot. 

from left to right I dropped my Bounty Hunter on the flank to push an attack run towards Jazz. +4 armor off the booty chart had me feeling pretty good for its capability as an attack piece. 

Given Christian’s two model deployment I assumed AD was coming and I made sure to have a lot of my units keeping an eye on my back and side edges. The TR bot parked on a roof with a good angle to both the left flank and panoply with a little room to maneuver and just clip the edge of the center panoply if needed. My Kappa LT deployed watching the back edge and stairs here with the hope the Bounty Hunter would discourage any deployment on that side outright. The Raveneye stayed near the center at the edge of the 16” dz with plans on pushing straight upfield to accomplish mapping or to drop EM mines and enter suppressive near the coveted loot boxes. I threw a prone Kappa on the center building mostly to prevent Christian from having a juicy landing pad in my dz. The Monstrucker was ground level near my HVT. I liked this spot as his climbing plus would give me several different approach angles to move upfield after grabbing something from the center panoply. The Beast Hunter went down prone on the yellow building in case the missile bot ever dared to stand and also served as a good option for securing the HVT. Two flash pulse bots watching the right flank rounded out my deployment. I dropped my reserve Crusher down on the left flank with the intention of trying to take out Jazz quickly to neuter the missile bot.

Turn 1

Top of 1 – Nomads 

I declined to strip Christian of any orders in this game for a couple reasons, first taking away two orders in a 150 pt game feels really mean and overpowered, second, with three irregular units at 150 I wanted to be sure I had a few command tokens to convert orders if needed. His first order was for jazz to drop prone and shoot a pitcher out near my Crusher. As soon as it landed I knew her days were numbered. With all of Christian’s drop troops he started this turn with only four orders. Three left, still plenty to do some damage with the missiles. I got lucky on the first shot and a crit dodge was able to keep the crusher alive for a moment longer. Order three went for a second attempt that unfortunately missed with a roll of 19. Christian’s final order was to drop his Moderator prone. I think his thought was to keep her safe while also providing a chance to throw a discover at the camo token if it chose not to react. Sadly, 150 point games can result in some pretty obvious LTs and I couldn’t pass up an early opportunity to score some points with the Beast Hunter; even if he had me out of cover. I revealed to throw a panzerfaust out. Christian opted to shoot back on 5s for the dice advantage but my hit on an 8 resulted in an early LT kill. At this point Christian pulled an unexpected card out of his sleeve and dropped all three of his AD troopers in with their own orders: A Tomcat walked on the edge of my right flank in the small gap of both my peelers back arcs. A BSG Meteor zond came down just behind my Monstrucker and the final troop was a hellcat that jumped in on the noodle shop stairs right behind my Kappa Lt *gulp*

Bottom of 1 – O12

I wasn’t expecting all the troopers to drop in without any orders left to feed them but their landing effectively forced me to abandon my plans and devote all my resources to cleaning up my DZ and avoiding their AROs. I used the biker’s impetuous order to head upfield rather than canceling it and coming around the back of the building so the Hellcat wouldn’t have a chance to catch my LT with a template on his way to hitting the bike. Sadly, a poor distance guesstimate on my part resulted in the biker getting spot lit in aro through the pitcher watching the crusher. C’est la vie. 

Priority 1 was the hellcat staring down the back of my lieutenant. I poked a peeler around a signpost for a back arc shot at him with a flash pulse but only resulted in him passing both saves and dropping prone, forcing my lieutenant to get himself out of this mess. As much as I would have liked the order efficiency of using my LT order to move the Kappa to safety I didn’t want to encourage Christian to piece trade with a template here so I used a regular order to move him around the corner, putting some combi shots into him on my way by. As I hoped, the chance for a face to face out of cover had christian opt for the one on 18 option against my three on 15s. Two of my shots got through to put down the Hellcat and keep my LT alive.

Now to solve the Meteor zond problem. cue the first irregular attack run from the Beast Hunter. In order to save my last panzerfaust shot I kept him prone and spent a whole order crawling closer to the zond without provoking an aro. One more order to stand and come out to the edge of the building allowed me to catch him with the tip of a heavy flamethrower template while avoiding his boarding shotgun’s 8” band. The zond failed his dodge and burned down to unconscious level two, freeing up a lane through my dz for the bounty hunter to neutralize the last drop troop threat. It took a full three orders of jetting across the board to get in position and a fourth for the shot but the bounty hunter killed the tomcat outright and tanked his save on his armor 5.

With my flanks clear I used the Monstrucker’s order to climb up the short wall and perform Nanoespionage on the downed Zond for my first classified of the game. Feeling pretty good about my turn I spent the LT order to place the Kappa in suppressive and pass.

Turn 2

Top of 2 – Nomads

Christian is in loss of lieutenant and on his back foot from losing his jump troops but he has three command tokens and both my primary offensive pieces are still in targeted state. The bounty hunter dies quickly to a missile strike with the bot’s own irregular and christian proceeds to convert Jazz and Billie’s orders to continue the shelling. My crusher is turned into a fine red mist despite a valiant effort with her second crit dodge of the game. After this he reveals a camo Prowler from hidden deployment and pushes it upfield a bit, presumably to make a run for the right panoply on his third turn.

Bottom of 2 – O12

With the crusher dead, jazz prone and Billie’s repeater watching my main route through the center of the board I resign myself to losing more specialists than I can kill and proceed to go after my remaining classifieds. After grabbing an appropriately thematic adhesive launcher from the panoply I sent the monstrucker climbing up the front wall to try and take out Billie with his SMG at close range. He succeeds but gets targeted for his efforts. Next up is the Raveneye to go for a hike into Christian’s DZ to map a barricade. I’m again targeted, this time by Jazz but I consider it a fair trade for classified number 2. With my last few orders of the turn I maneuver the beast hunter over to discover Christian’s Prowler and a low percentage shot (1 on 5’s) with my last panzerfaust round removes him from the board. 

Turn 3

Top of 3 – Nomads

Christian still has Jazz and the missile bot and he uses their orders, along with the bot’s new LT order to exact revenge against the Monstrucker and Raveneye for their aggression upfield. two more dead specialists.

Bottom of 3 – O12

With no chance of taking out Jazz or the bot I use my remaining orders to take the rooftop Kappa on a run to pull one more item from the panoplies and secure the hvt for classified #3

Post Game Analysis

Final Score: O-12 -8, Nomads -2

I’ve pulled three items from the panoplies and accomplished three classifieds. I’ve also got the two for killing a lieutenant and Christian scores two for taking out all three of my specialists while keeping Jazz alive. 

Missile bots are strong. even with only one hacker to spotlight things. I wish I had noticed/remembered that the bonuses to AD in firefight also removed the back edge restriction from parachutist beforehand. If I had, I likely would have foregone the light rocket launcher option and taken the AD crusher to walk on christian’s back edge or jump down and deal with that missile bot. The value of cheap bikes feel magnified at low point values, especially when they have a good roll on the booty chart.

Christian and I talked after the game about the dangers of dropping in troopers without more orders to feed them, it’s just so hard to survive when your opponent has the active turn and can dictate the terms of engagement.  I really enjoyed this game against him though. He may be new to infinity but is not to war games and his previous experience,along with not having to unlearn N3 has led him to have a challenging playstyle unique from the rest of our local meta. With the experience from the escalation league we’re doing I suspect he’ll be a very tough opponent the next time we play.