Jhokalups – Field Operation Action Report – 16

2019-03-22 Jhokalups

Jhokalups – Field Operation Action Report – 16
StarCo vs Varuna
200 ITS X – Capture and Protect

I was finally able to make it to game night again. Last week I missed the local showdown tournament due to work and not being in a good head space. I would not have been a good opponent, so bowed out. This week though, I wanted to play a game. I have been working on an exercise for ITS scenarios, and wanted to test the results.
The exercise is to look at the scenario and identify the two to three main actions that score the most points. For Capture and Protect these are capturing the enemy beacon, and giving it to my data tracker of possible; and preventing my opponent from capturing my beacon. I built my list with these two objectives in mind.
My opponent tonight was Xammy, this was both our our second games. So we set up quickly and got started.

Wip Roll
StarCo 5
Varuna 7

Decision: Xammy
Deployment: Jhokalups
Initiative: Jhokalups
1st Turn: Jhokalups
1st Deploy: Jhokalups

Varuna List:

VIRD – High Punch
──────────────────────────────────────────────────
7 1

KAMAU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 20)

KAMAU Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 22)

KAMAU (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 32)

ORC (Varuna Div.) (Multiterrain: Aquatic/Jungle, Stealth) HMG / Pistol, Knife. (2 | 45)

PATSY GARNETT Submachine Gun, Nimbus Plus Grenades, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 37)

ZULU-COBRA Lieutenant (Sensor) Combi Rifle, Jammer / Assault Pistol, Knife. (0 | 29)

FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)

TECH-BEE (Remote Assistant Level 1, Specialist Operative) Flash Pulse / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5)

3.5 SWC | 200 Points
Open in Infinity Army

StarCo List:

CnP – Snake DT?──────────────────────────────────────────────────
5 3 1

ANACONDA (Fireteam: Duo) HMG + Chain-colt, Panzerfaust / CCW. (2 | 64)

OPERATOR Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (- | 0)

LUNOKHOD Heavy Shotgun, Heavy Flamethrower, D-Charges, CrazyKoalas (2) / Electric Pulse. (0 | 25)

BRAWLER Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16)

SPECTOR (AD: Combat Jump) Boarding Shotgun, Nanopulser, Drop Bears / Pistol, E/M2 CC Weapon. (0 | 33)

UHAHU Hacker (Hacking Device Plus. UPGRADE: Icebreaker) Pitcher, D-Charges / Assault Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 25)

WARCOR (Aerocam) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3)

IRMANDINHO Chain Rifle, D-Charges, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW. (0 | 8)

2.5 SWC | 199 Points
Open in Infinity Army

Winning the roll Xammy decided on which side he wanted. With the list I had I wanted to try and disrupt things with Spector and try and grab the beacon and start carrying it back to my Anaconda, so I chose to go first.

Deployment:
I deployed my Lunkholds watching the approach to my beacon, putting my koalas into places where anything approaching the beacon would be hugged to death. My brawler Lieutenant was prone on a roof on my left next to a Warcor. Uhahu was prone on a roof on my right. My Irmandinho was in my day left in the back. I held my Anaconda in reserve to put it in total cover on my left.

Xammy deployed his Orc Core (with three Kamau) across the middle of his zone. The Orc HMG was standing on the roof on the middle. The rest of the link was watching various angles of approach. There was a Fusilier prone on my left and a Tech Bee watching the beacon.

Top of 1: StarCo
To start things off my Irmandinho runs forward like the angry engineer he is. Looking at the board, there’s a really nice spot to drop Spector down and then tear through the Kamaus in the fireteam. So, I place him down, roll my test, and fail the roll. Spector drifts and lands right in the middle of the link team and then goes down in a hail of bullets. Alright, that plans off the table. So I start my recovery plan, I knew that Spector wouldn’t always be the option, so I use the Irmandinho to set up a smoke screen. I send my Anaconda up field and stick it into a nice piece of cover, able to watch the approaches with it’s HMG.
At this point we notice a deployment error that I made with one of my Lunkholds, and Xammy is gracious enough to let me correct it. (I had a Lunkhold on the roof of a building out of cover and in full view of everything, I moved it behind the building.) Seeing the points on the VIRD side I guess that I won’t have to worry about any AD, so I rotated one Lunkhold, have it start watching down the field and reposition it’s koalas.
With my last orders I put enhanced reaction up on that Lunkhold and put the Anaconda into suppressive fire. Not a great turn, but there are still two left.

Bottom of 1: VIRD
Xammy starts off by consolidating the link team towards the center of the board, because of how spread out the team was I get a free shot with my Warcor on the Orc, which I whiff. Another order and the link team advances more with the Kamau sniper as the leader. I have the Warcor try and flash pulse the sniper, but she died in a hail of bullets. A few more orders brings the link team forward and has Patsy start a gun fight with the Anaconda, I elect to shoot back in suppressive fire. We are within 24 inches so I get my burst 3 and the imposed -3 on Patsy. Patsy still wins the face to face with several of the hits going through. The Anaconda is arm 6 and in cover, I am feeling pretty good about these armor rolls. And then I fail both and the anaconda explodes. Leaving my Operator floating in the wind. A few orders more has Xammy take out the Operator and set up to start approaching the beacon on his next turn.

Score at End of 1: 0 – 0

Top of 2: StarCo
(Authors note: in reviewing this for the battle report, I started this turn in retreat, but didn’t notice. The game should have ended at the end of my turn.)
Ok, three orders, not a lot of options… I have my angry engineer run over to try and bring back my Lunkhold. He succeeded at bringing one up, and the last order has Uhahu successfully freezing the Orc HMG in place with Icebreaker. I pass turn.

Bottom of 2: VIRD
Xammy continues to have his link team advances up, we screw up some rules and I try to Oblivion the Orc, but fail all the rolls so it doesn’t matter. As his diminished link continues to advance up and around the building he guns down the Lunkhold and a Koala. My Irmandinho gives him some trouble, critting a Dodge once and being a tough little guy. Xammy spends the rest of his orders clearing the koalas and the Irmandinho, but is out of orders.

Score at End of 2: 0 – 0

Top of 3: StarCo
I am in retreat, I have no way to score anymore points, but Xammy hasn’t done anything extra either. So I end my turn which ends the game.

Final Score: 3 – 3 Tie

Lessons Learned:
The checklist I had helped a lot for this game. Very little went to plan, but my deployment and returning to the checklist and checking the next steps turned what could have been a crushing defeat into a tie. Had I remembered that Uhahu had spotlight, I could have won with s minor victory.
My deployment put a ton of pressure on Xammy. I presented a puzzle that he would need to deal with. And the puzzle of 4 koalas, 2 of which were in standby, put Xammy into a tunnel vision where he spent too many orders shooting Koalas. There funny thing was that he could have walked the team into the koalas, are the two active ones and still be able capture the beacon and start walking away.
It was a good game, and informative about how even the best plans can fall apart, but with a focus on the mission you can lose nearly every face to face and still get a decent result.