Impersonators are Fine but Mutts can Burn
By Pandamonium
Overview
- Mission: Supplies
- Forces: Nomads versus Hassassin Bahram (300)
- Deploy First: Nomads
- First Turn: Nomads
Nomads
GROUP 1 |6
2
1
GROUP 2 |
KRIZA BORAC Lieutenant HMG / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (2 | 54)
ZOE & PI-WELL . (0 | 47)
PI-WELL Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 19)
JAGUAR Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 10)
MORAN (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, CrazyKoalas (2) / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 22)
MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, E/M CCW. (0 | 6)
BANDIT (Forward Observer) Light Shotgun, Adhesive Launcher / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 23)
ZERO Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 21)
INTRUDER (X-Visor) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CCW. (1.5 | 43)
KRAKOT RENEGADE Submachine Gun, Chest Mine / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 15)
DAKTARI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)
ZONDBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
WARCOR (360º Visor) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3)
4.5 SWC | 299 Points | Open in Infinity Army
Hassassin Bahram
GROUP 1 |
FIDAY Rifle + Light Shotgun, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW, Knife. (0 | 30)
AL-DJABEL Rifle + Light Shotgun, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Viral CCW, Knife. (0 | 35)
LEILA SHARIF Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Shock Marksman Rifle, D-Charges / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 20)
MUYIB Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher (Normal and Smoke Ammo.) / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 23)
ASAWIRA Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, Shock CCW. (2 | 43)
GROUP 2 |
GHULAM Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12)
RAGIK Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 25)
MUTTAWI’AH Chain Rifle, E/Marat, Jammer, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5)
DAYLAMI (CH: Limited Camouflage, Inferior Infiltration) Light Shotgun, Panzerfaust / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 8)
4 SWC | 300 Points | Open in Infinity Army
My opponent Gaz (groundpenguin) and I have been playing weekly on Tabletop sim for a while now. No travel to game stores, no setting up a table, no pack downs and finally being able to play with a cup of tea and my back not hurting afterwards.
Our table / terrain for the evening. A fairly open table but with few long sight lines and we have found that playing with as few open buildings as possible has helped us speed games up.
I lost the LT roll and Gaz took deployment whilst I chose to go first. This was my first mistake and I should have called the bluff and taken 2nd turn.
The classified I drew. Fairly happy with them and binned off capture or rescue because who needs that hassle?
Deployment
My Deployment
So knowing I’m against Hassasins with impersonators and infiltrating daylami and having my orders fairly spread out, I deployed my war bands watching corners and preparing to lay smoke. My intruder and his support pieces on a roof and my morans / bandit / killer hacker zero within walking distance of the supply boxes to grab them and carry them off. I put the Kriza in a flanking position to run down the right hand side watched by the jag, piwell and an alerting zondbot.
Unit missing from the deployment photo is the FO bandit I have prone touching the leftmost supply box (don’t worry she doesn’t do anything and dies miserably)
Gaz’s Deployment
I didn’t get a chance to go into the thinking behind all of his deployment, but generally in our area we are all incredibly reserved with our deployment and hide things as best we can. So besides his impersonators and daylami, everything is hiding in a building behind a mine.
(on a side note this is because of one very good player in our area where if he gets first turn he will punish you for bad deployment by breaking all your toys)
A game always starts well with 30% of your opponents points starting in your half of the table.
Lucky for me the Daylami fail their infiltrations and they hide in their DZ unlucky for me two of the “bureaucrats” from command passed their rolls to deploy in my DZ.
My Meta chemistry rolls are, Morlock 1 super jump, Morlock 2 dogged and +3 phys and regen for my hulk krakot renegade.
Turn 1
Top of 1 – Nomads
2 orders are docked from ground one containing my kriza which luckily doesn’t hurt me too much as he has nothing to go and kill and in group two I still have all the orders I want to spend on my intruder. My first turn goes well for me as my impetuous guys don’t die to ARO and one even alleyoop super jumps over my intruder and puts her in smoke. I then spend a turn dealing with the impersonators within my DZ.
With my split order groups I have to be careful with which units I can use to discover. I use the orders from group one moving the morlock onto a container so she can discover who “STEVE” really is and she makes her roll. The intruder guns the impersonator down with her pistol.
Who would have thought that steve was actually a fiday assassin here to kill my good guys!? I then use his body to get my “In extremes recovery” classified and waste the rest of my orders discovering and trying to shoot “TERRY” who turned out to be Al-Djabel. He proceeded to dodge 3 shots and just move closer to me. I re-camoed the intruder and called my turn.
Through all of this Gaz declines to ARO until he starts dodging.
Bottom of 1 – HaSsAssiNs
Another turn that I think was going well for me. First the mutts move up. One moves into sight of my intruder but with Al-Djabel near still I decline the shot. Another MUTT (future president) moves up and dodge explodes my koalas whilst avoiding my warcors paparazzi shots.
Then I think Gaz makes a mistake as he attempts to make something happen with AL-Djabel he runs to the jags chain rifle, dying and putting him dogged. I said after the game that he should have just sat him there watching my intruder.
The rest of the turn Gaz spends moving his link into a position to make a run on the rightmost supply box. Leila shocks one of my morlocks to death on her run.
As leila attempts to move over to the box my Zero pops out and hacks her in ARO. She stops what she’s doing to REDRUM his ass but his sacrifice wastes a precious order and the link has to retreat into safety.
Turn 2
Top of 2 – Nomads
I cancel the krakots impetuous order as he was about the run into a hail of spitfire rounds he didn’t need. My remaining morlock runs towards the centre of the table unhindered off to discover who that Tunguskan accountant really is. This turn it starts going downhill.
I pop the kriza out to take a look at that Asawira and knock her out with 5 full auto dice I then put down the Mu-yib behind him. This allows me to move piewell up to get my 2nd classified identity checked.
I take this opportunity to move the intruder into an ARO position watching the contested supply box. And I leave the kriza out to ARO also.
The rest of my turn is spent moving my morlock up to try and discover that damned accountant and my central moran (MORON) wasting 4/5 orders trying to pick up some supplies. This outright travesty of variance really tilts me. I forget to take some screen shots. I see red. I curse his useless Koalas and his slippery grabbing hands.
Bottom of 2 – HaSsAssiNs
Gaz starts getting a bit more momentum here after my mOrAn drops the ball. He doctors up his spitfire Asawira and remakes his 5 man link. He doesn’t have a lot of orders left in his main group and he satisfies himself by putting a wound on my kriza (I get very worried about this and guts away. ) and then takes a shot on my intruder. I roll an 11 and he crits on a 5. I would have liked at least another order for the intruder to die. The odds are roughly 33/33/33 on either of us winning or both failing.
One final thing to note is that a hero of the Haqq state moves into a very open and obvious position. That I completely fail to understand the consequences of.
Turn 3
Top of 3 – Nomads
Here is where it all falls appart becasue of a stupid 5pt model I failed to attribute his true value.
My first order is on the kriza using his LT order to move out and see the MUTT and the asawira. I know i’m out of his template range and let him throw smoke onto the objective whilst I shoot and kill the asawira. I think I am clever by letting this happen so piewell can run up and grab the objective under smoke cover.
I then spend an order the MORON (Moran) to try and pick up the central box and then he gets jammed whilst failing his 6th attempt at a wip 13 roll. This is the end.
Piewell tries to move just outside of 8 of the MUTT but its very hard to judge distances on TTS and he gets jammed through the smoke.
My only hope now is the bandit being watched by a daylami on the other side of the board. He tries to kill the daylami twice and fails. Then one last ditch hope was to just pick up the box which he also fails whilst getting killed by the daylami. Pathetic.
Bottom of 3 – HaSsAssiNs
I am currently winning 2-0 but thats just because of my two classifieds.
Gaz’s MUTT impetuous runs and tries to put smoke on top of the objective but the kriza and pi-well put him down. He then tries using the smoke LGL in his link team to spec fire smoke onto the target and fails once. So counting his orders he stands the launcher up, puts smoke down so it wouldn’t be a F2F roll. The kriza kills him for it but the smoke lands.
We then discussed what was the best way of his doctor getting through the smoke free and making the box roll and he did it. 2 dice on 18s is almost guaranteed and he grabs the box.
Post Game Analysis
SOOOOOOOOOO dice…. And a few simple mistakes / my own underestimation of MUTTS caused me to go from a 8 – 0 to a 6 – 2 defeat. On the other hand I hate blaming dice and usually over a game that sort of luck evens out. I got lucky with some discover rolls and then very unlucky with some supply rolls. I also know that Gaz has a great late game where he has beaten me or clawed a game back from the brink in the last turn more than once.
Gaz normally plays ISS and this is the first time he has put hassassins on the virtual table (One great thing about TTS is being able to very easily proxy units) and the first time I have played against them. We both agreed that he could have played the impersonators better and he even made a good guess as to who my LT was during deployment but didn’t take full advantage of it.
I usually say to ignore impersonators and accept that they will probably kill something but you have to make it the only thing it kills, or do a lot of damage mitigation but in this game I knew that if I killed them it would be a main plan of attack nullified from his list. He forgot to bring the drop troop in / did not find a use for the troop as he wasn’t a specialist.
In conclusion on the game front Gaz is a solid opponent and used his tools (MUTTS) to great effect that cost me a game and he is only getting better each time we play.
As for the list I didn find that having multiples of the same units or units that fulfill similar roles placed in different groups caused me to make more considered choices during deployment. The two morlocks were placed to DZ guard but the two jaguars were placed so that group ones Jag was watching the intruders back / placing smoke for him and the group two jag was guarding the kriza / preparing to throw smoke for him to move around dodging AROs.
The list building gets very difficult when you throw the irregular units in and I had to spend all of my command tokens flipping the irregular orders to spend on units that didn’t generate them (looking at you bandit).
I think I will have to try at this style of list building with a sectoral and make the most of this sort of order efficiency with link teams. Perhaps Corregidor.
Thank you for reading.
Luke