By Erin (IceCream)

Overview

• Mission: Capture and Protect
• Forces: JSA (Erin) versus Bakunin (Melanie) (300)
• Deploy First: JSA
• First Turn: JSA

JSA:

I really enjoy the JSA motorcycles and, while talking about lists, it was pointed out to me that I could fit all six JSA bikes into a list with an O-Yoroi. I decided to put all nine impetuous orders in JSA into a list, along with the TAG. The O-Yoroi could play defense while the impetuous troops played offense, and I’d still have tons of orders due to impetuous activations.

Bakunin:

My opponent has figured out a playstyle that’s really working for her. The Tsyklon in a Moderator Core provides a very solid ARO piece as well as the ability to throw out repeater coverage for her hackers. The Zeros are a mid-board headache that can’t be cleared out easily by early aggressive play, and the Meteor Zond can drop in the back to provide repeater coverage and also grab the flag for this mission. Melanie was forced onto the defensive for the whole game, but the Riot Grrl Haris was meant to be an offensive link.

Deployment

My left side of the board ended up covered in Decompression Zones, so I deployed almost my entire biker gang to attack the right table side. My O-Yoroi was deployed to defend the objective, with one of it’s CrazyKoalas guarding the flag. The Tankos were placed on a roof above the right side firelane, so they could try to clear a path using their impetuous attacks.

Because of the Decompression Zones and my deployment leaning heavily to one table side, Melanie set up her Core to defend the side my bikes were looking to attack. Zoe was placed in the way back to keep her safe and let her hack through repeaters, using Pi-Well as a bodyguard in case there were any Oniwaban infiltrators. The Riot Grrl Haris deployed in the center back to have options on how to proceed depending on how the first turn played out. Her Zeros were scattered throughout the mid-board to just be generally good and annoying.

Turn 1

Top of 1 – JSA: Bike Strike!

The Tanko train was first to depart,using their impetuous orders to launch missiles and rockets at the Tsyklon, trying to remove my first obstacle. Good rolls on both sides prevented anyone from taking any damage.

With the Tsyklon still up, the motorcycles used their impetuous movement to head forwards, but had to stay out of LoF of the Tsyklon. Following the impetuous activations, my first regular order was to push ahead with all three Tankos, coordinating their fire onto the Tsyklon. The Missile and Flamenspeer lost their face to face rolls against the Tsyklon, but the unopposed Blitzen was able to connect, disabling the Tsyklon!

Zoe’s Peripheral Servant was hanging out right behind the Tsyklon, and I did not want it getting back up and shooting at me while taking the flag back to my DZ in future turns. I’ve also played enough games against Bakunin now that I was very sure that one of the Moderators in the Core link was the Lieutenant, which made taking down those troops a very juicy target. Yojimbo rushed up the far right board edge, and using a combination of Contender and sword, cut down nearly all of the Moderator Core! Crucially, the one KO he couldn’t get was the Lieutenant, and went down to returning fire!

I moved into a defensive position with my last few orders, and passed the turn to Melanie.

Bottom of 1 – Bakunin Boxed In!

Bakunin didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver at the beginning of her turn. Her first safe move was to push forward with a Zero setting up some repeater coverage to defend her flank, and taking down my Aragoto Killer Hacker defending the objective!

There was so much Decompression on her right side of the board, Melanie decided she needed to contest the other side with her Riot Grrl Haris. As they transferred over, Avicenna fired at the Spitfire Aragoto watching their path, and took it down!

Short on orders, Melanie used her Morlock’s smoke to cover the Haris’s path over to her downed Moderators, allowing Avicenna to get them back up. Her Zero also moved back and flipped into Suppressive Fire, in an attempt to stop my bike’s advance. I had done enough damage my first turn that Melanie was out of orders at this point, so she passed to turn to me.

Turn 2

Top of 2 – JSA: Mor’ lock, Mor’ Problems

My Impetuous activations were used to push forward, and take down the Suppressive Fire Zero, and then to try and clear out the Morlock on the way to the Objective, although it proved surprisingly resilient. Moving my Spitfire Aragoto up to clear out the Morlock with regular orders, I suddenly discovered just how large a chain rifle template was when it ARO’d on top of three of my bikes. I passed the armor saves, but realized I had accidentally gotten my bikes trapped.

The only tool I had to safely untangle the Morlock mess was my Tanko Missile Launcher. It kept shooting at the stupid Morlock, and the Morlock KEPT not dying! After wasting about half my orders shooting at the Morlock,I FINALLY knocked it unconscious. Moving up to try and capture the flag, my Aragoto Spitfire rushed forwards, unloading on the Riot Grrl Boarding Shotgun who was watching that corner. The dice did not go my way, and my Aragoto was taken down!

After having wasted so many orders trying to kill a Morlock that just would not die, I went for the Lieutenant kill again to try to keep tempo on my side. The Tanko who had taken down the Morlock just couldn’t manage it with my remaining orders, so the turn passed over to Melanie.

Bottom of 2 – Just Say No to Nomads!

Nomads are the worst. Remember that Zero that was all alone on the Decompression side of the board? Well it had Deployable Repeaters. And it walked into my Koala minefield and traded it’s life for some repeater coverage…

Repeater coverage on my TAG.

Remember Zoe hanging out waaaaaay in the back of the map? 

So anyway my TAG got possessed and had a clear line of fire into the backs of basically all of my remaining troops.

Turn 3

Top of 3 – JSA. D:

I only had one possible path to victory, and it was a Hail Mary charge to the Objective with my last remaining bike. It didn’t work. GG Nomads.

Post Game Analysis

This was a fun game, even though I got wrecked! I talked to my opponent after the game about my TAG, and it was part of the reason she got boxed in so badly. The stacked Decomp zones forced our game onto just one half of the board, but moving down that side would mean pushing into my TAG in cover – not an attractive option. The threat of walking into its AROs forced Melanie to stay in cover in her DZ for basically the entire game, until she was able to possess my TAG.

There were a lot of places where this game could have gone differently, but my biggest error was not realizing what was happening with the flanking Zero. My Koala placement wasn’t quite good enough to protect that flank, and that one repeater cost me the game. I also keep forgetting just how big the large template is for chain rifles, and need to keep that in mind better, as that tied up Kuroshi Rider with her smoke that I really needed to use to capture the objective in my second turn.

Also, after reading the rules a bit more, I realized that I was in Retreat at the start of my third turn, so my last ditch impetuous attack from my biker wasn’t even legal. So that’s something else I learned.