This battle was the very first in our local Operation: Damocles campaign. Unfortunately there were some scheduling and communication problems for a number of the players (such as "The campaign already started?" D'oh!) but it seems we have the bugs ironed out now and the rest of the campaign will be smooth sailing. Still it was nice as this was the first time that John (the owner of Little Shop of Magic) and I had really been able to sit down and play a one-on-one game.
As with one of the earlier battle reports, this time we played the first scenario again but this time we actually used the full map. Here you can see it in its full 3D glory!
We each would be fielding a 2000 point army for this battle. Here you can see my Cypher platoon, led by Urash himself. In my army, I had a maxed out Assault Golem unit, a minimum Storm Golem unit, a Bane Golem unit, an Incubus Golgoth (proxied in this game with the Poltergeist), and Nimit-Urash. My sole Hekat was created during the game and not part of the original force.
On John's side of the board, he was fielding two maxed Kaptar units (one with snipers and the other with ZZ-cannons), a unit of two Easy Trikes, and a unit of K-warriors. His commander was a Saint leading the Kaptar unit containing the snipers.
John won the roll to pick sides and in this case decided to be the defender. Not a big surprise to me as we had discussed that the scenario seemed to put the defender in a pretty strong position right from the start. Admittedly he does begin with fewer units in the beginning but being able to rack up VPs right from turn one seemed to make up for this drawback in our last game.
As defender, John deployed his two Kaptars on the board (ZZ cannons on the left, snipers on the right) while the other two units remained as reinforcements.
Rolling for Authority, John won the roll easily and decided to let me activate first. First up was Nimit-Urash himself walking onto the left side of the board. I let loose with the sonic cannon and nucleus cannon on the sniper Kaptars in the hopes that I could score some easy kills right off the bat but no such luck. The sonic cannon failed to even hit a target while the nucleus cannon easily took out one of the Kaptars. At least I had first blood but I had really been hoping to do at least a little more damage.
I ended Urash's activation by creating my Hekat right in the between the Kaptars and his Golgoth. As an aside, I have to say that it is kind of ironic that the Hekat, one of my least favorite miniatures for the entire AT-43 line, is now an integral part of my army every single game.
John activated his Kaptar ZZ-cannon unit next. Splitting his fire, the ZZ-cannons were able to damage Nimit's sonic cannon and the frame while the rest of the unit destroyed one of the nanogenerators on my side of the board.
My bane goliaths activated next and I dashed them up to gain control of a container and a nanogenerator on the left side of the board. I had hoped to be able to get close enough to the second container to capture that as well but I just barely fell short.
Next, John activated the Kaptar sniper unit (no big surprise there since he only had two units on the board). Using the sniper rifles, John was able to destroy the sonic cannon and damage the nucleus cannon while fire from the rest of the unit bounced harmlessly off of the Hekat. Things were starting to look a little rough for Urash and this was only the first turn!
The final activation for the turn came from my side of the board as my unit of Assault Golems moved onto the board and took up position behind a container on the right side of the board.
With the whole unit opening fire, they were able to destroy one of the containers right next to the sniper Kaptars. This denied John a few RPs which I needed to do to keep those Trikes and K-fighters off the board. To end their activation, the Overseer used the Reconfiguration routine to remove one of the low walls located right next to the Kaptars.
This brought the first turn to an end with the Karmans having 4 VPs and 200 RPs while the Therians had 0 VPs and 100 RPs.
The second turn, John again won the Authority test (not being able to wager Leadership Points with my Cypher platoon can definitely be a pain...). First up were his Kaptars with the ZZ-cannons. The regular troopers opened fire first, easily destroying the container that my Bane Goliaths were hiding behind. Now out in the open, John let loose with the ZZ-cannons against the Banes but luckily he was only able to destroy one of them.
For my first activation of the turn, the Hekat dashed forward and slammed into the other Kaptar unit. With its grim scythes whirring, it quickly killed four of the seven Kaptars including the Karmans commander.
Moving to get themselves back into coherency, the remaining Kaptars openned fire on the Hekat but were not able to pierce its armor.
The next unit in my sequence was the damage Nimit-Urash. I quickly used the Repair routine to get his nucleus cannon operational again and opened fire on one of the two containers located between John's Kaptars. At this point I was only focusing on denying him RPs for as long as I could because if his reinforcements were able to get onto the board the game could have easily shifted in his favor. After inflicting a damage point on the container, I used the Reconstruction routine on the Bane Goliaths to bring them back to full strength and then used the Reconfiguration routine to bring the low wall back into play and give my Banes some much needed cover.
As John had no units left on the board to activate, the rest of the turn went to me. First, my Banes opened fire on the already damaged container, destroying it and killing one of the Kaptars that was caught in the cross fire.
To end the second turn, I moved my Assault Golems into the open and fired on the remnants of the sniper Kaptar unit. The hail of fire from the nucleus rifles and cannons was too much and quickly cut down the four survivors.
The second turn ended with the Karmans moving up to 6 VPs while their RPs increased to 350. On the other hand, the Therians still had yet to get any VPs but I had moved up to 300 RPs. This was just enough to bring the first of my reinforcements onto the board as I added the Storm Golems to my sequence.
With his commander killed, John's Authority had dropped enough that I was finally able to win the test, and the first unit to activate was the Hekat. Running around the far side of the container, it stomped through the Kaptar unit, killing both of the heavy weapon troopers before taking down another three in close combat.
John made his morale check and moved the stalwart Kaptars to the other side of the container to take cover behind the nanogenerator. With no more units to move, all they could do at that point was sit there as I destroyed the container, generator, and finally both of the survivors.
The Karmans had fought bravely but in the end the Therians were victorious. The game ended with 6 VPs for the Karmans and 20 VPs for the Therians as they took the control of the now uncontested landing field.
All and all, it was a really good game and I had a lot of fun. I think that the easiest tactic for this mission (especially if you are the attacker) is to simply destroy as many of the secondary objectives as quickly as you can. This opens up the fire lane and more importantly denies the defender much needed Reinforcement Points. If John had been able to hold out for one more turn and hold the nanogenerator, he would have been able to bring in his K-warriors which would have changed things quite a bit I think. I have never fought against K-warriors but I know how annoying Red Blok artillery can be since even if it doesn't kill an infantry unit there is a good chance that they will be grounded and effectively rendered useless the next turn. The K-warriors can do this and will probably cause some casualties at the same time which I think would have seriously taken its toll.
Well, that is all for today but be sure to come back again for the next mission in the campaign! Until then, may all of your dice come up Dragons!
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