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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

AT-43 Battle Report 13072008: the Conclusion of the Uneasy Alliance vs. the Karmans

Hey everyone,

As promised, here is the conclusion to the Semi-Mega-Battle that we played this past weekend! In the last post we ended turn 2 with the Alliance (aka the Therians and Red Blok) having 8 VPs while the Karmans had 2 VPs.

Turn three opens with my Incubus taking the first move. Advancing towards the King Buggy, it opens fire with both cannons but only manages to inflict a single point of damage to the frame! So much for the v2.0 cannons...

The Dragonov unit on the second story went next, letting loose a salvo on the Wendigos again. They inflicted three more casualties, one of them being Cornelius!

Seeking revenge, the King Buggy drifts sideways and opened fire on the Incubus with all of its weapons, destroying the legs and damaging the frame.

The three remaining Wendigos went next. Opening fire with the grenade launchers, they pound the two squads in the ruins, grounding both units and killing seven Kommandos in that single attack!

The Banes were next up. Moving them forward I opened fire on the still unscathed King Buggy, hoping they would be slightly more successful than the Incubus had been. Once again they did not let me down, damaging the propulsion and inflicting a whopping three hits against the frame.

Urod moved around the front of the ruins and opened fire on the now badly damaged King Buggy and managed to blast it apart with a volley of rockets. Turning its attention to the Wendigos, it then opened fire with the AT gun blasting another one apart.

Things were looking very good for us at this point and then the Kaptars in the ruin on the far side of the table opened fire on my now exposed commander. Two sniper shots later and I had lost my leader, leaving the equally exposed Urash as the new commander.

The second Kaptar unit in the ruins on the right opened fire on the Banes next, but luckily for me they were only able to destroy one of them.

My Assault golems in the center went next. Splitting their fire, the nucleus guns were able to penetrate the armor of the Trike to destroy it while the rest of the unit was able to take out another Anakonga, taking that unit down to a total of five troops.

Going back to the left side of the board, one of the Dragonov units advanced around the ruin to try to get into a better position.

The battered Anakonga unit went next. Jumping forward, they could not get close enough to be able to use the flamers but the rest of the unit was able to take out four of the Assault golems in a hail of drum pistol fire.

All alone in the center of the table, Urash moveed to get line of sight on the Anakonga and opened fire. The amazing thing is that he not only hit but he even managed to kill one of them!

The rest of the turn consists of the two units of Dragonovs standing up (always exciting...) and the Storm golems moving forward to shoot at the Anakongas, taking their number down by another two.

This brought the third turn to a close with the Alliance at 10 VPs while the Karmans only had 2 VPs. The game did continue on for another turn but at this point it was almost impossible for the Karmans to catch up. We called the game after the fourth turn with the Uneasy Alliance ultimately winning 12 VPs to 2 VPs.

All and all, it was a pretty good game but there were some things that we need to work on. First and foremost was the army building itself. I have never seen rules that cover making an allied force, so for this game the Red Blok and the Therians each fielded their own company. This combined with the fact that we were playing Nova meant that we could effectively choose to go first every turn which made it feel more like a more traditional "I go, you go" game. This was especially frustrating for us since one of the things that we really like about this game is the dynamic feel it has and that was kind of lost in this game. I have already started asking people about doing a rematch to try a new system which borrows from the rules for allies in Confrontation and would work like this.

One player is the company commander. He has the highest ranking officer in the company and he chooses the faction the army. The remaining player then chooses units according to that army's platoon pattern. To use this game as an example, Urod would have been the commander and the pattern would have been Supra. The Red Blok army would have remained the same but mine would have been slightly different since I would be following the Supra pattern (this would have forced me to drop a Golgoth and field another infantry unit instead). This also means that I would have the advantage and disadvantage of Supra and that my army would only have the basic rules for the Therians (I would still have access to the routines but none of the faction advantages or disadvantages). We would also be pooling our leadership together and putting our activation sequence together which would eliminate the "I go, you go" feel that this game had since each side would be activating one unit at a time. Not sure how well this will work but hopefully we can get together again soon so that we can try it out.

One of the other things that caused some problems for us was the terrain, especially as far as cover was concerned. After hitting my own head with a hammer a couple of times it started to make more sense to me so things should go much smoother next time plus I figured out how to explain it to other people quickly and easily which is always a good thing.

That is all for now but until next time, may all of your dice come up Dragons!

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