Asteroid Blues

An anti-alien patrol sweep stumbles upon something they weren't quite expecting to find...not a Shasvastii nest, but a Tohaa hideout. Will the unexpected development make the ALEPH team artichoke up? Or will the Tohaa be put into a vegetative state? We'll soon find out!

My opponent opens his bag and immediately realises he has brought the wrong army. He brought along Haqqislam instead of Tohaa....or are they? Clearly they have all all enrolled in the Kiuutan School of Impersonation. Especially the Tohaa pretending to be a Fiday pretending to be a HVT

And of course, the mission is...

I won the initiative roll off and opted to pick the side nearer to the camera. Tohaa has the first move and sets up first

The Tohaa begin by trying to advance with the Hatail Triad down the lane guarded by the Dakini Core under the cover of smoke. He manages to get the antenna closest to him lit up as he leapfrogs forward. Sakiel Spitfire comes out of smoke to take on the Dakini sniper and fails. Even the sacrifice of a SymbioMate isn't enough to keep him from going down and breaking the link with him

With his remaining orders the Nikoul duels the Zayin and takes it down, but not before losing a wound himself. One more Triad shuffles forward far enough to bait out the mine trigger and fall back before he's completely out of orders in that group. Nobody actually gets hurt in the explosion. The lone Sakiel FO in the other group lights up 3 antennas with 4 orders before ducking back into safety

My turn is effectively spent on a Dart rampage. She climbs down in line of sight of several models but my opponent mistakenly chooses to discover with only one guy and fails. She waltzes up to the Sakiel FO and knocks him out before sneaking around the Sukeul HMG's line of fire to off the Nikoul. Finally I get around to the Sukeul who stubbornly refuses to take a dirt nap and even does a pistol crit to Dart. By the time I knock him out I only have enough orders to recamo Dart and hide on high ground near the enemy deployment area.

All I can really do after that is to put Assisted Fire on my Dakini MSR and call it a turn.

Antenna Count
Tohaa: 4
ALEPH: 0

The 3 Makauls on table break out of their link to rush impetuously towards my positions. The Dakini MSR takes one down, my Naga reveals himself to bag another with a shotgun crit. Only one Makaul is left.

It's clear the Dakini sniper is causing problems for him. A Clipsos FO pops up in the midfield to try and take him out. He misjudged the range however and gets shot to pieces as punishment. He marches down the middle line, lighting up more antennas along the way. However, an attempt by the Datatracker to kill the HVT fails when the civvie crit dodges the whole thing.

He doesn't have many orders left and is forced to choose what to do. The Tohaa give up on fragging the civvie for this turn. Instead he reforms a new triad with the last surviving Makaul and walks into my deployment zone with the help of more eclipse grenades. The Kosuil fails to kill the Mk.1 Engineer even after expending his Panzerfaust ammo and is forced to break out of coherency distance to finally remove her. He is barely able to pull back slightly and spend yet another CP to reform a strung out Triad sitting in my deployment zone to slow me down. That ends the turn for Group 1

Group 2 however achieves much more with much less. With only 3 orders, a Chaksa auxiliary reveals Dart and points its flamer at her. She promptly rolls a 20 to dodge and burns to a crisp

It's finally my turn. As revenge for Dart the Dakini sniper blasts the Chaksa in the back from across the board. The Triad in my deployment zone pass all their saves even when shot from the rear and stubbornly refuse to go down until I drop the hammer of my Core fireteam on them. The Mk.5 gets rid of the Sakiel Datatracker before lighting up 3 antennas and ducking prone again. I've burnt up most of my order pool getting rid of the vegetable rabble and can only shift my fireteam forwards in preparation for a Turn 3 antenna run.

At this point I've killed most of my opponent's army. I had to make absolutely sure my opponent would not go into retreat before making my moves. In this regard his Chaksas benefited me more than him

Antenna Count
Tohaa: 4
ALEPH: 3

My opponent has only 4 models left, out of which 2 of them are Chaksas. All he can do is send Hatail forward to shoot the plucky HVT. Unfortunately the civvie is now guarded by my fireteam. He finally bags the cheeky bugger at the cost of Hatail getting turned into red mist. With that he calls it. There's nothing he can do to prevent me from doing whatever I want now.

Antenna Count
ALEPH: All of them.