Asteroid Blues

Infinity

Operation Bulwark

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0rph3u5
VS Haqqislam
havocfett

Former-Colonel Yang sleepily stared up at his monitor, his eyes glassy from years of combat. He had fought with distinction in the Kurage Crisis for his nation, but for what? He was promised rest and reprieve for his role in capturing the underwater facilities, but only came back to his former unit being dismantled, murdered, and covered up. People couldn't know about his group's role in attacking the rebels, no one would hear of their success, at least that's what the man holding the pistol to his face said. His service with the emperor's personal guard meant nothing. His company's lofty goals, a farce. The deaths of his soldiers in the name of the Jade Empire: meaningless. Yang had gathered as many of his surviving comrades as he could, but after only narrowly escaping all he felt was emptiness and dejection. He chucked at this thought. It was fitting given his new employer. He had heard whispers of the name "Mr. Daixo" before and when he was offered his new position doing what he did best alongside his escaped soldiers, the colonel knew it was the only choice he could take.

The words of his contact rung throughout his head: "at 0800 hours some of 'the Caliphate's Finest' will come by. Watch for the tall, bulky man with a large scar under his right cheek. Huge and obviously genetically enhanced, no way you can miss him. Their target is to eliminate Lieutenant Graves: one of Mr. Daixo's right-hand men. Do everything you can to make sure this does. not. happen." Sure enough, it was impossible to miss the bulk of the soldiers as they passed through the bar. At first, the colonel felt nothing but pity for them. He was like them once. He was once showered with praise as an example of "the Empire's finest soldiers". He, too, once thought he was the best of the best. This pity, though, was immediately overshadowed with one emotion: pure, raw anger. When he heard his contact's description, he felt what was a last, gasping shred of hope that this Haqq soldier was the one he knew. His eyes sharpened as he instantly recognized the one Haqq soldier's frame. The one who destroyed his original body: The Wolf. He was out of the armory in a flash, his Tanko armor still undergoing its diagnostic routines but his missile launcher already fully loaded. He smiled for the first time in ages as he broke into a sprint to take his position. Today revenge would be handled personally.

An overhead picture of the game table from my deployment side. Slightly more sparse than I'm used to, but perfectly fine for our game.

This game was quick, but brutal. It was also my second time ever running Ikari Company... ever. Every time I play it, though, I love the faction more and more, though. Normally I run limited insertion and my opponent Havocfett runs 13-15 orders, but this game I ran a total of 20(!) orders because of numerical advantage and the free Wild Bill shadowshooter while Havocfett ran limited insertion. It was awkward, but hilariously fun.

I crit the deployment roll, so I decided to go first. Decap normally favors first turn and I knew that, going against a limited insertion list, I'd have to wreak as much havoc(fett) as possible before he could leverage his linked Tarik. My opponent, of course, had me deploy first.

The location of my designated target.
The first time I ran this many orders. Is this what it feels like to chew 5 gum?

Here are pics of each of our deployments. To my left I put a krakot SMG, pathfinder, and the core link (with the Lt. safe on the roof) alongside a doctor to heal the missile launcher and a hacker to buff the rui shi and fix the link in case a keisotsu dies. In the middle, I deployed the tanko + brawler MSV2 sniper haris with a ninja killer hacker in TO camo. On the right side, I put a bounty hunter sniper on the building (he rolled +1 ARM), the reserved the rui shi, a desperado (unseen in the photo, but was proxied as kuroshi rider in front of the bounty hunter's position), and put Wild Bill (rifle profile) under the bridge prone behind cover. To my right, Havocfett put a zheyadan sniper with a TR bot. In the center, he stuck his pain-train-link-of-doom on top of 2 buildings with Wild Bill completing the 5-man link. The only overwatching model in the link was the hortlak sniper, a durable but potentially vulnerable piece. Underneath the link team he put a second TR bot to slow me down even more. He also hidden deployed a prone tuareg assault hacker to my right and a tuareg boarding shotgun to my left in the blue ruins.

My first turn starts off with a yuan yuan walking on in the back center of my deployment zone so he can throw smoke on top of my brawler MSV2 sniper. He then rolls... +1 ARM... okay...
The second yuan yuan walks on to my right behind the holo-ad, out of view of the TR bot and zheyadan sniper so he can help the rui shi with his smoke. He rolls EM grenades on his booty roll.

The desperado drives forward with his impetuous order and contests the zheyedan's sniper shot, but gets riddled with bullets by the TR bot. My first yuan-yuan then spends hucks a smoke grenade onto my brawler sniper who uses his MSV2 to eliminate one of the two TR bots. The bashi bazouk also comes in on my left side next to my opponent's deployment in the blue ruins in case I need another angle to contest the enemy link team. Realizing the brawler is still at losing odds against the hortlak sniper despite being in smoke, I then have the right yuan yuan cover the right firing lanes with smoke. The rui shi then runs forward and destroys the zheyedan and other TR bot. In the process, though, the tuareg reveals and attempts to oblivion the rui shi, but fails twice.

The rui shi's assault slowed by the tuareg assault hacker. Next to the unconscious body of his desperado friend.

Taking advantage of the rui shi's repeater, the ninja killer hacker reveals itself and redrums the tuareg, rolling a crit and zapping him. The rui shi then transitions of the left of the building to attack the overwatching hortlak sniper. It's 4 dice on 15s (thanks to assisted fire from the keisotsu hacker) vs 2 dice on 16s, so it's a bit dicey but lady luck smiles on me as I roll a crit and one more hit which the hortlak fails his armor save against. At this point, my opponent concedes the game as he feels he doesn't have a way to contest my position with only 5 orders.

A pic of the fateful final F2F roll of the game. The mighty rui shi against the deadshot hortlak sniper.
One final picture after most of the carnage. With less than half his army points remaining, the hostile combat patrol retreats.

The battle was over before it began. "The Caliphate's Finest" came in acting like superheroes, thinking they would be facing drunk mercenaries. They flaunted themselves as the pinnacle of human technology and military might, but didn't expect to face the resistance they did. Yang and his company were on their home turf. This was their home, their territory, their land that they knew like the back of their hand.
Yang fired a missile, but it flew wide as The Wolf dodged effortlessly away. The Wolf and his forces pulled back and the smoke grenades cleared, they were gone without a trace. Yang sat, his heart smouldering. The colonel felt that he had failed, he felt outraged that his quarry had escaped. More than anything, however, he felt... alive. Yang had been denied vengeance this day, but his charge was alive and the opposing force decimated. One day, he would face his opponent again and until then... he would be prepared.

This match came down to a simple case of deployment and experience. Havocfett rarely ever runs limited insertion and I normally never run so many orders, so this was a bit of a learning game for both of us. His linked sniper, though, was definitely a thorn in my side until I managed to crit him off the table. Had he just been a touch more conservative with the sniper's overwatch, I would've had more control of the board, but not enough orders to actually climb the buildings and start shooting as his main link team after eliminating the TR bots, zheyedan, and tuareg. I would've only been able to have my tanko shotgun (my datatracker) eliminate his designated target (behind the red, square building in the center) and move back giving his link almost free reign to contest my AROs. Had that happened, this probably would've been a very different game. Still, it was a quick, brutal, and very fun fight and I look forward to messing with Ikari Company more in the future!

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