Asteroid Blues

We actually had a long setup phase as we chatted about the scenario and built Mansuri’s O12 terrain. We agonized over trying to make an appropriate table and eventually ended up with this. A damaged hangar, flooding with smoke, which we represented with plumes of painted cotton. We decided to make the plumes infinitely tall with standard Zero Vis rules for army-grade smoke. There’s some noxious chemicals going up in this space hangar!

The biggest challenge for our table design was wanting to accommodate the huge gap on this play mat which appeared to be an open bay door into space. It is where Patrick got the idea for smoke - we decided that it would be solid floor, but be flooded with smoke, which helped immensely with our LoS concerns.

I won the starting roll so I kept initiative. (Who wouldn’t, in Firefight?) he took the smokier end of the table and (naturally) deployed second.

In Patrik's story arc, this mission takes place after his PanO defeat. Haqqislam sent Ramah back to the area, only to find a lot of destruction. And....a stranded Croc Man hacker! Mysterious.

I had plenty of room to spread my single combat group, so...I did.

Tariqa was herself placed behind a smoking crater on the opposite end of the table. I'm not sure what the lore reason is for that. Wait for his writeup.

My opponent deployed in two main groups - a Khawarij Haris with a Mk12, prone on a roof with two unassociated Ghulams, and a Core link with a Khawarij Spitfire on the other side. Some Remotes were in the middle, in the same way that I left a Liberto up on the landing pad, kind of as an afterthought.

My reserved deployment came in as my beloved Noctifer.

I made my Overdron Batroid my Data Tracker; he made one of the prone Haris-side Ghulams his.

My first turn's most important action involved a solid Fraacta drop. I was really intrigued by the "deploy anywhere" thing for AD troops, but was ultimately afraid of losing a wound off the bat from walking into his deployment zone. Ultimately there was no need; I dropped her on my side of a midfield building and went to work. She climbed the stairs, shot his Rafiq, climbed halfway up the stairs to kill his Data Tracker Ghulam, and then finally killed the Namurr Killer Hacker he placed on the top floor of that building. I was pretty happy with my work that far, so I set up defensive positions on the left of the field, and coordinated-order-suppressed with her, my Charontid, and my E-Drone. The Charontid and the E-Drone had the Haris in lockdown, so that left me feeling pretty confident.

I lost an Ikadron to debris while moving up at the end of the turn, which sucked. The Charontid got dinged by debris on the way to its position as well, and failed its armour save. That sucked too.

My opponent's first turn was a little uneventful. He moved the Core down that flank, which I used as an opening to reveal my Noctifer and shoot at his non-link-lead Khawarij. Sadly, the Noctifer made that 25% chance to miss. I tried again with my Libertos, which also missed (though that was a bit more expected).

He dropped a Hakim on the side of his HVT, using the smoke plume as cover. I started drawing LoFs for my (hidden) Noctifer, but I realized that the plume itself didn't have a clear shape to begin with, so I decided that it would just be best for the Hakim to be considered safely placed. He spent a brief moment shooting down my Unidron posted up on that side. We confirmed that, as a remote, the Shock of the ammunition had no effect on the Unidron. I later realized that he put his MSV2 Khawarij opposite of the smoke plume, which I think was a mistake. The Khawarij beat down a few of my units with the almighty Link Team Bonus, but had a seriously miserable time shooting my covered MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID. Much to my relief, ol' MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID survived the encounter, recoiling into a flat position further behind cover (and with nary a piece of debris jammed in its body). At the end of the Khawarij's run, he suffered an anomalous crit in his good range when he finally fought my Noctifer! Irony.

I was slightly worried about how exposed my left flank was at the start of Mr. Mansuri's turn 2, but after his turn I was feeling especially confident. His main link was broken and his second link was utterly locked down by two different multiwound units in suppressive fire. I had work to do, and not many orders (Libertos was gone and some other units were unconscious), but I was still pretty comfortable.

I wanted to get my medic out of my deployment zone, so that (at minimum) it could defend itself without risking loose rebar to the eye-cluster. The best way to do that, in my eyes, was to get my Overdron moving. I figured that the majority of Patrik's firepower was down, so the Overdron could be left in the lurch, too. I pushed my Overdron forward to fight the remnants of his link team. Sadly, it had some pretty pathetic exchanges with the Ghulam, and he retreated behind cover - even surviving a rocket launcher hit at the end. I knew not to get too afraid of the debris rolls with a 3 wound model, so I left it at that.

I got a new idea. I ran the MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID out of my deployment zone, outside of enemy LoFs, while I ran a Slave Drone up to my downed Ikadron. The MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID got into a firefight with the Hakim, and it won handily with a crit and a hit. The Slave Drone went down getting the Ikadron up; the Ikadron burnt the last two link members. I even got lucky with its armour saves against both the flamethrower and the shotgun that were fired at it during this time! I think at this point I had just an order or two left, so I spent it slithering the MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID back to cover, and then putting it in suppressive fire.

Poor Patrick's round-two active turn was pretty miserable. He ran his second bot - a spitfire Rafiq - out to try to kill the MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID for specialist kills. The MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID won the exchange with the power of suppressive fire, and the faraway Overdron Batroid also contributed with its own return fire. He then tried to engage my right-side suppressors with his Khawarij Haris, but that ended in several wounds and deaths in my favour. I was kind of hoping he'd Superjump over the edge to Boarding Shotgun my Fraacta in his good range, but he instead sacrificed that Khawarij to revive the Mk12 one again, which then lost another firefight with my Fraacta. He was down to his last Ghulam, which revealed as his Lieutenant. She had an incredible performance, shooting my Fraacta straight to death with a crit and two hits! ...Not that this was much of a step forward at a single order left on turn two.

I felt a little bad at the start of my turn 3, but empathy is not a trait that the Evolved Intelligence concerns itself with. (I proceeded to apologize and say that I wanted to just maximize my points for the Online Campaign.) I ordered my Ikadron to sprint downfield to an unconscious Ghulam, which it then tore the Cube out of by clawed hand. I can't speculate on what the EI will do with this Cube, but that resulted in me achieving In Extremis Recovery. The Charontid opened a Panoply, finding an extra 3 ARM in body armour. Maybe he put it on his enormous exposed forearm. That ticked off my Panoply objective. The MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID made a slither over to Tariqa and injected her arm with...something. Haqqislam High Command is gonna have to figure out what the hell happened there. Mechanically, I achieved my Inoculation Classified. After all of that, my turn was over.

With his final, two-order turn, Poor Patrik had nothing left to do but post up his so-far-overperforming Ghulam against my Charontid. I expected nothing from a Rifle firing on a BS14 unit with 8ARM. Hilariously, she managed to wound the Charontid, this time with a critical, putting it into NWI. The game ended here. I think she's earned her way into the Namurr/Nahab program; we'll see what HHC has to say about that.

The end results were as follow:
-206-12 army points for me
-More specialists for me
-I killed his datatracker
-no lieutenant kills either way
-I achieved both classifieds

Combined Army wins 8-0.