Asteroid Blues

So for this game me and Anthony decided to trial run the 20×20 mission set for a change (which is really good for pickup games). For the missions you roll up 2xd20, one for primary and one for secondary missions. I rolled up a 19 and a 20 which correlated to “take prisoners” on the primary and “the duel” as the secondary.
Take prisoners is a bit of a riff off of hunting party in ITS, you stun/ADHL/IMM2 and either casevac the prisoners off or leave them on the board and you may swap certain weapons for ADHL/akrylat kanone. LT, CoC and specialists are higher value and net more OP. “The duel” is about getting CC specialists engaged and trying to beat up squishy guys.
I lose the roll off and get given deployment as the ariadnans choose 1st turn.
I deploy very conservatively, Link team to centre left, daoying central and the holoechoed lu-duan with the tag centre-right, mowang and sensor bot far right.
The haido is left prone with a bead on an exposed frontovik, zanshi HMG hasnt got many options and has to cover off a diagonal lane. the mowang covers a diagonal lane coming away from his right flank.
My opponent had gone for a limited insertion TAK list and hadn’t got tons of options for trading out shotguns for ADHL, obviously had no MULTI weapons and had a good head scratch about how he was going to achieve the objectives.
T1: he starts with the frontovik+vet kazak team, hooking up the AP sniper to come hunt for my Haido. The shot is through a low vis/sat zone and I ponder the unopposed shot with a stun round on the exposed engineer but “play safe” and take the FTF roll vs his sniper. Of course I hit but get out rolled regardless, fall to NWI and fail guts to gain total cover. I knew I should have taken the unopposed shot lol!
Relatively free to reposition, the vet kazak then takes over and strips off a holoecho left out for that exact purpose.
With a clear route to the mowang now made, a camo marker (revealed to be a strelok minelayer later) makes an order intensive dash cross-board to attempt a surprise shot with his adhl on the mowang. The mowang is having none of it however and punks him with his red fury in ARO. With little else to do with the remaining order, the intel specops repositions.
YJ: There’s a field of camo tokens in the midfield as you’d expect from ariadna so i send the sensor bot up to do its thing. It reveals quite a bit of ambush camo as well as a scout minelayer (slight error made on the positioning of an emauler gives the game away a bit here too) and the daoying makes use of the LT2 orders to buff and recamo. The drone then engages in a 3 order gunfight but eventually comes out on top. Suspecting a spetsnaz HMG, the tacaware TAG order gets spent on a failed discover and the sensor bot also fails a discover on the same marker which sets the theme for the rest of the game. Seeing an opportunity to undercut the frontovik HRL’s range bands, the sensor bot engages but gets out-rolled and burns out to fire ammo.
A co-ordinated suppressive with the tag and mowang ends the turn for me.
T2:
The frontovik team reposition and come hard to my right (his left) flank, gunning for the mowang’s dug-in position. In doing so, they cross the line of the zanshi HMG who gets punked by the vet kazak for the second game in a row with a crit (setting the theme of anthony’s game!). The kazak, embolden then puts a crit through on the mowang (who brackets his own crit number by rolling a 9 and 11) who stays up, but the loss of another wound to the next order prompts him to fail guts and retreat to full cover. The link is slightly out of position now and struggles for cover, sheltering around the small buildings on my right flank but not everyone gets b2b with a cover element before the order pool runs dry.
YJ:
The paramedic eases the HMG’s passing on the first order with a large dose of morphine before the daoying buffs the lu-duan and recamos with LT2 orders. The buffed lu-duan splatters the frontovik HRL who was out on ARO duty and with the next order takes on the paramedic and sniper who are both exposed in the building away from cover. An excellent round of dice from my opponent sees a fistful of crits come back at the luduan and it stays down, a mere pile of scrap.. Enraged, the Tag gets in on the action, drawing a bead on the paramedic only to have his crit get counter critted (FFS!!). The paramedic goes down to the next salvo but the sniper is a harder customer, taking 5 (FIVE!!!!) orders of TAG fire (mixed between stun and AP) before finally succumbing to shock rounds in anger. Some excellent BTS, FTF and ARM rolls coming out of my opponent here, any attempt on the primary objective had seen excellent BTS saves considering they’re BTS 0!!
T3:
A back marking camo token advances from DZ down the central corridor towards my TAG. All discovers are failed (as per usual) and an akrylat Kanone round splatters against the TAG but its servos overcome the glue’s strength (thankfully!) Vassily is the assailant and he manages to get away and recamo after another excellent BTS save vs the MULTI HMG in stun mode’s ARO.
YJ: This time the LT2 orders go into the mowang who moves up and tries to discover vassily on a diagonal corridor. He of course fails, as does the TAG on his tacaware order!! Enraged, the TAG then decides to intuitive attack with the HFT, Vassily decides against dodging and revealing or retaliating (given how bad my dice have been, it was a safe-ish bet) only for the HFT to go through very well and cook him to cinders.
I’m running out of good options to get points on the board at this point and spy a nice back marker camo token and the Intel both within a couple of orders’ move and a good fire-lane to deal with the remnants of the link (vet kazak and the lonely engineer that I should have pinged in ARO T1).
Pushing up with the TAG, he firefights with the link remnants, splattering the Vet and failing to stun (again!!!) the remaining engy with another order.
Undettered, he pushes up, gutting the spetsnaz with MULTI HMG fire on his way to his prey (the lone Intel).
Using stun rounds as he engages in CC with an order in the bank, the intel passes another ridiculous BTS save and outrolls the TAG in CC on the last order of the game, denying me “the duel” secondary objective (I’d have had a healthy advantage due to DA CCW, High ARM and high PHYS).
I think he passed at least 5 BTS saves this match on 17+ on models that had no BTS lol.
I get the moral victory on surviving army points as there’s not much left of the Ariadnan contingent at this point.