Asteroid Blues

Played against my best mate on my home board, both of us using new factions. This is my second game with Invincibles and his first one with new Shas, though neither of us are new to the game. He wins on a 3 and chooses turns, electing for first turn to get best run at the objectives. I get the choice of deployment and go for a central deployment with the zanshi and GML bot with the doaying and zencha on my right flank, hac tao left flank and yan huo central. Liu xing in AD to give me options.
Turn 1 shas:
His caliban FO pings the near left two objectives on first order whilst his shrouded colleague on right flank fails on a 20 (has multiterrain so doesn’t worry about the hostile zone) and then passes on the next order. The FO places some d-charges ready to detonate later in the game. His gwailo then starts to advance and crosses a lovely long firelane my daoying has been sat on. I weigh the odds, given the gawilo is B3 and at-9 to hit for cover, camo, range i play risky and reveal and BS shoot. We both whiff so he dumps another order and then crits on a 4 after i whiff another ARO! so I’m starting the game in Loss of LT, thats my fault for playing risky!
T1 Invincibles:
Loss of liuetenant!!
The Yan Huo revs up the hyper rapid and evaporates the haiduk sapper directly opposite with his own order. He then draws 3 command tokens and orders off the link team to pummel the Gwailo to unconscious and then dead.
The hac tao on my left flank was rapidly joined by my liu xing to see if i could bait a reveal from the speculo on the edge of my left DZ but he holds. Both zencha and Hac Tao move in camo state ready for next turn and the hac tao gets eye-on on the impersonation marker to slow it down in conjunction with the liuxing. Hac tao is still in marker so is fairly safe and gets the Lt status. Thankfully I’d killed a couple of good pieces and maneuvered a few bits up ready so didn’t feel too bad for it being a LoL turn 1.
T2 shas:
My opponent had good discipline and this was largely a turn of just doing the objectives; designating and destroying.
Caliban detonates D-charges. Noctifer missile launcher then reveals and blows up a few objectives after a couple of misses. He’s at 5 designated and 3 blown and moves a few backfielders around with co-ordinated orders ready for a big push next turn.
T2 invincibles:
My turn is largely the same, thankfully I’m no longer in LoL and my team is still intact. I start off with the Linked FO and start pinging my right and central objectives before switching to the zencha to ping one of the remaining objectives on the midline and his near line. I then destroy them in a hail of missiles from the GML bot, but forget to add the targetted mod and waste two orders to misses (daft lad!). I’ve designated 4, destroyed 4 (1 counts for the objectives).
Those missed orders could have been enough to have pinged the speculo’s defended objective and GML’d it but never mind!
T3 Shas:
His shrouded on my left (his right) gets brave and leaves the building, trying a suicide run to designate the speculo’s objective, but my hac tao cant shoot for shit and he survives his failed attempt and the next successful attempt too! He also succeeds a save on a 17 from a long range zencha shotgun shot. tough sunofagun! With the last scoring one now designated, the noctifer recamos and mov-movs a bit to get a bead on it, blowing it nicely with one round.
He then has two remaining orders and pulls off the decoy/AD banzai maneuver to deploy in my DZ. my linked HMG and rifle miss all four shots at a sitter of a target which is clearly the real model, the decoys predictably get hit and removed. FFS. the enemy shotgun then hits the HVT and kills it and gets evaporated in a salvo of ARO fire. Another co-ordinated order pushes some backfielders to cover off his own HVT.
T3 Invincibles:
I’m now faced with a choice. I can either go kill his HVT through a minefield of AROs, or designate and destroy the last scoring objective on his backline, but not both. Having two multiwound models on my left flank i opt for the safer option and push for the remaining objective. I’ve got a token state speculo + mine, revealed shrouded out of cover and a jayth + mine in the objective building to deal with which seems reasonably achievable.
I push the hac tao up but he manages to whiff totally again in what must have been the worst opening run of any of my painted models in my gaming history. after two missed aros, he then misses a split burst on a 19 and 20 (both would have triggered hostile as well lol) and is taken out by shitty rolls of 5,2 on his armour against a rifle and a mine and dies. FFS. So, the liuxing picks up the slack, pulps the revealed speculo, the shrouded, tanks the mine, kills the jayth, grabs the objective, places d-charges and unfortunately only damages it, rather than destroying it but that heroic rambo narrowly swings it back to me on a 5-4 victory!!
glory to the oft-maligned Liu Xing!