The most difficult thing about this mission was that I don’t have an armory or objective room. Here’s how I made one in about 10-15 minutes.
So in real life, I live in YuJing/PanO territory, near Novvy Bangkok, which means that September is the Mid-Autumn Festival, a great time filled with high calorie mooncakes! As a teacher, I get mooncakes all the time from my students, but this year my fiancee really went out of her way to buy a lot for us to share with guests as well, leaving me with a surplus of metal mooncake tins of various shapes and sizes. As each mooncake is 4×4 inches, the 4-mooncake tin was perfect!
Step 1: The initial step to this build will be, of course, to buy a tin of four mooncakes. There is a high chance that this tin will be 8x8 inches, which this one is.
Step 2: Go online and locate the wide or narrow gate tokens and tape them on. An alternative would also be to use S2 and S5 templates as your guide.
Step 3: Take a marker (mine is water soluble) and draw lines using the gate markers as your guide. Draw all the way up to the lip of the tin in a straight line (use a ruler), then trace them around onto the inside so the doorways are clearly delineated on both the inside and outside of the tin. Repeat this for all 4 possible doorways.
Step 4: Time to decorate! To make the doorways even more obvious, we took unit cards from Infinity Blisters and alternated them between INFINITY and CORVUS BELLI on the inside; this way, the outside cards all show Infinity on the top. Using some blutack, we also pasted on the ITS anniversary 8-inch rules to emphasise that this was indeed an 8-inch tin. In the center of the tin we put the patch for Victor Messr, and on the outside we hung pins for Aida Swanson!
Step 5: Add panopolies! Our original idea was to have Messer and Aida handing out weapons inside, but instead we used O-12 currency.
And that’s how we built our own armory for this mission! A cultural trivia: Did you know that mooncakes are a historical reminder of uprising and revolution against an unjust ruling authority? Mooncakes were used to convey messages by the Ming revolutionaries in their effort to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China at the end of the Yuan dynasty!
Onto the pre-game!
I didn't get my notes for this game as carefully noted as I wanted to because of how intense this was to play and the knowledge that there wasn't much time left to Phase 1.
In this scenario, the Tohaa are here to reinforce their friends who have been declared terrorists by an unjust ruling authority, but we that’s a private opinion we only share in Corahtaa. The Nomads are just here to get a pony, which an unjust ruling authority has denied them repeatedly.
The Nomad lust for pony is great, so they win the Lt. roll and choose to go first. I choose the deployment I feel I can work best with. During Nomad deployment, my opponent attempts to sneak a Moran into my deployment zone, Koalas and all, but thankfully fails and ends up at the back of the Nomad deployment zone.
Tohaa Classified Objective: Sabotage; Nomad Classified Objective: HVT Designation
My initial triads are
1. Sukuel, Makaul, Sakiel Paramedic
2. Gao-Rael Lt., Ectros w/ Vulkan, Makaul
3. Draal, Kriigel, Makaul
Spurred on by the sight of the pony on the horizon, Senior Massacre’s triad moves into position to rush the armory. The Moran gets to the door first and plants the Koalas in the worst damn area possible, giving them control of the whole armory before the doors are all hacked to open.
The Gao-Rael Lt. takes the ARO with an Adhesive Launcher but misses and now the armory is filled with eclipse smoke – teaching me just how annoying Makauls must feel to everyone else. An Intruder creeps up through the smoke, triggers the mine, but successfully dodges before shooting out a gout of flame that teaches me how fire works – with continual damage. The Gao-Rael decides that losing her armour is enough punishment and goes to ground.
In the armory are Senior Massacre, his cronies, and a once-again camouflaged Intruder waiting to unleash more fire.
The Diplomatic Delegate in the rear attempts a discovery on the Intruder and fails, but thankfully our heroic Chaksa are ready with their sensors to suss out the Nomads at the gate! The Draal with his SMG rushes in and takes out the Intruder but also dies to fire, shattering his triad.
A lone Makaul runs in to the side of the armory and is followed by a Kriigel. This is when I learn that Active Turn units can’t dodge when ARO’d with templates, so the Makaul dies but the Kriigel takes down his target.
Not liking their line of sight chances with the Tsyklons watching across the way, the Makaul with the Sukuel Commando and Sakiel Paramedic throws up some eclipse smoke to block the way. The Tsyklons hit their mark on the Commando, doing a wound, and the Jaguar inside fails its smoke dodge and on the next order goes all but down (Dogged!). Good enough.
Gao-Rael’s link team goes in through woven eclipse smoke, and the Lt. sacrifices herself to take the Koalas in the face. Kaeltar Einhorn takes command. The link rebuilds with the Kriigel, and the Ectros and Makaul run into Senior Massacre, which is when I learn what Natural Born Warrior does. Ouch. It's 23 vs 22 CC, no modifiers. Massacre crits on my Makaul, isolating and knocking it down.
The Libertos lays down a new mine at the door, and the Kriigel hits Massacre with Eraser, Isolating him.
It’s the Ectros vs Massacre for points inside, so the Tohaa score the first objective point.
1-0 Tohaa
The Nomads move against my Kiiutan in the back, missing the shot, but connecting on the second. Senior Massacre also uses his order on the Ectros, thankfully missing! They remain stuck together as the fight continues around them.
Another token trooper (Bandit?) runs up the side, reveals, and tries get a read on my HVT, failing the first WIP check, passing the second, and then failing the third before giving up.
The Tsyklon link moves forward, and the first Tsyklon goes down to the HMG retaliation from the Sukuel Commando. Tsyklon 2 reforms the link and gets flashpulsed by the Delegate and painted bright (targeted). They move forward again, this time the rest of the link coming into the sights of the Sukuel and the Libertos. After a harsh fire fight, the Tsyklon and the rest of the link team are down or in serious danger.
A Tomcat enters from the side of the board and stays there for the rest of the game.
The Sukuel Commander, safely prone and with good vantage, scuttles more to the right, then shoots down the two Aguacil in one order, clearing the room. The Kriigel spearheads a coordinated order with the Chaksa, spurring them forward as he rushes inside and grabs a MULTI-Rifle out of the panoply. The Libertos runs in and lays a mine into the center of the room, and a Makaul runs in and breaks link with the Sukuel to attack Senior Massacre, finally taking him down! The baggage Chaksa arrives in the room and takes position, and the Sukuel’s final action is spent rebuilding a triad with the waiting Kaeltar Lt. in the rear.
End of round, Tohaa still control the armory for an extra +1.
The Nomads aren’t in retreat, but are close. They sense that the Tohaa are distracted in the armory and narrow their focus on their true goal – the Pony! The Nomads concede because they’ve achieved their true prize and vacate the arena.
Tohaa controlled the armory for 2 rounds: 2pts
Tohaa pressed the button once, more than the Nomads: 2pts
Tohaa dominate the armory at end of game: 4pts
8-0 to the Tohaa!
- That Gao-Rael are MI and should be getting Forward Deployment L1 this season.
- On the Active Turn, getting hit by ARO templates really sucks and I should avoid it.
- My Kriigel and Draal look too alike and the Kriigel does not have the D-Charges, so I shouldn't run towards an objective that needs D-Charges.
- Next time, don’t forget that you don't have a Spitfire in this particular list!
- Writing reports for games at the end of Phase is stressful.
Good idea with the adhoc objective room 🙂
I am glad to see the pony sub plot being used outside the forum.
Uohoooo!!! That final push!!! Gj!!
Nice selfmade objectivroom, good job commander. Well done Brohaa!
Congratulations on the victory! Analysis of the game is cool. I’ll take a note for myself.
Well done on the armoury. The TIL is helpful too, I might do that myself!