Asteroid Blues

The time had come. It was time to give the arogant smurfs a fist in the eye. And the nomads were the ones to do it. Strike Force Bordeaux entered the drop ship and launched Operation Blue Hippo.
(yes, the drop ship scene from Aliens needs a link in every campaign :-) )

The PanO local detected the drop ship and prepared for contact (throwing a hollow rock with giddy bastards inside isn't exactly subtle). The left flank consisted of 2 fusiliers. and a bolt killer hacker, a Aquila Guard with HMG and a Hexa hacker (that was made known after the fact). The right flank comprised a a black friar and bolt link with all the marbles, spitfire and sniper included, and a bolt and reserve to move up and bolster the ranks. Aida Swanson completed the Neoterran force (Wait, isn't she a Shas? WTF?)

Strike Force Bordeaux adopted a somewhat defensive posture and deployed the Interventor LT. a Reaktion Zond, a engineer Zond Bot, the Zero FO, the Intruder Sniper and the Dak on the right side. The left side was made up of a HMG Kriza, a Feuerbach Tsyklon, a Hollow Man, the second engineer Zond, the Clockmaker and the Daks Zond.

The Neoterran siezed the initiative, moved up a fusilier and a then let the Aquila Guard do his thing. it killed the Zero and then moved into the center to setup suppression fire. The Bolt link then moved into position,killed the Tsyklon, and got ready to do som major murdeing. in response the nomads droped the Hell Cat right down behind the Neoterran right flank. Morale was high at that point. All she had to do was execute a single fusilier and the road was open. the Hexa hacker tried to foil the jump, but no cigar to him! That fusilier was on the ball though and won the firefight. Uh ohhh. The Kriza then moved out and engaged the Aquila Guard at long range. That firefight ended with both Hi wounded. The Hollow Man engaged the Aquila Guard finishing it of and the launched a repeater next to the Bolt killer hacker. The inteventor then tried to kill said hacker but the bolts ICE held. All in all, bot bad but not good.

... And the other shoe dropped like a hammer! The bolt link moved up with meticulous precision. The were engaged by the Intruder and Kriza and came out victorious. They shot the back and dropped him like a 3 day old sandwich. Task Force Bordeaux was in dire straits!

The nomads responded in nomad fashion. The Reaktion Zond rolled out and engaged the Bolt Spitfire and was critted. The clockmaker, via a zond bot, got the Reaktion Zond going again.... and the zond got critted again. The Clockmaker fixed up the Reaktion Zond a second time, and the remaining few got read the for the descending firestorm. The Lt. radioed for backup or extraction but no answer come from high command.

(this was the crux of the battle, so we forgot to snap any photoes)

Once again the bolt link showed their mettle. With ruthless efficiency they plowed through the remaining nomads (critting the Reaktion Zond ofcourse... *sad face* ). The last recorded video was from the bodycam of the Clockmaker all it showed was a shotgun popping into view and then fade to black.

I sucked and my opponent played a good game. I engaged the bolt sniper in ARO even though he had MSV 1. I parked my Hoolw Man with his ass to the approach vector of the link. I got cocky with my Kriza and got caught out of cover. lots of mistakes were made. I did however feel a bit unlucky woth both the Hell Cat and the Reaktion Zond. Both situations I had burst numbers on my side and the target numbers weren't that awful.

Oh well, sometimes the bear gets you.

And can't say enough good things about my opponent. A stand up guy.