Asteroid Blues

Lieutenant Alfonso "SkyKnight" Ferreira tried to clear his head. Vague recollections of earlier orders, memories of an earlier time, and half-felt objections to striking against fellow Nomads passed through his head, but were ignored.

He remembered his first mission on this rock, the alien monstrosity towering before him, and the flash of light as its template weapon fired. He remembered hearing his CUBE pop, sizzling and rewiring under that alien light.

That was weeks ago. His perspective had slowly changed. First, he thought of Morats as useful allies. Later, he exhorted his fellow Nomads to ignore the Shasvastii, and instead attack humanity's Aleph defenders. Now, the perspective change was finished.

Nomads were the enemy, said the voice in his head. He must strike against them.

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The armies are Corregidor (me) vs Vanilla Nomads (Dorian). As a TL;DR of how this goes, I blow up his AC2 and then throw myself into Retreat, stealing a win from under Dorian's nose.

I let McMurrough go impetuous, and I decide to double-move so that the Liberto can see. Dumb mistake: the Liberto takes a DEP shot and McMurrough takes a wound.

I spend 2 or 3 orders blasting with the Intruder at Kriza and the Liberto, wounding the former and doing nothing to the latter. Bandit reveals, capping the Liberto and getting a Morlock in the template

Wildcat on the right activates, trying to kill the enemy Wildcat. It's 3 dice of HRL versus 1 die of HRL, but I roll 18, 19, and 19 versus his 3. My Wildcat HRL dies.

Intruder tries to put another one into Kriza. It's kinda risky, since I basically have just one order to kill Kriza or else be exposed... and instead, I miss on all four dice and Intruder goes down.

McMurrough hustles towards the PAC, and deals two wounds to the PAC before dying to a mine.

Sidenote: I was using Duroc as a proxy for our Mercenary Dog... so maybe this is Mac-Morreaux?

Dorian pushes with his bandit on the right, killing a wildcat and putting a Jaguar dogged. His Wildcat kills one of my Morans.

Otherwise, he spends like 3 or 4 orders chasing around my Bandit. His hope is to spec fire E/M LGL into my fireteam, but he runs out of orders.

His Morlocks are intended to clear out my CrazyKoalas, and he gets all but one which is near the PAC.

At this point, I know I'm in a bad spot. I start the turn knowing that my best shot at winning is to (a) destroy his PAC and (b) get myself into Retreat!

I move all my orders to Group 1, leaving me with 10 orders and a relatively clear path to the PAC.

Wildcat can be avoided with Smoke, while Moira is up on a bridge so that I can get very close before she sees.

My Jaguar team hustles, and I intentionally make some risky plays so that my guys will get hurt. Fortunately, Massacre passes his armor save against a Koala and the Moira misses all her suppressive shots at Balboa's B2 Nanopulser.

Balboa still dies, but she does so trading with a Securitate.

One of my jaguars gets glued, but I end with Massacre and other Jaguar very exposed.

My last order - the lieutenant order - is to have the Wildcat lean out and flamethrower the bandit. My Wildcat survives the Wildcat's LSG - but I'm still very exposed.

I've left three units exposed: a jaguar, senor massacre and my lieutenant.

My classified is Net-Undermine, and only Massacre can do it - I've failed the roll 3 times. To prevent me from completing, Dorian eliminates Massacre.

My lieutenant is obvious, and Dorian spends 3 orders pounding my Wildcat with a HRL. I make something like 5 armor saves, which is actually bad for me since I want to be in Retreat!

Still, he moves his jaguar up and caps my other jaguar in the back - he was intentionally positioned carelessly, with his back exposed. This puts my Jaguar into Dogged, which is enough to get me into Retreat.

Dorian has three orders left, but he doesn't know I'm in Retreat and he spends them positioning for next turn.

Thematically, winning to Retreat is appropriate: a renegade Corregidor unit backstabs a loyal Nomad Supply Dump, torches things, and vanishes into the Maze.

Mechanically, winning to Retreat is unsatisfying.

I suspect I might still have won if, say, my opponent had left a of mine Jaguar alive. He didn't have much left that was Anti-Material CCW, and I could have done damage to it if my Jaguar weren't dead.

But, even so, it feels kind of like a "Gotcha" victory to say "Surprise! You don't get a Third Turn! I win!"

I guess that's how it shakes out.