Fought At The Gallery Maze: The Chimneys
1673 days 13 hours 50 minutes ago
Author’s Note: Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. I took no pictures of the battle, but I recreated a blow-by-blow in PowerPoint which I’ve attached.
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I thought humanity was supposed to be standing together against the Combined Army menace. And I thought Aleph, with Achilles at the front, was supposed to be leading the charge.
Why all the glorious photos with Achilles and a severed Morat head? Why all the propaganda with pretty boy on the front?
It’s all lies. Aleph aren’t heroes. They’re violent, tyrannical, jackbooted thugs.
This war isn’t a war about Humanity versus Alien. It’s about Artificial Intelligence versus Evolved.
And I refuse to die for a computer.
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It’s my opponent’s first time running Achilles, and my first time playing against him. My opponent has Achilles *and* a Marut, which means I’m in for a rough time.
Aleph wins the lieutenant roll and goes first.
**Aleph Turn 1:** Achilles starts his run, and hustles through the Saturation zone. With Mov 6-4, ODD, and 3W, Achilles is confident about putting a single shot into 4 different targets whenever he can. He figures that he can lose a FtF and survive the armor save, if it buys him efficiently in demolishing my list.
And Achilles has a target: I’ve got 3 of my four lieutenant options in the bottom-left corner, reasonably hidden behind terrain but otherwise accessible.
The strategy that works. Despite lots of AROs from Warcors and Transductors, Achilles scythes through my line, killing the HVT and a bunch of other stuff. His last order, he puts 4 shots into Kriza from point blank and kills him. Ouch.
**Nomad Turn 1:** I’m in Loss of Lieutenant, but I’ve got a hail-mary plan. First, he’s only got 4 specialists, and two are in easy reach. Second, I’m going to put D-Charges on an Antenna then, in ARO *next* turn, blow the charges to steal an Antenna.
Mostly, things go according to plan. My zero kills his Thorakites, my Bandit puts down his Proxy FO, my Moran FO tags an antenna, and my Prowler gets the D-Charges in place without dying. It costs me 4 command tokens, but we’re in position.
**Aleph Turn 2:** My heart goes out for the Aleph player. My plan is cheeky, but he’s still got 9 orders and nothing to do but designate an antenna and blow it up. It’s Aleph’s game, and all he has to do is not get distracted.
Sadly, he gets distracted. He chases down my Moran (unsuccessfully), fails to shoot an Antenna with explosive ammunition *twice* from the Marut (misses once, the second time it passes 3 armor saves), and is out of orders without blowing the antenna and only tagging two.
Worse, he went to kill my Prowler, and I blew the D-Charges. I’ve now got one Antenna tagged and destroyed, to his two tagged antennas.
**Nomad Turn 2:** I’m in Retreat!, but the Moran has courage and thus can act. I’ve got one order, but it’s enough: the Moran FO hustles forward and re-designates one of Aleph’s antennas, meaning that I now have two to his one.
Game ends, and since I’ve tagged more antennas and blown more antennas, I win.
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SkyKnightWins
Go-go Bromads!
Good work holding the line. Hope if you get a chance to take pics next time you retain the powerpointy bit, I like it. Reminds me of the old old batreps The Very Big Corporation Of Nottingham had in their magazine up until about 2002….
Getting distracted and wasting orders on unimportant things: my Achilles heel.
Also, I like the Powerpoint. It’s a nice touch to follow what’s happening.
Yeah, we had a similar game last night. He didn’t blow any antennas, but had more designated than me. I surprised him (with the win) at the end when we were tallying points.
ʕ•ૅૄ•ʔ Nice Report with a good idea
@Mars And yes, Achilles was his Datatracker. The Nomad symbol in the middle-left of the board was my HVT.
@Mars, that wording was a weird one.
There is no objective to destroy “more Antennas placed in the enemy half of the game” – the only objective is “To have Destroyed more Antennas than the adversary at the end of the game (3 Objective Points)”.
Based on a query at my local game store, my opponent & I discussed the issue before we started and decided that the statement about the “enemy half of the game” didn’t make any sense and we ignored it. If this is different from how a Tournament would rule, then perhaps this was actually a Custom Mission, identical in every way to The Grid, except you could blow up any antenna.
That said, I’m pretty sure my Prowler would have been able to get to the Top Middle antenna if I had to. Mighta had to deploy differently – hard to say.
“Only those Antennas whose base is entirely placed in the enemy half of the game table will be considered valid towards accomplishing the Objective of Destroying more Antennas placed in the enemy half of the game.”
Was Achilles was his Datatracker?