Asteroid Blues

“They want us to go back in there?!”

Farooq's angry voice rang through the hallway, bouncing off the rough walls and probably carrying all the way through the nearest wormhole.

Rashida held one finger up to her lips to silence him. He quieted down immediately, but his eyes still screamed indignation.

“I sympathize, Farooq. I really do. Those Hulan were... a lot... to deal with. But HHC says those persons of interest still have intel we need. And besides, intel states that those Hulan have moved on to bedevil someone else on this rock, so we're probably free and clear to proceed.”

“Probably?” Hamdan's voice was small and quiet, as usual.

“Intel says 90% certainty we'll be free and clear, no resistance.” Rashida coughed. “But of course 90% certainty we're free and clear means that there's definitely some Yu Jing operatives inside the complex still, so stay alert and think mean thoughts at them. That might literally apply to you, Wazir. Let's get to it.”

- - -

For our second game of the evening RazorsEdge and I did another game using TACOS. If you missed the link on my first report, here it is again:

https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/alternate-play-system-tacos-mk-ii.578/

A brief rundown is that each turn there are four cards you draw, and each one has a certain objective on it. i.e. neutralize an enemy model with a weapon of DAM 13 or lower, or be within 6'' of the HVT, etc. Simple, but each time you earn a card it's removed from the lineup and a new one is drawn, so the game shifts every turn.

This time, RazorsEdge stuck with his hyper-elite troops, fielding only three models in a 100-point army. He put nearly all of his points in to a Yan Huo, because the Hyper-Rapid Magnetic Cannon is kind of ridiculous.

His hyper-focus on one giant monster of a gun with a tiny man attached to it paid off very well. He got an early lead by annihilating my Ghulam HMG with it, and later turned my Ghulam Hacker in to a fine red mist. I managed to secure a win by sheer luck of the draw and his astoundingly bad dice rolls rearing their ugly head.

First, I was able to control the HVT and the Intelligence Operative with my Engineer and Doctor. Then the Ghulam Doctor then was able to make a dash in to his deployment zone, scoring me another point. Finally, because Lieutenants are Specialists in TACOS, my Naffatun dove to the Console and controlled that. This tied things up, and the only chance I had to win was to neutralize a Heavy Infantry model, or neutralize his Lieutenant, and by chance the only HI he had was his LT. The risk was that my LT, the Naffatun, was the only one in a position to try this, and if he killed her in ARO then the game was his instead of mine.

My Naffatun sliced the pie around the Console she was hiding behind, and hit the Yan Huo with a single B 1 shot from her light flamethrower. Its return fire just flat-out missed, and then it failed its ARM roll. It then failed its second ARM roll, and fell over on fire. It also literally fell over, breaking through a piece of weakened terrain and breaking its Hyper-Rapid Magnetic Cannon. That's right – my Naffatun shot it so hard with a flamethrower in the game that the actual model fell over knowing how dead it was.

This secured me a clear, unimpeachable lead, scoring me a solid win.