Asteroid Blues

VIDEO: An accurate summation of how this game went. All giant mechs shooting each other while, presumably, blasting heavy metal in to their pilots' ears.

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“I just think this might be escalating things quickly. We were doing fine without one.”

Lieutenant Rashida Ghali turned to look at the speaker, Midhat. “No such thing as escalation, just having the right tool for the job.”

“But it's so big! Isn't this going to ruin our chances of stealth?”

“Every single one of us is carrying a bag of hand grenades and a flamethrower. What's stealth?”

The enormous arachnid bulk of the Maghariba Guard moved towards them, crouching as low as it could to gain cover. While they watched, its scorpion tail weapon pod raised over the roof of the building. After a split second, and with an ear-splitting roar, its massive machine gun opened fire at something they couldn't see.

Their comms burst in to activity - “Marut sighted! Repeat, Marut sighted!”

Rashida turned to Midhat as she flicked on her pilot light, “Glad we've got the big beauty now?”

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This was a peculiar game. Shamash went first and moved his Marut up the board, trading fire back and forth with my Maghariba Guard. The battle of the multi-HMG TAGs! We pinged shots off each other, but his superior B in the active turn disabled my Maghariba Guard. But since everyone else on my side was cleverly hiding in terror from the giant mecha stomping around, he couldn't do much else. So he instead snagged two objective cards without any resistance.

On my turn, my trusty Najjarun got the Maghariba Guard back on its... feet, I guess? I then poured orders in to it, having it sweep up the battlefield and disable his Marut and his Yudbot. I tried to also drop his Sophotect but she ably avoided the shot. I scored an objective by annihilating the poor Yudbot and my turn ended with a badly-damaged Maghariba Guard staring ominously down at the lone Sophotect.

At the top of Shamash's second turn, the Sophotect took a huge gamble and ran to repair the Marut. The Maghariba Guard responded by hosing them both down with burning naft. The Sophotect repaired the Marut, fell over and died from the fire, and then the Marut burst in to flames and then fell over. I scored two objective points by disabling his TAG, and I tabled him with that blast.

Game ended with a shocking 3 – 2 upset.