Shattergrounds

CAPTURE AND PROTECT - EDDA

Super fun battle, had an insanely unfortunate roll in round 2 that ultimately kept my opponent from winning, but at the cost of my pride.

I went first and saw about 4 camo markers with no mimetism. Wonder what those could be? If I wanted to get up the board at all, the Daylamis would need to die, so my Gamma w/ HMG went to work. With the help of my Sirius Team, the Gamma took down 2 Daylami without taking a scratch, and then moved on to removing the Lasiq w/ Viral Sniper from the left side of the board. My opponent screened my Bronze's advance really well with a Barid hacker and Ghazi Jammer. I wanted to clear these pieces out with my gangbuster but the Lasiq was halting his advance.

With the Lasiq down, and 3 kills to my Gamma's name, I realized I ought to start getting my Bronze up the board to play the objective. I wasted an order in hindsight moving the Bronze to a bad position, and decided to have my Gangbuster move up and lay down a madtrap to keep the Barid from getting any funny ideas. I forgot my opponent had a second Lasiq staring down the alley, though, and I got lucky as none of the shots got through my Gangbuster's armor.

I was kind of running out of orders at this point, as I had wasted one more earlier in the round panicking about an impersonation marker, so I spent a command token to give myself one more regulars order and tried to keep my bronze a little bit further away from that Barid and Jammer. This opened me up to that viral rifle's sightline, but I figured it wouldn't be a problem due to the ole' reliable Immunity (Total) skill.

On to Haqqislam turn 1:
My opponent moved up his Ghazi, which soaked up the madtrap I had been hoping that the Barid would have taken. Luckily, it was glued, which ate up an order to free itself. At this moment, I realized my mistake of forgetting that parachutists exist (specifically a Ragik). As the trooper dropped down behind my bronze with a boarding shotgun, I realized I might be in for a bad time.

Managed to turn around, but the Ragik was in an unfortunate place for me to try and do anything about its presence other than survive. the Bronze ultimately fell, but I managed to take off a wound from the parachutist, placing her into dogged, and he did manage to survive through about 5 whole orders, which I honestly think is worth it. I was planning on having my Delta jump in and doctor my Bronze later anyways, this was just moving up the timeline. After this, my opponent proceeded to move his dogged Ragik through my deployment zone to try and get a bead on my Gamma. I fired back ineffectually, but didn't take any wounds either. With his last order, the Ragik blasted Ensign Cho (holomasked as a Betatrooper). While Cho went down, I luckily had taken the Chain of Command profile instead of LT, so nothing of major value was lost.

O12 Turn 2:
I felt like I was still in a pretty good position to win at this point. I had a Crusher ready to advance up the middle of the field with practically no resistance (a Daylami w/ Panzerfaust in a bad range band and a Lasiq that would have to waste at least 3 orders to get the kill), a Gamma able to clear one practically one half of the board, as long as I had the orders for it, and there were almost no enemy troopers even remotely close to striking distance of my beacon.

Surely nothing could go horribly wrong, right?

I spent my first order moving my Crusher up to try and take down the Daylami. He didn't come out of camo to ARO, so I discovered him instead. Perfect setup. My Crusher moved forward a bit more to secure the kill and a Nadhir popped out of hidden deployment behind him.

Shit.

I figured the Nadhir was more of an imminent threat to the Crusher's life so I shot him with my SMG and took a wound, going into NWI. Luckily, both the Nadhir and Daylami were in my Gamma's sights. I split my burst, 2 for the Daylami, 3 for the Nadhir. Nadhir went down easily, taking 3 shots and dropping. The Daylami took one and passed his armor and guts roll. All I had to do was take down the Daylami and then my Crusher would be able to grab the beacon and run back to my side.

(Pictured below with a Betatrooper representing the Crusher as I left the model at home)

As I declared one more BS attack on the Daylami, I figured it would be a cakewalk. Unfortunately I missed 2 and rolled low on my 3 hits, allowing the panzerfaust to get a hit in. No big deal, I just had to make one of my 3 explosive saves, I have 2 wounds plus NWI.

Unfortunately I failed all three and my Gamma died. Whoops.

According to later calculations, this outcome had a 0.7% chance of happening. Oh well.

I was about one model away from going into retreat, and while I didn't realize it at the time, I would be able to use that to my advantage. I spent the rest of my orders securing the box with the Crusher which was honestly probably a mistake, I should have shored up my backfield from the imminent Yara + Govad fireteam coming my way.

Onto Haqq Turn 2:
The previously mentioned Govad fireteam began to move up on my flank, and with no real gunfighters left, it was pretty bare. As Yara put my Psi Cop down, I slipped into the retreat threshold. moving up the rest of the way, I managed to take down one Govad with a lucky shot from my cyberghost. Unfortunately, the fireteam had managed to get into base contact with my box with no real way of getting them off of it. My opponent also managed to finish off my Crusher with a mutual template weapon kill. His Beacon was wide open with no troops anywhere near. My Beacon was captured with no way to clear the enemies off. Seemed pretty doomed.

O-12 Turn 3 (Retreat!):
Enter the Delta. I spent 2 command tokens cancelling retreat on the Delta and gaining a regular order as well. I used combat jump to place the Delta right next to the enemy Beacon and the second and final regular order to move into base contact, tying up the game.

Retrospective:
Gonna be real here, I did not deserve to tie this game, Retreat really bailed me out. One more Haqq turn and It would probably be 5-0 instead of 2-2. I don't really know what would have happened if my Gamma hadn't died. I think I would have been able to secure a line of retreat for my Crusher, and the Govad team would have had to dedicate their time to killing him instead. I wouldn't have had to drop my Delta on the objective, and I probably could have revived my Bronze instead to additionally provide more insurance on the Crusher. It's all hindsight though, so who knows. It was a super fun game though, and the Gamma dying was a hilarious moment that I will remember for a while.

[22:31] DELTA ANDERSON - "Command, this is Sergeant Anderson, Strike Force Hawk Talon. We've managed to secure the beacon at heavy losses. The Hassassin team has fallen back with our beacon, and I've managed to revive multiple team members, but Lieutenant Bravo is KIA. I have taken temporary command until Ensign Cho is back up. Requesting Evac and medical assistance immediately."