They say that Revenge is a dish best served cold. It was a pity that the basement gaming area of Hobby Bunker was warm and muggy :P.
Still, it was a rainy Saturday and a perfect day to stay indoors and get a game in. After the complete drubbing I received last time I went back and re-tuned my list. I'm still convinced that I used the Athena fighter very poorly but between its performance and the real lack of firepower that the list had I felt that I needed to focus more an anti-air and to actually take less transports to increase my firepower even if it meant having something walk on. Lastly I wanted to take advantage of some of the range boosting (countermeasures hack) and healing PHR cards so I wanted something durable...
So I shook things up a bit and put in a Hades! My commander went down to level 4 and I dropped the two Ares, two Apollos, and two Odins. With those points I put in a Hades and added in two Phobos. The results? Well...see below.
My new list was as follows:
Clash: 1498/1500 points
PHR Standard Roster [1498/1500 pts]
Hand of the Sphere [438 pts]
Command Squad: Zeus(Grand Vizier), Odin, Neptune [306 pts]
Sirens: 2x Sirens, Triton A1(+Miniguns) [132 pts]
Battle Pantheon [326 pts]
Battle Squad: 2x Phobos, Neptune [166 pts]
Helios Squad: 2x Helios, Neptune [160 pts]
Battle Pantheon [166 pts]
Battle Squad: 2x Phobos, Neptune [166 pts]
Immortals [303 pts]
Immortals: 2x Immortals, Triton A1 [101 pts]
Immortals: 2x Immortals, Triton A1 [101 pts]
Immortals: 2x Immortals, Triton A1 [101 pts]
Heavy Pantheon [205 pts]
Hades: Hades [205 pts]
Pegasus Group [60 pts]
Mercury Drones: 4x Mercury [60 pts]
We rolled randomly for mission from the Reconquest book and ended up with "Secure the Flanks". Excellent - a mission with some focal points for my new big toy to hold :D.
At the end of turn one deployment looked like this.
Klarg1 modified his list as well removing out the deadly Caimen and inserting in the Shaltari fighter. This caused him to lose a gate but upgrade to firstborn for one unit of Braves.
Standard Army
Clash: 1493/1500 points
Gate Group [190 pts]
Eden Gates: 2x Eden [90 pts]
Haven: Haven [20 pts]
Haven: Haven [20 pts]
Spirit Gates: Spirit [40 pts]
Haven: Haven [20 pts]
Court of Elders [301 pts]
Coyote: Coyote(Warchief) [205 pts]
Firstborns: 2x Firstborns [96 pts]
Swordpoint [244 pts]
Tomahawk Squad: 3x Tomahawk [114 pts]
Firedrake: Firedrake [130 pts]
Warrior Clan [140 pts]
Braves: 2x Braves [70 pts]
Braves: 2x Braves [70 pts]
Warrior Clan [205 pts]
Braves: 2x Braves [70 pts]
Kukri Squad: 3x Kukri [135 pts]
Warfist [305 pts]
Jaguar Squad: 2x Jaguar [220 pts]
Dreamsnare: Dreamsnare [85 pts]
Arrowhead [108 pts]
Warspear Squad: Warspear [108 pts]
As you can see from deployment - the Shaltari were not willing to stand in front of the Hades on turn one and spent their time mostly huddled behind buildings :P
Turns 1. Peter rolled perfectly for the reserves on the Warspear and it was immediately available. Suddenly my infantry feared for their lives as its deadly shots could vanish a Triton in a single pass. We rolled off for initiative and I won and so I forced Peter to activate first. By doing so it would allow me the maximum time to delay deploying my troop transports for fear of fighter strike. I had a plan in mind that should keep my troops relatively safe for turn one...
After deployment I burned my only turn 1 TAC card to give the Hades a movement boost and immediately targeted the building on the far corner in the Shaltari deployment zone where his infantry had landed. I managed 5 damage with the tail gun and falling masonry took out one Brave. Beyond that the rest of my forces advanced via dropships with the exception of 2 of the Phobos who landed in order to present AA coverage on turn 2. On my fifth activation I moved out my three Tritons and dropped two of the Immortals in the objective building closest to my deployment zone. The third actually landed and dropped the troops out behind the cluster of bunkers near my side.
The Shaltari fighter showed up and immediately tore a chunk out of a Phobos' body in the hopes of clearing out some of my anti-air. The last activation of the turn saw the Sirens and commanders come on board and scream up towards the center of the table.
Turn 2. With two five plus rolls on the closest building (thanks to the Scout drones) I found the objective closest to me. Beyond that I was lucky enough to win initiative and had the Sirens dive into the center building before the Warspear could come. The rest of the turn saw the Shaltari shuffle around while I healed up the damaged Phobos (thanks to the Hades!) and landed the other two. His fighter showed up and blew up one of my Tritons...which happened to have reloaded up my immortals :(. In turn the Phobos took a point of damage out of it before it left the board.
The Zeus and Odin begin their slow crawl to the focal point across the board. As long as their stubby legs didn't get caught in the mud they'd make it there by turn 6!
Turn 3-4 It was here at the decisive parts of the game happened. Rather than sitting still and being pounded by the Hades Peter choose to land his Braves and Firstborns into the center building with the Sirens. In turn I moved the Immortals with the objective off the board and the second immortal squad ran in to support the Sirens. In close combat the sides matched up almost perfectly evenly but a timely TAC on the PHR side gave them the tiniest advantage. After several boxes of dice were tossed back and forth 7 Shaltari troops had perished and 6 PHR. The Shaltari Firstborns failed their fortitude test and ran out the building but quickly rallied to return on turn 4.
On the far right flank the Coyotes deployed at the second focal point hiding behind the building hoping to run in and out plinking away at some Phobos. To get there was costly for him as one gate was shot down with Phobos fire along the way. A Phobos was destroyed by the Warspear before shooting it out of the air and a second Phobos took a point of damage.
The Shaltari refused to fight out in the open against the incoming might of the Hades:
Turn 5 - Final Turn. The Hades finally manages to clear the building and immediately hammers a Coyote for 3 damage. The Odin take a point but not before he and the Zeus put two damage on the Shaltari commander. Four damage points are sprayed into the firedrake between two of the Phobos and a timely Countermeasures hack played on the Helios. With the Firedrake hanging on by a thread and the Coyotes taking a pounding from an undamaged Hades that was about to entire close range the Shaltari surrendered. I had more points on the closest focal point, was about to contest the furthest and on turn five the Sirens found the second objective in the center building. Final score was 6-3 PHR.
AAR:
Well this was a bit better than last time! After our last game I quickly realized how hard it was to maneuver with as much AA as Peter's list had presented. The fact that I had more troops really didn't matter last time as I could never get them to where they were needed. This time I took more Phobos and removed out the Ares. They Ares died very quickly to Caiman fire and rarely had enough punch to put a hurt on anything the Shatlari had. With so few attack dice he was able to frequently shield save off some damage and outside of popping a tank or two I couldn't really scratch the paint of the Coyotes or Caiman. Now the Hades allowed me to threaten his units on turn one which meant he went quickly into hiding. That gave me breathing room to maneuver and allowed me to be more confident moving my dropships forward and take the battle to him. Had his Coyote wandered forward to present more AA they would have met a healthy dose of Tail Cannon love. And his base line gravtanks actually have to fear the shooting from the Phobos as they could be killed on a 5+. Finally I manuevered around much better and never presented him with opportunity to hit multiple targets with the Firedrake.
The resulting restricted movement discouraged Peter (I hate to say, but he got a dose of what it felt like for me in the previous game) so much as he was frustrated as he could never engaged me exclusively on his terms unlike last game.
A much closer game and a very fun game this time as both sides did damage and took names. I can't wait to try out more list variants and see more troop types in action. Good stuff!
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