OK, as promised, I'm attempting to make up a coherent battle report from my game held last Thursday with Germanicus [he's pretty silent around here].
The scenario we played was
Among The Ruins, from Scenario
Pack 1. I love this particular scenario because of the 4 randomly drawn Mission Objectives that compliment a general objective of achieving 800vp through enemy elimination.
For our game, I increased the force UPV to 1250, thus increasing our total Victory Point conditions to 1875, which also raised the VP's for the Activation/Destruction mission from 500 to 1150 [rounded off]. As we unfortunately did not have time to complete the game, I can't reveal what missions were randomly drawn by either of us at this point.
UNE forces:2x Commando
Section, FCL [1256 upv]
Machine Forces:1x External Security
Horde, FCL [638 upv]
1x *Modified* Command Pack, FCL [382+230 upv]
- modified to include 2 G3 Predators & 1 additional
G1B Nightmare.
Here's a shot of the game set-up;
Note the red EW chips laid out in what I termed 'The Copper Room' in the center of the map [containing the
Activation/Destruction terminal objective]. These represented low level obstacles that did
not have rubble in the surrounding squares, where all the other rubble counters on the board represent low level obstacles WITH surrounding squares containing rubble [+1 additional MP's to traverse per square].
Turn 1:Commando Section 2 [the white painted
squad] won initiative, followed by the Command Pack, Commando Section 1 [unpainted], and finally the External Security Horde.
A pretty standard turn entering all forces, cramming them in wherever they'd fit and using some leadership to help advance positions. 1 Section is splitting up, as is the ESH at this point.
Turn 2:More movement with no contact yet. Initiative order: 2 Section [painted], ESH, Command Pack, 1 Section [unpainted].
The ESH has surged forward with a split group of Nightmares preparing to deal with the split squad from 1 Section. The other portion moves ahead of the room containing a terminal that may be a potential Commando objective, while the Command Pack is advancing a bit slowly with the exception of the MKII
Assault Fiend looking to dive into some
HtH, perhaps? 2 Section has begun to set up some defensive positioning in the long room.
Turn 3: Contact!Initiative order: 1 Section, 2 Section, Command Pack, ESH.
The Sergeant of 1 Section advanced to a doorway in the corridor, opened it up and knelt down to get into a firing position, with a Heavy Weapon Trooper moving up immediately behind him. 2 Section continued to take up defensive positioning in the long room.
The MKII made a backtracking manouever using leadership to open the doorway to 'The Copper Room' and return to its previous square, headed for the
other door into The Copper Room. This allowed the
G1C Nightmare to walk forward and fire the negasphere into the room, possibly as both a defensive measure [-1 to shoot through the sphere] and a deterrent to the Commandos to enter from the opposite doorway in the Copper Room. The rest of the Command Pack continued its slow advance, the G1B Nightmares & the Succubot careful to maintain some spacing.
*During the end phase of Turn 3, the sphere moved 7 squares into the center of The Copper Room. Here we made an on-the-spot rules call and allowed the sphere to pass over the low level obstacle on a d6 roll of 2 or better. It would have deflected to the left or right on a further d6 roll if I had rolled a 1.
[I have started a topic in the
Rules Discussion board regarding the Negasphere rules, please have a look!]
Once the ESH began it's move, the action started!!