Underground Base

The past few weeks have been a little busy for me at work, which had led me to fall behind with blog posts. Here's a 'battrep' from last week for now. Later this week I'll write up another post with pics from my Therian army.

On 6/14, Rob and I tried out another mission from the Frostbite campaign - this time it was "Underground Base". This mission was another combination of twisting indoor passages, and frozen landscape. Victory point markers were placed at all of the building exits, a little closer to the attacker's deployment zones than the defenders. The attacker had the potential to control Karman crystal formations, while the defender had containers and Therian nanogenerators to pull reinforcement points (RP) from. Each player had two deployment zones to choose from at each 'long-side' of the map.

I had a bad feeling about this mission right after Rob deployed his first Sierp within the building. I have fared really poorly in battles where I'm the attacker trying to clean out a defensible position. It's probably been a combination of tactical mistakes, and the fact that it can just be that challenging to pull off. Well, this battle was no different.

I was playing with a different Therian faction for this game. The "Web Striders" - a faction that gives you the advantage of having lower cost tactical 'routines', but at the expense of forcing your units to make morale checks. (I really missed the standard 'Nerves of Steel' Therian ability!) I'm not sure I'll use this list again. The 'Cypher' list is pretty strong, and one I've had success with in the past.

So, anyway... Rob started off the early deployments by getting his Sierps into position within the building. They're fairly weak mechs, but they can cause mischief with infantry - and with the "Frontline" Red Blok faction, they're able to hold objectives pretty well. I tried to get aggressive right off the bat, and rush a Hekat Golgoth right up in the Sierp's face, first turn. That strategy didn't pay off - my dice rolling was terrible - and with the next deployment Rob's Urod popped in to the building and blew away my Hekat.

I decide to shift tactics and pull in the rest of my company in on the other side of the battlefield. My hope was to keep the Assault and Bane Goliaths together to form a solid anti-mech/anti-infantry tandem to hammer Rob's forces on the other side of the map, and secure a defensible position of their own to deal with his Urod (and Kossak). I also had the Storm Arachns available to rush infantry or mechs and do a little sacrificial explody action. This plan failed as well, as Rob's 2nd Sierp really tied up a building entrance preventing my Goliaths from causing much mayhem in the building. My Bane Goliaths did put some hurt on the 2nd Sierp, but he pulled it out of line-of-sight to get some mechanics to work on it.

The mission really nose-dived for me when Rob shifted his Kossak outdoors and wiped out my Assault Goliath unit. My units were spread out some and I was really cut off from acquiring more RP. Since things looked so grim, I decided to concede the game. I think Rob had 9VP to my 3VP, at that point, but it was looking inevitable that he would have no problem securing most of the VP markers and gradually widdle down my forces to nothing.

One of my biggest tactical blunders was putting Babylon Zero in reserve. Dreadful mistake. Babylon is a high impact unit that can dish out some serious punishment. As an attacker, I had really limited options for acquiring RP, which led to Babylon sitting in reserve the entire game. I definitely can't make that mistake again.

I mentioned a little about my dice rolling... well, it was pretty bad the entire mission. Poor dice results prevented me from easily taking out the Sierps which slowed my entrance into the building. I'm not saying that the mission result would have been different - the Red Blok can be challenging to attack - but it would have helped some. Oh well - on to the next battle!

The Abandoned Base

So, last night we got together to play a stand-alone mission from the Frostbite book. It was a chance to get a taste of the campaign missions, as well as break out the cool Frostbite and Damocles tiles.

Rob and Dave faced off in a mission called "Abandoned Base". As you can see from the initial setup photo, this mission combined a snow landscape with a contained building. Victory point objectives were scattered within the building - many close to entranceways. (We chose to ignore some of the special mission rules - in the interest of time, and some forgetfulness - which included icy surfaces in the snow as well as crated explosives within the base).

It was really damned impressive to see the terrain tiles put to use. It was quite a nice visual scene to see them combined with the barriers, crystals, and containers.

Dave's Karmans deployed out in the frozen waste, charging quickly across the snow. Rob's Cogs deployed within the Abandoned Base - his Cog units squeezing through the tight passages in a close formation. Orders were given on both sides to take cover and go into overwatch.

The first casualties of the night were Dave's K-Shooters, who popped out in full view of a Cog unit in overwatch and were quickly gunned down. (So quickly that I didn't get a chance to take a photo of them in action). After this point, both armies jockeyed for position - the Karmans clustering near a container and a Karman Crystal to gather valuable reinforcement points; while the Cogs spread out through the structure to control both containers and victory point objectives.

One of the most surprising exchanges of the night was when Dave shifted his K-Warriors (indirect fire artillery) into full view of the tightly-grouped Cog units and unleashed mortar fire. This eliminated a large number Cog infantry, and left a number of their units grounded and at risk for morale checks. It seriously weakened the Cog army, but the K-Warriors did not survive the return fire. There is no doubt that the K-Warriors are a great anti-infantry unit at the Karman's disposal.

Even weakened, the Cog were still able to fiercely control victory point objectives - and through the use of their AI-Beacons were able to conjure additional Type 1 combat striders to bolster their assault. The Karmans brought on some capable reinforcements, but they weren't enough to halt the advance of the Cog, who entrenched themselves around objectives and eventually wore down the Karman company. The Cog won the mission 20VP to 3VP - which sounds extremely lopsided, but the battle was a lot closer than the results showed.

I took the night off from playing in a mission to take some photographs and to rules lawyer. As it turned out, this battle didn't conclude until midnight, anyway.

The "Barbie Dreamhouse"

Joanne Fabrics and wargaming are not two things you normally associate. However, as Rob showed us, Joanne can serve the wargamer in many ways. :)

The "Barbie Dreamhouse" is one example. Joanne sells a wide variety of scrapbooking storage that works really damn well for mini storage. Compartmentalized, modular, and quite a bit cheaper than authentic wargame mini storage. Rob was able to pick up a couple on heavy discount, and the one he snagged for me has worked well for transporting and storing all the damn Therians and UNA I own.

Mind you, the "Barbie Dreamhouse" isn't perfectly built. The top lid gets a little shifty when you add the weight of 8000 army points worth of minis. A strong tug, and the lid could come free, spilling your armies everywhere. So, you have to utilize a length of velcro to ensure the lid stays on properly. Not a perfect situation - but when your mini storage container is $15, and a roll of velcro strips runs $5, it's still a very reasonable investment for mini storage.

By the way, the term, "Barbie Dreamhouse", is a Dave-ism. He has yet to get one - the monkey army hasn't grown enough to require a deluxe home, yet. :)

Pride of the UNA

About a month ago, I decided to pull all of my UNA forces from storage containers and shoe boxes and gather them together for a quick photo op. It was also a chance to take stock of what I had - figure out how many army points worth of UNA I had, etc.

Here's a photo of my various UNA units. Admittedly, the photo sucks - too much flash blurred out the snow camo Star Troopers. But, it gives the general gist of how many damned Space Americans I have.

As a compulsive mini-buyer, there are still a few things I wouldn't mind picking up - if I could find them. A Colonel Stark w/ Copperhead, maybe another Defender Snake mech. But those extra toys can wait.