At the end I'll post the faction breakdowns and who the overall winner was but I wanted to go through my games.
So a spoiler to the set-up, I went 2-3 but all my losses for the most part were really close games. I got 30th which is not the top half of the rankings I think I did well all things considered.
Game 1 vs. White Company (Power Pack) Win 6-4:
So this was a more contentious game I felt a bit bad for winning but I managed to get a 6-4 due to the fact I had flipped both consoles and managed to have a turn where I camped on his objective with the Fiday.
I won the LT and decided to choose deployment since I wanted to have what I thought was the better side and then force him to go first. In general there was a good trade of both of us losing our units but he managed to kill more since most of the time I had avoided his linked Haidao sniper that was watching a lane he could see. His last turn he had his Guilang walk over to my console since I didn't have anyone standing up, but come my turn I managed to shoot it off and made an attempt to get someone on his console and failed.
The contentious part of this game is were my opponent had pressed the antenna first, but decided not to flip them back after I had activated them. And this was him believing that the Activated antenna in Power Pack account for both players and not the one who activated it last. As I explained it to him at the end of the game, I could sense he felt robbed of a game he could have won. And if he had remembered that part, I definitely think he would have won with one more point over me and his play on his last turn to have Hawkwood and the linked sniper watch over his console was a solid tactic to avoid me getting the console.
Game 2 vs. Dahshat (Unmasking) Win 7-3:
There were some deployment and play mistakes I had made this game, but in general I think I had done the best I could to pull the victory from the Jaws of near defeat.
I won the LT roll, which I took first turn in order to get the drop on one of his HVTs if possible. I held back my two Fidays which of course one got locked up by a Liberto mine layer. Kind of sucks but is to be expected since I assumed he wanted to protect the real HVT.
First turn comes up, which I try to get the console far up the building. The Barid KHD gets shot, so now I had to shift my game plan, so my Asawira+Rafiq duo had to reach the middle one and managed to kill one of decoys. The only thing I really managed to put down is his Rui Shi.
My opponent's first turn came up and he managed to get a lot done. He managed to repair his Rui Shi after not electing to impetuous with McMurrough. He gets the left console and managed to guess the right one and kill it with McMurrough. McMurrough had managed to do a decent amount of damage this game, but managed to put him down. During this he managed to position his Haris to grab the button next turn. That said I was down on some major pieces to kill his models.
The rest of the game, I had managed to kill the Haris with the Krakot renegade, flip the rest of the consoles to get his other decoy and his main one, and be managed to only switch one of the three I pressed (especially the annoying one on top of the building). The main HVT of his was killed by a guided missile, and kept him from flipping both. So I was cautiously confident going into the third round since I was doing pretty well at this point.
Game 3 vs. Kosmoflot (Supplies) Loss 2-3:
So this game was played against John Carlson (aka MooingFish) of the Swiss Miss Gaming podcast. Knowing he was playing Kosmoflot I had to snap pick first turn if I can, grab a box or two if I can and then have a defensive set-up against his bears if he had them...
Which guessing correct, he was running a double bear list and Mirage-5 so I had to set-up my Ghazis Jammers at certain defensive points to stop either his bears or Duroc and make a mess of my backline. I set up my Fiday by some stairs to see if I could bait him into spending orders on him. IIRC he electric to strip orders from the small group the Fiday was in.
First turn comes, and I managed to complete most of my objectives I had wished to do. Both of my Muhktar models went NWI to Uxia's shotgun template but managed to put her down so I could get the box and then put my Muhktar Red Fury in suppressive while my Muhktar hacker ran back with the box to hide. His first turn he had to contend with Knauf and Muhktar Red Fury watching his deployment zone and his bears unable to run up under the cover of smoke. That is when he brings in Margot and shot and Knauf, killing him. Then he moves her up and then kills my doctor and then tries to kill my Muhktar hacker, but gets clipped by my Ghazi's chain rifle and went unconscious afterwards. Sadly I revealed my Nadhir a bit too early thinking I could get the drop on Margot but she was just out of range of my Flammenspeer.
Second turn comes around and all we both managed to do is get some stuff moved up. My turn but I lost my Fiday to an unlucky crit from his Rokot but managed to guided missile one of his pieces to get a free kill as I move my Muhktar hacker back. Then I put my Muhktar and Nadhir in suppressive fire. He tries to grab the box but multiple failures means he had to waste more orders on it than expected. Then he uses UKR to engage my Nadhir in suppressive fire but my Nadhir managed to live and put UKR in NWI.
Our last turn I failed to get the box from his Irmandino who grabbed it, putting both my Asawira and Rafiq into unconscious just to get the job done. However my Asawira managed to make his Regen roll and basically watched the box he failed to pick up. All my opponent managed to do was run up with William Wallace and get a classified.
In the end he managed to win 3-2 because we both had boxes but managed to do a classified over me. Which in fairness, this was the most fun game of the tournament I had. Now I was going into day two with a 2-1 record.
Game 4 vs. USARF (Countermeasures) Loss 2-5:
This game was against a local by David Clark. Since he won the LT roll, he electric table side and I got the first turn. This would play into how the game went on since he managed to get a table side that got his Marauder sniper watching most of my side of the table, which made it hard to maneuver around. The first mistake I made was not using my Fiday to hunt his obviously where it would have not stopped his Marauder sniper, he would have had the first turn to do anything. Instead I have wasted a bunch of orders trying to take out his linked sniper and then only get a classified. Then he had his first turn where he maneuvered the rest of his big link, and he kept healing since he kept making his saves from being outright killed by my Nadhir.
Second turn comes around and I managed to get another classified but I only managed to kill some chaff and that is it. His Wardriver survived my attack, in which he used to have his total reaction Traitor Mul to kill my Muhktar Red Fury in his turn and then got three classified in one go.
In the third turn, I was in retreat. The best I could do was try to grab one more classified since the rest were hard to grab. However the last classified grab I failed the roll and then called it there.
This one was close on objectives but with some other play, I definitely think I could have done better with this game.
Game 5 vs. Military Orders (Decapitation) Loss 4-5:
This is the case of essentially having a game in the bag, and then going too hard for points that I wasted my advantage.
I won the initiative and decide to take the first turn. This mean I set up first, which I put most everything in a defensive set-up, save for the two Fidays and Knauf I held back to set up after his HVT drop. While not having a hacking network like Nomads, I still set up in a way to protect Saladin from a Santiago drop or have my opponent come in from the side. He sets up having his link hiding but defending the lane if possible, and his Sepulcher knight in a defensive position where it would be hard for him to get to without a good expenditure of orders but in a position to strike when needed. As expected he also had a Raveneye with E/M mines and a hidden deployment Trinitarian minelayer with a regular mind.
My first turn comes around and I use it to basically use my Krakot to take out his two HVTs instead of my Fidays to use them for later. The Krakot managed to trip both of the mines, take out a couple bots (especially a flash pulse bot that managed to blind Knauf for a turn) and put a wound on the Sepulcher knight after guessing the correct one. The rest of the turn for me was repositioning and protecting my right-most HVT. His first turn came around and managed to do a lot of damage with a Crusader Brethren. First he used his Sepulcher Knight to kill my Krakot but I managed to put him down in an rather unlucky armor roll. Then he went on his attack run with his Crusader Brethren. During this I revealed my Liberto to try and stop him but failed. My Ghulam Doctor, regular Ghulam, missile bot and Liberto died so now I felt like I was down on points.
Turn two came around and my main goal was to try and get rid of his Brethren, which Knauf managed to do after an great expenditure of orders but then I managed to have my Awasira duo run up and do a decent amount of damage by taking out his Order Sergent HRL and his Raveneye but managed to e/m mine my Rafiq. Kind of sloppy but it was still worth amount the damage I did. I end with my Asawira repositioned into my deployment zone and then watch over the approach into my DZ and then the flank. His turn comes around and he brings his knight in, he kills my other Ghulam and then I stopped him in his tracks, backing up an attack he made when he realized that Knauf would get him out in the open. This is were he revealed his Trinitarian and killed my HVT, and then saved against the mine I laid the turn earlier. Then he ended his turn there.
Third round is where I threw away the victory I had by trying to get more points. This was more due to using my Fidays very aggressively to kill his models, and then Al-Jabel had wasted a bunch of orders trying to kill both the EVO bot and his Teuton LT. Here what I have should have done is hold back a few orders to reposition my Fidays and have them re-impersonate to give them a layer of protection. The last turn of the game comes around and he engaged my Fidays. One I tried to shotgun with his Order Sergent who he healed, and we both died. And then I tried to smoke with Al-Jabel and then he died, which my opponent ended his turn there.
The game ended in a 4-5 win to my opponent, with my amount alive was 6 points off from what my opponent had left. This was a great game but it came down to me getting tunnel-visoned and then some bad luck. I'd say it was one of the closest games of the event.
Final Thoughts:
While I had a 2-3 record for the event, the main tournament was great fun. While I had played the two other events, I wanted to focus on the main event.
This was my first time doing a vanilla army instead of a sectorial, and a non-PanO army. While I view myself of as mainly a Sectorial player, I wanted to spend the year playing Vanilla armies to get more out of my comfort zone. I found vanilla Haqqislam a great departure but similar to how I like to play most of my other armies that are not PanO sectorials. When I go back to sectorials, I might grab my Hassassins and given them a go, along with JSA since the new O-Yoroi dropping.
Sorry for the delay on this post but I tend to be slow with write-ups and kind of wanted to decompress from talking about Infinity for a bit. Though I plan to get back to writing battle reports, with some vanilla ALEPH coming up. And a possibily long-winded post about a primarily sectorial player playing Vanilla armies.
