Battle Report 04: Robots Tasting Metal in the Air (ALEPH vs Spiral Corps- Radiation Leak)

So painting up most what I could for my ALEPH, I am giving them a run now. I've had a few games with them now, but this will be the first battle reports written playing them.

So the mission we did is Radiation Leak, which is a custom mission made by Wise Kensai from the Dice Abides network. Link to it will be here: Radiation Leak - Google Docs

The general idea of the mission is one side is trying to protect the reactor and the other is trying to destroy it. You also get points for being in the room but the radiation from the reactor has a chance to kill your models.

(Disclaimer: I was playing an earlier version of this mission where scoring was in the first four play turns of the game instead of the last four. Hence if you are looking at it later and seems a bit off on the scoring that is why)

Lists

After Adepticon I decided to ALEPH so here is what I was running. I played more toward the mission and for the most part I liked how it functioned on the table. Having Parvati, Mk. 1 Engineer, Acmon and Machaon gives me a good amount of redundancy but also can cover most of the classifieds in the deck. However, Classifieds would not be a concern here.

For my opponent, he was running Spiral Corps and more wanted to run his favorite of a "fake" Chaksa Longarms Haris which a cheap Chaksa of some sort with the Portable Autocannon Chaksa in reality being a Taagma Viral Sniper with MSV 2. The other man Haris in his list was a Draal supported by two Taagma schemers with one of them being the Tri-core. And the main piece was topped off with Neema as the LT and Jaan Star being out of Impersonation state with a Symbiobomb.

Deployment

My opponent won the roll-off and decided to take the first turn. And in turn I took the side where I could hide all my models I could but have an easy access to have one of my units with D-charges or antimaterial weapons blow open the door.

My opponent deployed his two Haris teams on both his flanks, with his 'fake' Long arms team setting up on the building on his left and then Draal team on his right to preform his alpha strike in the first turn. And then Neema Sataar in the middle to move up into the Radiation room if needed. 

            A Piece that may or may not do           something this game

Not wanting to give my opponent that many easy targets, I put most of my stuff in null deployment save for a couple flashpulse bots to slow him if I can. There, my Agema ML placed in hidden deployment covering the lane where I expected his Draal to go. 

Then he deploys his two heldbacks, which were the Keltar and then Jaan Staar in that specific order, with him getting the symbiobomb and then the Draal getting the Symbiomate. I of course held back the Liberto minelayer to lock up Jaan Star and makes sure if he was going to Symbiobomb Hippolyta he'd have to pay the price for it potentially. 

I elected Hippolyta as my master breacher and my opponent chose Neema. In which in this mission, it gives Zero-G terrain but the main thing is D-charges to use to blow open the door. 

Round 1

Turn 1 Spiral Corps

   A Story of Jaan Star getting memed on, told in three parts.

Wanting to take care of my Liberto and have Jaan Star safely hit Hippolyta, he spends a few orders shifting over his Taagma sniper to get to the Liberto and his mine. He spends a few orders clearing the Liberto, but the Liberto managed to lay a mine down to further trap Jaan Star. The Taagma failed to discover and remove either mine, which is where my opponent kind of goes 'Yolo, I need to try to take out Hippolyta with a Symbiobomb'. Fortunately for me and not so much for him, Hippolyta made her BTS saves even though she failed the face-to-face, and Jaan Star went down to the two mines from a fully healthy Symbiont armor profile.

This is where he switches gears and goes on the offensive with his Haris led by the Draal. When the Haris managed to walk out of the cover, this is when I revealed my Agema ML and took a shot against it. This sadly lead to the death of the Agema as he failed to hit and failed to make both of his armor saves against the Draal.  He pushes up his Haris onto the edge of my deployment zone instead of pulling back, and managing to put down the Dakini HMG.

In my turn I would try to exploit the Spiral Corps Player's over-extension as much as possible. 

Turn 1 ALEPH

I decided to try to take care of the Draal haris by either killing all of the team or at least putting down the Draal so he would not be a problem later. However it had taken a few orders (including a risky play of using Machaon and his LT order to attack the Draal) before I put two to the three team members down. From there I breached the Reactor room with Acmon which blew the door open in one order. The Mk.2 Hacker then went in there, hiding behind the reactor and then using the rest of my turn to reposition Parvati to get into range to repair and heal the Dakini HMG and Hippolyta that went down on my opponent's active turn. The radiation saves then came in which my Mk.2 Hacker made with ease, which will be an re-occurring theme in this battle report. 

While this turn is written shorter than I would have wanted, it is truly the main focus of my turn for the part. 

Round 2

Turn 2 Spiral Corps

   Eventually Hippolyta had to succumb to Tohaa/Spiral Corps Bullshit
Realising he had lost a good chunk of his haris, my opponent decides to use Neema to get into the room and start having points in the room to score. However, the Mk.2 Hacker was able to Isolate Neema after two orders he spent trying to blow open the door with her D-charges. The rest of the turn was used to reposition his Helots and then having his Taagma Sniper watching over the lane where I could make one potential run to heal Hippolyta, in which he put unconscious with his Igao after sneaking up my flank. 

Turn 2 ALEPH

The main impetus of the turn was to get my Dakini HMG and Hippolyta to hopefully get more units to engage then get into the Reactor room. The Dakini HMG managed to get back up and managed to force the Taagma down but did not kill him. However for the need of this turn it was good enough.

For the purposes of the this batrep I am going to wrap up Round 3 in general as pretty much the game was sealed at that point. My opponent managed to get Neema out of isolation and then moved into the room. Then Hippolyta ran into the room, took out Neema and then brought the Reactor down to 0 STR with the D-Charges from being the Master Breacher.

The game went to me in a 7-1, as my opponent managed to disable one of the safety looks on his final turn. 

Final Thoughts

This is a little more delayed than I wanted to be, but I wanted to talk about the mission more than the game itself even though it was fun to play. 

My thoughts on it is that it delves into the asymmetrical aspect Infinity that is present in the gameplay, but I feel doesn't get explored in the current design climate of ITS. I may get a few more games in before I have a solid take on Radiation Leak, but I like the main gist of it. 

One thing I really like is that you have a decision tree as the attacking player to either blow it early and force the defending player to repair it, but it also makes it harder for both sides to score points for holding the room. The damage scaling depending on the state of the reactor does also give some incentive for the defending repair it outside of scenario points tied to how much health it has.

The couple critiques I might have is that it falls into the trap of Looting and Sabotaging where it is highly discouraged that you want to repair the Reactor as the defending player, since the failure state is that you are giving your opponent free points if you fail. While this is mitigated by the fact that the reactor always is on the table and can still repair it at 0 STR, it punishes factions with average to below-average WIP (looking at you PanO) if they have to be the defending player.

The main suggestion is that failure state of the engineering skill should not be applied, or perhaps the use of command tokens allowed to reroll failed rolls. 

The second critique is a bit minor but the safety interlocks may not affect the game too much after the door has been blown open by D-charges or whacked with an anti-material CC weapon. The way this could be changed is that you cannot destroy the doors but at the same time, it takes away a tactical option. 


Sorry this took longer than I wanted to get out but I had some IRL stuff that happened and was in a bit of a funk. Currently I am working on a post about Impersonators which is kind of going slow since I am currently not playing a faction who runs them. Hopefully I can get it out soon-ish, but I want to have ALEPH be my main focus for the next few months (I.e around 3 more batreps or so). 

Tune in next time!

Adepticon Tournament Report

So over the last weekend I had participated in the Adepticon 2-Day Satelitte Tournament. While a good amount of our local guys made it down, there was a good amount from the greater Midwest region of the US and a good amount that came from California and other regions. 

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.

Pre-Adepticon Adepticon (or The Evening Setup of The Two Day Tournament)

With Adepticon nearly two weeks away, I can assume many are trying to get painting goals done and trying to work out lists. As for me I am quite excited to come back to Adepticon for my second year, especially since I am planning to do four days' worth of Infinty events. This is something I might regret later but going to enjoy the day of. 

While I am planning to do the narrative event and duos tournament, the main focus of this post is to talk about the five main missions of the ITS event. The mission lineup is Power Pack, Unmasking, Supplies, Countermeasures and Decapitation. The faction I am taking- due in part of Critposting's 'democracy'- is vanilla HaqqIslam. 

In truth, this actually works out well since for the most part HaqqIslam can do all these missions quite easily. For the most part, I have built my lists to tackle the mission line-up. I hope to place in the top half if I can, if not I am there to have fun and see some people I have not seen in a while.

So here is my lists I am planning to take and why I have made my lists like this:

List One: Power Pack/Unmasking/Decapitation 

Since Unmasking and Decapitation require you to kill HVTs, it seemed like a no-brainer to take a list that both ran a regular Fiday and Al-Jabel. If I was going to do that for those missions, I figured I would make this list my Power Pack since I can use the Fidays to either camp on his console to rack up objective points as well as forcing the opponent in an awkward position they would need to deal with turn 1.

Saladin is the lieutenant since he does have NWI and the identity of the LT is known in Decapitation. While it does make him a potential target his value bringing that extra command token and order each turn will help to squeeze out one or two more orders to get the mission done. Hackers and guided missiles are here to give me another attack vector if needed, with my main guns in the list being my Asawira Spitfire in a duo with the Rafiq and Knauf. Zuleyka and of course (and the surprise Krakot) makes an appearance since she will provide corner guard duty and smoke until I can use her to make an attack run to do as much damage as I can.

The rest of the list is my backup specialists like the doctor, as well as the chaff and order monkeys. There is only one Daylami instead of two or more to give me an option to have the Liberto lock down a lane or be a potential held back to lock up any enemy Impersonators to protect Saladin.

List Two: Supplies/Countermeasures

Since these missions are more specialist heavy, I changed a few things around from the other list to this one. Running both the Muhktar and Awasira+Rafiq Duos, this gives me enough coverage on the board to get the supply boxes and most classifieds in the deck. The largest omission in this list is any kind of Engineer. This is due in part to Haqq not having great access to an Engineer that can be generally useful. There is the Govad Engineer but needing other things for my list I decided to leave it out and hope the engineering classifieds do not pop up during the game that is Countermeasures. 

Naffatuns were chosen to be the lieutenant and decoy as the points were needed to have two Ghazis with Jammers to guard the DZ but potentially lock out the opponent's specialists. The Nadhir can act to grab the box in Supplies or stop the opponent from doing so.

Final Thoughts:

While I am happy with these lists for the most part, the one mission I may struggle with the most is Countermeasures if I cannot get the first turn. That said, I am confident in my lists to get it done.

I hope to see you all at Adepticon if you come! 

Update: Lack of Battle Reports and Goals for the Year

Alright I know I've been dead for the past 5 months here but I am alive. November through December tends to be my busy season at work so it leaves me with little gaming time during the Holidays. Also as well I've been playing a lot more HaqqIslam in preparation for Adepticon which while I could write battle reports, it would kind of paint me as a HaqqIslam main which not entirely true. In the future I'll write up a tournament prep post about my lists I am taking, along a tournament write-up with how I did.

As for the main post, I have a few main plans for the year of 2023 when it comes to Infinity.

First off for gaming goals I was planning to restrict myself from two things: a) Not Playing a Sectorial for the entire year and b) Not playing PanO. This is more to challenge myself to kind of go against the grain of my meta being sectorial-centric and kind of challenge my list building by not taking non-duo links. The PanO restriction is more for the fact the last few non-store tournaments I have taken PanO of a certain flavor of PanO and kind of want to get out of my comfort zone to some degree.

After Adepticon I am torn between playing Vanilla Ariadna or Vanilla ALEPH next. One might lean towards the depending of how much of either army is painted. 

As for hobby goals they are more hobby guidelines. The first is to get two of my non-PanO armies to a 95% or where at least most lists I make have 100% painted models in them. Not related to Infinity, but getting back into Blood Bowl with the 2020 ruleset so planning on rounding out my Human team and then picking up two more teams (which I might lean towards the Amazons, Elven Union, Wood Elves and Khorne since those are the ones that most intrigue me).  

Anyways, I plan to have make a post about something Infinity-related but not sure yet. Hopefully before Adepticon.

Battle Report 03: "A Certain Word" the Police (HaqqIslam vs. Starmada)

Hello again, and here is another battle report of my gaming adventures. This game was played on Thursday the 29th of September, against my good friend Vince. I was playing vanilla HaqqIslam yet again, against Vince's Starmada. This would be my second game against Starmada on the blog, but against a different opponent.

The mission was Frontline, playing with the new ITS 14 rules. 

The Lists: 

HaqqIslam: 

I have been running an approximate version of this list for a while now and enjoy it. It for the most part deal with enemy hacking presence outside of Nomads which it might struggle against or the more elite hacking elements of Combined Army like an Anthemathic. The first group also has a lot of orders to push but also Zuleyka to have that expendable attack piece to potentially do some damage, along with a Fiday to either scaple a piece out or in the case of this mission act as points in a zone. 

Knauf also acts as a really good long-range piece of if he has something standing up in ARO to deal with, along with guided to threaten him if needed. 

Starmada:

I will admit I have very little experience with Starmada listbuilding despite this being the second battle report against them. This is also a recreation off memory what he played so the groups may be wrong from what was in the battle, in which I think the core may have been in group one and various other things in group two. This said I think I am confident in saying this is what he was running. 

This said, the basis of this list is solid from what I know about Starmada. He does have some ways to threaten me from all sides and has a few forward deploying models to get into the zones, along with him having a few disposable warbands that can threaten me if I am not aware of how things are deployed. Overall, something I could consider a good list despite the shortcoming of what I see with Starmada and their lack of marker state units and some staples of O12 that they really miss out on. 

Deployment:

Having won the roll-off, I decided to take deployment with the table side I thought would be easier to defend against his attack. He deploys first, setting up his 5-man security team on his right side while his three-man team of Nyokas and a Epislon Multi sniper behind the building. He deploys a baggage bot near his security team but kept it hidden to have it be points in his closest zone for later. Later I would realize he had a Nyoka parachutist with Red Fury, which I had not deployed that well against but could manage to deal it with if it came up.

In my set up, I had Knauf deployed standing up against his Lawkeeper but could not see the Varangian that could move up and throw smoke and forgot his Epislon Multi sniper could get into a position to take a shot at Knauf. 

As a slight spoiler, later in the game I forgot I had my Guided ML bot which would deploy behind the advertisement board which is where I originally was going to place him but came up at a point where his Nyoka was making an attack run in Saladin. 

His held back was a mutlirifle crusher, which deployed on the building where I would eventually put my Taureg hacker in Hidden deployment. Then my held backs go down with my Fiday hiding on the building while the Taureg hacker stayed I hidden deployement to hide from it being hunted down by either his Nyokas, Crusher or his KHD Beta troopers.

Since Starmada had the first turn I docked two orders from him.

Round 1

Turn 1: Starmada

Realizing he had a good chance to shoot Knauf off the board, he impetuous with his Varangian and throws smoke in the area in front of the two saturation zones and Knauf. Next order he then positions his Epislon Multi Sniper to engage Knauf and fires. In a situation where I should have dodge but shooting because I thought there was a recent FAQ that made shooting through smoke with MSV 1 was -3 instead of -6. However, I managed to win the engagement and his Epislon Sniper went down.

This is where my opponent realizes he has good chance to put me in LoL potentially, so he walks in a parachutist Nyoka Red Fury. When walking up to the building he got close to my hacker which I went to spotlight it. This is where I remember that I had missile bot and finally placed it where it was as spoiled before.

So not wanting to take two potential AROs, he goes for my missile bot but my missile bot manages to get a hit and kills the Nyoka. My opponent talked about it at the game but had he ignored the missile and went for Saladin I potentially would have been in a worse position since I'd be starting in LoL for my first turn. 

The last couple things for that turn he used his Crusher to get the Sabotage classified and bunkered up on top of the center building. Then he went on an attack run with his Betatrooper KHD went my Ghazi set up to run in and attack next turn due to dodges and Knauf finally being killed.

Turn 1: HaqqIslam

Since his Crusher had a good position to see my ghazi on the right and middle, the units that went impetuous was the BSG+E/Marat Ghazi on the farmost left and threw smoke. During this I spent and order to move the Ghazi up the stairs and took a shot at the Betatrooper, but the Betatrooper managed to make its dodge. Then I spent Zuleyka's actual order since I did not want to risk losing Zuleyka to his turret, which she then threw smoke down to block its line of sight. Then the Muhktar Duo moved up, with the Red Fury having to take a couple orders to shoot his turret off the table. 

The rest of the turn was me repositioning my Muhktar duo back, then the last couple orders I had one of my Barid KHDs in essence bully the Betatrooper which he takes a wound here. Then I spent the remaining orders with the Ghazis group to take out the Betatrooper and complete my Extreme Prejudice classified.

Round 2

Turn 2: Starmada

Since Knauf was out of the picture, my opponent was able to run his Lawkeeper up the board so he could attack Saladin and attempt to put me in Loss of Lieutenant. In this he managed to get my Missile bot down, but my turret managed to hold him up for a couple orders. Then his bike went up, soon engaging Saladin but Saladin managed to tank his saves while his Lawkeeper went down. Then she switches tactics to his Crusher which he attacks my Ghazi but the ghazi but the ghazi managed to make both it's dodges on the two orders be spent on the crusher to hide.

The other thing of note in his turn is that his Nyoka Multirifle to attack my Muhktar hacker, which in the exchange it loses and then goes unconscious. In the process, I had realized I scored Telemetry earlier because of the spotlight AROs.

Turn 2: HaqqIslam

Deciding that the Ghazi was in a good position to attack, he uses his impetuous order to run up against the Crusher. The Crusher elects to Nanopulser me and the Barid KHD nearby in which tanked it save but the Ghazi went dogged but managed to kill the Crusher that was already in NWI.

I realized too late that I could have just put my Ghazi unconscious instead of Dogged to score the Experimental Drug classified but was kind of too late in the turn to dial it back.

During this turn though is when Zuleyka went on her attack run, which managed to force the Nyoka down but also put his flash pulse bot unconscious after doing some damage. The rest of turn was me shifting my duo around along with my BSG Ghazi who managed to kill his baggage bot to strip orders but also trying to avoid putting him in retreat. Which granted if I did in turn 2 I think I would have scored a 10-2 victory looking back at that game. However, I do think I was limited on orders to do both exactly so it would have been hard to pull off.

Round 3

Since the last round me and my opponent did not do much, I figured I'd wrap it up with a general idea how it went. Since he was a little over the threshold of retreat, he still had his orders to push his link team up into his closest zone. He engages Zuleyka once, but she manages to toss her smoke and ends that fight.

My turn then comes around, which I reveal my hidden deployed Taureg hacker to have him be points in the zone. This as well I reposition models to secure points in zones I know I can dominate. 

I end up winning 5-2 because I had my closest and middle zone with two classifieds, and he had his closest zone and a classified.

Final Thoughts:

While I think most of the game had gone in my favor, I think it could have gone in my opponent's favor and would have been a harder game if he had managed to put me in Loss of Lieutenant. The Deployment of Knauf was definitely risky but I feel if he was not watching the Law Keeper he would have done a lot of damage along with it. 

Anyways, fun game to my opponent and hope to see you soon!

Since it is October, it means it is Haqqtober. For now, I am maining vanilla Haqq more than I'd usually would but soon I'll be going back to my first love of PanOceania and give MO a go. 

First Impressions (Hot Takes) on ITS 14

So figured I'd get out my opinions on ITS 14 since I have not yet managed to play it yet but read over the document. These opinions are bound to change, and not to be taken as law. With that out of the way, let's begin.

Main Takeaways:

Let me state that I still have a deep love for the game and get a good amount of enjoyment. Infinity is one of the most dynamic and for the most part well-balanced games on the market with a great amount of depth.

This said, I think the newest season kind of plays it a little too safe with a majority of the missions being action oriented than objective focused as it was back in N3. It also reuses some of the rules back in season 12 where I thought it would go into using Jungle terrain or so. As well, all the missions stayed with the inclusion of one more, whereas I would have liked to see a few of the missions to go away in favor of some new ones. This is particularly the case when some of the missions to be similar to some extent (example being Supremacy and Quadrant control).

This said, I will give Corvus Belli on a couple things they've done in season 14.

1) The creation of Direct Action Missions is a good way to introduce new players into ITS. Considering newer players may not have access to HVTs and a classified desk it is a good way to ease them in. While I'd would of like them to have different but easy to understand missions instead of the four of them being various of reskins of other missions, they work for what they are. 

2) The new mission Cryogenics on paper does seem like a good mix of both a combat mission but also trying to press the buttons in order to get the advantage over your opponent. From what I've read so far, it seems that the advantage of having second turn and scoring the lionshare of the points is somewhat diminished now that the first player could lock the second player out of two points if first player flips three of the four consoles. 

Now onto what I find to be...

The 'Free' Elephant in the Room

I thought I'd put the new Tachimoto rules and free units in this section because I found them to be the same thing for each season it does come into effect. 

What I mean by this is that these are concerted efforts for CB to test a specific set of rules on a unit or push people to buy some models to get the advantage of the full rules for this season. I don't find this to be too egregious for veteran plays but it could be a burden on new players trying to get into the game.

The Tachimoto rule is more to push Forward observer bots into play, or at least seems thay way with them gaining Marksmanship and a Tactical Awareness order. I find this a little surprising since those type of troops are a great toolbox but them getting a bonus might have me take them more often than I do in my list building at times (which is to say not that often but not rarely as well). 

For the free units you get this season in form of the Bashi Bazouks and CSU, I think these are better than the Motorized Bounty Hunters because with MBH I found anctedotially 9/10 times people had chosen the Red Fury profile because you were getting a burst four gun for free. 

Now with the Bashis and CSUs I think there are cases to which profile you want to take, being that the profiles for the both of them have a different toolkit that can play well into different match ups. Whether this plays out in the next few months in practice is to be determined. 

Concluding Thoughts

While I wish CB did more to go back to the more objective-focused nature of Infinity, I still think this season is alright on paper. Though it could be much better by taking a few more risks by cycling out missions that are similar for one or the other, but also having more Direct action missions down the line.

This said, I am going to give this season a go and then reflect on it with enough time. For now, hope to see you in the next batrep or post I write!

Battle Report 02: (Somewhat) Irregular HaqqIslam Division (HaqqIslam Vs. Starmada)

 Heya, I figured I'd write up another battle report, this time writing one up for WiseKensai's Bromad Academy challenge. 

As a little disclaimer, I was going to write up a tournament report for one I participated a few weeks ago but I had lost the photos and one of my games was a bye, so I kind of lost the motivation to write it up. Though in the future, I'll definitely get one out even if I get a bye game I play. 

Moving onto the actual battle report, me and my opponent agreed to do a classic mission Hunting Party with the matchup being my HaqqIslam versus Starmada. If you are not familiar with the mission before, it was in previous ITS seasons in N3 but never got ported over to N4. Which I do find a shame because it is a mission where you cannot outright kill your opponent but have to 'capture' them in order to score points on top of having a couple buttons to press. In order to make it work, everyone gets stun pistols that shoot rounds that immobilize-A (for the purposes of this game, we treated them being like adhesive launchers that shoot at the range of a pistol), and veterans get adhesive launchers. 

HaqqIslam List:

Dice Abide Irregular challenge

──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1  8  / 2  / 1

 SALADIN (Lieutenant [+1 Command Token]) Combi Rifle, Nanopulser(+1B) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 36)

 MUKHTAR (Multispectral Visor L2) Red Fury, Nanopulser(+1B) ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 36)

 MUKHTAR (Hacker, Hacking Device) Rifle, Light Shotgun, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 31)

 BARID (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device [UPGRADE: Trinity (-3)]) Rifle, Pitcher ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15)

 BARID (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device [UPGRADE: Trinity (-3)]) Rifle, Pitcher ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15)

 SHAYTANIYAH REMOTE Missile Launcher / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1.5 | 16)

 KNAUF MULTI Sniper Rifle / AP Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 32)

 FIDAY Rifle, Light Shotgun, Shock Mines, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 27)

 HUNZAKUT  (Forward Observer) Rifle, Light Shotgun, Shock Mines ( | Deployable Repeater) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 18)

 ZULEYKA Light Flamethrower(+1B), Smoke Grenades / Breaker Pistol(+2B), EXP CC Weapon. (0 | 12)

GROUP 23  

 LIBERTO (Minelayer) Light Shotgun, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 8)

 HAWWA' (Hacker, Hacking Device) Boarding Shotgun, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 26)

 GHULAM (Doctor [+3]) Rifle, Light Shotgun ( | MediKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15)

 NASMAT PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 3)

 DAYLAMI (Camouflage [1 Use], Infiltration) Light Shotgun, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 8)

 WARCOR (360º Visor) Flash Pulse ( ) / Stun Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 3)

 6 SWC | 301 Points

(Disclaimer: This list was played on the weekend before the change to ITS 14 so this list reflects what would have been a legal list in ITS 13)

Starmada List:

Opponent's List

──────────────────────────────────────────────────

 10  

 SALADIN (Lieutenant [+1 Command Token]) Combi Rifle, Nanopulser(+1B) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 34)

 NYOKA (Forward Observer) MULTI Rifle, Chain-colt / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 23)

 EPSILON Heavy Machine Gun, Nanopulser / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 35)

 SHONA CARANO Submachine Gun, Nanopulser(+1B), Flash Pulse / Pistol, EXP CC Weapon. (0 | 27)

 CHAKSA LONGARM Missile Launcher, Pulzar / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 25)

 CHAKSA LONGARM Portable Autocannon, Pulzar / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 30)

 PSI-COp (Hacker, Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Nanopulser(+1B) ( ) / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 24)

 KNIGHT OF SANTIAGO (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, D-Charges ( | TinBot: Firewall [-3]) / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 39)

 BRONZE Red Fury(+1 Dam) / Pistol, E/M CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (1 | 56)

 KYTTÄ Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7)

 6 SWC | 300 Points

Initative Roll:

Winner: Starmada

Turn Order: Starmada
Deployment: HaqqIslam

Since my opponent decided on first turn, I elected to have him deploy first. Which he had a duo of a Bronze Red Fury+Santiago KHD on his right-hand side, with a Chaksa Longarms in the middle and a three-man core of a Epsilon HMG, Shona Corano, and Nyoka FO in the link. The Chaksa Longarms haris was three models he held in reserve thanks to Saladin and a command token. 

I deployed rather defensively save for the Daylami standing up and Fiday more forward than it should have been to force him to waste orders on it in theory. I also spread out my models to counter-deploy against a potential alpha strike he could have used to get into my DZ. The Liberto held down the left flank to have the HI duo slow down its potential advance some distance behind the Fiday. 

Round One:

Turn one: Starmada

Since he had only one command group, I strip two orders out of it but left him with 9 out of realistically 11 because of Saladin. Most of the turn, he moved up his duo to engage the Fiday with his Santiago and my camo Daylami with his Bronze Red Fury in the next few orders. He tries to discover with the knight but fails. Then he activates his Bronze Red Fury after he had managed to get the Daylami out of camo with his flash pulse both IIRC. While not the best situation I had my Daylami in, I decided to dodge to save my panzerfaust rounds I decide to dodge out of the way. While I had failed, I managed to pass both my armor saves he got on me and fail guts to go prone and out of line of sight. 

He decides then to use his Bronze to discover my Fiday, which he eventually does over the course of three orders to down him. The Knight then attacks him with a template, which I do the same but goes unconcious while his Santiago makes his save. Then he moves his Bronze back up on top of the building and holds it in ARO. 

Turn One: HaqqIslam

I needed to get rid of both the ML Chaksa Longarms that was standing up in ARO and potentially the Bronze if it could be done. So Zulyeka runs up with her bike with impetuous to move into a good position to throw smoke in the next order or so. However with must frustration and annoyance what should have been one order turn into three or four, and only block the line of the sight of the Bronze. So from there Knauf engaged ML Chaksa Longarms, but took orders to take him down. Then attacked the Bronze through smoke, which managed to oneshot him. 

This left me a few orders left, so I elected to do a coordinated order to move both my hacker and Knauf, this time moving Knauf out of line of sight and moving the Barid up to shoot his pitcher to land spotlight on his three-man core. With the few remaining orders in that group, Zuleyka moved back into full cover. 

Using my second order group then, the Panzerfaust Daylami stood back up and then the Liberto walked up to his Knight. While I went into this engagement expecting my Liberto to die and take a few orders to possibly kill the Santiago or at least put a wound on him, I got really lucky and one-shot his knight while my Liberto managed to tank his BTS save from the Nanopulser. The last order is him moving towards the wall and laying down a mine. 

Round 2: 

Turn Two: Starmada

Killing three out of 10 units in his list was a good trade for losing my Fiday's mispositioning, but he still had Saladin around and had a total of nine orders to play around with. So, in essence I did bring him down to his original orders he had after stripping two orders turn one. For the most part, his turn was him moving up his three-man core. I managed to get a few spotlights on the Epsilon HMG and Shona, but he managed to kill the Daylami and have Shona get into CC with my Mukhtar Red Fury and downed him. Other things of note for the turn is his Nyoka FO was immobilized in places, which gave me a point on the board. Then he spends a couple other orders to reposition his Epislon HMG and his flash pulse bot, but also Shona engaged Knauf but Knauf managed to live. During this my opponent managed to get the Predator classified IIRC. 

Turn Two: HaqqIslam

So in a slightly panicked state, I had moved Saladin up to try and shoot Shona to dislodge her and save Knauf. Which going as bad as I potentially expected, all my shots went into Knauf but he saved all but one so was just unconscious which I did not wish to happen. Then using the Hunzakut I had on the side and was not doing anything with, I shuffled the Hunzakut to engage Sona. Doing a surprise shot into Shona, she makes her dodge on a crit and engages with my Hunzakut which puts my progress back to square one. Not wanting to lose more models that could not act as shields for Saladin, I stop spending orders on that and view it as a lost cause for the most part. During this time his Nyoka managed to reset out of immobilized but managed to immobilize the FO again.

That's when we shift over to the one irregular order left on the Liberto in the second group, which for the most part I use to put his unconscious Santiago KHD in the immobilized state. This gives me another specialist of his locked down. There, we then reposition Zuleyka to engage Shona if she manages to escape. Before my turn ends my Al Hawwa Hacker managed to score the HVT hacking classified

Round 3

Turn 3: Starmada

Being that he is still down on points, he attempts to tie on specialists captured. Which due to my desperate play of trying to lock down Shona, she manages to immobilize the Hunzakut.  There, he then moved up with his flash pulse bot and then repositioned his ML Chaksa Longarm watching the lane Zukelya will go down if she takes impetuous. This also gives him a chance to lock down my Al Hawwa hacker, which he manages to immobilize instead of isolate. 

Turn 3: HaqqIslam

I needed to reset my Al Hawwa out of isolate but had to get rid of his flash pulse bot to do it. Zuleyka goes in to try and do it but she gets stunned by it after it passed all of its armor saves. Funny enough she does get hit with the missile but tanks all her armor saves. Since I could not make another attack with Zuleyka, the Liberto Minelayer is left to do it but manages to make it happen as the Flash pulse bot goes down. Next, I spend a few orders to get my Al Hawwa hacker out of its immobilized state, which takes his points off the board  I then use the Barid KHD and presses one of the consoles, which no wanting to risk any more potential danger I call the game there with me in the lead. 


HaqqIslam wins 5-1

Final Thoughts:

While the Hunzakut play could have been much better by laying a mine or two to deter Shona to some extent, I think it was the best play I could have done to stop Shona from getting to Saladin. 

While I am planning on playing HaqqIslam for the next few months, I think HaqqIslam is the premier faction to highlight irregular orders so I built my list to include what I find to be the four main archetypes.

1. The Impetuous troopers (as played by Zuleyka in this battle report)

While not all Impetuous troopers are irregular, I would say a good majority of profiles with impetuous tend to have the irregular order. Which I find gets used to great effect to push order efficiency unless you are put into a position where the trooper in question is locked in a place that is hard to move forward. However, these troopers tend to be very inexpensive and can be good to soften up your opponent's deployment zone if it is allowed to get into it. 

Granted in the game Zuleyka only provided smoke for Knauf and act as an corner guard, but if my opponent did not have something standing up then Zuleyka could have ran into his DZ to cause a lot of damage and potentially take out his haris if she could get in position. 

2. Roadblocks and Piecetraders (as played by the Daylami and Liberto in this battle report)

As this describes, this is irregular orders that may not do much but be ARO pieces during the game for the most part. However, they have the potential to trade up their points value tenfold if they get a good shot in ARO or have the orders to spend can reposition or go on the attack. Which either they may die without killing anything (which is more what happens statistically) or can ruin your opponent's gameplay if they managed to get a lucky roll. The main point is that this type of irregular unit is meant to 

In this case, my Daylami managed to delay my opponent for a few orders and my Liberto managed to make nearly six times his points during the game and would say was the lynchpin of making me able to win the game. 

3. Off-table Piece (as played by Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Battle-Report)

While not part of my list in this game, it fits the role of something like the Bashi Bazouk or Yuan Yaun. Here, this would be a piece were it comes in and either becomes a nuisance for your opponent or clear your opponent's midfield of mines and other items. This said, the Bashi Bazouk has the benefit of a specialist profile to press buttons if the mission calls for it. 

Due to the board set up, I think it would have been hard to benefit with a Bashi in the list if my opponent expected one to come up on the board as there are no good sides with enough coverage to land. However, if his stuff was cleared up it definitely would have been easier to do so without any threat. 

4. The Inexpensive toolbox (as played by the Hunzakut FO in this battle report)

This could encapsulate a lot of different roles, but in this case, it was my Hunzakut. This would be the kind of irregular piece that can be used to move up and press buttons or set up the board state to make it more adventurous to the player in question.

If I was a bit smarter with the play of my Hunzakut this game, then I would have used it to possibly lay down a repeater on a group of my opponent's models to spotlight them, press the button on one of the consoles or put mines around Shona to make it a less appealing prospect to attack Shona. This said, the Hunzakut did alright for what it did this game in trying up Shona.

I may write a blog on this topic down the line, but the general gist is that running irregular orders requires a balance between regular and irregular orders or else your order pool begins to lack the resources to get the mission done. 

Well this took a bit longer than I wanted to get out but I hope to get another report out soon! Next tournament I do promise to write up too! 

Tune in next time as I possibly post my first impressions of the new ITS packet.