My list ended up looking something like this (from memory):
AT-RT
- Rotary Cannon
AT-RT
- Laser Cannon
Han Solo
- Duck and Cover
- Emergency Stims
- Esteemed Leader
1.4 FD Laser Cannon
- HQ Uplink
Rebel Troopers
Rebel Troopers
- Z-6 Trooper
- Rebel Trooper
- Targeting Scopes
- Frag Grenade
Rebel Troopers
- Z-6 Trooper
- Rebel Trooper
- Targeting Scopes
- Frag Grenade
Fleet Troopers
- Scatter Gun Trooper
- Fleet Trooper
- Recon Intel
- Blast Grenade
Rebel Commandos
- Duck and Cover
Rebel Commando Strike Team
- Sniper
After hearing lots of good things about them from Daniel and Fish, I wanted to try out the AT-RTs. They would be used to provide covering fire for a main pushing force of Han, generic troopers to take Esteemed Leader hits for him, Fleet Troopers, Rebel Commandos. On the other flank, I planned to anchor things on the laser cannon with my sniper team and two decked out squads of troopers to lay down covering fire and pin anything that advancing towards them.
Hubert brought four decked out squads of stormtroopers, each bearing the legendary DLT-19. Add in 2 squads of snowtroopers with flamethrowers, speeder bikes, and Veers, and you had a Corps heavy Imperial Army with a lot of anti-infantry potential.
Daniel set up the table for us, with a mixture of barricades and Heroscape terrain. We made a house ruling on climbing, and treated all elevation changes below three tiles as difficult terrain for the purposes of movement. I will say though, trying to determine cover in this game continues to frustrate me no end. I desperately want something more like XCOM, with clearly defined cover. Here, it's all open to interpretation, and much of the game involves angling and maneuvering to try and get that critical half of the enemy squad with more than 50% exposed. I just don't know how this is handled in tournament settings, as I could see this easily sparking arguments. Hubert and I at least had Daniel and Fish to play arbiters to this end. At the very least, I think I finally understand how scoping works, and range, although I'll still struggling with figuring out where to place individual squad members when I move squads. On the plus side, we as a group finally figured out how suppression works! To me though, cover just adds a simultaneously critical and tedious layer to the game, and I miss the charming simplicity of finding range in Armada.
Anyway, on to the game!
I more or less got to deploy how I wanted, and I was able to use Change of Plans turn one to return Maximum Firepower to Hubert's hand. My plan from the start was to focus on suppressing the Snow Troopers and prevent them from getting close enough to do real damage. However, my opening rolls were pretty lackluster, and I made the mistake of moving my sniper team to close to be utterly obliterated by his speeders coming in from the left flank.
On the right flank, his speeders closed into range 2 of my Laser Cannon AT-RT, and due to us misunderstanding minimum range, I thought I had to have him out of the range two section of the range ruler to fire upon him. I was able to back up and fire, but this move cost me an aim token.
Turn 2 opened with Hubert scoring a massive hit with maximum firepower on my AT-RT and polishing it off with a rocket. However, I was able to nuke one speeder bike on each flank (mopping up the following one from each duo on t3), all the while finally beginning to start whittling down the snowtroopers approaching on either side. This cut down on the incoming fire, but Hubert's main force of stormtroopers remained untouched.
In the center of the battlefield were my plucky fleet troopers, who endured a barrage of fire but somehow managed to stay alive long enough to panic and run for the rear of the board.
As you can see here, there really isn't so much of a "push" going on with my right so much as a bloody exchange of fire. I do want to give a shout out to my 1.4 FD laser cannon though, providing a base of consistent fire throughout the entire game.
I shoved up Han to get into position to use his Gunslinger and engage the snowtroopers in close range since the flamethrower was ineffective against him.
Han was an absolute monster this game, proving extremely tanky with the combination of Duck and Cover and Low Profile. I flubbed using his Esteemed Leader with my generic trooper squad and forgot about his emergency stims, yet he still lasted forever with clutch rolls from Uncanny Luck. However, the snowtrooper squad on the right was able to bypass him and eliminated by generic trooper in one pillar of flame, a disappointing outcome after I had spent much of the game suppressing it and whittling it down. Han shot up over half a dozen troopers on his perch above though, and eventually Hubert turned all of his free stormtroopers to focus him. At one point he had 8 suppression, and finally died right before he could panic.
On the left, a similar tragedy befell my trooper squads, as the depleted snowtroopers finally became un-suppressed and moved up to nail 4 of my guys with their flamethrower. This was a major flub on my part, as I just didn't focus fire on them hard enough and allowed them to get too close. I left this game with a healthy respect for snowtroopers, as both punched above their weight, killing six opposing troopers each. The one of the far left held off my two decked out trooper squads for half the game and went 1 for 1 in kills before finally going down.
We ended on turn 6, calculating points lost and determining I had prevailed to the tune of a mere 5 points.
Still, the game was for all intents and purposes a bloodbath, and I feel like I made far more mistakes than I made solid moves. My biggest advantage was an army comp that seemed to work pretty well against Hubert's corps spam.
I continue to love the laser cannon, and units that can take Duck and Cover with Low Profile are super nice since you can effectively ignore the whole cover game and just focus on location on the battlefield. Han is a monster, and I think his deck of cards could be really strong combined with a more supportive leader like Leia who can throw out dodge tokens. I don't like heroes as a concept, but I will say I definitely would have liked to have a second leader this game since Han couldn't do much to help his corps and I had a holding force with no commander morale bubble. As for AT-RT's...eh, I conceptually understand that they are cheap sources of awesome armored firepower, but I wasn't blown away by their performance this game. Granted, a lot of that had to do with Veers.
On the plus side, I feel like I finally understand how to play Legion....mostly. Now to learn how to use Objectives. Hopefully Hubert gets his SSD soon though, as that is the table-top game I am really looking forward to.
Good game Hubert as always!
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