Continuing on from part one...

Mission Three - Central Seizure

Overview - divided forces are approaching a ruined alien spacecraft from different directions. The table was divided into quarters, with the winner of the initiative roll-off having his two forces deploy in random quarters. The other player then took the other two quarters. Each player's forces had to be split into two Combat Groups, each with at least 140 points in it.

The objectives were to get into the spaceship, shut down a security system that did nasty things to people inside the ship, put down beacons in the ship, stabilise some systems inside the ship and check out some consoles outside the ship. All of these required either Hackers or Engineers (but could be done remotely) except placing the beacons which could be done by any 'Specialist'. For what counts as a Specialist see the Prisoner 09 mission or the New Rules PDF for more details, but the Forward Observer models listed below count for this.

Plan & List - it was after 6pm by now and it had been a long day already so 'plan' is probably a bit too strong a word, there was definitely a comment from Carlos along the lines of 'It isn't your list that matters, bwa ha haa!' while I was sitting there struggling to write an appropriate list and divide it into two roughly equal Combat Groups... 

I ended up with one group containing an Interventor Hacker Lieutenant, Clockmaker with two helperbots, Maasai Forward Observer with Koalas, Tsyklon with Spitfire and a Zero Forward Observer and my Spec Ops Hacker. The other group contained a Chimera, Spektr MULTI Sniper, Lunokhod with Koalas, another Zero FO, two moderators, a Transductor Zond (effectively a walking Repeater for increased hacking range) and an EVO Repeater.

My opponent was Slasher from the Infinity forums (who was also using Nomads), he won the roll-off and ended up in opposite corners of the table.

This was another table that was a bit short on LoF-blocking terrain but I've a suspicion that was an attempt to make the game go faster due to the lateness in the day - an attempt which failed...

Deployment & Early Game - knowing that Slasher was going first made my deployment particularly tricky as there literally wasn't enough terrain in my deployment zones to hide everyone unless they were prone. Which wasn't going to happen as my Remotes couldn't go prone and having the Impetuous Chimera start prone is a recipe for disaster as it means her first order of the game would be to stand up and run forwards into the teeth of the enemy guns without even getting a chance to Dodge or throw a smoke grenade.

Slasher made good use of the first turn, using a combination of a Mobile Brigada powered infantry with HMG and then an Intruder HMG (ah, the irony, I'd forgotten/ran out of points when it came to including one!) to shoot through the two patches of woodland and take down my Lunokhod Remote, one of it's Koalas, the Zero next to it, my Maasai and one of his Koalas and one of the Clockmaker's helperbots. The only up side was having my two prone Moderators manage to shoot down one of Slasher's Morlocks. 

Starting my first turn with rather fewer models than I'd hoped but still regarding myself as having got off lightly, the Chimera (who had spent most of Slasher's turn ARO-Dodging towards his models) went into attack mode, passing out of the line of sight of the Mobile Brigada HMG with the help of a strategically-placed zero-vis smoke grenade before rounding on the re-camouflaged Intruder HMG who had left himself too far forwards. Rather than wait for me to try and discover the camo marker or attack it with the Chimera's Nanopular template weapon, he opened up on one of the two visible Pupniks, managing to kill it.

The Chimera was not happy about one of her pets being shot and proceeded to advance along the inside of a wrecked Rhino, allowing the Pupniks to reach the Intruder without revealing the Chimera to the Intruder.

Om nom nom nom, a lovely Intruder starter!

The Chimera and Pupniks then advanced towards the chaos ruin hill that the rest of that corner's enemy models were behind, leaping on Slasher's Interventor Hacker and devouring her in short order, again with the Chimera staying back out of sight.

My other combat group started laying down Spitfire shots on the Mobile Brigada HMG and also on Zoe who was standing behind a low hill, eventually putting a wound on the MB HMG and making Zoe drop down out of sight. One Hacker down, one Hacker/Engineer to go...

Mid to End Game - the table quarter containing the Chimera echoed with cries of 'Oh my god, get that thing away from me-aarrgh!' as the Pupniks went on an ARO-Dodge-into-combat frenzy, eating both Morlocks when they tried to attack, then Dodging into combat when other models tried to shoot them.

Slasher's Zoe managed to to open one of the spaceship doors and stabilise the systems via a helperbot and Pi-Well managed to reach the doorway of the spaceship.

My Spektr sniper uncloaked and shot down all the Alguaciles covering the gap between my Transductor Zond and the nearest external console, letting the Interventor hack it through the Transductor's Repeater, taking us up to two objective points each. The Chimera tried to eat the Alguacile HMG (the last of Slasher's models in that table quarter) that had managed to shoot the Pupniks but took a pistol shot to the face.

In a last ditch attempt I sent the Tsyklon forwards towards the other external console but had to do a move-move order to reach it and the Tsyklon went down to a lucky reaction shot before my Interventor could hack the second console through it.

I still managed to edge a win due to Slasher's forces now being in retreat but it was a close run thing!

Campaign End

This left me as the highest-ranked player of group two and Alex/SleepAmoeba from Reading as the winner of group one.

What do points mean? Points mean prizes!

Scarface & Cordelia, wooo! These are likely to see a good amount of use in our club's upcoming Campaign: Paradiso run-though, both as their actual profiles and with Scarface standing in for the unreleased Iguana and Gecko TAGs. If you're not familiar with Infinity terms, the TAGs (Tactical Armoured Gears) are the heaviset troops in the game and are very roughly to Dreadnoughts in 40k, although they're much more mobile and varied.

Wrapping Up, Painting Competition

A few of the players who hadn't got through to the third mission (it was only played by the top two players in each group) had had to leave as it was getting quite late by now but everyone who was still there put their army out on one of the clear tables so that Carlos could look through them and decide which he thought were the nicest paint jobs.

Ian's Nomads on top of their custom carry case.

James' Morats.PanOceanian forces.Yu Jing.ALEPH scum.Robin's Haqqislam.Massed Ariadnans.The painted part of John's forces from the second game.More Haqqislam.Tom's Haqqislam from the first game.

Now the winners as chosen by Carlos, and I agree with his choices. :-)

Winning Haqqislam army.Carlos presenting the first winner (sorry I can't remember your name!) with concept art.This was a discarded concept sketch for Margot.

Richard's Ariadna force came second.Making him very happy he'd driven all the way up from Devon with me!

After a long and full day we finally packed up and drove away.

Thanks again to Carlos, Juan and the TTN staff for a great day and if there's another one I'll make sure to bring along a few boxes of spare scenery. ;-)

I'd been going to put an analysis of how Campaign: Paradiso is going to change people's armies and how they play the game, but the event report got quite long enough as it is...

Ian

Update:

View the group panorama here.