I am a sneaky git, but I have a table

The next round of the Infinity Escalation League is finished. In a suspense-packed game that was entertaining to the last order, Henning's Yu Jing force met my Haqqislam soldiers. It was also the first real game played on my newly built gaming table, which has now been appropriately consecrated with dice.

Round 5: Fight!

The mission was capture the antenna. Three Antennas along the middle, in a right angle to our deployment zone. I fielded the following:

A specialist team made up of an Al'Hawwa Hacker, a Hunzakut Forward Observer, a Kaplan Doc, a Ghulam Doc and a Tuareg Hacker.
Fire support was provided by a Djanbazan with HMG, a Lasiq Sniper. Two Naffatun joined in as cheerleaders and to introduce any camouflage to a face full of flame.
A Fiday and two Ghazi Muttawi'ah to occupy the midfield, as well as a Ragik ready to punch from aerial deployment completed the troops. All of this was commanded by a Hafza Lieutenant.
View it in Army 5

My enemy fielded (from memory) a Bao Sniper, a Ninja Hacker, two Guilang FOs, an Oniwaban, two remotes (one of the MSV2 variety and one of the Holoprojector thingies), a Keisotsu, a Tiger soldier paramedic, all commanded by a Daofei with Spitfire.

It's called tabletop because you set your gaming table atop another table
and play on top of that.

Deployment

I drew Telemetry as a classified objective, as well as the repair a drone one. Made for an easy choice considering my lack of any drones or TAGS. I won the roll of and went second.
My Lasiq and Djanbazan deployed so they had a good view of the Antenna on my side, as well as one angle of approach to the middle one. The Ghulam Doc lay down on the roof close to the Lasiq ready to render medical assistance.
Kaplan, Naffatun and my Hafza (disguised as a Spitfire Odalisque) set up in a container yard to my right, covering themselves against airdrops. The two Ghazi went to the left, ready to make a flanking dash for the center antenna and be a nuisance.
My Hunzakut snuck up behind the garage on the left. The Al'Hawwa set up forward to the right, covered by some crates. The Tuareg switched on his thermooptic camouflage and lay in waiting behind a container close by the middle objective. The Ragik received orders to attack from my right flank.
My Fiday, once again impersonating Gogo Marlene, hid a little left of the center, behind yet another container.

The general game plan was: Draw Henning's forces forward and to the left. Whittle them down as much as possible with mines and crossfire, then sucker punch from behind with the Ragik and Tuareg. Throw the Kaplan Doc forward supported by the Naffatun and take the middle.


Henning set up his troopers with good firing lanes. The MSV2 remote covered the approach of my Fiday and Ghazis, as well as the garage, the Hunzakut was hiding behind. The Bao sniper took a rooftop with a good view. The other Remote holoed as an Aragoto, various came tokens hid near the midline. Ninja and Oniwaban used their TO camouflage and deployed hidden. Keisotsu hid in the back.

First turn
Do you know the saying, "No battleplan survives contact with the enemy." Well, first turn left mine bruised and bloody on the ground.

The Bao took full advantage of my offensive fire base and first took out my Lasiq and then my Djanbazan and with DA ammo nonetheless, putting them beyond the reach of even Haqqislam's vaunted doctors. Then I think the fake Aragoto advanced and revealed itself as a Remote. I had already been scrambling plans how to deal with it, so I was relieved to see it was "merely" a drone. The Daofei revealed and sprayed one of my Naffatun with hot lead from his Spitfire, leaving her unconscious.

In my turn, the Ghazi, true to their name stormed forward. One of them took a hit, but dogged kept him on his feet. He promptly used his Jammer to fry any communications equipment on one of the Guilangs, leaving him in an isolated state. The Kaplan managed to get my Naffatun back on her feet, advanced and took the objective on my side of the table, before scurrying back into cover.
I believe I also had my Hunzakut drop a mine and recamo.

Foxtrot masquerading as Hunzakut since they favor stylish headwear
and forward observing

Second turn
Yu Jing moved in. The Bao took a higher position atop a roof. The MSV2 remote also moved up. covering the approach of my Ghazi, Hunzakut and Fiday. The other Remote moved closer to the middle antenna which my Al'Hawwa took as an opportunity to hook it up to 4chan, immobilizing it for the next two rounds under an avalanche of terrible fan fiction.

Kirk is an Ocelot? Does not compute. DOES NOT COMPUTE! ERROR! ERROR!!!

The Tiger moved in from the right and fired at my Al'Hawwa, but he was close enough for my Boarding Shotgun to do its work, leaving him unconscious. That earned him the ire of the Daofei, though, who moved around the corner and dropped him with a Spitfire burst, before retiring back behind a building.
The Ninja hacker revealed and took the middle antenna, as well as an Guilang, who took the antenna on Henning's side. Also, my Kaplan died, I think from the combirifle of the Oniwaban.

At this point I was very tempted to go all in with my Tuareg and Ragik, but after a consultation with my inner Captain Jack Sparrow. ("Wait for the opportune moment!") I decided to only drop in the Ragik. The Ghazi who was left, ran the gauntlet, triggered a mine, dodged and managed to Jammer the Oniwaban, but only revealed him.
The Ragik walked in from the right and opened fire at the Daofei. And after a lot of ineffective shooting, he managed to actually drop her, but with himself in the Dogged state, ready to drop dead once my turn ended. Apparently my dice really don't like me playing sneaky.

Not pictured: invisible Tuareg

Well, screw you dice! At this point anyone, who can not provide orders for my Tuareg or take objectives is expendable. I tried to at least secure the Classified and Forward Observe the Bao with my Hunzakut. Once again, DA ammo left my trooper in the dirt. With my last orders, I prepared to  secure my objective, as well as my troopers lives as best as I could. The Fiday dropped a mine, leaving impersonation, to set up a double are on my Antenna.


Third turn 
Luckily, my heroic Ragik had actually put Henning's force in Loss of Lieutenant, so he was hampered by an entirely irregular force. His Ninja made a dash for the antenna at my side, but fell to an ARO. Then he moved everyone of his troopers up, to cover the mid and set up AROs, while I tried my best  at channeling Hassan-i Sabbah, looking calm and not get excited as one after the other, his troopers moved away from my Tuaregs hiding spot. Well, mostly.

This picture is not chronologically correct here, but it shows the relevant area

I felt a bit bad for what happened then. My Tuareg revealed, only to immediately dodge a mine blast. I moved him into my first combat group, giving him about five orders to play with. He made a dash for the antenna on Henning's side and with Haqqislam's high willpower, had no problems flipping the switch. Next, he successfully managed to use his Hacking Device to mark a Guilang, netting me the Classified Objective.
Then, I tried to go for some more tiebreaker points and shot at the Guilang knocking him out. And promptly got myself shot unconscious by the Bao.

Score
Henning had one antenna and secured his HVT as well as mine, netting him four points
The Tuareg nicking the antenna and completing the classified ended the game with seven points for me.

Haqqislam wins 7:4 (90:114)!


What have I learned?

1. Hidden deployment is great if your enemy does not see it coming. I will now be fielding my Tuareg more often and eagerly await a resculpt. I won't lie, I spent the evening browsing Army5 looking for nasty surprises possible with it. As if the Major had not already convinced me.

2. My table needs some higher terrain pieces. For this game it was fine, but if any of us had invested more in snipers, HMGs and other long ranged weapons, it could have been a slaughter. Also, showing my painted street is well and good, but one or two vehicles can break up long firing lanes nicely.

3. Yu Jing can field a surprising amount of visors.

4. Deploying your fire support to timid, will make unable to do their job (see last game). Deploying them to aggressively will lead to them shot dead. On the other hand, my infiltrators were well deployed this time.

5. Ghazi are awesome. Five points for a perfect chain rifle platform of annoyance and the Jammer heaps more awesome on this great package.

6. Anyone know where I can buy glossy black dice? Because despite them being sadists, I liked the game.


I had way too much coffee during today's meetings and am writing this while sitting in a train...
Fenris

New design is new!

Yeah, new design as you can probably see. If you can't, HOW ARE YOU READING THIS???
Makes bigger pictures possible without frakking the layout.

Pictures like this!

Being a vengeful revenant has its perks

A few days ago I jumped at the chance to acquire Shadow of Mordor. The game is mechanically similar to the Assassins Creed series and the Batman Arkham series. But the setting is obviously very different.
You play as Talion, a Gondorian ranger. Quite early in the game, in fact during the tutorial, your wife, son and yourself get murdered as Sauron's forces overrun the citadel you are stationed at. (Minas Anor?) However, since it is Sauron's Black Hand that kills you in some kind of ritual, you don't stay dead.
You come back, as a wraith. And you bring back a buddy, an Elf Lord, who is just as undead as you are. And also even more vengeful. And a bit of an amnesiac. From what I pieced together he seems to have fallen in battle during the time when the last alliance fought Sauron.
Now both of you are united in the quest to bring down the Black Hand.

You do this by eliminating the Captains and war chiefs of Sauron's army one after another. This is the highlight of the game. Captains are randomly generated with different strengths and weaknesses. They grow in power and fight each other. Orcs and Uruks who manage to kill you get promoted.
But since you don't exactly stay dead, this is a mixed blessing for the orcs as you will come after them.
For example the first orc that killed me and became known as Puk Eye-Gouger. He became quite powerful as I died twice to him, before I put an arrow through his eye. But the bastard survived that. So I used the help of the Elf Lord to gain insight in his weaknesses. Read that as "forcefully tore it from the mind of one of his underlings". I found out he was scared of Caragors, those Warg thingies.

I rode a Caragor right into his fortress, tore apart his guard and chopped his head off while he was screaming in terror.

Yeah, the Nemesis system is fun!

Another great thing is the free flow combat system. Each attack you land increases a counter, set number allow you to land special moves, such as an instant kill or knock everyone back. Any hit you take resets the counter. If an enemy attacks, you have to block. Certain enemies like berserkers can't be blocked and must be dodged, shieldbeares have to be attacked from behind etc. And everything has to be done with, as best as I can describe it, a rythm. Also, it looks freaking beautiful, as you slash, slice, dodge, block, weave and slaughter your way through masses of enemies.

There are also hundreds of things to collect, because Batman and the Assassins liked to hoard stuff, too. Guess you can't do games like this without this.

I'm just wondering, don't all wraiths fall under the spell of the Dark Lord?


A wraith for barely four hours and already loving it!
Fenris

Spitfires are awesome, but so is ODD...

Two more games done, both against Kenza(Mark) 200pts and 250pts with a 12XP Specop. Both with classifieds

First game:





I fielded an Al'Hawwa hacker, a Hunzakut FO, a Muyib with Spitfire, a Kaplan with Spitfire, a Ghulam doc, two Ghulam (one LT), a Lasiq Sniper and a Djanbazan Doc. My enemy brought Joan of Arc decked out in her mobility armour, an ORC Hacker, a Bulleteer, Konstantinos, a Fusilier Hacker, two fusiliers, a Trauma Doc.

Mark won Initiative and set up mostly on the right side, with Joan and an Fusilier holding down the left. I set up my Lasiq and Djan in good overwatch position, the Ghulam hid, covering secondary firelanes, the Muyib and Kaplan positioned to move up left and center and the Al'Hawwa infiltrated far left, while the Hunzakut hid near a Snack Bar upfield near the right.

Mark moved up Konstantinos, who promptly got shot at by my Lasiq. Sadly, it bounced off his BTS. But it gave him a bit of a scare. Next, Joan moved to the right, discovered my Hunzakut and promptly put a lot of superflous, but deadly holes into him.




During my turn I snuck up my Al'Hawwa and D-charged one of those pretty japanese arches netting me a classified. The he recamoed and put a Boarding Shotgun slug into the Fusilier holding down the left, before hiding again. I repositioned and went into suppressive fire where possible.


Next turn saw my Lasiq go down to a deadly shootout with the Bulleteer, though the Bulleteer also bought the farm. (Do Remotes dream of electric wheatfields?) Sadly the Lasiq was killed outright, leaving the Ghulam Doc close to her unable to do anything, but scream: "NOOOOOOO!" in a suitably dramatic fashion. Konstantinos moved up behind the Snack Bar, chugged a D-Charge into the coffee maker and denied this vital resource to the enemy, fulfilling a classified. (I think Haqqislamites prefer Tea, though.)



I responded by moving up my Muyib, who relentlessly chased down Joan, finally downing her with the deadly hail of bullets from her spitfire and putting Mark's troops in loss of Lieutenant.




This put quite a spanner in the works, but Mark managed, with the last of his orders to move up a fusilier hacker, who spotlighted my Muyib, netting him his second classified.

Finally my Muyib traded a silly amount of shots with the Fusilier Hacker, finally killing the girl in blue. Then the Kaplan moved around the bar and shot and killed Konstantinos. The Orc Hacker may also have fallen to the Muyib, my memory is fuzzy on that.

Second game


I fielded the Al'Hawwa, A Farzan FO, a Husam Specop (Engineer, Hacker, Myuib armament), an Odalisque with Spitfire, A Kaplan with Spitfire, A rifle-Lasiq, a Djanbazan with HMG, a Hafza LT, and a Ghulam.
Mark had Joan again, a Aquila Guard with HMG, a Specop, the Bulleteer, a Fusilier Hacker, a Trauma Doc and later on an Akal and a Croc Man.

He setup well spread out this time, with Joan and Aquila taking the left (now my right) and the Bulleteer and Specop took the right. I setup my Lasiq and Djan central, planning to cover a firelane up the middle. But having a bit of a brain lag, I setup prone, so I could not get shot. And also not shoot at people passing the firelane. *deeerp* The Al'Hawwa infiltrated on the right, the Farzan on a building on the left.

First turn the Bulleteer and specop moved up, because my Lasiq and Djan were prone. The Bulleteer blasted my Al'Hawwa to shreds. The Aquila moved up in a better firing position as did Joan. I scrambled to stop the Bulleteer with my Djan, but due to a Hacker buff and suppressive fire, the Djan went down. I tried to hunker down in suppresive fire, not sure how to blow up the Snack bar since I had pulled the Sabotage classified again.



Second round the hidden Croc man appeared, moved up to the Lasiq and placed a mine. I'm not sure what else happened. On my turn I tried to nanopulser the Bulleteer, but failed. My Lasiq tried to bring down the Aquila, but failed. -,- My Farzan leaned out, tried to discover the Croc man and suceeded ... wait, what? Then he forward observed him. Several times, but finally netting me a classified. The he shotgunned the Croc man.



Third round an Akal walked in close to the Bulleteer, who shot my Hafza to death putting me into LoL. Joan sprayed the Farzan with her Spitfire, taking him out.

The Specop moved to my HVT and nicked Gogo Marlenes camerbots card, probably hoping for racy pictures of the Human Sphere's prime celebrity.



I used up my leftover Command Tokens to move my Husam around a container, shotgunned the Akal, slinging the templates into the Bulleteer. The Akal dropped, the Bulleteer didn't. I shotgunned the Bulleteer again, but the Husam took a Spitfire round to the face and dropped. Maybe the adrenaline made him miss. Lastly the Kaplan Doc fired a few rounds at the Bulleteer, but missed entirely.


What did we learn?

- High burst is great
- ODD makes it really hard to hit things
- if you want to hold down a firelane, make sure you can actually fire -,-
- coordinated orders are useful
- don't be too aggressive with infiltration
- Joan makes for a great Lieutenant (I have been wanting to do an Order of Mercy force for some time now)


also highly classified
Fenris

Pretty pictures!

I found some trial pictures I shot in the summer on my camera, while shooting some of my Infinity minis:

Flowers are great, they don't move and are colorful, so you can play around with your cameras settings.

Al'Hawwa

Ghulam

Jannissary

Also some minis, The last one was painted a while ago. The first two are my current Haqqislam color scheme.

Fusiliers

Presented in Technicolor

Fenris

Rangers, lead the way ... to the gaming table

My USAriadna Ranger Force arrived. Hooah! A whole box of armor, guns, motorcycles and a werewolf marine. Yeah, you read that right. Werewolf Marine! My table is also getting ahead.

Needs more hexagons!

And a testmodel for the Rangers. He's a dogwarrior from the Ariadnan Kazaks. Meaning he's coming at the enemy with his knife and chain rifle, regardless of terrain in the way. And if they manage to shoot him on the way in, he flips out, turns into a werewolf and murders your face.

Rawr! I look like Clint Eastwood, when he wasn't a senile, republican old man!

And now I'm off to chew bubblegum and make food to bring to a friends party.

And I'm all out of bubblegum!

Fenris

Some terrain

I hear the noodles are good.

MDF-kit by Laughing Jacks.

And base table, Gogo Marlene for scale. I swear it's not a Fiday impersonating her again!