Iko Turso DFC Battle Report

It's been a bit of a while since I've had a chance to update the blog, but I've had a nice period of gaming lately! I met a new group down in Hamilton that I get to game with, which has been excellent. I'll blog about those in a while.

Here I wanted to provide an update on the Iko Turso campaign that James and I have been playing!

We managed to carve out some time to play our first DFC game for the campaign; a cool 800pts.

800pts is a tough list to create! I got slaughtered pretty hard, which I blame squarely on my list building in this game; so far that seems to be a theme in the campaign because I have been taking unusual units and strange combinations. In this particular instance I did not take my beloved Echoes and did away with my bombers. I think that was a massive mistake, because very quickly James was able to pull ahead on the ground game while also owning the air with his Amethysts (this inspired me to build some of my own for my growing Shaltari fleet).

Anyhow, see the video above for the details. So far the campaign is 2 to 0 for Shaltari and both scenarios had me losing squarely because of a lack of attention on list building. In the DZC game I clearly didn't take nearly enough infantry and in the DFC game I ignored the PHR strengths and didn't take anything to handle Voidgates sitting in atmosphere.

Iku-Turso Mission 2: Take the Mines!

MISSION BRIEFING:

It took a lot of time and effort, but we've finally extracted and decrypted the memories on our fallen scientist's limbic implants.  There's a lot of missing data, but from what we can piece together, the lab was taking some kind of mineral, or energy source, and using it to build a weapon - something so terrible it could very well tilt the whole war in the Scourge's favour if it is ever completed.  We don't yet know what this weapon is, or how far along in the build process the Scourge are, but our scans of the scientist's mind were able to reveal the location of the source of the necessary material:  Khonsu, Iku-Turso's own moon.

Our mission is to seize the mining facilities on this moon, and we need to do it quickly.  Our sources tell us that the Shaltari already have a head start.  They've sent in a scout party and managed to take over one of the defense cannons.  That said, we believe the mining facility they've already depleted is   They've sent a small fleet but if we get our butts in gear we should be able to get our fleet there in time to stop them.  We need to claim these mines and figure out what they are about, and we can't let anyone else get ahold of them until we understand what's going on. 

MISSION PARAMETERS:

Army Size:  805 Points

Scenario:  Scenario 1: Take & Hold (Pg 76) with all rules as listed including the Variant where the two clusters on the sides are worth double victory points.

Special Rules:

The Shaltari player gets one infantry token on one of the ground defense sectors of the middle cluster.

Every other sector gets a random Scourge token (infantry or armour) on it. 

When it comes time to fire defense weapons, the Scourge fires first.  Each defense weapon fires its weapons at the closet available target.

When scoring clusters, count the Scourge ground units as if they are a player as well.  The Scourge do not get points, but they can prevent players from getting points by control clusters.

Scourge tokens do not ever move, but will participate in combat if there are player units in the same sector.

Iku-Turso DZC First Scenario: Battle Report

I'm not great at doing after action reports but this one was a super fun game to play! James and I have been meaning to get together for weeks now to start our Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander campaign and we thought that we would start it off simply with an 800pt scenario for Dropzone Commander.

The idea is that the winner would gain some small advantage in the Dropfleet game that came after this initial kick off!

The battlefield setup. Buildings in the middle and forests
surrounding.

Overall, I was pretty happy with how I played, it really came down to list building in my opinion. My opponent rightly took 3 squadrons of infantry whereas I only took 2 of the Immortals, which are kind of known for withering under fire, or more accurately under falling masonry.

The PHR Force

Pretty quickly on I determined that James' Shaltari were going to occupy and possibly be able to search for one of the scientists long before I would even be able to respond, and I was outnumbered by way of troops. As luck would have it the rampaging Bullhorn ended up knocking out half of the building that James was occupying with an objective so I figured it was a good move to just blow that building up and force James' Shaltari to bunch up and focus on 2 objectives. After all, there was no way I was going to outmaneuver him and it let me, for the most part, ignore the Bullhorn on my right flank and focus on the task at hand.

The Shaltari Force

Unfortunately, it turned out that I did end up blowing up the building that had the PHR scientist in it but in the end I suppose that the scientist would just get resurrected back at base in a new body ala Cylon style.

I was quite happy with my anti-tank stopping power, I did manage to take out his Gharial, however

The Bullhorn enters the field

not before it totally cleared out my Immortal squad in a single blow!

In retrospect I wouldn't have relied so heavily on anti-tank stopping power, traded in my Helios for walk on Phobos instead and cashed in the Janus for another squad of infantry. Live and learn.

I'm a bit more confident at my skills in Dropfleet Commander, I seem to have a knack for naval based wargames, so I'm hoping that I can tie things up in the second game. Either way though, I'm very much looking forward to playing our next mission!

Gharial and Hera get into a pistol fight

Iku-Turso Mission 1: Distress

Iku-Turso.  Haven't heard of it?  Few have.  Small, with a few cities, and even fewer defenses, the Scourge took it swiftly, and those UCM fools haven't even taken a second look at attempting to take it back.  To be honest, it wasn't even showing up on our starcharts, metaphorically speaking, until today. 

We just received a distress signal from some of our scientists, claiming to be captured by the Scourge.  This in itself is strange - the Scourge typically turn all captured lifeforms into hosts, who are then just hollowed husks of their former selves.  To leave them intact is unheard of.  To add to this strangeness, we have also detected Shaltari and UCM messages sourced from the same location on the planet.  They're encrypted, and we have yet to decipher, but at this point we are assuming that they are similar distress calls.

We need you to go in and investigate.  This could be a trap, and we could have Shaltari or UCM visitors as well, so we need a small team to in, to reduce the risk.  Extract our science team if possible.  If other teams are there, feel free to "liberate" them as well - any intel we can extract from them will be most useful.

MISSION PARAMETERS:

Army Size:  800 points

Scenario:  Targets of Opportunity (Page 55, core rulebook), with the following changes:

1. There is a base in the middle consisting of 3 buildings.  The rest of the area is woods and rocks.
   
2. There is one objective in each building - one is a UCM science team, another is a Shaltari science team, and the third is a PHR science team.  "Liberating" any and all teams can be helpful, but obviously our own scientists will be a lot more open to share with us what's going on.  When an objective is revealed, randomly determine which team you found.  Holding or extracting your own faction's science team is worth 1 extra VP.
   
3. There is a Bullhorn in the area (Reconquest Phase 2, page 45), who will come on the scene starting in Round 2.  He follows the normal rules, but will also destroy any trees it runs through.
   
4. Round 6 - The Scourge Respond!
   In Round 6, before each activation, a single Scourge unit (randomly a Hunter or a Reaper) will arrive via a random side of the board at full MV value, and attack the closest Shaltari or PHR unit.

"Scourge Respond!"  Fine Print:

 - Scourge Unit will go after target closest to side it's coming in on.

 - Scourge Unit will go minimum distance required, and then fire available weapons at it.

 - If no unit in range from that side, will attack building in range.  If no building in range, will go full Mv distance towards closest unit, and will go into "overwatch".  It will fire once with +2Ac against next available target (whether land or air.)

 - Reapers prioritize Air targets, then buildings, then ground targets.