Battle Report: PHR vs Shaltari: 1500pts.

A view of the two firebases along with my command walkers,
yet to be deployed and the Poseidon ready to redeploy the Hades
should it need to get out in a dash.

Managed to play my first game of Dropzone Commander in months.

I played against Brent and his tricky Shaltari. I took my fairly static castling force that features a big, beefy block of 4 Ares and 2 Phobos in a Poseidon and a Hades with another Poseidon.

We played Targets of Opportunity because it's a fairly easy mission to play that is almost always featured in tournament play and allows folks to get an idea of what the game is like. I particularly enjoy it because it highlights on one of the things that I like in Dropzone Commander; that your weakest units, your infantry, are also the only thing that can score you points.

So with the board set up I saw two streets running down the center of the board that allowed me to set up two firebases: One with the Hades and my command group of a Zeus and a Hyperion and the other with my block of walkers. If Brent decided to get into a firefight with either of those I was reasonably confident that I would be able to go toe to toe with what he presented.

Fortunately Brent did split his force a little bit in kind by having a Jaguar off on the right side near my block but spent most of the time denying any viable target on that side of the board.

Instead he decided to focus his efforts on the left side with his Coyote command walker, a Jaguar,

We have the targets in our sights...

Dreamsnare and a Firedrake. He also ended up putting a block of Kukri and Tomahawks on that side.

Surprisingly I fared pretty well against that group, sustaining fairly minor casualties and managing to take out 2 of his walkers and threaten his Coyote.

However, in the end the Shaltari maneuverability won out. By tying up my rather slow Immortals in the central building. After an epic hand to hand struggle with some Firstborns the Immortals did manage to overwhelm their physically superior foes, find the objective and hop into the Juno which got picked up by the Neptune which, in turn, tried to high tail it out of their only to get reaction fired upon by the sole surviving Kukri AND the Jaguar that had been lurking on the right flank.

Sadly the Neptune's tough armor wasn't able to withstand such an onslaught and it exploded above the block of walkers taking out a Phobos in the wreckage. By some miracle the Juno survived and was able to continue with the objective but I couldn't get offboard quickly enough.

Meantime, on the left flank Brent's Braves managed to find the objective he needed and, through Shaltari witchery, managed to get his wee, tiny little gate offboard to secure 4 victory points.

So with a score of 4 vps to my 3, Brent managed to secure a win. It was a GREAT game, and the first of many, I hope.