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.

DFC: After Action Report. 1500pts PHR vs Scourge

Djinn made for a horrifying alpha strike!

I had a truly excellent game with my buddy Steve on Thursday evening. We met down at the Hamilton MIGS (Military Interests Gaming Society) clubhouse where they have a whole ton of terrain and tables for various scales of wargames.

We played 1500pts a side which is the largest I've played yet and fought a Take and Hold scenario. Scourge is one of my favourite factions to play against. Not only do they have an excellent background, but their playstyle is something that I enjoy very much playing against. The fact that they are supremely fast, built for up-close engagement, and typically are on the opposite end of the tactical spectrum from PHR makes for a very enjoyable battle.

Echoes respond to the right flank threat.

Steve had decided to perform an early game alpha strike by running his 4 strong Djinn frigate squad right up the right flank table overtop of the medium sized city I was positioning 2 Medea towards. It was a devastingly effective tactic and one that I hadn't expected at all, he managed to take them out in a single volley.

What's more is the display of power was such that I would ignore them at my peril; I had to do
something about them.

Since we were playing a scenario that had a Column approach type, it meant that in the early game I had to commit a sizeable degree of my fleet towards dealing with the Djinn problem lest I expose my right flank and encourage him to start harrying more important assets in my fleet.

Thus, I responded with my 4 strong Echoes, an Orpheus troopship as well as my Scipio battlecruiser with Calypso ECM frigate in tow.

Admiral in the Scipio watches enemy right flank attack crumble.

I had some extreme concerns that if I didn't deal with them very quickly that I would end up sacrificing the left side of the battlefield and potentially giving Steve control of 3 of the cities on that side that we were fighting over.

Meanwhile I ran my Pandora frigates up the left side flank in hopes that I could respond to his own troopship as well as the bulk of his fleet that seemed to be deploying on that side. I hid behind a dense debris field to mask my approach, though he did manage to send some bombers on me in the early game.

I got lucky however, I managed to get a full volley of VERY effective burnthrough laser fire onto his troopship and destroy it in one action. This of course painted a HUGE target on their heads as a good portion of Steve's fleet started to focus fire on taking out that threat.

Meanwhile, I did manage to take the right most city with 2 Medeas even though they were getting

Pandoras focus on taking out the Chimera.

pummeled by bombardment fire from Steve's Charybdis frigates. I wasn't overly concerned about the ground game; Steve had taken 4 Gargoyles and a Chimera troopship which I had already taken out. Conversely I had 2 Orpheus troopships and 6 Medeas. That being said, Steve had some seriously concerning firepower in his heavy cruisers and Hydra fleet carriers, so I had to be careful about the orbital game, lest I end up getting destroyed before I was able to get to turn 4 for scoring.

By turn 4 it looked as if I had the game pretty handily. I believe the score was somewhere around 21 for the PHR to 11 for the Scourge.

However, in the bottom end of the game Steve's fleet was able to get into its optimal range and started just wreaking havoc on my fleet. My Scipio battlecruiser and Orpheus troopship were destroyed quite quickly even though my Calypsos were star performers. There is only so much that the Calypsos can protect against. By turn 6 the deadpile on both sides was quite heavy, though I think that Steve had a

Scipio and Shenlong trade blows, much to the Scipio's demise.

considerable advantage in the end. I was able to hold onto the objectives in the end though and by my count the score was 36 for the PHR to 21 for the Scourge. Not a bad victory, though certainly a pyrrhic victory what with all the dead cyborgs floating in space. :)

A great game!

The three things that I learned out of this game about the PHR fleet were:

• Calpysos are worth their weight in gold. If you have a heavy investment in any particular assets, definitely find the 37pts to field one to protect them. I had 2, one with the Scipio and another with my 2 Bellerophons. They were absolutely worth the points.
  
• Pandoras: Fielded in 4s they are expensive, yes, costing 200pts for the squad. But good god, they have an absolutely devastating alpha strike.
  
• Scipio: I see its value now. Having a launch capacity of 4 along with 12 light calibre broadsides, it can field a decent degree of threat. In my opinion though, the real advantage of the Scipio is it's speed. Having 10" movement a turn allows for a tremendous increase in possible threat range for my bombers. While I LOVE the Bellerophons, having a movement of 7" means that they are typically relegated to backfield firing and don't have a great capability of repositioning. The Scipio's movement can address both of these issues.

Fleet Parade

It is a happy thing to reach a milestone when involved in a large painting project. Today I feel as if I've reached a decent milestone.

I now have enough versatility in my painted PHR fleet that I can field a variety of options, including more frigates and different configurations of troop landing ships.

I do feel a bit short on Medeas though, really I do need two more to round out the fleet number to a healthy eight.

1500pt PHR Dropfleet Armada!

I managed to get 2 Calypsos done in 2 days during the work week, so I'm pretty happy with being able to have that progress. With the Scipio that I completed last week, I'm now able to field a 1500pt fleet for the gaming session that I was invited to on Thursday. VERY much looking forward to being able to play!

I'm horrified at the thought of how many damned gravity nullifier panels I have painted in this fleet.

I'm also thinking on whether or not I want to get a pack of the normal Echo corvettes. I am not in love

Close up of the Calypso

with the aesthetic of them, kind of preferring my weird Alien-esque scratch built ones but I'll admit, they are a horrific pain to build and the thought of building another 2 to 8 of them just exhausts me.

What do you guys think? Do you like the weird Echoes or should I be a conformist?

The Scipio is a nice centre piece model, which I'll admit, I feel like I was lacking a little bit in my Adepticon list last Spring.

What are you guys interested in seeing me paint next? I have the following on my plate:

• Finish the PHR fleet.
• Start the Shaltari fleet.
• Start the Shaltari ground forces.
• Start the Warhammer 40k Tau.

I'd love to hear your comments.

Thoughts Regarding Fleet Expansion

Scipio Battlecruiser ready for launch.

With my Scipio Battlecruiser finished I am now closing in on the finishing touches of my PHR fleet, which is great. I've hugely enjoyed painting this fleet but am very much looking forward to it being finished and being able to concentrate on some other projects (like my Warhammer 40k Tau and my DFC Shaltari).

I LOVE the look of the Scipio, it's big, nasty and has launch capacity and there is just something about carriers that I truly love. That being said, I think it's fair to say that it is not as good as it's cousin the Leonidas which is 15pts cheaper.

So with the nearing of my fleet's completion I start to look into where I can round out the holes in my fleet. I've started working on getting some Calypsos finished, with the new rules changes to them they are now one of my favourite ships not only from an aesthetic standpoint but also because of what they can do in game.

The only thing that I love better than carrier ships is ECM ships.

After the two Calypsos that I'm working on I will finish my Heracles battleship and I have a full 8 more PHR frigates that I can complete.

So with this in mind, here is what I'm envisioning to finish to complete the fleet in its entirety:

2 Calypso ECM Frigates
1 Heracles Battleship
2 Medea (to add to the current 6 I have)
6 more modular Frigates
1 Agamemnon Battlecruiser
2 Theseus
2 more Echoes

Hmm, well that's 16 more ships, 2 of which have to get scratch built to go with the rest of my Echoes but I think that will be doable.

The two main strategies that I want to be able to use with this flotilla composition is to be able to field fleets that are either traditional in design (with a healthy segment of Capital and support ships) or be able to field a Frigate horde fleet. With no less than 20 Frigates at my availability once the fleet is finished, as well as the Theseus in support, I should be able to field whatever little horde I want.

I'm SUPER excited about acquiring an Agamemnon Battlecruiser once they are available. As much as I do enjoy the special edition Kickstarter variant of the Battlecruisers, the new sculpts of the Battlecruiser class is just gorgeous.

Paint Brushes Maketh the Man

I always enjoy getting new paint brushes. Even if they are the shitty ones.

Actually, I have to say, I do prefer crappy paint brushes to nice ones. The cheaper ones hold an edge just fine, I find and more often than not, even if I have a decent set of brushes I invariably end up cutting the points with an xacto-knife anyhow.

Sure the nice paint brushes are better quality but when you can spend upwards of $30 or more on a brush, do you really want to do anything by way of lining, drybrushing, blending or anything that's going to cause some wear? I don't!

Europa configuration

With the cheaper brushes I don't really care. I can use them for whatever I want and at $2 a brush I'm not worried if they don't last through an entire project.

So I've taken a small detour on my Warhammer models to complete some of the PHR frigates that I have for Dropfleet commander. Since my frigates are at a premium I decided that it would make sense to go ahead and magnetize the weapon types. It's a bit more work on the build time and
painting but well worth the effort.

I got the first frigate done in about 3 hours which I think is fairly respectable considering that 1 frigate is now 3 essentially. :)

Pandora configuration

I'm really not sure yet what kinds of frigates I like, I can see uses for them all. Initially I REALLY loved the Andromedas. Just something about pocket carriers really made me excited and reminded me of my Eve Online days when I'd run around in an Ishkur drone frigate.

The Pandoras are gods though in numbers with their small signature and absolutely deadly burn through laser.

While I dismissed the Europas for having somewhat mediocre broadsides, I did see how they can essentially almost drop a heavy cruiser in a single, well placed volley if fielded in numbers, so we'll need to test those further to see if they continue to perform.

I'm enjoying painting the frigates, mostly because I can bust them out relatively quickly, but I'll be

Andromeda configuration

happy to get back to my Warhammer figures and start chipping away at that new projects.

Oh! Also, I've been using Trello as a way of keeping all of my painting projects on task. I highly recommend using it! I might do a blog post and show some screen shots on how I'm using it soon.

PHR Fleet Finished!

The PHR fleet in its entirety.

Huzzah! I'm quite happy to say that I was able to finish the last bits of my 1250pt Adepticon PHR fleet for the Dropfleet Commander tournament!

I am pretty happy with how quickly the fleet came together. Typically my painting progress is usually fairly slow. While I don't profess to be a terribly good painter by any stretch, I do get lost in the details when I'm painting models of this scale and that can greatly elongate the time it takes to finish a project.

Close up of the Bellerophons and Launch Assets.

Tournaments are a great motivator for me though and, since I'm headed down to the States in a little while, I wanted to make the most of it with a fully painted fleet and army. There have been times (as is the case with many gamers) where I've had to pull some all nighters in order to get an army done in time for a tournament. Given that I was able to get this sizeable project done in the time I had, I can turn my attentions towards rounding out my Dropzone Commander army in a little while.

I wasn't certain how I would enjoy going with the stock colour scheme, but now that they are finished
and I can see them 'in the flesh' I'm quite happy with how they turned out. I was even able to get all of the flight stands and launch assets complete as well.

Enjoy the pictures!

Echoes Complete

Echo squad in all its glory.

One of our favourite things to do in my home is to go upstairs into our loft on a cold, wintery day and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and my wife will knit while I paint. It's wonderful to be able to hang out like that.

So this morning my wife said that she wanted to go upstairs and knit.

I was able to complete the rest of my Echoes this morning which was an unexpected and happy surprise. I even had the chance to complete assembling the rest of the launch assets as well as base the last Medea and 2 Orpheus in the fleet.

Officially I have 2 cruisers and 1 frigate left to complete the fleet, so I'm WAY ahead of time! Which is good because it's looking like I have some painting to do with my Dropzone Commander army for Adepticon.

Since Echoes have the Stealth characteristic I wanted to add
the ECM suites from the Calypsos.

The final touches to the fleet will be to paint the bases as well as the launch assets, I imagine that I should be able to get those done in an evening though.

I figure 9 more evenings will complete this fleet. I'm very happy with the progress.

But as far as my Echoes are concerned I am very happy with how these kitbashed ships turned out. They are exactly what I imagined the corvettes looking like.

Echoes

Test Echo supported by double Bellerophons in the back.

I got a lot done this evening.

First off I've gotten it down that I can complete a heavy cruiser inside of 3 nights of light painting. About 2 hours to black the models and do touch ups to the cream on the hulls. Another 2 to silver and do broad details and a final 2 to touch up details and do some shading.

Which meant I was able to finish another Bellerophon tonight! So I've got 2 painted in my fleet. With 4 cruisers done and 5 frigates, I decided to give myself a bit of a reward and paint up my Echoes.

The normal PHR corvette is a problem for me; it looks for all the world like a derpy dolphin. While it does convey speed and maintain some design principals of the overall PHR theme of sleek lines, gravity nullifiers and a sub-light engine, the execution of it is something that I'll just never field in my fleet.

I wanted something that paid a bit of homage to the kind of Alien-esque design of the PHR fleet.

The fleet grows!

Something that almost looked drone-like, or animal, in a technological kind of way. So I opted for a kitbash for the 4 Echoes I plan on fielding.

It's pretty simple with just 7 parts. First I take the hood of the Andromeda frigate and turn it upside down on top of a Calypso underslung ECM systems. I make sure to turn them backwards however and align them so that they are more or less perpendicular with the hull.

I then knocked off the sensor array on the prow of the Calypso underbelly to create a flat bonding surface where I glue a cruiser prow mass driver to represent the Echo's Medium Calibre Turrets.

On the back end I flatten off the round part of a frigate fin, turn it upside down and nestle it in the natural pocket that forms between the Andromeda canopy and a light cruiser's underpaneling that has been cut in half. That will form the aft of the ship.

They look pretty good, I think!

Bellerophon

The first of my Vanguard ships was completed tonight. The Bellerophon is a key player in the PHR fleet and the current meta is such that having them is practically (in my opinion) pretty essential.

The reason is PHR bombers. They are just so good. Hitting on 2+ and causing criticals on 4+ they have the potential, in numbers, of causing a truly massive amount of damage.

Sure, point defense is an issue, especially considering that it is a defense mechanism that is usually affected by hull damage in other games, but given that you can critical so easily, it's also relatively easy to overcome PD.

When paired with a twin burn through laser on the prow the ship is a damned fine one!

I love carriers, always have. Doesn't matter the genre really. The idea of massive amounts of fighters
and bombers has always been cool to me.

I decided to make the highlighting colour of the gravity nullifiers a bit more white. They look a bit more 'anime' but they pop a whole hell of a lot more.

Anyhow, enjoy!

Dropfleet Commander: PHR Orpheus

Completed Orpheus.

I've been as sick as a dog lately, but I did manage to spend some time tonight painting another troopship for my Adepticon fleet. This time I painted an Orpheus. A cheaper cousin to the Ganymede, the Orpheus is a very nice troopship because it comes with no less than 12 dice of light broadsides on each side as well as a burn through laser on the prow.

Decent prow weapons are a rarity on the PHR ships, so I capitalize on them where I can. A part of the philosophy behind my fleet is to saturate the opponent with burn through lasers on the prows of my fleet while I overwhelm them with superior launch assets. PHR bombers are the best in the game, hence why I have no less than 2 Bellerophons in the fleet.

I am assuming that the Shaltari will be my most difficult opponents and it is my hope that I'll have enough saturation of either BTLs offset with bombers. The idea is that I'll force my opponent to make one of two difficult choices: Either take the BTL hits directly with the weaker armour saves or choose to take the passive shield saves but then sacrifice their superior point defence dice under waves of bombers.

So where does this troopship fall into that? With the addition of the BTL on the prow as well as the essential needs of bulk landing capabilities, this troopship covers both of those needs quite well. In addition, the broadsides allow me to hunt frigates either in the orbits or possibly in atmosphere.