Gorilla Straylight

So last time in the first game of this contract, I won pretty handily and with minimal damage, which meant our track for this one was “Strike” with myself as the attacker again. Strike is another “defend/destroy the buildings” mission which should make it quite hard for the defender, but the twist here is that there are four buildings set up by the defender, with only one being designated secretly as the target. The attacker must scan the buildings to find out which is their true target, and unless you have a nice active probe that means the unit doing the scanning can’t shoot for the turn - so in theory, this is much more balanced and dynamic.

In practice, my opponent’s artillery list continued to suffer against my brawlers once they got up close, though he was able to deal some real damage in return. Let me tell you, friends, BFA helicopters with TAG supporting homing Arrow IV is truly bullshit and that artillery revision in the core rules can’t come soon enough. Do *you* like being hit by an AC/20 from 14 hexes away on effectively a 7+ because some little bastard who *always* has a TMM of 4 regardless of movement got in your rear arc? Because of how homing arrow iv’s BV tax works, he didn’t even have to pay for it either! At least hit location is determined by direction of the artillery rather than the TAGger now. Anyway, whinging aside, this was largely a pretty fun game with one caveat. Rather than going turn by turn, I think I’ll just give a general overview.

Starting Out

For this track, the defender (my opponent) deploys first, with some of their forced obligated to be near the target buildings at the center of the board - I, meanwhile, had to split my force in half, with one half entering on turn 1 from my long edge and the other half entering on turn 2 from short edges. I elected to have the Maxim and Ostsol, two swift units with high damage potential that could be neutered with just a few unlucky shots, enter as reinforcements. If I were to do this over, I’d probably have the Starslayer replace the Ostsol, but I misread some enemy placements (the Mad Dog and Kit Fox were on a height 6 building, turns out) and overestimated the Starslayer’s ability to dodge damage. We used some Kill Team tokens to mark the potential target buildings - red, grey, blue, and orange.

On the bright side, my opponent seemed to forget just how fast the Neanderthal is (this happens a lot - people just do not expect a big bulky assault ‘mech to go 5/8 or 6/9 with TSM) and left his archer positioned just right for the smashing machine to get stuck in with it turn 1.

Lieutenant Joensuu's Starslayer was TAGged and ate its first guided Arrow IV round here, managing to keep its feet and continue scanning the Red building, while the Neanderthal weathered a flurry of SRMs andlaid into the Archer with its lasers and kicked it, getting ready for some TSM destruction next turn. The Firefly began its scan of the Grey building - both it and the Starslayer would have to forgo attacks next turn to finish those scans.

On turn 2, my Maxim and Ostsol entered from the side edges, which is where I made my first stupid mistake - I forgot that the Mad Dog and Kit Fox were both on a very high building, and sent the Ostsol after them. Now, there had been a little bit of controversy about building structure points - last game, my opponent had said that I couldn't land my Starslayer on a height 2 building without it collapsing, since the target buildings had 30 SP each, but now he seemed rather reluctant to acknowledge that a single small laser hit could make the Mad Dog's building crumble and send his 'mech down 6 levels, presumably to a gruesome death (or at least maiming). Now, the rule that destroying a non-target building would result in a loss of company rep meant I likely was not going to do this, but just another reason it's good practice to verify those kinds of things before the match. Either way, the Ostsol took some pot shots at the Vulture and the Maxim began scanning the Orange Building - meanwhile, the Starslayer got TAGged again and ate two (!) homing Arrow IVs, blowing its left arm off and breaching both torsos. Fortunately it kept its feet and completed its scan (as did the Firefly) - no dice on either. The Neanderthal at this point whiffed all its lasers but ripped off the Archer's leg with a hatchet swing - leaving the heavy 'mech prone and in a bad spot. The Maxim completed its scan the next turn as my Firefly started on the blue building (the last possibility, though I did still need to do the scan), while my Ostsol just kind of jogged back and forth to shoot at the Kit Fox, which it did mercilessly rip the side torso out of, forcing a withdrawal and silencing one source of artillery. The Maxim took some nasty hits from a BFS Pegasus, ineffectually returning fire, but kept fighting and dodged motive damage, while the neanderthal cut off the Archer's other leg and utterly failed to swat down the copter via laser. I’m sure someone ate Arrow IV here but I don’t remember who - no one fell and ate shit, though - possibly a direct fire went astray and damaged some buildings? The Starslayer, for its part, fled off the board before my opponent could touch off its SRM ammo.

In our final turn, I totally forgot to take photos - the Javelin was put in an awkward situation positioning-wide but managed to avoid destruction, the Neanderthal carved the Archer up with its lasers, the Firefly completed its scan while the Maxim continued to slowly lose its duel with the Pegasus, and the Ostsol traded blows with the Mad Dog. My Neanderthal kicked the Archer’s arm and came very close to finishing its side torso, but was just shy of the necessary damage. I offered surrender, and he accepted to preserve his Archer. With a victory and some fresh money under my belt, I bought a Gunsmith off the local market before heading off to the arenas while waiting for our other players to finish their tracks.