My fifth game of Death Squads and this against an entirely new opponent: Imperial Renegades!
The fun started again during my opponent's unpacking of his models (dude, post here, so I can name you
). Apparantly IR weapons & equipment are dirt cheap (
fourteen points for the leader's carapace armour? Wtf?), not to mention they get to take a ton of models. My already mauled squad of 10 would be facing...
fifteen Renegades, INCLUDING an Ogre! Ok, fair enough, several of the troopers were clearly designated as 'meatbags' or 'cannon fodder'. Still... I had my work cut out for me.
As you’ll be able to judge from the pics, none of my friend's models has any reservations about working for chaos. His workers are quite mutated already. The ‘will not work for chaos’ rolls should be totally funny, should they occur in the postgame (instead of bickering about allegiances, they’ll just be jealous of each other’s mutations...”Why did YOU get the third arm, eh?”)
Before I move on, a small warning: this was my first game without Prius and his Mega-Camera of Awesomeness +3. Hence the picture quality will be a little less than before. My apologies!
Trying to get my friend familiar with the rules I opted to play a scenario I already knew (and had enjoyed before!): Valkyrie Down. In this case, a sexy downed Ultramarine skimmer made by our Renegade player.
Our initial table setup, with my friend dodging for the camera and my bed in the background (I live in a one-room apartment - I know, I want to move, too). We designated as objective buildings the sand-coloured ruin on the right, the ruin between the trees and the craters to the north and the ruin with the tent on the south:
As per the scenario instructions, the defenders deployed first:
As you can see in the background his scattered units ended up quite fortunate: inside two of the three objective buildings AND in cover!
I deployed on the western edge of the board, near the ruin with the tent in the south and in the forest to the north.
Turn 1Wanting to get those juicy objective buildings into his hands while they were still hot, Captain Aetos advanced his men into the north into the building there, while moving the other group through the south objective building... in the south (nice sentence). Initial shooting saw one of the Harakoni recruits take out Renegade Sergeant Bilko (who recognizes him?).
In turn the Renegades responded by getting in positions to counterassault and taking cover.
The Harakoni move up to take control of the northern objective building:
The Regenades move to intercept them:
The southern Harakoni group moving through the ruins, with the Renegade counterassault moving up.
Turn 2With the sea of traitor scum closing in on them, the Harakoni took cover in the ruins and started blasting away, but their shooting proved ineffective.
The Sturmm Renegades, on the other hand, starting housecleaning in the southern ruin, one of the troopers showing how wielding a shotgun is not done. He started cracking off shots at leading Harakoni Lieutenant, who deftly danced past all the shots (mwuahaha! I didn’t forget my Dodge this time!). The by now customary ‘Roasting of the Medic’ followed shortly: the sucker was again too far up front and took a mouthful of Promethium, out of action!
The Harakoni in defensive position (the medic had already been reduced to ashes when I took this picture):
The confrontation in the north is shaping up:
Turn 3Now
really needing to put some traitor scum down, the Harakoni once again opened fire. To no effect (I rolled
six 1’s to-wound this turn! SIX! That’s insane by any standard!).
One of the Harakoni sergeants in the north, quietly noting that his squad’s shooting was being ineffective, had already declared a charge and now decided to make Renegade Paté, chopping up a shotgun-wielding trooper (stun with sword, finish with combat knife - very cinematic!).
Numbers started to count, though. The Ogryn blasted one of the Harakoni Lieutenants off his socks, while in the south the two (yes, two - purge the loyalists?) traitor flamers started flushing out the Harakoni troopers.
The Harakoni sarge going Rambo:
The result of the Renegade BBQ (and a general impression of my feeling about the game):
Turn 4THE GAME IS CURSED! The Harakoni just cannot not score a wound. Hitting? No problem, but actually
killing something? Nahh... we don’t do that! Alright, except for the gung-ho sarge. He chalked up another one.
Wounding and scoring criticals turned to be a Renegade speciality, though! With three wounds to the chest, the second Harakoni Lieutenant in the southern ruin fell (having run out of Matrix-like dodge moves, apparantly), one of the pistol troopers gleefully reloading as he watched his opponent die (though in all fairness, the Renegades did roll a considerable amount of 1’s, as well - I just rolled
far more).
As a final piece-de-resistance, the Ogryn (aptly named ‘Tiny’) ended the Harakoni sarge’s killing spree by playfully clubbing him to death in close combat (“Wot? He no move no more! NO FUN! FIGHT BACK!”).
Final flight of the Sparrow:
Which is ended with the themesong ‘Clubbed to Death’ playing in the background:
Down to four guys, Captain Aetos (
who actually fired a weapon this game!) decided that discretion was the better part of valour and forfeited the battle to the enemy! I really saw no other way to finish this, other than utter defeat!
Post-battle SequenceWell, at least in games like DS the post-battle sequence is often kind to those soundly defeated.
But not this time!
I lost my medic, my flamer AND a recruit,
permanently. The Lieutenant with the bionic arm took... another arm wound! He shrugged it off this time, though (he’d better, with a freakin’ piece of
Ahh-nuld attached to him). One of the sergeants lost an eye...
The income phase did some good as I got over a hundred credits... but I’m going to reconsider continuing this squad.
Our treacherous Renegades did far better, I thought: but perhaps my friend is willing to comment on that himself, no?
I hope you enjoyed this battlereport! Look out for the next one, hopefully soon...
Subject: Harakoni vs. Sturmm Renegades - WILL work for Chaos! 
Thu Oct 14, 2010 4:37 am
Arachas: What a bunch of bad luck man! SIX 
's in a row? WOW! You and Dozer are 
of crappy rolling. Heheheh... Nice table too! You should experiment with more terrain (buildings with multiple levels and bridges connecting them) so you 'move' the game to a new dimension (3D!)... BAD PUN! It changes the game's dynamics.
and OOA rolls all the way (just not for me!) Unfortunately the rematch with Way of the warrior had to be postponed due to an important meeting at school (boo!)
!!!
