This weekend saw the continuation of our extended trainingexercize campaign! We bring you not one... but TWO games! With pics! 'Ere we gooo...
First off, Arachas' Cadians have finally gotten a name. After testing several painting schemes to my far too high standards, I settled on the Harakoni Warhawks scheme. Since I didn't want all my guys in carapace (as per the Warhawks fluff), I decided my regiment would be the 11th Harakoni Light Recon, the "Mad Sparrows". theColonel's team, though already named the Praetor Infiltrators, were established to come from the Forgeworld of Praetor.
We played our next two games at a friend's place in an as yet futile attempt to convince him to play Death Squads (he's registered here, though). As you can judge from the pics, his scenery is quite frankly AWESOME.
With all that settled, our second scenario quite fittingly was determined to be:
"Valkyrie Down". With the tiny detail that, in absence of any Valkyrie models, we used a Chimaera. The Harakoni troopers deployed with their transport (an area of 1" around the vehicle), though half of the squad was scattered throughout the rest of surrounding area. Goal of the mission: to occupy three buildings that were in a strategical position surrounding the downed Chimaera, in order to allow a safe extraction of the stranded squad. The Praetorians of course arrived to hinder this.
Pic: the Harakoni exit their crashed vehicle and make ready to take up a controlling position on the battefield.
Pic: The Praetorians arrive, immediately taking control of one of the objective buildings. Not to mention they managed to take an excellent firing position right from the start.
Turn 1:The Praetorians immediately start picking off the exposed Harakoni troopers. A sergeant is shot and one of the Lieutenants succumbs to his wounds as he is toasted by the Praetorian flamethrower.
In response the Harakoni attempt to regroup their scattered squadmembers. One of the recruits scattered to the other side of the board, but conveniently close to another one of the three objective buildings. Leaving the fighting to the rest of team, he decided to take matters into his own hands. The rest of the team attempts to take cover in one of the nearby craters, sacrificing their chance at any effective return fire.
Pic: An overview of the battlefield. Note the scenery!
Pic: The Harakoni take heavy fire.
Pic: The Harakoni take cover, while the scattered recruits rush in to support the rest of the team.
Turn 2:The Praetorians strengthen their position and continue to rain death upon their fellow (well, not really) Guardsmen. The Praetorian flametrooper decides to have Sparrowstew and roasts the Harakoni taking cover in the crater. The Harakoni hopelessly try their hand at returning fire, while they continue to regroup.
Pic: More regrouping and dying Harakoni in the craters up front. The flamer is the guy on front of the building.
More overview:
Turn 3:Pressing their advantage, the Praetorians advance, the Captain up front. He charges into the crater in an attempt to dispatch the knocked down Harakoni Captain. With a swift stroke he knocks Captain Aetos’ (as yet the only named Harakoni on the table) pistol from his grasp and summarily executes him with his own pistol.
The remaining Harakoni Lieutenant, seeing his Captain cut down in front of him, charges the Praetorian CO, only to stumble through the crater instead of looking scary. Not far from there two Praetorians are kept from taking the third objective building by a lone Harakoni sergeant, who manages to fight them off in close combat by himself.
Pic: The Praetorian CO (holding his pistol gangsta-style) now gets to deal with the Harakoni second-in-command.
Pic: The Harakoni sergeant seems to have his work cut out for him, but defies the odds. In this pic he is almost hidden from sight by a part of the building.
Turn 4:Showing the clumsy Harakoni Lieutenant how it’s done, the Praetorian CO charges him head on. A vicious duel ensues, with neither party being able to land a blow! In the third objective building, the Harakoni sergeant courageously stands firm, repeatedly knocking his opponents down without being able to finish them off. I guess he was too busy to land a decent killing blow!
Pic: The two officers duke it out in the crater:
Turn 5:By now, most of the Harakoni recruits are being picked off, with the Praetorian flamer having a field day. Meanwhile, the duels continue! The lone Harakoni sergeant continues to fight off his Praetorian collegue, while the Harakoni Lieutenant exchanges blows with the Praetorian CO.
Pic: The Harakoni recruits take cover in one of the central ruins, only to be flushed out by the Praetorian flamer.
Turn 6:The duel in the crater reaches an epic conclusion! Sick of playing with his opponent (tee, hee) the Harakoni Lieutenant finishes off the Praetorian Captain! And in the objective building, the Harakoni sergeant fells his Praetorian counterpart, now having but one Praetorian left to deal with!
In conclusion, one of the Harakoni recruits picks off the last Praetorian Lieutenant with a lucky shot.
As we came to the conclusion of the turn, we had to roll to see if the game would continue. It would on a 4+, but we rolled a 3 and so the game was over! A hard-fought draw, since both parties occupied one of the three objective buildings, while the third building was being contested.
The post-battle sequence proved critical! The Harakoni Lieutenant whom so bravely fought off and bested the Praetorian CO was granted a very much deserved +1 WS! He got a shiny chainsword as a reward. One of the recruits proved to have some talent, but subsequently missed the next game due to a careless inspection of a sewer entrance (of course they sent the new guy down there!)
One of the Praetorian Lieutenants ended up missing the next THREE games. But, even more interesting, it turned out that the Praetorians had managed to take the Harakoni CO captive! After much desperate haggling and the offering of my sister-in-law to theColonel, it was decided we would play a rescue scenario for our next game. I’ll be posting that up, shortly!
(@ theColonel: anything I missed, particularly from your Post-Battle Sequence, feel free to add!)
Administrative EDIT: I split your OTHER Battle Report... it is too AWESOME to be missed! THANKS! Check the link!!!
Subject: Airborne versus Forgeworld! Arachas and theColonel game 2! Warning: TONS of pics! 
Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:39 am
) on my side in the first half of the game, but that shifted to Arachas soon enough, making me have to work for it. Clearly that failed, with the game ending in a draw, but if we had had another turn I doubt I would have managed to hold, or even take, that second building.
