All Quiet Battle 9-13-14
Most of you know that over the last few months I have made many postings about All Quiet on the Martian Front. Posts about my modeling projects and several battle reports. But believe it or not, up until now I had not actually played the game! I've helped run games and I've taken a lot of photos of games and written reports about games, but I'd never played in one. Well, that ended yesterday when me and my friend Eric played two games at our local game store.
We didn't play any particular scenario, I just brought all my stuff and we set up a game. The table was 8' x 6'.
The Americans had a line of trenches defended by 3 infantry squads and a section of Machine Guns. They were backed up by two platoons of MK II steam tanks, 1 platoon of MK III steam tanks, 2 MK IV Monitor heavy tanks and a battery of Mobile Howitzers. They had a command post on a hill, an infantry commander in the trenches and a command tank for the armor.
The Martians had three assault tripods, 3 scout tripods and a slaver with 9 drones. Eric decided he wanted to play the Americans, so I took the Martians. We weren't using blip counters or hidden movement, but we did each take 5 command tokens.
I won the first initiative roll and sent everything forward all along the line. We had started pretty far apart so I only had a few long range shots against the American infantry, but their trenches gave them enough cover that I did not score any hits. I made the mistake of moving forward again with my second move, which put me in range of the American's guns for Eric's turn. I probably should have held back.
Eric did not even have to move his tanks forward. He just sat where he was and opened up with everything. He hit the middle assault tripod several times with his tanks and rolled an 8 on the damage table, which means multiple armor hits, and then a 10 on the number of hits. The tripod's armor was reduced to 1!
The battered hulk was then hit by a volley of rifle fire from the trenches (rifles!) and with an armor value of only 1 the tripod came crashing down!
Yeah, I really should not have taken that second move forward.
But it didn't end there. One of the Mk IV Monitor's slammed a few rounds into the next tripod over and stripped some armor off it, too. Well, it could have been worse.
Unfortunately, it got worse! Eric won the initiative for the next turn and got to fire again! In short order he destroyed the damaged assault tripod…
… and then blew up the slaver!
Ouch! This left the Martians at very close to their army break point and they hadn't even killed one of these miserable humans!
At this point Eric said (very charitably, I thought, for human vermin): "Why don't we start over?"
I quickly agreed to that! He even removed one of the Mk IV Monitors to help even things up. Actually, our point totals were almost exactly equal, but I accepted anyway :)
So, we put things back where they were and started again.
This time the Americans got the first move and all their guns were out of range, except for the mobile artillery and the 7" gun on the Monitor. The howitzers laid down a very effective barrage on the slaver and its brood. The slaver took an armor hit and three of the drones were destroyed. The Monitor knocked an armor point off one of the assault tripods. Here we go again!
Then it was my move. I used a command point to give my assault tripods a double move. I decided I would not just charge straight into the human guns this time. I sent the assault tripods around the hill on the right to try and attack the human flank.
My speedy scouts went left to do the same thing.
The slaver and drones plodded up the center. Sadly, my firing was still ineffective.
But then I won the initiative for the second turn, so I got to move twice in a row. I sent the assault tripods forward and they managed to kill a MK II tank. Yay! First human blood!. My scouts blasted away at the humans in the trenches, but to no effect. The infantry is really hard to hit when in trenches. I used another command chit to double move the slaver and the drones. The drones managed to kill one of the machine guns in the trenches. But that was all I could accomplish and then it was Eric's turn again. Once more the human fire proved frighteningly effective. Two of the assault tripods were damaged and each got the dreaded weapons hit, which left their targeting system unreliable and dangerous.
And worse, concentrated fire brought down the slaver again!
Drat! (Oops, wait, I'm an emotionless Martian, let's make that: "Unfortunate")
But there was nothing to do but press on. In my next move I sent the scouts across the trenches and one of them managed to kill one of the MK IIs. The platoon routed!
And a good shot from another took out one of the dangerous MK IIIs. During my second move I advanced a scout far enough to catch one of the routing MK IIs and destroy it, leaving the platoon with just one.
In Eric's turn, he used a command counter to rally the remaining tank of the routed platoon. They quickly got revenge by destroying one of my scouts! Over on the other flank the Monitor further hurt one of my damaged Assault tripods and then an infantry assault from out of the trenches destroyed it! This was not looking good.
In my next turn I sent my scouts around behind the hill to try and destroy the human command post. Sadly, both of them missed.
But then at last random chance favored me (that's Martian for I got lucky). I sent the remaining damaged assault tripod forward. Due to its weapons damage, Eric and I had a roll-off to see who could control its weapon. I won and I fired at the Monitor and destroyed it!
I then got to move again (winning the initiative). On the flank I tried out the Black Dust launcher and managed to kill an infantry stand since the Dust ignores the protection of the trenches.
Even better, over on the other flank, the scouts destroyed the Human command post. No more rallies from there!
Still things were on the brink. One more loss and I would reach my break point. Eric realized this and decided to concentrate everything he had left against the damaged tripod that had destroyed his Monitor. He managed to knock off some more armor, but it survived.
I had to crush these humans quickly. My scouts moved around the hill and destroyed a MK III, and my damaged tripod won the weapons control roll-off again and did a sweep attack on the mobile howitzers, but sadly failed to destroy any.
In Eric's turn he again fired everything at the damaged tripod, but although he stripped off more armor, it still survived. I still had a chance!
But then disaster! In my next move I tempted fate once too often and the damaged tripod lost its roll-off for control of the heat ray. Eric won and took a shot at one of the scouts. Kaboom! Down it went with one shot!
My army was broken!
So, a closely fought battle with a nail-biter ending! We both agreed that it had been a very fun game!
