Warlords Club member Paul and myself had a spin around the Slammers block last night. This is a bit of a skimpy AAR, I will confess, and not up to my usual standard. Apologies in advance!
Paul ThinkingIt'd been a while since Paul had played and I wanted to get him into some heavy training for a game next week. I also wanted to show him a 'tricked up' detachment, specifically a nasty, late Slammers Prime Detachment with lots of Elite Skills of the sort that reflect not just 'run of the mill' units but the sort written about in the books full of skilled operatives and, in this case, a flaky commander (June Ranson). PDF link
I ran a detachment of fanatical Scotsmen (the Stewart Regiment link ) backed up by a police unit of late TAS link . All Slammers vehicles were Ainsty Up Armoured Blowers and Up Armoured Combat Cars. The Stewart Regiment is Brigade British forces (with some Russian AFVs thrown in) and the TAS are Brigade PacFed.
The game ebbed to-and-fro: Paul's tactical options were limited a little – four cars and four tanks – but at least he could use all of his guns. Many of the weapon systems I was using simply wouldn't penetrate beyond the enhanced armour of the UA vehicles and their Elite skill of permanent "hull down" (+1 DV all round). That made things tricky for me.
What I did have in my favour (on the similarly points costed game) were that I was playing defensively (and could spend my leadership in encouraging my men to fight well) whereas Paul had to move and attack. Oh, and I had – in comparison – lots of stuff: 20 TUs over Paul's 8.
My opponent's mission was simply to park a vehicle in front of my HQ building and all I had to do was stop him.
In DefenceI lost the TAS in fairly quick order with the Slammers concentrating on the heavier vehicles – the Wraith tanks – first (on account of them actually standing a chance against the blowers): none of them survived beyond turn two and – although one immobilised his commander's Combat Car – none managed to stop a blower tank. In fact the only TAS vehicle to manage that was a missile armed Banshee which rapid fired four missiles at a blower in turn four and (use of elite and optional rules here) – despite using it's own tribarrel earlier, the target tank called on other vehicles on the net to try and intercept missiles on the way (they took out one from the four) and then tried to fire it's improved ADS at the missiles (missing all of them). Finally – after a truly appalling dice throw – only one of the missiles actually hit the tank's top deck and, with luck, penetrated and blew the vehicle.
Apollo MBT with 'Main Gun' token showing it had lost that item – behind it is the TAS Banshee with missiles, hidingHowever, while this was going on, Paul took out one Apollo MBT from the Stewarts, I managed to lose the gun from another in a futile rapid firing attempt (damn that cheap ammunition). He took out both my anti-tank guns – though not before I took out another blower) with tribarrel fire (one of which had been re-hitched up to its prime-mover AFV and repositioned in a desperate attempt to stop the Slammers flanking around the rear) risking jamming his tribarrels with rapid fire confident in the training levels of his crews (who had the Elite skill of Field Mechanic) hoping that they might be able to fix any jammed weapons.
My final acts were brave Stewart infantry using anti-tank grenades from the upper floors of the high-rises firing ballisticly and hitting the top decks of the blowers. One lost its ADS system and then – eventually – it brewed up but not before almost all of the infantry were killed as the Slammers opened fire on the building with their main guns and raked the windows with their tribarrels.
First blower downPaul lost three out of four blowers and kept all of his Combat Cars, one damaged and proceeded to park one of the latter in front of my HQ.
Stewart AFV desperately hiding… I lost all of the TAS and was about to take a moral test with the Stewart regiment having taken more than 50% casualties) when Paul parked up.
I had fun. But then I'm not averse to losing!
Sorry abut the paucity of pictures: I was enjoying getting thrashed too much!
John Treadaway
