"The New Alliance" Topic

This battle saw me testing out my new Resistance force. They started at one end of the table, the Scourge started in the middle and the PHR started at the far end. The table was 12x4 and we played the long way.

So the Scourge started out about 6 feet away from the Resistance or just slightly less.

The PHR were 6 feet away from the scourge.

There were three streets running East-west crossed by a number of avenues running North South. The battle took place down the main street in the city, now largely over grown with vegetation.

More pictures of the forces, deployment and the battlefield can be seen here:

link

The Scourge simply had to annihilate either the Resistance force or the PHR to win the game, preventing the two sides from making contact at any cost.

Since there was probably only about 500 pts of Resistance the Scourge decided to try to take them out. Makes sense. There were actually more points of PHR than of Scourge if you discounted the massive amount of Scourge infantry available.

The first two turns saw the Scourge force streaming towards the Resistance, basically making it to the point where they could consider dropping stuff after two turns of movement.

The PHR valiantly tried to come up as fast as they could.

Basically the Scourge had to decide if they wanted to focus all of their efforts on destroying the Resistance or leave a trip wire to slow the PHR down with some of their forces while concentrating the rest on the resistance.

They decided on the former, leaving the Desolator and the infantry behind. The later took up positions in buildings denying the PHR easy advancement down the middle and North sides of the battlefield and forcing the resistance that were on the North side of the main street to either move, or fight through them to reach the PHR forces.

The rest of the Scourge force screamed towards the Resistance infantry on the South-West corner of the table while the two gun ships attacked the force on the North side of the main street.

The shooting started when the Resistance dropships tried to shoot down some of the Scourge transports and failed miserably.

First blood did go to the resistance when the Scourge gunships learned just how deadly a wall of fire from some gun wagons could be.

Pretty quickly the two units of infantry in the block were engulfed in plasma fire and the Scourge reapers were trying to hunt down the AT-77s who were doing their best to ward them off.

The Resistance forces on the North side of the table made a hesitant move towards the PHR forces coming in from the East but with the Scourge occupying the buildings in that direction it would be difficult to run that gauntlet.

The Scourge were relentless and when the infantry were battered on the other side of the table, the Hunters pulled out to go after the rest of the force while the Tormenters pulled up and filled the buildings with boiling acid.

Tough as they were, the Resistance troopers were no match for that level of devastation and soon, there weren't even bones to mark their passing.

You can see more pictures of the first three turns of the battle here:

link

The PHR started to drop walkers in to deal with the massive amount of infantry that the Scourge forces had deployed between them and the forces of the Resistance.

The fire seemed almost desultory at first with the massive number of troops in the buildings.

More pictures here: link

Scourge interceptors were appearing above the table and two of the PHR Tritons were lost to their fire, the one exploding in the air while the other managed to skid across the ground, the pilot managing to save the two light walkers he carried.

More and more fire was exchanged between the PHR walkers and the infantry in the building and it quickly became apparent that some cyber warfare had been conducted by the Scourge as the PHR weapons were unable to hit almost any targets.

Meanwhile the two Lifthawks had been shot down and the few survivors of the Resistance force were almost making a fortification out of the wreckage of vehicles that surrounded them.

The PHR infantry forces took up a position on a building across from the main Scourge bastion. Gun and plasma fire was exchanged between the two buildings, while the PHR concentrated their main effort on the building to the West with the smaller concentration of Scourge infantry.

As the Scourge infantry were being worn down in the Western of the two buildings they occupied the last remaining Triton moved to the top of the building and dropped its troops into the building. A close combat ensued and while the PHR troops were victorious, it came at a heavy cost and only four of them remained in the building, now littered with the bodies of 30 Scourge infantry.

But the Scourge weren't just taking it, they were giving it out. The Desolator moved into the midst of the PHR walkers firing at the Eastern building and let loose with its Ion storm. Damaging no less than four PHR Walkers, the PHR continued to ignore it to their peril as it raked their ranks with lightning arcs again and again.

The Walkers started to move apart when relief would come from a surprising direction, the two light walkers that had not been destroyed when their transport was shot down fired their full payloads at the Desolator.

It was enough to damage the beast.

The Resistance were still just barely holding on when the Scourge descended upon their last standing troops on the North side of the board.

More pics:

link

It now ground down into a war of attrition. The Scourge had killed almost all of the resistance forces except for one stand of infantry, two jacksons and the two Hannibal tanks.

The Hannibals gave back through when they were facing off against the Scourge hunters and blocked off the road with wreckage from them.

Eventually the Desolator went down in a giant fireball as the walkers were forced to concentrate their fire on the machine raining death down upon them.

The Scourge were now down to only 3 stands of Infantry, out of an initial 15, they had two hunters tanks left that would have to move around the block to get to their quarry, and all but two of their drops ships were destroyed.

The two tormenters still survived but with the amount of PHR firepower that could be brought to bear against them the battle was lost.

The resistance tanks slowly pushed their way through the wreckage to the PHR lines. The last of the Scourge infantry was pinned down now and the tankers drove past the building they occupied.

Their objective in keeping the two forces apart now lost, the Scourge withdrew as quickly as they could and the PHR forces were happy to let them go.

Looks like the membership system is close, I'll post some more pictures tomorrow.

Proper scrap,
I was drooling into my keyboard at the gorgeous terrain and models, really enjoyed reading up on this feast of a battle
thankyou.

I'm glad you liked it. It was a pretty good scrap, lasting about 5 hours actually.

A lot of that was down to the PHR/Resistance side not being able to hit for sour apples most of the time. There were entire battle groups that, despite having 15 or more dice of fire, failed to inflict a single wound or damage point, despite needing only 4 or 5+ to hit and the same to wound.

I think more 1s were rolled on that side than anything else. And the number of times snake eyes turned up was almost unbelievable.

The Scourge really needed a quick victory and probably chose the wrong units to act as a trip wire if they were going that route.

Even at the end of the game though there were still a fair number of Scourge on the table for the amount of enemy they faced.

For example the Athena, despite the game lasting about 10 turns, didn't inflict a single point of damage all game.

Here it is delivering 6 shots at the desolator needing 4+ to hit and 4+ to damage:

It did that twice actually.

Here are some more pictures:

link

Attrition:

From the nine stands that started in this building they are down to five, and one with four guys dead on it. Another two whole stands were taken out by the end of the game.

Ding, dong the witch is dead:

The Desolator finally went down. Probably the PHR player ignored it for too long. Oddly, the first shot it took was at a walker with its concentrated beam. Despite needing a 2+ it missed. Then it used its ion storm eventually taking out 3 walkers.

And then the last of the pictures:

link

60 odd pictures from this batrep. Can you tell we were testing out a new camera?

Very nice terrain boards give me some ideas, and a nice game report thanks, :D

I really like the abandoned city vibe you got with the moss/lichen effect.

Mmmmm….Fritos and Pepsi…..

Nice report Scott

Attractive table and mini's.

JAS

I'm sure a million people have said it already but I love the moss-grown buildings. Very nice. Gives a totally unique feeling to the game "world"

What a fantastic looking table and minis

Thanks guys, I'm glad you guys liked it. It was fun to play. The Resistance play a lot differently from the PHR forces so it was tough running both in some ways. I do like the way the resistance army plays though and I'm sure I'll be expanding that force in the very near future.